29 Oct 2013

Social Video Startup Magisto Raises $13 Million From Qualcomm And Sandisk




By Ryan Lawler at TechCrunch

Once upon a time, seemingly everyone was creating mobile apps to help users shoot, edit, and share videos with one another. Thanks to a desire to build or invest in the “Instagram for video,” a number of new social video apps popped up and got funding last year.

One startup that was always a bit of an outlier in that race was Magisto, which had built an app that was designed to magically create interesting videos out of the videos that users had stored on their computers and phones. Now, after posting pretty incredible growth, the company has raised $13 million to take on the ambitious goal of unlocking all the world’s photos and videos and making them shareable.

The funding comes from two major strategic investors — Qualcomm Ventures and Sandisk. Existing investors Magma Venture Partner and Li Ka Shing’s Horizons Ventures also participated in the round.

Magisto has signed up more than 13 million users since being founded, pitching them on the idea of “video storytelling.” By using proprietary algorithms, the mobile and web app pieces together multiple video and photo assets and creates shareable videos and photo slideshows. They can then be shared on social networks, or with specific friends and family.

While a large amount of video is being created and stored on smartphones, there’s also a ton of photos and videos that has been shot but never makes it off a user’s SD card. Magisto CEO and co-founder Oren Boiman hopes to make all that content available to be shared.


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