Scientific research, publication, discovery, and dissemination has been slow to embrace streaming video as a critical advance as a form of scholarly communication. Alex Lazinica, founder of Underline Science, a leading provider of platform and technology support for virtual and hybrid scientific conferences, is attacking this challenge head on with the launch of the Underline Digital Video Library (DVL). The Underline DVL will aggregate and curate the best of conference and lecture presentations, captured in streaming video, from across the world and across all scientific fields.
The mission of Underline is to improve researchers and students’ access to quality scientific conference presentation and lecture video content. A key challenge academics and researchers have historically faced, is accessing critical content from conferences they could not attend. Virtual and hybrid conferences are reducing the barriers to access, but how is a scholar to stay abreast of all the content in their field being delivered across so many conferences and events? Underline’s DVL has grown to more than 25,000 videos and is growing daily. With content strength in fields across the health sciences, life sciences, engineering, technology, social sciences, business, and humanities, there is something for every researcher. And the video content has been and is being continually accrued from the world’s most prestigious scientific societies, universities, and organizations, such as IEEE, AIP, MIT, Harvard, Facebook, and Google. Each video is enhanced and delivered complete with an abstract, transcript, presenter bio, and most importantly, digital object identifier (DOI), which ensures that the video can be searched and discovered alongside the scholar’s full range of output.
Underline’s business model is an annual subscription fee for unlimited access to the entire Digital Video Library for the subscribing institution’s patron community.
Today, Underline is pleased to announce it had raised $2.5 million in a Pre-Series A round of funding, led by South Central Ventures and the Dutch Founders Fund. As a result, Mr. Jure Mikuz (South Central Ventures) and Mr. Laurens Groenendijk (Dutch Founders Fund) will join the Underline Board of Directors.
“With this new round of funding, we’ll be able to enhance the Underline DVL features and content greatly, and grow the team and expand our go-to-market strategy,” Underline CEO and founder Alex Lazinica commented. “We are looking forward to expanding access to the digital video library across the library, government and corporate, institutional subscription market.”
South Central Ventures, who led the round, Managing Partner Jure Mikuz, said, “Underline’s mission resonates with us very well as they are addressing a global opportunity by creating a library of global scientific video content. I believe they will be successful because of their proven track record and excellent execution skills along with deep industry knowledge. We are very excited to join Underline on this journey.”
Founding Partner Laurens Groenendijk of The Dutch Founders Fund states, ” We believe that if Underline Science can tap into the researcher’s need to increase exposure and understanding, and build a network, Underline will quickly grow to be a leading player in science content aggregation. We at Dutch Founders hope to see underlining become a verb. If anyone is going to do it, we know a seasoned entrepreneur like Alex will.”
About Underline Science
Underline is the premier virtual conference platform for events in science, medicine, academia, and other professional fields. Underline’s mission is to capture and disseminate scientific knowledge through video, making it globally accessible by enriching and preserving both virtual and hybrid conference content. Underline’s groundbreaking Digital Video Library is providing new opportunities to expand access to the scientific record and accelerate scientific discovery. For more information, visit the Underline website and follow Underline on Twitter.
About South Central Ventures
South Central Ventures is a VC investor with a long and enduring presence in the Balkans. Operating out of four offices – Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade and Skopje – the team has invested in about 40 early-stage tech companies and has been an integral part of the local start up community. With a strong base of international investors, South Central Ventures is a go-to investor for regional tech companies competing in global markets. SCV’s portfolio companies include Cognism, Celtra, Agrivi, Orgnostic and AdScanner, among others.
About Dutch Founders Fund
Dutch Founders Fund is an early-stage venture capital fund from Amsterdam, started by a group of successful Dutch entrepreneurs, including Laurens Groenendijk founder of Just Eat, Treatwell, Miinto and Hiber, Patrick Kerssemakers founder of fonQ, Bas Beerens, founder of WeTransfer, Hidde Hoogcarspel, founder of Spacebuzz, and Remco van Zanten, founder of Booking, Zalando, Vinted and BCG.
The fund specializes in marketplaces and companies with strong network effect potential. Since its launch in 2018, the fund has successfully invested in 16 companies. Including YourCampus, Shypple, Vintage Cash Cow, Lumaly, Blanco, Nostics, Reveall, Veylinx, Wonderkind, Voicebooking, Fleks, Minimum, Caya, Winc Academy, Buildstream and Tracedock, which was sold to CM.com. The total fund has near €100 million in assets under management. Dutch Founders is a committed partner of Techleap’s Fundright initiative.