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Category Archives: General

Back on the wagon/horse?

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Haven’t written a blog post since 2016, which is a near-eternity in the modern era. As much as there was no particular reason I stopped, man is it hard to restart. I’ve literally been wanting to write the entire time, but sitting here typing is a totally different thing. In fact I have no agenda to this post, and am treating it as a stream-of-consciousness.

That said, I have decided that I should feel comfortable putting anything I want on this blog, be it personal journey (hello!), product/technology commentary & opinions, thoughts on product management & strategy, etc. I think one central theme I’d like to write more about is innovation as a mindset. But I’ll also dabble on anything from family/living/social commentary (I pledge to keep as far away from politics as I can). Hope that works out. One of my goals is a high level of transparency, dabbling on over-sharing vs under.

I do realize how daunting it is to write. Even now I’m not 100% sure I’ll hit the Publish button. Here are some of the concerns I have:

  • Why bother? Seriously, there’s SO much content out there, does the world need one more thing to read? I can just keep these oh-so-witty moments to myself. But I’ll try not to!
  • I may fall off the horse/wagon (seriously, which is it?) again. Sometimes the hardest part of losing a good habit is the effort to just get back to where you started. And the idea of doing this haphazardly is tough for me – I prefer to get into a good routine and commit. The challenge with blogging is I either write a bunch of posts and don’t publish, or I run the risk of giving it up again. Going to have to go with the latter.
  • Is it worth the time? Beyond the why bother remark, if I spend, say, 15-30m per day writing, is that the “best” use of that time? Hard to say, and hard to even evaluate what that might mean. Writing along might contribute to happiness/etc, so even if nobody’s reading, the process might be worth the journey. I’ll take a shot.
  • Making it look good is much harder/time-consuming. Sometimes I just want to write, but “best practices” would say to edit, to find a good picture to go with the post, properly tagging the post, cross-posting to medium/linkedin/etc, etc. For now I’ll skip the “extra work” part until I am in a good rhythm with it, then re-evaluate.
  • Lack of interaction will be defeating. In a bit of a chicken-and-egg moment, since I haven’t been regular, I have, effectively, no readers to engage with. So I have to pre-commit to the deafening silence for now, and see what happens.
  • Avoiding judgment. I think the biggest concern overall is whatever personal brand-building this results in. Do I look better, or worse? Smarter, or dumber? I’ve certainly made some very wrong projections before, but a few right ones as well. And does it even really matter? Hard to tell, but I’m going to just have to jump off the diving board and see what happens.

So there we are. Welcome to 2019, and hopefully I’ll be back as soon as tomorrow, but realistically just before 2021 would be good enough for now.

11 Tips for Startups Pitching Big Companies

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pitchPitching – it’s an art and a science, a love and a hate, an up and a down (wait, what? get on with it? oh, okay, sorry)…

I spent most of the past 20 years on the sell-side of things, whether to VCs, partners, customers, etc. I learned a lot. As I near my 1-year anniversary at CNET/CBS, I’m getting pitched a lot. And I’m seeing startup after startup making the same mistakes. So I wanted to reflect on and share some of the experiences I’ve had being on the “other side” of the pitch.

So, to my friends and colleagues at startups, in no particular order, here are thoughts, tips, and suggestions on how you can get better results from your efforts:

