social video

In case you are new to this blog, the easiest way to get updates is to register your email on the right and you'll get updates in your email inbox automatically.

Favequest is playing in the 'social video' space and I thought it would be worthwhile to explain what that means to me. It might give you a sense for why we are building what we are building.

I have to come to realize that I get a much bigger kick out of media when I have a chance to use that media to interact with others. I write this blog to interact with you, even if people don't leave comments. I run into many of you through my travels and the blog often comes up which helps connect us. Why does that matter? I think it matters because the only way for us to evolve is to understand each other and work together to achieve greater things. This is one reason I'm supporting Pangea day http://www.pangeaday.org/index.php in a big way (reminder about event at my place on May 10 at 1:30). We're all much too isolated and busy living our lives to care or worry about others and that simply must change.

Why did I start this train?

One way media like tv is feeling increasingly empty to me. I only watch it occasionally when I'm relaxing with my wife but would NEVER just sit down to watch anything on tv. It feels like having dinner alone in a strange town or traveling and seeing something exciting and having no one to share it with. It's like watching a hockey game alone in the basement vs being with friends and screaming together. Enough with the analogies, I hope you get the idea.

Just watching video on-line is also empty if all I can do is watch it in isolation. Let me share with others, tell them what I think, have them do the same and start a conversation (can't really do that on YouTube). Let me discover exciting topics and meet new people with whom I can exchange ideas and create action. Let me reconnect with my Romanian friends and family all over the world by collaborating and sharing on Romanian topics.

I'm willing to bet a lot of money (done) and my reputation (done) that there are many others like me. If I'm the only one, were kinda screwed ... But I don't think so.

So we are building a platform that is totally about social interaction around video. So you should ask .... why does this matter? What are you really trying to do? What's the big picture? If you know me, you know there's always a big picture even it doesn't seem like it.

Look for the next blog for answers to some of these questions.

Cheers,

Allan

The three Ps I care about Passion, Permission, Personalization,

When starting a business, you need to define the things that are going to make up the fabric of your company. The shorter the list, the better. The list a bit longer than these, but to keep things simple here are my three Ps for FaveQuest: Passion, Permission, Personalization.

Passion:

Passion has always been the main driver behind anything I do and I look for that everywhere. I look for passion in myself, my team and our customers. People on my team have been spending countless months with no pay and it wears thin after a while. There is just no way to go on without passion when you are working this hard and sacrificing so much.

The products that we are building, naturally, are also about passion. It doesn't matter if your passion is knitting, mustangs, traveling, music, collecting mustard, butterflies, aliens, horror movies or anything else. Whatever the passion, people seem to become irrational when it comes to their passions. This is a good thing and we encourage it. People are also sometimes compelled to tell the world because their passions define who they are. This is also a good things and we encourage it. This is the energy that FaveQuest is tapping and it is a tough, but golden vein to find.

Permission:

Maybe I've been drinking too much Seth Godin kool-aid but I think permission is critical. One of our missions is to find stuff you will like (we like to call them faves ... very original). We could guess based on stuff you do while surfing normally but we find that creepy. It isn't for everyone but we prefer to ask you what you want and give you the chance to provide us feedback so we do better. It requires a tiny bit of effort but we think this is good for everyone. Some people won't want to bother ... and they won't be our customer. I told Pandora I like Pink Floyd and U2 and it rewarded me with great music. It was worth it.

Personalization:

This is where the world is going. Permit me to share an nice analogy one of my partners came up with. Imagine that you walk in to your local video store and the clerk asks you: you're a good customer and we would like to provide you with personal VIP service by assembling a video rack just for you every week. It would save you time and we could also bring in some rare movies you might like. You say yes (duh), let them know what movies you have enjoyed in the past, and next week you walk in to find a rack with the name "Allan's Videos". Some obvious titles that you definitely like but also a few surprises. You're in and out in 2 minutes and now you're walking out with two movies instead of one. When you return the movies, you tell the clerk what you thought of the movies. You are happy and the video store makes more money so they are happy. You never go anywhere else to get videos, you tell your friends and the video store is now renting more movies to more people.

