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TimeSight gets $1 million in funding from New Jersey

TimeSight gets $1 million in funding from New Jersey

MT. LAUREL, N.J.—TimeSight Systems, a maker of software for video surveillance lifecycle management, announced this week a $1 million investment from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. The NJEDA acts as a sort of publicly funded venture capital firm, and TimeSight officials say the investment is a validation of the company's momentum in the video surveillance space.

“They look for the same kind of thing that a venture capitalist would look for,” said TimeSight CEO Charles Foley. “A big thriving market—and video surveillance seems to be somewhere between $25 and $40 billion and growing—and an interesting or unique competitive advantage, and our ability to compress video over time and save customers 70 to 90 percent on their storage costs is a very strong competitive differentiator.”

Foley said the $1 million investment does get the state of New Jersey a share of the company, though the investment does not represent an evaluation of the company's worth. Last October, TimeSight did a $4 million funding round headed by New Venture Partners, based out of Northern New Jersey. “We're still what you would call a younger company,” Foley said. “For a young company you walk that line of how important is profitability and how important is growth. It takes money to grow. We could be cash-flow positive tomorrow. We could fire people and ride the projects we have now. But our investors have said they want to continue to invest. They're not worried about profitability. We've created about 20 jobs in the last year, and that's pretty good in this economy.”

Foley said sometime around 2011 the company will evaluate its market share and maybe then focus on maximizing profitability. He also said an acquisition may be a possibility before too long, responding to theories that TimeSight's technology might be more beneficial as part of a larger video management system instead of as a standalone product. 

“We're a VC-backed company,” Foley said, “so it's no secret that they're here to generate more money and get a return out of what they put in ... That comes through two ways, one is that you can be acquired, or, two, you can go public. I've done them both ... At this point it's still very early, but they're making the investments and they don't care whether it's an IPO or an M&A exit ... But we've got a killer technology and it's all software, so it's going to be very reasonable costs. I think there's any number of larger companies who can look at the technology and see it's darn hard to do—maybe we just go acquire that.”

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