Digitalsmiths

Digitalsmiths operates as a provider of cloud-based content discovery and recommendation solutions for the media and entertainment industry. The company was co-founded by Ben Weinberger, who served as CEO, and Matt Berry, who was the COO/CTO. Weinberger started the company from his college dorm room at Southern Illinois University. The company's journey included a strategic move to Raleigh in 2007, which was instrumental in securing a $6 million Series A funding round.

The firm's core business revolves around its Seamless Discovery® platform, which enables personalized video search, recommendations, mood-based discovery, and social trending. This technology is designed to connect consumers with relevant movies, TV shows, and live events across a variety of devices, including set-top boxes, tablets, smartphones, and gaming consoles. Digitalsmiths' business model is structured as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, providing its technology as a white-label solution for other businesses to integrate into their own services. Revenue is generated by licensing this platform to a client base that includes major pay-TV operators, content providers, and consumer electronics manufacturers. By the time of its acquisition, Digitalsmiths was serving 46 clients and its technology was used by seven of the top ten pay-TV providers in the United States, reaching 64% of the country's pay-TV households.

A significant milestone in the company's history was its acquisition by TiVo in February 2014 for $135 million. This strategic acquisition was intended to accelerate TiVo's transition to a cloud-based service provider and expand its market opportunities by leveraging Digitalsmiths' technology and extensive relationships with service providers. The acquisition was also a testament to Digitalsmiths' robust technology in metadata management and its flexible APIs, which allowed for quick deployment by operators. Both co-founders, Ben Weinberger and Matt Berry, joined TiVo following the acquisition to ensure continuity.

Keywords: content discovery, video recommendation engine, personalized search, metadata solutions, SaaS, pay-TV operators, media technology, video discovery, social trending, mood discovery, cloud-based services, TiVo, Ben Weinberger, Matt Berry, Seamless Discovery, video indexing, content monetization, connected devices, set-top box, service providers