Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 10, 2011

Each customer segment of your business needs to be analyzed to determine whether they are profitable enough given ongoing costs to serve them relative to the revenue you would receive and the retention money you’d have to money to keep them with your service. A 20% savings for a cost conscious consumer. If they were on the $9.99

Customer 287

Customer Technical Review Caching PR 287

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Traditional video had very high costs of distribution due to limited time slots of broadcast TV (we only had enough spectrum to support 3-4 channels). Much of network television can cost $100,000 / minute to produce. Producers can cost-effectively test formats and build fans as they go. Much of it already is. Not so fast.

Video 339

Video Technical Review Distribution Aggregator 339

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 19, 2011

As people realized streamlining client-side development really matters to cost-effectively build software, new tool sets emerged to streamline the process. The costs of multi-platform development are too expensive. There is an acronym we use in computing called TCO or Total Cost of Ownership. Apple had a store.

Web 355

Web AJAX Distribution HTML 355

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. But not doing basic research makes no sense.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

So when Google started pushing AdSense (ads for affiliate or 3rd party sites) they had a HUGE cost advantage. it seems that Twitter should have the same Google-like cost advantage. I think the best solution for the social networking era is “in-stream&# advertising. Google had huge destination traffic. Enter TweetUp.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 12, 2014

While traditional methods (PR, advertising, events, seminars) and online methods (SEO, SEM, social, referral marketing) are well understood by most companies there are many methods that are less well publicized. When they had enough of TapJoy driving downloads through CPI (cost per install) they shut down this component of their service.

SEM 379

SEM Viral Marketing Widget 379

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

From there most websites unfortunately don’t know what to really do with it so it basically just becomes a way to log you in and potentially allow advertisers to serve up more targeted (and therefore higher CPM) ads. Brands like Samsung, LG, and Dunkin Donuts pay Meebo to advertise to users on our partner sites. For Meebo 1.3%

Connecticut 286

Connecticut Cofounder Silicon Valley Web 286

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

By “vertical production” I meant that many online video production companies will have a strong vertical focus that will help them win the battle to sign up talent, build stronger & more loyal audiences and align with stronger advertiser relationships because they serve more endemic audiences.

South America 291

South America Colombia Mexico Vertical 291

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

YouTube takes too high of a revenue split (45% vs. 30% that Apple and many other distribution companies take – FWIW, YouTube argues this is because their costs are much higher since they host and stream the video). Your tech needs to add value to content producers, the audience and advertisers. You must invest in technology.

SEM 150

SEM Los Angeles Silicon Valley Acquisition 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

He acknowledged the importance of the growing seed fund movement in creating a new wave of cost-effective innovation. Revenue must come from a primary source (as opposed to advertising or other third party sources). Fred Wilson wrote a great piece on this. He has a set of clearly defined criteria in order to invest.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

Cloud computing and the open source movements have brought down the costs of starting a company by more than 90%. They need a combination of capital and experience to separate from the rest of the pack – the low cost of starting a business means it is even more vital to become the market leader more quickly.

Venture Capital 347

Venture Capital Technical Review LP Mobile 347

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2012

… phones cost money, phones do not scale. But they make the overwhelming majority of their money from advertising. They are selling audiences to advertisers. Whenever I talk about advertising people comment how much everybody hates ads. The customer are advertising agencies and brands themselves. Believe me.

New York 311

New York Mobile Technical Review Software Review 311

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 11, 2011

In working with brands, Jon says: “ Vary creative, try lots of things, the costs are so low, why would we put up one piece of branded content? It is absolutely MVP of advertising. There’s no cost!&#. Can we do 10 variants? Can we take this video and put it in 10 different contests?

Viral 354

Viral Video RSS Audio 354

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

A demand side advertising platform which allows advertisers to bid on individual ad impressions in real time, based on the site and who would see it. Scott’s first big foray into industry-changing companies came with CarsDirect, an IdeaLab company where he was the initial founder & CEO. Total raised: $125mm See: TechCrunch.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 25, 2011

You struggle to get advertisers to pay your CPM rates and get your page clicks up in a business where you become a near commodity to ever other website out there. Final message on financing – just be careful not to let your fixed costs get too high as a young services business. Even tech blogs know this. This is a huge mistake.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley IP Dividend Finance 332

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

She sold many of her possessions on Craigslist and even sold her paintings and materials at less than cost. Second, she sells advertising, which given her tight demographic and the big spending that comes when one is planning a wedding she can monetize really well. She put all of her savings into her company. She never gave up.

Silicon Valley 363

Silicon Valley Cofounder Entrepreneur Startup 363

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 6, 2012

When you have limited distribution, the costs of distributing media are so prohibitive that only the largest of media producers (and distributors) are relevant. That couldn’t happen without the advent of lower cost production & distribution. Production costs have plummeted. Why is that? Even a hundred.

Media 302

Media South Korea Distribution Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 4, 2009

Not only do I need to understand a customer pain point that my solution solves but I also need to convince them that my product does it better or most cost effectively than others on the market. This one is a little harder but still quite straightforward. Many entrepreneurs think naively that it’s not good to have competitors.