  • Know. Your. Target.
    We had a startup in here the other day who clearly had not researched CNET. In fact, I’d wager they hadn’t even visited the site for 5 minutes. So we wasted at least 1/4 of the time with their founder taking us down utterly irrelevant paths. If you cannot tell me why you are a fit for my needs, you are wasting both of our time.
  • Learn the basics of how my business works
    Same startup as above, literally had no idea how we make money. No idea. It’s fine if you don’t know all the nuances of my business, but at least have a rough guess. If unclear, then ask me via email before you show up, so you are ready to fit by the time we are chatting.
  • Understand our time, use it well
    You have 30 minutes (occasionally 60) to get me hooked on whatever you’ve got. And there’s decent odds that, no matter how much I philosophically hate being late for things, I may be showing up late (apologies in advance). So you should come into the meeting knowing exactly how we’ll spend that time, what you hope to get out of it, what you hope I get out of it, etc. Granted this should be de rigeur for all meetings, but I’d recommend getting it to perfection before you show up. If we’re 8 minutes into our time and I still don’t know what you do, at all, it ain’t good.
  • Don’t re-use your fundraising pitch/story
    I understand that having so-and-so on your board is great when you hit Sand Hill Road. Or that your CTO collaborated with whatshername on that last venture of theirs. But that’s 100% utterly irrelevant to my business needs. Further, I don’t necessarily care that the market opportunity for you is unicorn-like. Fundraising and sales/BD are similar, in that you pitch, but different, in that our needs and motivation are not shared.  Bottom line: drop the SV jargon when pitching business opportunities.
  • jargonSkip the Jargon; Use vocabulary that I’ll understand
    And while we’re at it, think very carefully about the terminology you are using. The reality check is most business professionals are paying little-to-no attention on the nuances that impact startups, modern tech, or Silicon Valley trends. We also might not know all the acronyms related to your particular niche/industry. One of your key goals is that I can go tell your story the moment you leave my office. You want me going to my team/peers/boss explaining how much we’ll benefit because of you. So if you confuse/bewilder me with insider talk, rest assured I’ll leave the meeting confused and unable to share your vision.
  • Also, skip the “tech basics”
    We had someone in a recent demo show us how QR codes worked. Literally pulled out their phone, took a picture, showed a website. Unless you are the QR app company, you don’t need to show us this (nor how email works, browsers, etc). Not only are you wasting your time, and effectively talking down to us, you are also creating additional risk in case something doesn’t work (because it’s a demo, something will not work). If I want to see the demo of the QR scan, I’ll ask for it. Again, don’t confuse this with not showing me your core benefits, just we can take for granted the basics of it.
  • Something won’t work. Be ready.
    It’s awful, for both sides, when demos break. First, keep in mind that we want your demo to work out great. We want to be impressed with your tech/app/service. We might be skeptical, but are actually hoping you will help us save time/money/whatever. So if your demo craps out in the middle, that’s fine, but be instantly ready to go with either a slide/diagram/video or just even talking us through what would happen in a successful demo.
  • Don’t ask Mom if Dad says no!
    Had someone come in, pitch, and I politely declined. A week later, one of my peers emails me about the same company. So now we’ve had oodles of wasted time, and you still are not a fit for my needs. Only now, I’m about 1000% less open to you coming back in in a few months with a new option/service. We may be a big company, but we do talk. You are welcome to ask me if I think a different department would be interested – because if I think so, I’d happily send you on that way. Remember, if you are truly solving our problems, we are truly interested in you.
  • Keep your videos short and/or email me videos separate to our meeting
    I watched a founder push play on a YouTube demo of their tech. It was a 9 minute video. I lasted 90 seconds before I asked them to cut to the chase and email it to me later. Remember the part about using time wisely? Send me your 9 minute video to watch later, or share internally with other decision-makers. But use our in-person time for interactive discussion and to understand the opportunity. “Netflix and chill” doesn’t work out so well in the office.
  • multitaskingDon’t Multitask
    While one of the founders was sharing the vision, I was listening to the cofounder clickety-clacking on their keyboard – and rest assured they were not taking notes. I don’t think I need to say any more on this one.
  • Most Importantly: Be a square peg in a square hole.
    Every time I hear a startup founder complain about how they keep getting bounced around departments. While its fair that sometimes this is BigCo’s fault – it’s just as much your fault. What your lesson should be from the bouncing is “you are not fitting into their process” which can easily kill a great potential deal. Some products/technologies are easy and obvious fits. Some are not. It’s your job to make your solution an obvious fit.

    Easy tip here: the very first time someone bounces you, take 5 more minutes to understand the wider organization.It may well be that at company X its a marketing decision and at company Y its a product decision. But that’s a solvable problem. When I was running Dijit, it was “obvious” that TV companies could benefit from having audiences get automatic reminders to watch their shows. But it was far from obvious as to which department at each network was in charge of something like this. Social? Marketing? Reach? Audience Development? So we put in a process that had us uncover this information prior to any in-person meetings. No more bouncing.

I hope these are helpful to any startup trying to get traction – I know it’s hard. Remember to focus on the audience, share your passion, and hopefully great things will happen!

CES 2016: A New Role

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My first CES was in 1999, with Mediabolic (a software platform for consumer electronics devices). Unfortunately due to age and data loss, I have no real nor digital memories of that particular trip, other than “learning experience.”

For the next few years CES trips were all about networking, demos, meetings, demos, walking the show, demos, events, demos, press briefings, demos, and, of course, the occasional demo. The two key highlights of these years, in no particular order:

jt_snoop

(1) Photobombing Snoop Dogg in 2002

and

Winning Best of CES in 2004

(2) Winning Best of CES in 2004

Good times. The next two years at the show were for Sling Media, where I spent the shows demoing, networking, demoing, doing press events, demoing, in meetings, and, of course, demoing. I again won a Best of CES award at the show (in 2005, demoing at a booth the size of my desk, in a tent in the LVCC parking lot, during the rain), and I was in full love with the annual event. I even put together my first batch of “Tips for CES” posts.

Rich Buchanan (RIP) setting up the CES 2006 Sling Media booth

Rich Buchanan (RIP) setting up the CES 2006 Sling Media booth

From 2007-2011, my attendance of the show shifted, from being at a company (doing demos), to running booths and media events for multiple companies, all clients of Stage Two (the product and marketing consultancy I ran with Adam Burg for 4 years). Instead of doing insane amounts of demos, I helped orchestrate numerous other products and launches at the show. Our presence included: Bug Labs (won another Best of CES award!), Boxee, Splashtop, TuneUp Media, PogoPlug, Magisto, Sphero (pre-BB8!), and others. The experience was quite different, still very cool. More CES survival tips.  Some highlight moments:

He said some wonderful things

He said some wonderful things

Team Stage Two

Team Stage Two

Yada Yada Yada

Yada Yada Yada

It's a Loose (Digital) Seal

It’s a Loose (Digital) Seal

Trifecta!

Trifecta!

From 2012-2014, my role at CES shifted yet again, this time as CEO of Dijit Media. Over these years I spent a collective 15 or so minutes actually on the show floor, the rest of the time in meetings. 7am to 7pm, then social events with partners, vendors, customers, etc. A very different kind of exhausting, but still loving the CES!

Huge Limo Ride

Huge Limo Ride

What Happens In Vegas... ?

What Happens In Vegas… ?

Look ma, a Xyboard!

Look ma, a Xyboard!

