Blue Jeans gets $25M for interoperable video meetings

The video conferencing service lets you connect with team members from any device and any system

Video conferencing service Blue Jeans announced Wednesday that it has raised $25 million in a Series C round led by NEA, with help from Accel Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.  All three VC firms previously contributed to Blue Jeans’ previous rounds.  This round brings the company’s total raised to $48.5 million.

"NEA, Norwest and Accel have not only been great partners of ours but they are world-renowned investors; a who's who list of venture capitalists,” CEO Krish Ramakrishnan told me.  “The three firms also have a great track record with their portfolios, and an affinity for placing large bets on transformational companies such as Blue Jeans."

Blue Jeans has arisen as something of a hero in the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) era—when getting all of your team members on one conference call might mean connecting several different platforms.  The interoperable cloud-based service allows people to check into conference calls from virtually any device and system.  Users can connect via room systems like Cisco TelePresence and Vidyo, desktop systems, video software like Cisco, Skype, Microsoft Lync, or Google Video Chat, mobile video software like Skype, and more.

Today, the company also announced the addition of Web browser access to the Blue Jeans video conferencing system.  Now, users who don’t want to go through Skype, Google Chat, or some other system can join the conference directly from their browser.  The company says that expands the market to over 2.3 billion people who happen to have access to the Internet and a browser. 

Among Blue Jeans’ list of clients are Facebook, the Sierra Club, Stanford University, Orchard Brands, Match.com, Gawker Media, and more.

The company doesn’t share user numbers, but does say that it has connected over 250,000 participants in over 3,000 cities worldwide in hundreds of thousands of video meetings.

The company says that it plans to use the new funds from this round to expand sales, marketing, and operations to grow the company.  It will also invest the money in product development.