Videoegg is one of the nice success stories from DEMO 2005. The company launched the product there - got a partnership deal with one of the biggest blog hosters Typepad and raised a second round soon after.

I had the chance to ask Kevin some questions recently. (Thanks Renee!).

Q: For the uninitiated (which there are few on this blog :-) - what is Videoegg doing?

VideoEgg offers web-based video publishing solutions which make it easy for internet users to encode, upload, host and watch video. Its flagship product, the VideoEgg Publisher, is a small website plug-in that serves as a "universal video adapter" that captures directly from hundreds of devices and reads dozens of formats. The VideoEgg Publisher allows internet users to painlessly publish video in a format that anyone can watch without worrying about player compatibilities, encoding settings, or extra software.

Q: Videoegg has taken the blogosphere by storm - how did it feel as founder to see this amazing growth?

After so much hard work, it's been really rewarding to see VideoEgg embraced so warmly. It feels a little surreal too. For a long time we were just a small group of folks building a product and no one had ever heard of us. I'm still surprised every time I tell someone I work at VideoEgg and they know all about us.

Q: Why has nobody else spotted this market opportunity before?

Well, lots of people are doing interesting things around posting and sharing digital video, so I wouldn't say that we're the only ones to see a market opportunity here. That said, most sites in the video space seem to be focused almost exclusively on how videos get watched in their website (how do users tag it, how do they search for it, how do we rate videos, can we publish an RSS feed, lets build a community around watching video) without paying very much attention to where the video comes from in the first place. Our focus is different: we want to make it drop-dead easy for folks to get the videos that they shoot off of their devices and onto the web (not so much on our site but in all of the places they already care about: their blog, their auction listing, their personals profile...). Doing that right means building drag-and-drop posting, camcorder capture, trimming tools right in the browser, client-side encoding instead of a slow and ugly server-side process etc. It also means building a partner-friendly company that works to power the communities and services that are already the heart of the web. That's the opportunity we see.

Q: Tell us more about the major deals in Videoeggs history - How did you score the partnership with Six Apart and the investment from August Capital?

By being charming, thrifty and industrious! :) (And lucky. Let's not forget lucky.) More seriously, we've got a great solution to a hard problem and have been fortunate enough to enter the market at a time when lots of people are interested in what we're doing. Our timing was fortunate enough that the rest fell into place.

Q: How does the company make money right now and how should this evolve in future?

We currently make money through the terms of several of our partnerships. In the long term, we see VideoEgg as a free service that supports itself with advertising.

Q: What is your most important lesson as an entrepreneur?

We've all learned so much that there's no easy answer to this one, but I would say the two most important lessons I will take away from this experience are:

The team is everything. Only work with trustworthy, kind, extraordinary people.
Adapt as necessary, but never give up.

Kevin thanks a lot for responding so quickly!