PlayPlay — an online video creation platform for in-house enterprise teams — announced that it has raised $55 million in a Series B round led by New York-based global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners, with participation from Balderton Capital. The investment will allow PlayPlay to further enhance its platform, accelerate international expansion by growing its first US-based office in New York City, and hire 100 new employees in technology, product, sales and marketing across Europe and North America.
PlayPlay allows enterprises to simplify and scale the creation of engaging video content. Using the company’s innovative SaaS solution, organizations can unleash the power of video to communicate and engage with key stakeholders, including prospects, fans, employees, and candidates. PlayPlay was founded in 2017 by Thibaut Machet, former social media director at Eurosport, and his colleagues Aurélien Dayres and Clément Moracin. The three founders set out to build a powerful yet easy-to-use solution that enables in-house teams without any filming or editing skills to create high-quality videos, in order to elevate their communication.
The rise and revolution of video
Video is visibly everywhere, dominating as the most engaging type of content on all major social media platforms. Companies now need to embrace this ubiquitous trend in order to stay relevant and connected with their audiences. According to a 2020 study by Wyzowl, 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and 93% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy. However, while organizations want to join the video revolution, they have struggled with the expensive and time-consuming process of content creation. For years, they have relied on agencies, in-house teams, or dabbled in DIY video solutions, and this unsatisfactory and burdensome process had led many to abandon videos altogether. This is where PlayPlay can help take charge.
A powerful and seamless video creation solution trusted by world-class brands
PlayPlay’s mission is clear: strengthen the bond between organizations and their key audiences through video — internally and externally. PlayPlay makes this possible by enabling anyone in an organization to seamlessly turn any message into a compelling video — whether it’s a project highlight for clients, an internal company announcement for employees, or a recruitment ad. PlayPlay’s secret sauce is developing a product that is extremely simple to use, paired with powerful capabilities. The SaaS solution produces videos of exceptionally high quality, with advanced, fully customizable branding, and a variety of ready-to-use video templates for all of an organization’s communication needs.
Transforming brand communication is at the core of PlayPlay’s mission. For this reason, it offers much more strategic value to enterprises than other video creation tools on the market.
“The main objective of an organization’s communications, HR, social media, and marketing functions isn’t to create videos,” said Machet. “These teams want to sell products, hire people, and engage their communities, and video is the most powerful type of content to help them do this. PlayPlay enables them to achieve their communication goals easily.”
The video creation solution is already being used by teams from mid-size companies to the world’s biggest giants across a variety of industries. Today, more than 1,000 companies spanning 15 different countries use PlayPlay to create compelling content for their audiences, including Yext, Heineken and AXA.
What the future holds for PlayPlay
In addition to expanding its international footprint in the US, PlayPlay also plans to triple down on the evolution of its product vision so it can play a more central role in the day-to-day communication tasks of their clients. This means adding more features such as collaboration and analytics, but also perfecting its storytelling capabilities and identifying more use cases.
“Using PlayPlay’s innovative video creation platform, anyone in an enterprise can create engaging, compelling content that moves the needle with audiences and key stakeholders,” said Rebecca Liu-Doyle, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “Insight was impressed with the simplicity of PlayPlay’s product, the clear vision that Thibaut, Aurélien and Clément have for the company, and the overwhelmingly happy customers both in Europe and the US. We couldn’t be more thrilled to play a role in this exciting next chapter of PlayPlay’s ScaleUp journey.”