was named to Fast Company’s top 100 list of the “Most Creative People in Business 2011.”
Tehran-born Shahrzad Rafati, the founder and CEO of the British Columbia-based Internet business was listed number 37 in this year’s list.
BroadbandTV finds and identifies copyrighted content on sites where users upload video content—even if it has a copyright—and then sells ads against these user-posted videos—essentially rebranding it as official content. The revenue is then shared with the copyright owner.
“We’ve claimed and monetized hundreds of thousands of videos for the NBA [National Basketball Association] over the last two years,” Rafati said.
The company is based off computer programs created by Rafati; these search algorithms crawl the web for specific, copyrighted content. It was for this innovation that Rafati was named one of the top 100 creative business thinkers of 2011.
Rafati’s search algorithms scan the web for copyrighted video clips that have been uploaded without authorization. When they find one, Broad-bandTV staff screen and remove any objectionable content and then attach advertisements. The video clip is then rebranded into a revenue-generating ad for the copyright holder. The resulting ad revenue is shared among partners in the venture, including the NBA and BroadbandTV.
The Iranian-born entrepreneur, who moved from to Vancouver in 2000 to study computer science, said she founded BroadbandTV in 2005 to “take the fear out of the web” for content owners like Warner Bros., Sony and the NBA. A year after founding the company, she graduated from the University of British Columbia in computer science.
BroadbandTV already has business relationships with companies like YouTube, the NBA, Electronic Arts, United Way, Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures and Warner Brothers.
“I consume a lot of videos online myself. I watch a lot of content on YouTube and other sites,” Rafati told the Vancouver Sun.
“When first YouTube came around, and a lot of other video portals that might not even be around now, the majority of the content on these platforms was uploaded by users. The majority of the uploaded content was not videos of cats and dogs. It was an NBA clip, an American Idol clip.
“I thought—the guys that are uploading are not really thinking of themselves as pirates. These are fans that are going out there, they are uploading the videos, they are sharing them with their friends and they’re very enthusiastic. They’re posting it on their Facebook wall.
“We thought, how can we come up with a solution to a problem that the content partners are facing where we give them control?” Rafati told the Vancouver Sun.
A deal to clean up user generated content was the first step. The next one was persuading the clients to let BroadbandTV create unique, legitimized Internet video channels where fans could upload their clips—and attach revenue-generating ads.
The company also created VISO, a “consumer brand” on YouTube. VISO offers a series of channels dedicated to content from video games, sports, music, television and film trailers. There’s a VISO Gamer channel for video gamers to post video clips from their in-game adventures. VISO Trailers shows movie trailers and other film content. VISO Games shows video game trailers, and VISO Music features concert clips and other music videos.
“At the end of the day, you are giving the end user what they are looking for, not looking at them as pirates but as fans, enthusiastic fans that are going out there sharing, uploading content, sharing it with their friends and educating them,” Rafati said.
Rafati said her favorite new channel is VISO Give, which enables charitable enterprises to post their own content and generate revenue from it.
“You see a lot of technology companies that just create technology for the sake of creating something really cool and hoping that someone is going to acquire the company. For us, it’s solving a real problem that exists out there,” Rafati said.
“It’s something I’m personally passionate about because it’s doing something good within the community and truly helping the non-profits. We are hoping to get more and more non-profits on board to really create a kick-ass, aggregated hub destination for the non-profits.”
Rafati is currently meeting with potential investors about a Series A round of venture capital funding.
“We’ve been fortunate,” she said. “The business is cash-flow positive. We have a proven model. As a result of that, we want to grow rapidly and we think it’s best to go out there and raise some money and truly scale the business.”
Fast Company is a New York-based business magazine.
