Video conferencing startup Vokle has confirmed that it has raised $542,000 in a round of debt financing and convertible notes. Investors include Tech Coast Angels, as part of its new ACE fund, as well as Grammy Award winner (and Vokle user) Imogen Heap and her Bubbletank partner Thomas Ermacora. The company, which provides an ultra-easy way to create interactive video conferences and event broadcasts, hopes to use the funding to continue adding features to its platform.
The Vokle platform gives users a simple setup through which they can build and control custom, branded live events. The front end displays a pretty standard interface for video chat, where viewers can watch hosts and guests banter back and forth, chat with each other and submit text- and video-submitted questions. But the real magic happens behind the scenes, where broadcasters have a full suite of controls, including the ability to appoint remote co-hosts, pre-screen videos and even edit videos live.
In addition to providing an easy way for its users to create events, Vokle also has built sharing tools into the platform so that broadcasters can share events on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. The Vokle player is also embeddable, so users can place their broadcasts on their own websites. Since being launched, Vokle has continued to add new features to the platform; most recently it made its embedded player resizeable, added breaks for some broadcasters and created categories for upcoming events.
Vokle was built by a couple of friends after receiving some seed funding to build a prototype and was launched in late 2009 at the Demo Conference. The startup now has six full-time employees and is based in Santa Monica, Calif.
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