Local startup
LeanIn reached a significant milestone earlier this month when it was among 20 Canadian firms that made a trip to Silicon Valley for the
C100"48 Hours In The Valley" pitch and mentorship conference. The event allowed LeanIn and the other companies to meet and pitch venture capitalists and mingle with mentors in the digital capital of the world.
"It was pretty awesome to go and hang around in San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a 48 hour period," says Luke Davies, president of LeanIn. "We got to meet a lot of influential Canadians who live in the valley who are incented to help us...we met 100 or so new friends in the valley who have joined our support network."
LeanIn's technology allows users to use search and social media tools within videos. As Davies puts it, the product allows users to search within videos for specific scenes, and to share specific scenes within videos with their friends on social media. Davies says the motivation came when founder and CEO Hescham Ghazal, already a successful technology engineer, set out to "look at online video because it's a massive market, and it's broken." Davies says that one of the key "really cool" assets of the software is to provide companies with analytics based on how users interact with their video content at the scene level.
LeanIn was incubated at the Ryerson Digital Media Zone beginning in May of 2010, graduating from the space just last month. The software can be set up by creators within any of the major online video platforms within 10 minutes. The company has developed key partnerships Brightcove and YouTube, among other key video giants, though Davies says that parterships they are attempting to set up with social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter could be just as key to their success. Already, they have grown to six employees, and plans are afoot to hire another six. "We're incredibly resource restrained right now, like a lot of startups, everyone is incredibly overworked. I'm literally the dishwasher," says Davies. "But we're undergoing a fundraising round in the next few months and we expect to hire another six or so people--to essentially double our staff--soon after that."
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Luke Davies, President, LeanIn