VideoGenie gets $2M for video testimonials

Customer-generated videos drive a ton of engagement and conversions, startup has found

VideoGenie, a startup that curates customer-generated video, announced Thursday that it has raised a $2 million Series A round of venture financing led by Blumberg Capital. Previous investors, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, also participated in the round.

Launched in May 2010, VideoGenie provides companies and brands with a platform for collecting video-based testimonials from their customers. Clients then choose their favorite videos, which VideoGenie compiles into a video playlist embeddable on a corporate website or social media page.

It doesn’t stop there, though, because VideoGenie continuously runs millions of A/B tests every day, optimizing the video playlist to best grab the user’s attention and compel them to engage with the brand more.

Amazingly, the company only took eight months after launch to break-even, and all without a single sales person. You can’t fake numbers like that, or like these:

Within the first month of the launch of the VideoGenie campaign on ShoeDazzle, over 70,000 videos had been viewed, which translated to over a thousand conversions. (Watch some of those videos here.) When Intuit GoPayment started using VideoGenie, the videos were relegated to the fourth tab of the main site. After Intuit saw the results, though, those same videos were given their own spot on the company’s landing page and social media hubs.

On VideoGenie, “the average customer watches over nine videos in a row, or over 3.5 minutes of video content,” VideoGenie founder and CEO Justin Nassiri told me over the phone. “Hulu can’t even force people to watch a 15 second commercial.”

The difference with these videos, according to Nassiri, is that viewers are “responding to the authenticity and realness and passion” of customers in the videos. In a world where “customer skepticism is high,” it’s nice to find some sincere feedback from real customers.

Nassiri wouldn’t confide how many clients VideoGenie currently has, but some of the clients they do have are not too shabby: Levi’s, Intuit, Sony Music and the U.S. Department of State.

VideoGenie says it will use the new funding to start scaling up the business, which includes further product development and new hires.