And now as the year kicks off, I prep to fly into Las Vegas and descend upon the madness of #CES2016. Only this time I’m doing it with CNET, the largest tech media company at the show! In fact, this year I’ve worked with my stellar team to get our dedicated CES section into great shape. While I know it’s going to be crazy busy, it’s also oddly calming to have most of my CES work already “in the can” (as they say “in the biz”).

I have no idea what this experience will be like, but I’m extremely honored and excited to be a part of it!

Everything I Learned (So Far) Working For a Huge Company

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More people work on the same floor as me than at any individual company I’ve worked at before. More people work for CNET than the cumulative sum of all my prior endeavors. To say my (not-so) new job is a different environment would be quite the understatement. And while I haven’t managed to get back on the blogging train, I can say, in a nutshell, I’m loving it.

It seems this journey of “startup to big company guy, and happy” is the less-common one these days. But last week I hit the six month mark, and thought it was a good time to reflect and share my learnings and observations thus far.

  • Bureaucracy: Not Actually Everywhere
    Probably my #1 fear going into joining CBS (parent company of CBS Interactive, parent company of CNET, etc) was the notion that I’d have to put in triple the work to get the same kind of output. TPS reports, etc. And sure, there are approval processes for many things, but I’ve yet to find something radically get in my way of doing my job.
  • Startup Thinking is Alive and Well
    Growth Hacking? A/B Testing? Cohorts? Check Check Check – we’ve got em. Fail fast? On it. Basically there’s a tremendous energy to go out, solve problems, build great products, etc. I think the biggest difference is the reality check of being a very established company that makes a lot of money, which leads me to…
  • Mo (Any) Money, More Problems
    Because so much of the things that happen at CNET already work, and work well, it can be challenging at times to want to push the envelope. I recently conducted an A/B test on a thing, and I had to face the challenge of knowing that, regardless of outcome, it could impact revenue/profits.  Which makes me think much harder about when and where are the right times to do a test, what are the business / product / user consequences, etc. I don’t think of this as a bad thing (at all), but adds a new dimension to a lot of decision making.
  • Status Quo is an Enemy
    The other hidden challenge in a successful company is people get set into routines, and there’s not enough “Why?” being asked. Which leads to all sorts of nuanced inefficiencies in how we do things, such as the “too many people in too many meetings without clear agendas, goals, etc” types of problems. But there’s an upside…
  • Change is Very Possible
    The upside is a lot of openness to improving process, eliminating redundancies, speeding up flow, and more, across the organization. I obviously am not speaking to all big companies at this point, but at CBSi there’s a clear and obvious desire to improve anywhere and anytime. I believe the management here is very well-attuned to not resting on laurels, and instead aggressively chartering a path forward.
  • A Different Kind of Busy
    I fundamentally believe most people at most jobs are pretty busy – I’ve never considered myself not busy in the past. But my job now has me ending the day feeling like I actually do a lot more than I have in many previous roles. Not sure if this is simply a matter of the increased scale of the product itself, or bigger org, or what, but instead of avoiding afternoon caffeine for insomnia issues, now I’m seeking it out to recharge the batteries to get through the day (in a good way). It’s a hard nuance to describe, as I don’t feel negatively “worn down” from work, but more like I’ve just expended a lot of energy to get a lot of things done. Also, I’m having a much harder time keeping my inbox in my comfort zone, though I’m still not drowning.
  • Having Resources is Awesome
    At a startup, if you want to to analyze stats, or run a usertesting analysis, or plan a CES visit, or any other project that isn’t necessarily core to you, but isn’t core to anyone else either, pretty much you just roll up the sleeves and get it done. Having teams of people, who are experts at what they do, available to get things accomplished, is just amazing. Not only do I use my time more effectively, the work itself is done at a very high quality.
  • Welcome to the Show
    Between products like the Slingbox, Dropcam, Boxee, VUDU, NextGuide, and others, I’ve built a lot of things that a lot of people have used – which is nice. But at CNET I’m running a website that measures up in the billions of things. Most of America has visited CNET at some point this year. It’s insane. That rush I used to get watching a new site launch is just dwarfed by the scale here. And it’s a blast, as a product guy it’s as if I’ve been given the world’s largest toy to go play with. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. It’s also kind of fun to be able to say you work for the biggest tech site in the world!

So, for the myriads of examples people have about how much inertia, slow-moving, politicalness and other challenges the aircraft carriers face, I’m thrilled that I’ve instead found myself at a gigantic speedboat. I’ve had a ton of fun with tweaks all across CNET.com itself, not to mention spearheading some new storytelling formats (like we used on our amazing Q&A with John Boyega from the new Star Wars movie), building new interactivity into our annual Holiday Gift Guide, some major new things for CNET in 2016 (our CES coverage is going to be insane), and my one more thing: the right-around-the-corner launch of our new amazing auto site: Roadshow.

Time For a Change

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Change!

Today is my last day at Viggle, and it was a heck of an amazing journey. A quick look back:

The early days

While it’s still a vivid, present memory for me, it was almost 4 years ago that I joined Dijit Media, as head of products. Over the next 6 months we watched the company’s first app, the Dijit Remote, grow and evolve, while planning the “next big vision” for our startup. While initially the company focused on solving the challenge of “Control” in home entertainment, we realized there were even bigger opportunities on the horizon. In the Winter of 2012 we rebooted (aka “pivoted”) the company to focus on solving “Discovery” instead, raised new funding, and I moved into the CEO role.

