Publications
Publications
- September 2011 (Revised March 2014)
- HBS Case Collection
Brightcove, Inc. in 2007
By: Andrei Hagiu and David B. Yoffie
Abstract
Brightcove, a technology and services provider to content owners in the Internet television field, aimed to become a media distribution company in its own right. On October 30, 2006, it relaunched its Website—and, in effect, its business. With its new, consumer-facing home page, and with new offerings for advertisers and affiliates as well as video publishers, Brightcove sought to build a four-sided business (or "platform") around the rapidly expanding online video industry. Simultaneously, CEO Jeremy Allaire was completing a major funding round that would enable the company to make strategic investments in some or all of several categories: technology, media distribution infrastructure, international expansion, and acquisitions. As Allaire and his fellow executives weighed those options, they confronted competitive threats in multiple quarters, but particularly from YouTube, a hugely popular video-sharing site that online search giant Google had recently acquired. Covers Brightcove's vision for its multi-sided business, its technology offering and early business model, its efforts to shift to a new model based on media distribution, and its chief competitors in that market space.
Keywords
Competition; Entrepreneurship; Investment; Diversification; Digital Platforms; Business Strategy; Internet and the Web; Business Model; Distribution; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Motion Pictures and Video Industry
Citation
Hagiu, Andrei, and David B. Yoffie. "Brightcove, Inc. in 2007." Harvard Business School Case 712-424, September 2011. (Revised March 2014.)