Vudini, a start-up co-founded by entrepreneur Dan Kiely that helps individuals and companies to appear more prominently on YouTube, has raised more than €2 million in seed funding.
Founded originally as Videorankme, the company uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help creators and brands to scale and monetise audiences on social media. Its customer base has been rising sharply since the launch of its self-service applications, with numbers up increasing more than 300 per cent in the third quarter.
Those that have joined the platform include well-known Irish YouTube sensations such as Little Kelly Minecraft and cryptocurrency-focused channel Altcoin Daily, which has seen subscriber numbers jump by 850,000 and has received 90 million video views.
Mr Kiely previously co-founded business process outsourcing company Voxpro, with his wife, Linda Kiely. Following his departure from the business after it was acquired by Canadian call centre giant Telus in a $150 million deal, he has made a number of investments. These include providing backing for Snack Farm, Cork-based co-working hub Republic of Work, alternative legal solutions company Johnson Hana and remote-work platform Abadoo.
Vudini was co-founded by Mr Kiely, Ricky Hill and Mike English, who also previously established ecommerce platform MoShoppa with former Republic of Ireland striker Niall Quin. Among those on its advisory board is Aisling Hassell, who previously led Airbnb Ireland, and Fintan Gillespie, head of gaming at Snap and formerly industry head at Google.
The start-up is a Google- and YouTube-approved and certified AI video search-engine optimisation platform. It drives organic growth in subscribers numbers by using AI across 200-plus processes.
Search visibility
Mr Kiely described Vudini as a platform “that uses AI to optimise organic search visibility and boost a user’s search ranking, which is key for creators to get discovered by their target audiences”.
“Vudini opened a funding round earlier this year and we’re continuing with investment to support the market validation and traction that we’re experiencing following the launch of our self-serve application for creators and brands. We’re currently onboarding new customers from multiple regions including the US, Japan, India, Spain and the UK, among others,” he said.
The company is targeting a big space with YouTube having more than 37 million channels. The global creator economy is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, with more than 50 million people believed to be earning income from partaking in it.
“Today, over 80 per cent of all content consumed on the internet is video. However, there’s a complete lack of tools to enable content creators to focus on what they do best – make great content – and not on the complexity of search-engine ranking. That’s where Vudini steps in, by helping creators operationalise and scale their video performance and uncover new audiences,” said Ms Hassell.