Launching NextGuide

Over the following few months, the team got heads-down, huddled, hacked, and had fun with alliteration, until we launched NextGuide, which we called a “hyper-personalized TV discovery experience” – optimized for the iPad. The vision at the time was to solve for “what should I watch next?” – tons of research has shown that for the most part TV viewers sit down with clear intent for a specific show, but highly infrequently with a followup show in mind (though this is clearly changing in the OTT/binge-viewing era).

The app did quite well at launch, and we grew and evolved it over the coming months. Fundamentally we knew we were solving a real problem and building a product people really liked to use. We launched an iPhone and a Web-based version as well, each of which were fine-tuned for their respective environments. Further, I continued fundraising from esteemed Angel investors like Dan Robichaud and Martin-Luc Archimbault (of the “Montreal/Silicon Valley mafia”) as well as firms such as Alsop-Louie Partners and Menlo Ventures. We even acquired another startup, GoMiso, along the way.

Partnering with Hollywood for TV Reminders

One of the more popular features in NextGuide was the ability to set reminders to get notifications when a show has new episodes on live TV (or Netflix, Hulu, etc). During a team brainstorm one random day, we evolved the idea into “what if we partnered with TV networks to let them serve reminders to their audiences?” and with that, the NextGuide TV Reminder Button was born. Again, an amazing team effort later and not only did we have a working product, but partnerships with major TV networks!

Over the following months, we entered trials with almost every US-based network, and saw the feature soar in popularity. After all, as our logic went, why wouldn’t a network want to remind their audiences about their TV shows? This turned out to be a critical differentiator for the company, as we found a real solution to a commonly held problem by the networks. Further, by supporting major streaming services we were operating from a position where we could actually help the TV industry evolve from its broadcast/analog/nebulous data origins into the OTT/digital/big data future. Oh, and it worked – really well.

Viggle Acquisition and Journey

In late December 2013, while actively raising a fairly large Series A fundraising round, we entered partnership/acquisition discussions with New York-based Viggle, Inc. Dijit had a great team, solid product and features, and good customer acquisition. Viggle had a huge user base, active revenue, and tons of resources. Also, the technology Dijit built was not yet present in the Viggle app, and was highly complementary to the experience. The fit was obvious.

Post-acquisition the combined teams got to work and began cross-implementing technology and features. We added a “Celebrity Alert” feature to the company’s Wetpaint website. We included NextGuide “show pages” into the Viggle mobile app. We added Viggle Points to the NextGuide website. And much more. #synergy

Personally, I moved into the SVP of Products role, running strategy and innovation, as well as all West Coast operations. I had the opportunity to work with the NYC-based product and engineering team, as well as the highly skilled management team. In all my experiences this was my first getting real exposure to mobile advertising, learning about rewards systems, running remote personnel, and much more.

Moving on

It’s been a great journey. And as all journeys go, they eventually come to an end. So today’s my last day at Viggle, and I’m leaving my team in great hands. No regrets.

As for what’s next? More on that as I sort it out, but here are my priorities right off the bat (in no particular order):

  • Family time
  • Get outside – do some hiking & camping
  • Binge watch Orphan Black (this is important!)
  • Build something and/or rebuild my garage workshop area

I may blog and tweet a lot. I may go silent and introspective for a bit. I honestly have no idea – I haven’t had any official career “gap” since leaving Mediabolic and joining Sling Media (during that gap I got married and had a honeymoon, so not sure I can top that). I’ll be sad to leave this amazing team behind, but looking forward to see where the next journey takes me.

Why It’s a Great Time to Start a TV Startup, part 2: It’s Time For Change

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2015-03-04_1049As I asserted in Part 1,  I believe we are entering a “fourth generation” of television, one in which the rigid walls that have previously defined the industry are fundamentally disrupted. In the post-1.0 era, not only have consumers lived within “walled gardens” of content, but the industry itself has remained mostly closed to outsiders. When even companies as powerful as Intel and Google have tremendous struggles dealing with Hollywood, gaining access to content, etc, it’s almost comical to think of the startups who tried the same. Aereo’s $96 million in funding became about $1M in auction to TiVo this week.

This is mostly due to the incredible entanglement of contracts and legal issues pertaining to content ownership, distribution rights, release windows, playback, etc. Heck, even TV-related companies trying to change struggle with the mess. For context: We live in a world today that lets me buy NHL Gamecenter (directly from the NHL) yet not watch my hometown team (Montreal Canadiens, FTW) play “blacked out” games that air on, wait for it, the NHL Network.

The way I’ve always tried to describe the complexity to people is to think of taking a few dozen cables, neatly wound up, then throw em in a backpack and go for a quick jog. Then try to extract a single cable – good luck (for off-topic reading, here’s why that happens).

