VisibleGains hopes third incarnation is the charm

■Three names, three chief executives. VisibleGains is just the latest name of a Internet video company with roots that meander back to the dot-com days, when peer-to-peer file-sharing and Napster were all the rage.

The company, formerly known as NetCableTV and PermissionTV, announced a new name last week, as well as a new focus. VisibleGains will help its clients produce, deliver, and analyze sales-oriented online video that is intended to help turn prospects into paying customers.

NetCableTV started in 2004, with peer-to-peer video delivery technology licensed from John Fanning, a cofounder of Napster. Fanning had started work on the technology in 2001, thinking it would be useful for delivering movies online.

In late 2005, the company launched PermissionTV, a “complete end-to-end system to create and distribute television programming via broadband,’’ and started working with niche media companies. Later, the business changed its name to PermissionTV, and replaced chief executive David Graves with Bob Lentz. Permission worked with organizations like the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign to help them deliver video on the Web. (I should disclose here that PermissionTV was a sponsor of a 2008 conference that I helped to organize.)

But the company always operated in the shadow of Brightcove and Maven Networks, two other Boston-area companies that aimed to help businesses incorporate video into their websites. (Maven was acquired by Yahoo for $160 million in cash; Brightcove has raised more than $91 million and is still independent.)

The company, now known as VisibleGains, has raised about $15 million in venture capital, from sources like CommonAngels, Castile Ventures, and Point Judith Capital. The most recent VC money came in June 2007.

Cliff Pollan, formerly chief executive at NewsEdge, joined the company as chief executive in March, replacing Lentz. He began shifting the focus to “videos that are relevant to a particular viewer as part of the sales process - ‘snackable’ content that runs 30 or 60 seconds with very specific messages,’’ he explains.

Sequences of related videos can be assembled either by a user navigating through them, or automatically by intelligent software. An engineer might see a different string of videos than the CIO, for instance.

“It’s persona-based,’’ Pollan says, “targeted to who is looking at it, and who is involved in the decision process.’’ Tracking which pieces of video were watched by which prospects is also an important feature, he says.

Pollan says Waltham-based VisibleGains will receive continuing financial support from its existing investors. The company has 20 employees, which is about the same as when he arrived, he says. I asked board member Sean Marsh, a partner at Point Judith Capital, what milestones the company will have to hit in its third incarnation, under its third chief executive, to get new funding. My supposition was that most of the money they have raised ($15 million in VC, plus $3 million in venture debt) has been spent.

“The company has been very capital-efficient and has generated growing revenue since 2007, so they actually do have cash [left over from earlier funding rounds],’’ Marsh wrote via e-mail, “but we are in the process of closing a round based on their ability to finish the product and release it (which they have done), show tangible customer ROI (which they have done), and continue to generate new customer traction (which they are continuing to do).’’

Will VisibleGains manage to close that round, and turn into a case study of trying once, trying again, and finally zeroing in on a profitable business? Stay tuned.

■Making sense of sports video. You know you might be onto something interesting when you make a few inquiries about a company and suddenly its website disappears. That was the case after I made a few inquiries about Bluefin Lab, a stealthy start-up in Somerville.

The company has its origins in Michael Ben Fleischman’s PhD work at the MIT Media Lab. Fleischman created software that could analyze vast amounts of sports video (and the accompanying audio and text) to learn, for example, what a home run, foul ball, and fly-out look like in baseball, and make each of those scenes easily findable. Imagine being able to view all of the strike-outs in a baseball game by the starting pitcher, or the field goal attempts in a football game, without needing human beings to tag and index the video manually.

The company has already banked roughly $500,000 in Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Science Foundation, most recently in August, and Waltham-based Kepha Partners has added a sprinkling of seed funding.

Helping to launch Bluefin are Fleischman, Media Lab director Frank Moss, serial entrepreneur Andy Palmer, and Media Lab researcher Deb Roy.

A permanent chief executive has not been hired and the company, I’m told, isn’t likely to be launched before 2010.

■Ballmer in Boston. Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, is coming to town Friday, and his one semi-public event is proving to be a tough ticket.

The last time Ballmer was in Boston, in February, he stayed for such a short time that the corporate jet’s fan blades barely stopped spinning. This time, he’ll have a heftier schedule.

I’m told he will have a morning “listening’’ meeting at the Microsoft NERD center in Kendall Square with local tech entrepreneurs and investors.

Then, Microsoft is putting together an invitation-only conclave of chief information officers.

Ballmer might also connect with some Boston-based policy makers while he’s in town, a Microsoft executive tells me.

At lunch, Ballmer will speak to an invitation-only gathering of the Chief Executives’ Club of Boston, at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Boston.

Although that is described by a Microsoft representative as a public event, it’s not listed on the club’s website - maybe because the ticket is so hot that would-be attendees are trying to pull every string possible to get into the room?