(Ridgeland, Miss.) – Innovate Mississippi announced today the New Technology Business Seed Fund investment of $100,000 in WSN Live, LLC of Flowood. This investment is from the Mississippi Seed Fund, a program created by the Mississippi State Legislature in 2008 and administered by Innovate Mississippi. The Mississippi Seed Fund is designed to stimulate the development of high-performance, technology-based business ventures in the state by providing access to pre-seed financing, early-stage risk capital and product development capital.
WSN Live (formerly WiFi Streaming Network) was formed in 2011 and offers organizations the ability to stream live video of their important events over a customized website. The company primarily works with high schools, junior colleges and universities for sporting events, providing the schools a website with access to a virtual catalog store, a web page for each of the sports programs, website maintenance, access to athletic statistical software, and live and recorded video streaming.
The company has clients in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee and provides each user a built-in fundraising component for advertisers and sponsors who want to target the sports enthusiast audience. Through WSN Live’s television production, they can help drive business to these merchants during a live feed with marketing features such as high-quality video commercials and advertisements, superimposed logos, rotating ad placement, active content, links to websites and coupon promotions.
“WSN Live’s product is giving schools a great way to get advertising revenue and also offer parents and fans the opportunity to view games from any location on any device, so it’s no surprise they have had such great success in expanding their markets,” said Tony Jeff, president and CEO of Innovate Mississippi. “Funding from the Mississippi Seed Fund as well as angel investors from our Mississippi Angel Investor Network will now enable the company to focus
even more on marketing and growth. Having worked with WSN Live for the last several years, I feel confident that they are poised to continue their rapid growth.”
“Because of this funding, WSN Live will now be able to expand its reach of coverage across the southeastern United States, including Texas,” said Charlie Helms, CEO of WSN Live. “Our first round of funding from the Mississippi Seed Fund in 2013 gave us the ability to go from one software package offering to now being able to provide four diverse packages for schools. It has also assisted our growth in the private sector with radio stations and municipalities now using our services.”
Since 2008, 26 Mississippi Seed Fund awards have been invested in Mississippi companies, totaling $1.94 million.
“Innovate Mississippi has been a great partner in WSN Live’s growth and helped us to become the premiere live video streaming solution in the market,” added Helms.
The entrepreneurial development program at Innovate Mississippi is an important service provided by the organization in preparing companies for Mississippi Seed Fund and investor funding, and further assists companies in analyzing and planning the essential product, market, management and financial aspects of their business.
Innovate Mississippi is a nonprofit organization with the mission to drive innovation and technology-based economic development for the State of Mississippi. Visit www.innovate.ms for more information.
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