But we, today, are seeing important catalysts of change, and the catalysts are strong enough to make the powers that be look at how they can un-entangle their own mess. Here are the factors that I believe contribute strongest to a looming shift:

  • Netflix, Hulu, SlingTV, HBOGO, and TVE services break down the barriers to making content available through live and near-real-time streaming options. They also “train” content owners to think differently about distribution options.
  • iTunes, Google Play, and VOD services enable a la carte alternatives that are truly viable options to many consumers.
  • Pervasive 4G access, inexpensive smartphones, and tablets train consumers to demand anything/everything on all devices everywhere and all the time.
  • Bittorrent, Popcorn Time, and other piracy options have made finding and accessing high quality content for free far too easy for far too many people.
  • YouTube, Vimeo, and the suite of multichannel networks like Fullscreen are providing infinite entertainment alternatives to younger audiences, who may be losing the “attachment” to broadcast-quality television. This should be particularly scary to all sorts of companies – if the zeitgeist of pop culture shifts away from TV, we can expect to see more change, faster, than anyone can predict.
  • Cord cutting and dropping TV ratings are at the cusp of causing dramatic impact to advertisers, the unquestionable lifeblood of the industry.

As my colleague Adam Flomembaum, Editor at Lost Remote, shared with me yesterday:

“… we have seen in the last year that control of high quality content is being wrested from the hands of cable and satellite providers. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of other great options for accessing their favorite content, and TV startups that make this process more seamless – or at the very least, more consumer friendly – have a great chance to thrive.”

"What do you mean 'Lets get rid of the middlemen' we are the middle men!"Fundamentally the thing that’s made the TV industry “work” is the requirement and dependency on the two-tiered “middlemen” between content production and audiences.  But if the audiences are shifting patterns, quickly, and the producers are able to find new methods of profitable content distribution, change will come. I can’t say it’s a “this year” thing or a “10 years from now” thing – but I do believe we’ve entered the phase wherein there’s industry awareness of changing times, and reactiveness is following.

I’d also argue that this was not the case over the past decade, and is directly attributable to why so many TV startups crashed and burned. As Eric Elia, Managing Director of Cainkade, puts it:

“The technology has been here for a while, but we’ve been waiting for 10 years for the TV industry dynamics to shift. The table is now set with [hundreds of millions of] streaming devices worldwide, the unbundling boom (HBO, CBS, Sling TV, etc), and a Netflix clone for every taste and geography.  It’s going to be a fun few years for tools companies, programmers, ad tech. But I would not want to be a commodity content owner that can’t flap its wings outside the bundle.”

Now with any change we’ll see some mega-corporations begin their slow road to the deadpool, while others seize opportunities. We’ll see startups rise seemingly out of nowhere and become household names. Even five years ago cable and broadcast execs could easily keep their eyes on the distant horizon fearlessly – today, they’re building survival plans.

Next up: defining “TV 4.0”, identifying short-to-long-term opportunities, and other thoughts on why I think it’s a great time to be riding the wave of change in television.

Why It’s a Great Time to Start a TV Startup, part 1: History and Lessons Learned

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television-history-timelineThinking back on the recent history of TV startups, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is likely the best time in history to start a TV or entertainment-related startup. This’ll be a two-parter from me, and I’ll start by a summary of the past 20-odd years of innovation and change in the industry. While many people would say the TV startups that came and went over the past 5 years (Aereo, Miso, GetGlue, ZillionTV, BeeTV, Yap, etc) and the ones still in play (Zeebox, i.tv, Peel, Viggle – disclosure: I work there! etc) were the “TV 2.0” startups, I’d actually argue they were the 3.0, and it’s now time for 4.0 (though I could easily go for 7.0 without a big stretch). Confused? Lemme ‘splain:

TV 1.0, or the “Plain Ol’ TV” era (1M BC to mid-1990’s): Technically we could say this is just the “three channel” era, and the advent of Cable TV then Satellite TV were the 2.0 and 3.0 endeavors. Now in reality the advent of Cable Television was unquestionably the biggest shift the industry’s ever seen, as it not only changed the financial dynamics in a massive way, but also set the stage for the huge providers that then themselves were set up to become dominant ISP’s.

But for today’s purposes, I’ll skip through to the mid-90’s, to define “TV 1.0” – a time where TV watching was all done on a “TV set”, likely with a set-top box, and the majority of TV watching was done “live” (something I’ll be explaining to my kids forever). To give it some context though, TV 1.0 startups included CBS, ABC, Comcast, etc.

TV 2.0, the “TV My Way” era (mid-1990’s to late-2000’s): Started with the DVR/timeshifting, included streaming media devices and placeshifting, ended with streaming. It’s almost impossible to explain how profoundly different TV is today than it was a mere decade ago. But to explain the difference between the previous decade is equally profound. First, the DVR moved TV off the default schedule, and onto our own personal schedule. Back then the only way a show could be “spoiled” was because you hadn’t watched your VCR tape, or some idiot friend from the East Coast called you (on your landline) and ruined a moment. My friend Richard Bullwinkle, former Chief Evangelist at TiVo says:

“The DVR was an excellent stopgap technology to help us all understand that Live TV was, if nothing else, inconvenient.”

With the advent of the Slingbox, and to a lesser degree a variety of streaming devices/services, TV then moved not only off schedule, but off-device. This change, called placeshifting, was the underpinnings of all forms of TV Everywhere, Netflix streaming, and everything else that moved the TV experience from primarily a “living room” activity to a “wherever I am” activity.

Lazy-Sunday-the-lonely-island-8377383-853-480And then came a little video streaming site combined with Lazy Sunday, and poof, the world exploded. YouTube led to all forms of uploading/streaming, which led inevitably to the advent of Netflix streaming. Combine these pieces and you end up at the beginning of the 2010’s with the commonly accepted notion that “I watch *anything* I want, on *any device* I want, at *any time* I want, in *any location* I want.  TV 2.0 startups included TiVo, ReplayTV, Sling Media, Roku, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu etc.