Sales 319

Sales Sales Cycle Startup Reputation 319

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

Or they have products that cost $40 / month but that require a direct sales person to close them. Want to build a product that relies on converting local mom-and-pop businesses into online advertisers – see if a regional approach might work better. I see it all the time. Want to be the SharePoint killer? Avoid rabbits.

Startup 389

Startup Early Stage Demand Channel 389

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 1, 2010

We loved the team (they hired a very experienced CEO (the founder’s recommendation to do so – not mine) and a great technology team, we loved the product category of in-stream advertising which I believe will continue to be a major trend and we were impressed with the quality of the product they were developing.

Post-Money Valuation 298

Post-Money Valuation Term Sheet Warrant Partner 298

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Or maybe you’re trying to dramatically change the way TV is consumed, like Boxee or TV advertising works on the Internet, like Hulu. Or maybe you’re developing second screen viewing applications like GetGlue or building a YouTube studio to deliver low-cost content.

Entrepreneur 330

Entrepreneur Tunisia Egypt Iran 330

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

billion in annual subscription revenues not including advertising or eCommerce). Brands didn’t advertise their web pages they advertised “AOL Keywords.&# You couldn’t pick up a magazine in the 96-99 timeframe without seeing AOL Keywords advertised everywhere. They have more page views than even Google.

Social Network 318

Social Network Networking Internet Technical Review 318

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. He took out an ad in the Yellow Pages (it was the early 80′s, pre Internet), which cost him $1,000 / month for a half-page ad.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 4, 2010

Online advertising platform for local businesses; ReachLocal reported over $203 million in revenue for 2009, compared to around $146 million in 2008. There weren’t enough details to know whether Corduro was trying to build a mobile payments company like Zong or a retail merchant processing solution like Square.

IPO 236

IPO .Net Venture Capital Strategic Investors 236

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

They therefore have large cost bases and have to pass on those costs to you. - But the trade-off in terms of flexibility and costs were enormous. Apple has sent out signals such as that they might like to own location-based mobile advertising. We evangelized to customer about the problems of on premise software. -

Flash 326

Flash Mobile Application Development Cloud 326

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 1, 2011

Around 2003, Quigo was doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue with two main products: a ready-to-use, search engine marketing solution for advertisers called FeedPoint and a contextual advertising platform for publishers called AdSonar. He wanted Quigo to be in the business of letting advertisers buy directly into the system.

Semantic 302

Semantic Acquisition Valuation Angel Investor 302

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

Tige and I discuss an excellent blog post written by the CEO of Hulu (Jason Kilar) on the future of advertising. Others have more time than money, and use services like SVnetwork to subject themselves to specific advertising to get access to the content they want. Monetizing content is going to be a moving target.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

Many of the Valley tech firms saw advertising as “beneath them&# and many VCs in the first boom encouraged people to focus on eyeballs rather than dollars. The result is that we’ve had a lot of innovation coming from LA and other regions outside Silicon Valley in terms of making money on the Internet. Some of it will be UGC.

Silicon Valley 313

Silicon Valley Southern California Los Angeles Semantic 313

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 17, 2011

Why do cable & satellite companies force us to take content “bundles&# that cost more than we want and have content we don’t watch. Specifically they pointed out that I didn’t cover all of the innovation they had done around the future models of advertising. Were they vertically integrated ? If so, why?

Technical Review 356

Technical Review Framework Audience Media 356

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

I always try hard to make this blog a place where you can learn lessons rather than an advertisement for portfolio companies. was driven largely by the massively reduced cost of media capture through mobile phones with cameras, the Flip Video, the rise of digital SLRs and now the capture of videos through mobile devices.

Term Sheet 303

Term Sheet Mobile Cofounder Early Stage 303

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 22, 2011

Ones that offer amazing value (low relative margins) at high volumes that makes it nearly impossible for high-cost incumbents to compete. But eventually low-cost new entrants came into the market offering most of our features at 10% the costs. Are you offering a product where the supply costs will continue to drop precipitously?

Non-Compete 386

Non-Compete Startup Internet Cost 386

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 9, 2011

The parallels to the music industry are too obvious even though the industry players, the medium and the cost structures are different. US TV advertising is $60 billion in its own right. These companies advertise. I have always believed that TV was ripe for disruption. I had found my industry and a deal I really liked in it.

Stock 305

Stock Technical Review Marketing Greece 305

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 10, 2011

Think of DataSift as turning the fire-hose into a cost-effective and manageable tap of running water. Some will cite my investment two years ago in social-media advertising company Ad.ly DataSift = platform for companies to develop cost-effective applications using this Twitter data to gain advantage relative to their competition.

Viral 307

Viral Las Vegas Tunisia Syndicate 307

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 13, 2016

And the more you succeed the more advertisers in search of endemic audiences want to advertise with you. Once you have stronger rate cards on advertising you accrue more money and you can develop or acquire more shows. And now the unscripted (aka reality) producers and talent want to work with you.

Vertical 150

Vertical Video South America Los Angeles 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2010

In this way they locked down the device (they controlled the phone distribution market through owning retail stores and subsidizing handset costs). And meanwhile I’ve seen several LA startups focus on creating low-cost video production & distribution houses. Companies like Filmaka have been trying to solve this problem.

Distribution 386

Distribution Audience Video Internet 386