A startup once again, Kontiki raises $10.7M to give each company its own YouTube

Kontiki, a startup with clever Web video technology and a storied past in Silicon Valley, announced today that it has raised $10.7 million in its second round of funding.

Kontiki gives companies a way to publish and stream video content, much like YouTube, within an internal network by using peer-to-peer technology similar to torrent programs like BitTorrent.

The company was originally backed by the late former Netscape executive Mike Homer, who was widely mourned in Silicon Valley when he died in 2009. Kontiki got a second chance at life as a startup, however, when it was spun out of VeriSign in 2008, which had acquired it in 2006.

Instead of hosting entire videos on remote databases, users looking to watch a live stream or video pull little bits of data from machines across the company to speed up the process. Kontiki provides companies with both a way to access static video, like YouTube, and stream live video content like company meetings.

Because the service uses peer-to-peer technology, rather than traditional video hosting sites like YouTube, its video transmission speed automatically scales to how large the company is, said Eric Armstrong, chief executive officer of Kontiki. That means companies don’t have to buy additional servers if they continue to grow — as soon as they add a new machine for a new employee, it automatically increases the power of the network.

The funding is pegged to help further develop their Web-based video publishing service, with which Kontiki hopes to triple their user base of more than 1 million enterprise customers. Enterprise video publishing looks to be about a $1.5 billion market, Armstrong said.

Most company networks aren’t built to handle large-scale data transmission like video — just “burst-y” transmissions like email and messaging, he said. That’s where the idea for Kontiki came in when the technology was originally developed in 2000.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company has raised $15.7 million in two rounds of funding to date, and has 35 employees. The most recent round was led by MK Capital, New World Ventures and Cross Creek Capital.

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