TV 3.0, the “Enhance TV” era (2010-2015): Combine the maturity of “Web 2.0”, which allowed developers to “mash up” any Internet services any way they saw fit, with the radically new availability of content and services from/related to the TV industry, with widespread access to powerful mobile devices and everywhere-access to high-speed Internet. What entered next was a wave of startups all focused on finding ways to “improve” the TV experience. Also sprinkle a dash of Venture Capitalists looking to find the next hitherto-undisrupted industries, and young entrepreneurs with visions of change.

Unfortunately we need to sour the story for a moment, as most of these ventures went belly-up. In some cases the companies needed deeper pockets and longer runways. In many others we were seeing technology solutions seeking out consumer or industry problems. Some are still up and running, and thriving. Most aren’t.

And with failure I think the most important thing to look at is what we should learn from it.

  • The TV experience was far from broken. For people who liked traditional/broadcast TV, aka the majority of TV audiences, all these new apps and services just put barriers between them and their beloved content. For people adopting streaming, on-demand, well, it’s already pretty awesome. Far too many startups went out with the proposition of “TV is broken” – it’s not.
  • People don’t want to multitask within TV. I can find a few dozen studies on how people are “second screening” their TV watching experiences. But this equates more to distracted living than some latent desire to watch a TV show and read “background” info written by an intern at the exact same time. Sure there are a few wins in this field, but not nearly enough to support a young startup.
  • YouTube is the best YouTube experience. While I can throw out a few ways to make YouTube a better experience (ahem – search while watching? better search algorithms? verified accounts?), fundamentally people are perfectly fine using YouTube as is. And as Hunter Walk put it best: “[YouTube discovery startups” struggle because video discovery just isn’t a venture scale business.”
  • SDKs and APIs don’t make TV an “open” business. I’ve watched a bunch of startups go after opportunities they see because companies like DirecTV and Hulu make API’s to access or interact with content. But these API’s are not the deep, raw access to services like Google Maps and Yelp provide, they are shallow services to enable very simple and basic access to limited feature sets. Maybe one day that’ll change, but until it does, there’s just not enough meat on the bones to support a startup.
  • Cord Cutting isn’t real enough. Want to hear an UN-sexy headline from a tech blog? How about “Pay TV Industry Alive and Well” or “Turns Out Almost 90% of Americans Like Paying for TV”? Ain’t gonna happen. So we’ve seen cord-cutting mania across the landscape, causing entrepreneurs and investors alike to think its a huge market/opportunity. We can all argue the numbers, but fundamentally until the past 3-6 months, there’s been no evidence, whatsoever, that there’s a big swell of people dying for some cord-cutting product that they’d then in turn pay for. Don’t get me wrong – this market will emerge one way or another, whether by cord-shaving or cord-nevers or cord-cutting itself. But it’s nascent today, and that’s a problem for a current startup funding climate that expects hockey-stick growth after two weeks of growth hacking.

Coming tomorrow(ish), part two: the rise of TV 4.0 and keys to success. Which focuses on a the following theme (well-said by Dana Loberg, founder of MovieLaLa):

It’s definitely an exciting time to be working in a startup in the entertainment /technology cross-section. There’s a lot of changes occurring because technology has fundamentally changed the way we communicate, engage with each other and even consume content.

Guest Post: the Broken Golden Age of Television

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This is a guest post by TV industry thought leader Erik Schwartz:

broken golden tv

It’s broken. But in 4K!

“Television is dead.” 

“It’s the golden age of television.”  

Here at the NATPE conference in Miami Beach this week, I’m hearing both of these arguments being argued repeatedly.  I think there’s truth in both positions.

This is the golden age of television. Programs like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, HOC, Hannibal, Fargo, The Americans, are as good or better than anything that has ever been produced. The current MVPD model is optimized around every network having a blockbuster show that makes that network a “must carry” for cable and satellite providers, and then filling up the rest of its schedule as cheaply as possible. As the number of networks has grown, the number of these tent-pole programs has swelled.  

Television is dead. Fewer consumers are watching this programming in a linear fashion, as the network airs it. It is DVR’ed, viewed on demand through TV Everywhere or Hulu, or purchased from iTunes or Amazon. It’s a generational shift. This is making it more difficult to monetize via traditional TV advertising channels. (My kids barely know what commercials are.) If this trend continues, will networks continue to invest in the funding of premium programming?

Will the SVODs like Netflix pick up the slack by funding even more new programming? To a certain extent, yes. But SVOD growth was fueled by buying archives of existing high-quality content, for much less than it would cost to produce new quality programming. This content is cheaper because it is already monetized.  It is found money for the rights holder. At market saturation (and Netflix is almost there in the US), if the SVODs have enough programming (original and archive) to prevent subscriber churn, is there incremental ROI in making more premium shows? Their profit is maximized by offering just enough content to keep a viewer subscribed — everything over that threshold eats into profit margins. A viewer consuming more SVOD is an incremental expense that does not increase revenue.

Yes, it is the golden age of programming. But the existing models for monetization are flawed given today’s consumer’s preferred consumption channels. Flat-rate SVOD incentivizes “just enough” great programming. For decades, advertising made revenue directly proportional to consumption. That changed when retransmission fees started accounting for more network revenue, and then it changed more with SVOD. For this golden age to continue, we need a new model in which revenue for all stakeholders is correlated with audience size.

