[ibimage==30265==Large==none==self==ibimage_align-right]Formerly known as MovieClips.com, ZEFR has been a pioneer in monetizing video content since 2009. Today, this Venice-based software platform for brand and content management offers products that promise to make it an end-to-end YouTube solution for customers in all industries. With nearly $30M in funding under its belt, ZEFR is poised for amazing growth, and is positioned to conquer online video.
The development of ZEFR’s new software platform began with its acquisition of Pipewave in 2013, a move to serve and help grow brands and content owners on YouTube. The acquisition was part of a growth strategy that was noted as half talent half technology, James Chmielinski, technical recruiting lead, said.
From the acquisition, and other R&D initiatives, ZEFR began offering two core solutions: Social Marketing for Video and Rights Management. The Social Marketing for Video product features Brand ID (a listening and management tool), Channel ID (a publishing tool) and Ad ID (a YouTube advertising tool). These marketing tools help brands connect with their fans, while the ZEFR Rights Management product helps people monetize, manage, and protect their copyrighted content on YouTube. These products are helping businesses make better decisions, and that help them reach more people.
As ZEFR’s offerings have been expanding, so has ZEFR’s team: Chmielinkski said a little over a year ago they had 100 employees and are now at 250 employees strong.“We are growing very rapidly and have teams of 20 to 25 engineers that are broken out by ZEFR’s products,” Chmielinski said. “Each product has four to five engineers that work exclusively on its projects.” In the future James said he sees ZEFR hiring around two engineers a month to keep up with its agile development cycle. ZEFR employees have the rare opportunity to completely run with their own projects.Growth and challenge are inherent parts of the ZEFR culture.
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“Culture is about creating opportunities for the staff to get together to laugh, work, and have fun,” Chmielinski said. “ZEFR is really a community where people enjoy what they do. Everyone is excited and that is who we are.” Chmielinski best summarized the culture at ZEFR as “go big and go fast.” Take risks and give it your all. It was a risk closing an acquisition in three months, but that speed and confidence shows the seriousness ZEFR has in expanding its technology.
ZEFR has already accomplished so much since the founding at the end of 2009. The company is already serving more than 1 billion video views per month and has secured nearly 80 percent of the movie industry and 60 percent of record labels. Yet this is just the beginning, as ZEFR has already hinted at expanding into other industries, like sports and TV, very soon. 2014 is the year where ZEFR makes it a point that video is the next status quo. ZEFR wants to help its clients understand the importance and growth of video as the next generation in social. “ZEFR wants to raise awareness as a one-stop shop in online video for the enterprise,” Chmielinksi said. “We are doing for YouTube what Google did for the Internet.”
