From Video Blobs to Searchable Data
Lenny Bogdonoff, co-founder and CTO of Milk Video, on the video infrastructure value chain
The strategic point is that the value in business video shifts upward once a video can be read like text instead of stored like a blob. A raw MP4 is hard to search, clip, reformat, or connect to business workflows, so teams fall back to manual editing and ad hoc sharing. The winning products turn speech, speakers, scenes, and watch behavior into structured data that can be searched, trimmed, captioned, embedded, and measured.
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Milk started from a simple workflow gap. Companies had webinars and Zoom recordings, but no easy way to find key moments, make short clips, add captions, or reuse old footage. That made video feel untouchable even when demand for reuse was obvious.
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Wistia shows where the next layer of value sits. Hosting and encoding matter, but marketers pay more for tools that tie video to lead capture, CRM records, distribution, and viewing analytics. That is the jump from file storage to revenue workflow.
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The market has kept moving in this direction. Microsoft bought Clipchamp in September 2021 to bring simple browser based editing into Microsoft 365, and Atlassian agreed to acquire Loom in October 2023 to fold async video into everyday work software.
This is heading toward video becoming a normal business document. As transcription, browser editing, and AI clipping get cheaper, basic editing gets bundled everywhere. Durable value will sit in systems that make company video searchable, reusable, brand safe, and tied to outcomes like views, leads, training retention, and sales activity.