– Erik Schwartz



When to Use Star Ratings Versus Pass/Fail

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If you’re a Uber/Lyft user, you’ve probably noticed a recent trend of drivers asking for 5-star reviews at the end of your ride. While this might seem normal for any service where reviews/ratings matter, what you may not know is this: drivers whose ratings hit 4.5 or lower get fired. In other words, when you see the 1-5 stars and click on 4-stars (a good review), you are actually saying “fire this person” to Uber/Lyft.

This, in my opinion, is a very bad use of a ratings system. First, we’ve been trained through our lives that 3 stars = “acceptable”, 4 stars = “good”, and 5 stars = “perfect/great”. For reference, that’s the equivalent of a D, B-, and A+ grade. And an A+ is supposed to be exceptional/rare. Further, if these companies are basically saying “only great drivers can remain employed” – that’s fine, but they need to train the customer in a way that makes sense.

Another example of poorly used 5 stars is Yelp. Ever see a 2-star restaurant on Yelp? Pretty rare. Took a *lot* of searching to find the following:

worst sushi - yelp

 

Any frequent Yelp user knows 4/4.5/5* = likely to be good, 3.5* = worth trying, and 3* and below should be skipped if at all possible. At least this is *closer* to a real review system, but the problem with Yelp lays in the reviewers. I’ve seen reviews of restaurants wherein people only discuss the cocktails at the bar, or give “4* for food, but 1* for service” reviews. This makes no sense as a method of judging a restaurant – and is the core to why professional reviewers exist.

Comparing, for just a moment, to services such as Metacritic and RottenTomatoes:

rotten tomatoes metacritic

Very clear ratings, lots of transparency, lots of meaningfulness in gradients.  Gives me enough information to make decisions on. Reviewers aren’t liking the above film, but early audiences are. Now I can make a choice and know what I’m getting into. There’s nobody rating a movie because of the popcorn quality in the theater, whether or not the ticketing process went smoothly, or if someone was polite to them or not. So I propose two options:

1. If it’s a pass-fail thing, make it so.

When I get out of a Lyft/Uber ride, it seems that the company wants to know, basically, should this person continue to be a driver? If that’s the question, then just ask it. Pass/Fail – all done. Then if I choose “Fail” they can quickly follow-up, determine the nature of my complaint (bad routing? rude? smelly car?) and take action. Further, drivers can be informed that XX Fails per month = terminated. Also, the same would work in reverse – was the passenger someone who shouldn’t be permitted to continue using the service? If so, determine why, take action, move on.

As an aside, I do think both companies should have a GE-like “bottom 5% of passengers get fired as customers” type of policy. I hear so many complaints from drivers about the rudeness and demands many passengers make it baffles me. Really people? And you wonder how taxi drivers got that way.

2. If it’s a scale, but with nuance – ask different questions.

If Yelp really wants to make scores relevant, the 5-star system should have criteria. For example, users should be asked to rate Food, Service, Ambiance, and an Overall Score. I don’t mind discovering that a place has mediocre food but great drinks and service – but that should be obvious from the get-go.

If Uber and Lyft want to know what I really think about my ride, ask me about the driver’s Safety, Routing, and Politeness (or other factors, as needed). I’ve often found drivers that were super friendly and prompt, but had terrible driving instincts (likely related to the roughly 3% of San Francisco area drivers who actually live here as opposed to Alameda or Sacramento).  Compare either service to Tripadvisor:

tripadvisor

I’d actually complement Tripadvisor at the single most useful ratings criteria sorting system I’ve ever seen. The simple nuance of sorting based on Vacation versus Business travel is *huge*. I can quickly re-sort the above hotel to ignore Families, and watch how the Traveler Ratings change as a result.

What about being able to set a preference for Lyft/Uber drivers who are rated highly based on Driving as opposed to Social? Or can I please view Yelp reviews, ignoring anyone who dines at a different budget than me? It’s not that any of these ratings or opinions are invalid, just not always helpful when combined and out of context.

In the meanwhile, I’ll go back to seeking out 4.8 or above drivers. Because those 4.7 people are terrible.

Advice to Mentors: Stop Giving Non-Advice!

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As a mentor to both 500 Startups and Montreal’s FounderFuel, I’ve met a lot of founders, read a lot of business plans, and given a lot of feedback. And I use the same two disclaimers with every founder I meet:

  1. My feedback will be brutal and honest.
  2. Feel free to ignore any of it.

I’ve looked founders in the eyes and questioned the very core of their product, strategy, business model, etc. And to this day, I’ve heard nothing but thank-you’s. In fact, the most consistent statement I hear back from founders is “I wish others had told me this earlier!”  For example, here’s a reply to an email I sent someone, in which I apologized if my feedback was only critical:

Please do not apologize, I need this perspective desperately! Everyone I have sent it to says it reads well and I know it needs to be ripped apart…

Mentors – you are there to help improve businesses, not be buddies. It’s almost like parenting – sure I want to be “friends” with my kids, but not if it gets in the way of being their father, which must always come first. There’s plenty of time and room for nurturing – and also time to call out problems when they arise.

The comment above is not the first time I’ve heard something like it. Founders know they have problems and need help, and when mentors give nothing but praise and head-nodding, it hurts the company’s chances of success. I tell all founders “you have friends and family, right? their role is to pat you on the back, tell you you’ll be a billionaire, and lift you up any time you need it.” And it’s not to say that my role is to tear someone apart – it’s to help them think critically, challenge their own assumptions, and get refreshing input and worldview onto their initiatives.

