Web video communications startup TokBox Inc. took on $10 million in a second
round led by Bain Capital Ventures, adding a comfortable cushion to a brief, charmed funding life that began with a $4 million investment by Sequoia Ventures when it launched last October.
Bain, the Boston spinoff of Bain Consulting, tends to look for companies with strong pedigrees or as potential roll-up platforms. The deal for TokBox is clearly the former, hinging on the startup's connections to YouTube, with Sequoia partner and early YouTube backer Roelof Botha and Jawed Karim, the video giant's co-founder, both serving on the young company's board of directors. TokBox also boasts veterans of PayPal, Nvidia [
NVDA] and Cisco Systems Inc. [
CSCO] among its small startup team. The company has garnered strong reviews for its service, which offers a video communications utility for social media sites as well as a downloadable version.
With recent features integrating video communications capabilities into Facebook's chat utility, TokBox is aiming to establish itself early on as the leading consumer video-based instant messaging communications platform for social media, and the Bain investment will help the company launch additional features and build out its management team.
-- Clifford CarlsenSee Aug. 7 press release from TokBox For more see
Pulse 2.0 and
Sociable Blog
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