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"Fight Club inspired my business"

By Rebecca Burn-Callander, published 356 days ago in Startups.

Tod Yeadon and Nick Bell founded Quick.tv in 2007. After two years in development, they've just launched their software as a service (SaaS) offering, which allows online publishers to make their videos interactive with text, click-through hotspots, forms and polls. It's already causing a real stir in digital media circles.

The two entrepreneurs came up with the concept while watching the Oscar-nominated 1999 film Fight Club, starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. "Remember the scene where Edward Norton is ordering furniture and soft furnishings from Ikea?" says Yeadon. "There's a long pan and his apartment fills up with stuff. Each thing features a text overlay of product information. We thought: 'You should be able to do that with online videos. And you should be able to click through and actually buy the products.' It's the new wave of online video marketing."

You can watch the clip from Fight Club below.

Yeadon and Bell set about creating the technology. They raised £1.2m from angel investors and venture capital firm Northstar to fund development. The final product launched two weeks ago and the entrepreneurs are already running 15 client campaigns with a further 50 deals in the pipeline.

But has the recession hampered the startup? "We have been affected of course," says Yeadon. "But we don't know what it would be like if it wasn't a recession. We have no comparison.

"We are keeping overheads incredibly low, however. Quick.tv is an internet company with under ten staff. And luckily we're not reliant on advertising revenues or anything."

The Quick.tv business model is practically recession-proof too. "Previously video was pretty inaccessible," says Yeadon. "There was no way to measure the effectiveness of your clip. Or find out how many users bought a product or visited a site after watching your video. With our software, you can measure the precise ROI of your online videos because people click through to your site from the video. You can also place a call to action, like a form or a poll, within the interactive video."

The only challange that faces the startup is the issue of education. "We actually want some rivals to crop up," says Yeadon. "People need to get used to interactive videos and clicking on hotspots. That will happen as the sector grows."

Check out the Fight Club clip that inspired the Quick.tv startup:

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