Montreal Tech Watch

That beautiful graph is the all-time growth in video streams as recorded by WatchMojo, Montréal’s video startup powerhouse. They hit 150 million video streams on June 30th 2010. A few other highlights:

• 85 million views in the past 12 months
• on pace for over 100 millions views in 2010
• 100-150 new videos produced monthly, with additional videos coming from other content providers
• Over 20 distributors, amongst them youtube, myspace, hulu and other major video diffusers.

The most important highlight in their results though is that the company is for the first time profitable, for Q3 2010. That’s a rare accomplishment in an industry where many video production houses are closing and major media companies laying off staff. Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, founder and CEO of WatchMojo, explains he self-funded the startup in its early days, and gathered all imaginable financial resources to get his company going. I found his self-reliancy and persistence inspiring. This is Ashkan’s version, a story with blood & sweat:

I was VP of ad sales for AskMen from 2000-2005 so I sold a lot of ads and earned commissions and bonuses over the years. While there I began to invest in the stock market, I would say I earned a small profit investing but then as a minority investor I made a small sum when AskMen was acquired. Before resigning, I leveraged my strong credit history and high salary and set up multiple credit facilities (credit cards, lines of credit).

When I launched WatchMojo, I funded it with cash I had, then progressively sold shares and indeed, in the last year used debt. I even took out a mortgage on my condo instead of laying people off in the end of 2008 because I saw our competitors scaling back and big media throwing in the towel… we also had momentum despite revenues being slow to take off. Basically, we saw everyone running one way (or jumping off the bridge) and decided to run the other direction, knowing that history repeats itself, after all, video was only growing and sooner or later big media would need to catch up.

For sure, it was a very risky bet that I cannot recommend to anyone (unless they have a great supportive and understanding wife), but you know what they say, if you will risk something, risk it on yourself. I also knew my limitations so I hired great people and encouraged them but got out of their way… so generally we have had a solid base of loyal folks who believe in what we do, which I think is key.

You can say the bet paid off as we have growing revenues, breaking even and definitely profitable here on out, and with no outside investors!

I am not anti-investors or anything, but finding the right people to understand and back a new media entrepreneur like me who wanted to build a media business around video content wasn’t obvious. But now, everyone seems to love what we do and want to partner with us. We’re just getting started, I’ve never had the luxury of planning one year out, it’s like I’ve always had one foot on the gas pedal and one foot in the grave… but our momentum is accelerating and dare I say it, we have options. Who would have known…

We might raise capital for acquisitions or simply strike a strategic partnership with a big media company that needs our expertise, assets or distribution. Or shelve all of those options and stay independent and private, emulating Conde Nast and Hearst: profitable, large, private media companies. We shall see. Time will tell.

Even if we have to take his version with a grain of salt, the success needs to be highlighted. We need more Ashkans in Montréal and we need more people committing to their projects. It’s not easy and it’s frequently a lone path, failures happen more frequently than successes, but that’s how you succeed in a high-risk, fast-moving environment.

Congrats to the WatchMojo team!