A woman takes pictures with Nokia’s new smartphone, the Lumia 1020, with a 41-megapixel camera, after its unveiling in New York, July 11, 2013. Toronto-based Keek Inc. was an early entrant in what is now a sought-after corner of social media, the sharing of short videos. (A keek is a Scottish term for a quick peek.) Keek’s user base is soaring, with more than 45 million users worldwide as of last month.SHANNON STAPLETON/Reuters
A year ago, investors and management at Toronto-based video-sharing startup Keek Inc. were looking for a huge valuation and dreaming of a future as a social-media superstar.
After a rough patch that saw the company almost run out of money, Keek is now publicly traded, but not through a blowout initial public offering, the hoped-for outcome of a tech startup. Instead, the company went public through a merger with a shell company that had been an oil and gas explorer. It trades for about 20 cents a share, and has a market capitalization of about $28-million.
But there is money in the bank, thanks to cash that was in the company Keek merged with, and there remains the dream of a big outcome such as a sale to a major tech company.
The problems of the past six months cost Keek momentum and let huge rivals such as Vine, owned by Twitter Inc., and Facebook Inc.'s Instagram, to build their presence in the business of providing a platform for users to share short videos.
"Six months is a lifetime in tech in some aspects," Keek chief executive officer Mike Marrandino said in an interview. "But in other aspects Keek was so far ahead – there before Vine, before Instagram. They had time to catch up. They had rich fathers that really got them an opportunity to move ahead."
Mr. Marrandino pledged that a coming software release would put Keek on par with rivals' features, and improve the ability to retain customers.
Features such as search and indexing by category are coming, he said.
There were videos in the library that "were funny, entertaining, useful – but nobody was able to find them."
Other features to come include private accounts that allow users to control who can view the videos they've shared.
Keek now has enough cash to last about a year without bringing in further money, and should start to see revenue in May through advertising. The company has cut back on cash expenditures by reducing what Mr. Marrandino called "buying users," and streamlining operations.
Mr. Marrandino intends to build a company that a large internet player wants to acquire, in order to compete with Facebook and Instagram. After Keek's near death experience, that would be a remarkable comeback.
The goal, Mr. Marrandino said, is that "we become relevant enough that in the next few years, a larger entity will have to decide, build or buy. And we're hoping to be there on the sell side."