Vyrill is offering convertible notes that will pay an annual interest rate of 3%. These notes are subject to a valuation cap of $8 million, though for the first $200,000 committed this will be reduced to $7 million. Considering where the company is operationally, this appears to be a reasonable valuation, but not stellar. Thus, Vyrill’s price rating is middle of the road.

The market opportunity for Vyrill is difficult to understand. It doesn’t really have a true market in the traditional sense. Because of this, our team elected to perform a bottom-up analysis of the business — a similar method to what Vyrill itself used. Vyrill determined that the opportunity for investors might be worth around $2.2 billion. It did this by looking at 11 different verticals, examples being beauty and electronics.

We took a more general approach. According to Nielsen, there are around 500,000 brands in the world. Using management’s $5,000 in average monthly revenue per client estimate, we arrived at a total addressable market of as much as $30 billion annually. That said, many of the 500,000 brands that do exist out there never would be able to afford a plan this pricey, no matter how good the technology might be. Because of this, it’s safe to assume that the market is substantially lower than this, but possibly higher than management’s own forecast. Due to both the small market estimate and the amount of uncertainty in that estimate, Vyrill’s market score is very low.

The team operating Vyrill is fairly small. At the top stand two key individuals. The first of these is Ajay Bam, Vyrill’s co-founder and CEO. In the past, Bam served as a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Before that, he was a co-founder and Head of Product at Produle.me. That firm operated as a video-centric campaign management tool for its clients. His role before that was as the Global Product Management Leader for Nokia. And before that he worked as a co-founder and CTO for Modiv Media, which operated as a mobile shopper marketing solutions firm. Its work involved personalized promotions, instant check-out features, and more. Bam’s past experience in both mobile and media over the years all matches the kind of work you would expect for someone running a business like Vyrill.

The other key individual at the firm, meanwhile, is Dr. Barbara Rosario. She is Vyrill’s other co-founder and its CTO. In the past, Rosario served as a Technical Consultant for Technicolor. Before that, she was employed as a Research Scientist for Intel Labs. Her experience in private industry makes her a good head for the company’s science-driven processes. But her experience in academia should not be ignored. She has served as a Visiting Lecturer at both UC Berkeley’s School of Information and at MIT’s Media Lab. Her PhD is in Computer and Information Sciences, making her an expert on all that Vyrill is working on.

This small slate of top brass at Vyrill is impressive. The combination of high level technical expertise and strong entrepreneurial experience has netted Vyrill an above average team rating.

There are many companies that focus on using AI, machine learning, and computer vision to analyze videos. Examples include Brandwatch, TrustPilot, Bazaarvoice, and STACKLA. Some of these, like Brandwatch, even provide other services that Vyrill does. Examples include constant content monitoring to identify new trends in videos, as well as collecting and analyzing demographic and scene data. Where Vyrill sets itself apart, though, is its complete suite of services. In addition to these features already listed, the platform offers competitor video tracking. It also provides video reviews and licensing content, and video to product, category, or brand matching features. None of its competitors appear to offer such a comprehensive suite of services. Thus, Vyrill’s differentiators score is its highest across all five metrics.

In terms of performance, there are some good and bad things about Vyrill to consider. The first plus is that the company has been generating revenue for a couple of years now. Back in 2018, its sales were $22,500. This grew to $58,242 last year. For 2020, the picture has become a lot more complex. In its investor presentation, management stated that they have 57 enterprise clients, seven of whom pay for their services. They state that this has resulted in $300,000 in revenue. But what we do know is that revenue in the three months ending in October of 2020 averaged only about $3,000. This disparity is disconcerting, as is the fact that in 2018 the company generated a net loss of $1.27 million while in 2019 its loss was $1.24 million. So far this year, the company is seeing costs average around $65,000 per month. Though this performance is not great, early-stage companies almost always lose money. In a sense, it’s expected. Helping to balance that out, though, is Vyrill’s strong early traction with brands. The potential for strong future revenue as a result of these early enterprise clients pushes Vyrill’s performance score to an above average level.

Right now, there are some bearish items for investors in Vyrill to consider before they buy into the firm. First and foremost is the financial condition of the firm. Significant net losses and slow-growing revenue is not ideal. Another concern is that the market is not significant in size. A small market could seriously limit potential upside for investors. Management also needs to clearly articulate the company’s value proposition moving forward — framing itself as the Google of video does not seem to accurately describe Vyrill’s product.

On the other hand, there are some bullish considerations for investors to keep in mind as well. The company is at least generating revenue and it’s growing — good signs for an early stage startup. Its traction with customers should not be ignored, and its valuation is reasonable. Add in a solid team with a clearly differentiated product, and it’s hard to ignore the prospects Vyrill offers if its business strategy is executed appropriately.

Taking everything together, Vyrill is an interesting business with an interesting business model. The upside could be significant if it can prove to enough brands that the insight the technology offers is worth more than the price paid for the services. The market size will always limit the upside for the firm, but it’s possible that Vyrill could carve out a decent niche for itself. However, there is a lot of uncertainty as to the company’s success at this time. As a result, Vyrill has been rated as a Neutral Deal. 

For questions regarding the KingsCrowd staff pick or ratings for this company, please reach out to support@kingscrowd.com. 

Analysis written by Daniel Jones.