Today, we announced the news that Zype has become part of Backlight, a PSG-backed company composed of five SaaS businesses serving the media and entertainment industry. Taking on this significant growth investment is another pivotal moment for Zype, and has a lot of meaning for our customers, our team and for the entire video ecosystem.
When we started Zype in 2015, we strove to connect the world's video and viewers by focusing on video infrastructure for businesses - making it easier for them to build, operate, and manage video distribution and monetization at scale. We focused on creating a product that puts performance first - powering billions of video interactions per month - always holding up to the rigorous demands of Internet streaming. We invested in a user experience and developer experience that is user-friendly and intuitive, so that customers could use it to build their streaming services with ease no matter their experience level. We set, as our mission, to be a connecting force in the larger video ecosystem and to create an open and compatible API-driven platform that could not only build, serve and manage direct-to-consumer OTT experiences, but would also be easy to integrate into existing workflows and integrate with other great products and services across the industry.
In 2015, as we were emerging out of our initial MVP stage, we won the SXSW Accelerator for Entertainment and Content Technology. With the recognition and support of the SXSW Accelerator judges, we were on our way in building a durable company, focused on our customer’s goals and outcomes, that would be an important force in the transformation and digitization of video in homes, on phones, and everywhere else.
The journey since then has been awesome. We’ve had the fortune to work with so many innovative media and entertainment brands, build a global team of over 90 Zypesters, work on one of the most scalable and durable streaming video infrastructures available in the world serving 30 million unique viewers a month. Most importantly, we’ve been able to solve mission critical video challenges for countless video publishers, connecting them to their viewers and enabling them to reach their goals.
Along the way, we’ve picked up a common refrain from customers we talk to: “I wish I had heard about you sooner.” The more we heard this, the more we realized that we needed to take on a significant investment to expand the distribution of our own product in the ecosystem, to invest in our go-to-market, and to expand our reach globally.
We had many choices in terms of investment - the global pandemic and public valuations for technology companies were driving interest in Zype and valuations up quite a bit from where things were just a few years ago. But we wanted a partner that would ensure that our customers would remain our number one priority, that our team and our culture would be preserved, so that we can continue building this durable and meaningful video streaming infrastructure that can continue being a force for connectivity and growth in the ecosystem. That partner was PSG. They impressed our management team with their focus on growth, operational expertise, and commitment to the video ecosystem. PSG provided the framework for Zype to join forces with other video innovators under the Backlight family.
With Zype now part of Backlight, with the significant resources of PSG behind us, we can deliver exactly that. This investment gives us fuel to accelerate our momentum in launching robust, innovative solutions for our customers. We know our customers love the performance and intuitive design of our current product, but we must move forward, as new standards, endpoints, and distribution and payment models emerge. With the financial and operational resources of Backlight behind us, we can provide even more value to our customers by delivering deeper product functionality and broader feature sets on a faster timeline.
One of our greatest strengths at Zype has always been our people - Zypesters - who represent Zype’s core values each and every day and use them as a guiding light in everything that they do. From today forward, our offerings will only get better as we bring on new talent to help drive product innovation and extend our global reach. This includes our award-winning support, which has been extended to more time zones and global locations since our acquisition of MAZ Systems in August of 2021, and will be continually invested in as we grow out our streaming network.
Taking on this investment and becoming part of Backlight opens the door to a range of opportunities for Zype and its customers. But we will remain a standalone company, connected to a broader set of video innovators like ftrack, Celtx, iconik and Wildmoka, who share our values, and committed to providing the best-in-class software infrastructure to help customers overcome their streaming video challenges. We are so excited for the future of video, the opportunities for our customers, and for the Zype team.
With Gratitude,
Ed Laczynski
CEO, Zype
