Video Search Pioneer CastTV Secures $3.1 Million Series A Funding Led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson

SAN FRANCISCO, April 24 /PRNewswire/ -- CastTV Inc. (http://www.casttv.com/), dedicated to building the Web's best video search, today announced that it has secured $3.1 million in financing through a Series A investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. In addition, CastTV also revealed today that it has signed a two-year deal with a major media corporation to provide online video crawling and indexing technology for the company's online video search offering. The funding and customer agreement validate CastTV's technology solution and will accelerate the company's growth and product development.

In conjunction with the Series A funding, CastTV welcomes Warren Packard, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, to its Board of Directors. Packard joins Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, legendary angel investor Ron Conway and Stanford professor of computer science and director of graduate studies Rajeev Motwani, as Silicon Valley veterans behind CastTV. Andreessen was the co-founder of Netscape and co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser. Both Conway and Motwani played important roles in the development of Web search -- Conway as an early investor in Google and Motwani as Google's strategic advisor.

"CastTV will become the first place users go to find video on the Internet," said Packard, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. "The exponential growth of online video has exceeded all expectations, and there is a huge opportunity for a company to bring order and organization to the video Web. CastTV's superior technology and team will allow it to emerge as a leader in video search and discovery."

CastTV's video search technology has been developed over the last few years to address the challenges particular to online video search, which are twofold:

  * Online videos are increasingly hidden in the "media Web" -- behind
    Flash, JavaScript and media player plug-ins -- and therefore hidden from
    traditional search engines.  CastTV has built unmatched proprietary
    technology that crawls, indexes and extracts metadata from these videos.
  * Information, or metadata, associated with videos is often short,
    incomplete and disorganized.  CastTV has developed novel search
    algorithms that overcome these limitations by incorporating behavioral
    and extended data -- delivering the best results for users' video
    queries.

"CastTV has developed proprietary and defensible technology to meet users' online video search needs, and we are building a world-class team to propel the company forward," said Edwin Ong, co-founder and CEO of CastTV. "We're fortunate to have strong financial and advisory supporters behind us. These visionaries who were instrumental in the first wave of Internet search, now recognize the promise of CastTV and support us as we lead the next wave of search -- video search," added Alex Vikati, co-founder and president of CastTV.

CastTV was founded by husband-and-wife Stanford alums Ong and Vikati to help users find all their online videos, from TV shows to movies to the latest celebrity, sports, news, and viral videos. Following the acquisition of their previous venture, FileFish Inc., in 2003 by Oracle, they set out to design a video search solution that would give users the best experience finding the best content across the Web. When fully launched, CastTV's solution will empower users to simply and effortlessly find the videos that matter to them.

CastTV will beta launch its video search offering next month at http://www.casttv.com/ , with a full consumer launch set for this summer.

About Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Draper Fisher Jurvetson is the pre-eminent venture capital firm with global presence through a network of affiliated funds, with offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $4.5 billion in capital commitments. DFJ's mission is to identify, serve, and provide capital for extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who are determined to change the world. Over the past twenty years, DFJ has been proud to back more than 300 companies across many sectors including such industry-changing catalysts as Hotmail, Baidu, Skype, United Online, Overture, Interwoven, Four11, Parametric, and Digidesign.

About CastTV

CastTV is working to build the web's best video search engine. CastTV lets users find all their favorite online videos, from TV shows to movies to the latest celebrity, sports, news, and viral videos. The company's proprietary technology addresses two main video search challenges: finding and cataloguing videos from the web and delivering relevant video results to users. CastTV is funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and prominent angel investors. The company is based in San Francisco, CA and will be launching its video search offering at http://www.casttv.com/ .