Twitvid: Canada’s great untold tech story

I had a chance to sit down with Adil Lalani, one of the co-founders of Twitvid, to learn more about Twitvid’s Canadian roots, its evolution, Social Ads, and Canada’s tech scene today.

When Twitter announced the release of new Twitter it was no surprise that they named Twitvid amongst its embedded media video partners.  With apps on Apple, Android, and Blackberry platforms and a high adoption rate amongst users and celebrity users alike Twitvid has become one of Twitter's most popular video sharing services.

Though Twitvid is well known to Twitter users the story behind its inception and its strong tie to Canada is not as well known.  Twitvid is the creation of Eatlime Inc. a two person start-up comprised of Adil Lalani (founder of SurfYourWork.com) and Mo Ahmad (organizer of the Twisit Jordon contest) who formed a partnership while they were both software engineer students studying at Waterloo University. 

Adil and Mo started their partnership working on several projects eventually focusing on the development of YouSwap a file sharing site allowing users to upload and share files quickly and easily.  Although they received positive reception from Canadian investors, no one was ready to take a risk investing in this young start-up.  In November 2007, frustrated with the lack of response from Canadian investors they decided to try their luck in Silicon Valley. 

While in the Valley, they were able to connect with Saeed Amidi a VC that runs one of Silicon Valley’s top incubators.  He offered them the second best thing to funding: three months of free office space in his incubator, Plug and Play Tech Centre.  Shortly after they landed funding from one of Silicon Valley’s top investors Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) known for this investments in projects such as Hotmail and Skype. 

After a lot of support and feedback from investors and friends including, Rajeev Motwani one of Google's early advisors, they decided to shift their service into a video-sharing site and created a Eatlime.com a video sharing site developed as a competitor to YouTube.  They were able to raise additional funds from DFJ and other angel investors allowing them to expand their team and eventually increased the traffic to the site to an average of one million viewers a month. 

In February 2009, Adil proposed that they try incorporating video sharing into Twitter.  Twivid launched as a side project in 2009 and by early July it had experienced a surge of traffic with over one million site hits.  Under the advice of investors they shut down Eatlime and focused exclusively on Twitvid.

Today Twitvid gets between five to six million new visitors a month and has had over 16 million video views.  The site has gained massive popularity with celebrities and big brands active on social media such as Justin Beiber, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the NBA. 

The relationships formed with Twitter developers and Twitvid as it quickly grew into a popular video sharing site was the basis of a partnership between the two sites. 

With such an active audience Adil and Mo are working on helping site advertisers engage viewers in an interesting way.  They have launched "Social Ads" an advertising program for Twitvid advertisers designed to increase brand social media presence through retweet-to-watch and follow-to-watch features built into videos. 

Now based out of Toronto Adil is closely following Canadian technology. The barriers of entry into the Canadian technology sector have significantly decreased.  In the last five years there has been an increased Silicon Valley mentality in Toronto and investors seem to be making more early-stage investments.  He notes that Canadian entrepreneurs still need to be more aggressive and move a little faster but the time for entrepreneurship in the technology sector has never been better.