VideoIQ gets $7.5m and new CEO

BEDFORD, Mass.—VideoIQ's new CEO, Ed Bednarcik, who is known for readying companies for IPOs, outlined steps he'll take to take VideoIQ “to the next level,” during a Sept. 12 interview with Security Systems News.

VideoIQ, a venture-backed producer of IP cameras and encoders with on-board storage and built-in self-calibrating analytics based here, announced Sept. 12 that Bednarcik had replaced Scott Schnell as CEO. It also announced that the company secured $7.5 million in series C funding.

Bednarcik said job No. 1 for growing the company is “making sure the supply chain can handle rapid growth on a global basis ... that you have good cost on anticipated volume and revenue and you can support that growth ... and that you can scale individual functions across the company.”

Most recently, Bednarcik led Write Line out of Worcester, Mass., which was sold to Eaton Corp. in August of 2010. Bednarcik was also an “early employee” of A123 Systems which “was the largest IPO on the NASDAQ in 2009,” according to VideoIQ.

VideoIQ's supply chain is not a problem now, but it's an area that a company that is growing needs to “focus on early on.” Bednarcik's other area of focus will be the front end of the business.

“It's important to be channel friendly and make it easier for the channel to sell and install and integrate our products,” he said.

To that end, VideoIQ will offer more training and tools for integrators. The company has had a technical certification for a long time and it recently launched a sales certification program as well.

The money will also be used for R&D. Bednarcik said the video surveillance market is “under-invested in right now” but that the technology is becoming “more and more accepted by customers, integrators, end users, A&Es.”

VideoIQ director of marketing Mark Gally said that VideoIQ more than tripled its run rate from Q1 2010 to Q1 of 2011. “And when you look at the Q2 sales rate, we did almost three and a half times as much,” Gally said.

“So you can see there's acceleration and growth,” Bednarcik added.

Video IQ has “gone from an R&D environment to a revenue-based environment ... As long as we can scale, we have a lot of headroom before we reach the natural limits of expansion,” he said.

The Series C funding is from Atlas Venture, Cisco, Matrix Partners and Tenaya Capital.