Additionally, I have a strong tendency to avoid giving specific feedback on areas where I have no expertise. I don’t know much about SEO, so I don’t comment. But when it comes to product, marketing strategy, communications and messaging, and fundraising, I am ready to dive into the weeds with any entrepreneur, and help get to the core “why?” of whatever they are doing.

A mentor of mine has a big thing about asking “why?” – basically he won’t stop asking it until all assumptions are challenged and taken down to their core. It’s almost excruciating to go through, and unquestionably has made any session I’ve ever had one that improved my strategies, plans, visions, etc. Try it sometime – work with a trusted advisor/mentor/friend and push yourselves to the very limit of “WHY?” until you truly can’t go any further. By that I mean, both parties agree that the answer is fully rational AND cannot be dissected into a smaller question.

It’s great to support entrepreneurs, and never want to discourage them. But if you leave a meeting with some founder, and you are thinking to yourself “that distribution strategy makes no sense” and you didn’t say it out loud? That’s the same as me telling my kids they’ll be great swimmers, and never taking them for lessons.

Are we actually in a tech bubble? (nope)

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popping-soap-bubbleJust read a piece by someone anonymous (which I don’t actually have a problem with) about how we are in a bubble.  The money quote from my perspective is:

We’re in a bubble and the market is overheated. That’s not disputable. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a few good years left before lean times set in. Fools tend to call peaks early and often.

I’m sorry, but this is a poor argument for “we’re in a bubble”.  Regardless of your belief of the statement, having rationales of “I’m older than you”, “markets have downturns”, and “capital mgmt is heavily investing in tech” is insufficient to support a bubble (or not) theory.

For us to be in a bubble means there’s some underlying fundamental that’s incorrect.  For example, in dot-com it was “anyone can IPO – wheee this is fun!” and in ’08 it was “houses will soon be worth infinite money, buy now!”.  I’m paraphrasing of course.  But I have yet to hear a single convincing argument of “the thing” that the bubble is built on.

Today, I can look at signs of VC investment into, say the sharing economy, or drones, or VR, or some sector I’m not personally a believer in and conclude: “VCs are overly banking on XXX.”  If I’m correct, many VCs will lose money on those investments – but that’s actually part of the model there, so not a bubble.  Further, a specific sector, ex Sharing Economy, could turn out to be bogus – which will cause a boatload of fail, but not a collapsing bubble.

Or I can say “the tech sector of the public market is overvalued” and therefore there’s a bubble.  Well, there could be a correction, and tech companies may lose value – or the entire market – but this still has nothing to do with bubbles.

I could point to all sorts of other “signals”, like bloggers becoming VCs, or theories about robot world domination, or millions of dollars poured into building a SmartCup.  But what are they signal of?  That a smart individual is changing careers, or that a prominent technologist has a theory about something, or that someone really wants to know if they are drinking apple juice or… not apple juice?  Not bubbles (unless it’s sparkling apple juice, that is).

Fundamentally, as another guy who was here through the entire dot-com cycle through to today, the current state of the tech industry seems to be full of companies that, gasp, actually make a bunch of money. And it’s full of many many companies who will fail, taking smart people and smart money down with them.  Such is life.  But this too, does not a bubble make.

On a related note – I do want my Kozmo back.

Why Does Anyone Expect More From Apple?

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Just read Walt Mossberg’s piece on “Apple is Like a Movie Studio” where he (as he typically does) makes excellent points on consumer electronics and Apple’s role in them for the past decade. But then the piece moves into the following statement:

But there have been no new game-changing products, the kind that establish whole new categories, or which finally get product categories right after others had attempted for years to do so. The last of these, the original iPad, was released four years ago this month.

This is true. But really – how off the charts are these expectations? In the last decade Apple “pioneered” (I use the term somewhat loosely since there were actually other players in the space, just none of them building anything on par with what Apple did), and today lead the categories for:

  • ultrathin laptops – MacBook Air
  • smartphones – iPhone
  • tablets – iPad
  • internet STBS – Apple TV

So if we’re doing the “movie studio” analogy let’s call them Pixar (or Universal or whatever).  If the comparison is “invented entire categories” can we name *ANY* other movie studio on a relative basis?  I cannot. Sure, Samsung, LG, Microsoft, others “make devices” but what have they actually done on par with Apple?  Nothing.  I’m not bashing the Galaxy phone or LG TVs or HP laptops in any way disparaging those companies – but they have NOT created new markets out of thin air the way Apple has this past decade.

So perhaps they might not have any more category killers that the world’s never seen. So what? “sequel time is over”? This is the problem with setting such expectations – if they “just” act like their competitors, and make (and sell) lots of devices – is that really such a failure? Mind you I don’t believe this to be their fate, but so what?

If you really, REALLY must compare to movies, then let’s call them James Bond. some years you get The Living Daylights or The World is Not Enough (excuse me while I vomit into my popcorn watching Denise Richards be a “Nucular” Engineer or whatever)… But sometimes you get Dr. No, or Goldfinger, and those are the ones everyone remembers. And along the way a Bourne or Mission Impossible show up, and they’re pretty great too – for a while. And it could even be another decade, but somehow, out of nowhere, you get a Casino Royale, and all is right in the world again.