Imagine now that instead of a video store, we are talking about a website with media and your company makes money by having people come to your site and consume (duh ... that's nearly everyone ... a good thing). Personalization, done properly, has been proven to easily pay for itself.

You tap an irrational passion, get permission and fan the flames.

These are the three Ps we care about: Passion, Permission, Personalization

More on personalization and other subjects very soon.

Barcelona 3GSM trip report

In case you missed the previous post, I attended the 3GSM Congress in Barcelona last week. This is arguably the biggest show in the world that focuses exclusively on cellular technology. It is a pretty large show and is attended by roughly sixty thousands people, mostly wearing fancy suits and looking stylish ... no golf shirts here. Barcelona is one of the most amazing cities in the entire world. Coming out of the conference center, you are presented with a beautiful plaza with an amazing statue and fountain like you rarely see anywhere. At night, fire comes out of the bowl at the top! I strongly recommend you come to Barcelona whenever you can .. you'll be amazed. Just keep you belongings close at hand or as by magic, they'll disappear.

Besides the setting, the conference itself was extremely busy and packed ... this is a good indication of a very healthy vibrant business environment. Anyone who had the chance to attend some of the more telecom oriented shows like Supercomm a few years ago would be shocked by the excitement and energy in the air at this show instead of the sound of crickets.

I attended the show to reconnect with some key people, make new contacts and especially to get a strong pulse on the world of wireless and cellular. A huge success on all fronts .... very glad I made the trip even though I came back utterly exhausted like I have never been before. I flew the red eye on the way there and took such an early flight back on Thursday, I didn't bother sleeping the night before at all. Keeping in mind these people start eating at about 8:30pm and the night life starts at midnight, it wasn't exactly a restful trip. When I was back home Thursday night, I fell asleep 5 times while my 8 year old daughter was reading her book before bedtime ..... daddy ... wake up!!! My wife tells me I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I have so much to tell about what I learned or reaffirmed, the blog would go on forever so I'll stick to the highlights.

Wireless providers are struggling to figure out what is next

The stock market has a strange way of forcing the value of companies to be dependent on future earnings. Wireless companies are desperately trying to figure out where growth is going to come from and many billions of dollars are at stake. If you ever analyze the various big service providers such as AT&T (SBC, BellSouth & Cingular), Verizon, Sprint, Telus, Rogers and Bell that provide multiple services such as telephony, internet access and wireless services, you note that the wireless division is the strongest. Doesn't everyone review quarterly earnings reports like I do? However, although you could do all sorts of cool things with you cellphone and especially smartphones, most of the revenue still comes from voice services ... i.e. minutes of use, roaming, long distance ... basically boring stuff and the revenues are getting flat.

All wireless providers are extremely motivated to figure how to sell you more services and increase average revenue per user (ARPU). This makes for some pretty cool stuff but much of it hasn't been doing the trick. Most non-voice revenue still comes from silly things like ringtones (roughly $5Billion in 2006!!!) and texting. If you're over 30 years old, like me, you don't get texting. These kids are as crazy about texting as business people are about the crackberry .... must be connected!! As my trainer told me the other day when I asked him how much he texts, he said "huge" ... nearly 2000 in the last month". That can't be quite right ... must have misunderstood ... either way, it was a big number. When people call him on his cell phone, his response is ... "dude, why are you calling me ... text me!"

So voice, ringtone, texting are already huge ... what is next? Video, Music, IM and Bluetooth are just a few things.

Video to your mobile

It appears that video on the cellphone is one of the expected key drivers of growth but the uptake hasn't been as huge as hoped in much of the world. You're thinking ... duh ... who wants to watch t.v. on a cellphone? Well, you would be hugely wrong. The cell phone is becoming the first screen in many countries, especially in ASIA. Some wicked phones were on display at 3GSM ... ultra sharp and clear ... very watchable. But, the services today are just too expensive and complicated.

If it takes more than two or three clicks ... forget it. Cost can also be ridiculous. If you don't have an unlimited data plan, which is the case for most people, data costs can be huge. Bell Mobility for example charges roughly $12/Mbyte for a Pocket PC or Treo plan!!!!*(&((!!!!. A typical song is about 4 Mbytes. So downloading a song from some third party location would cost you $48. Going off-portal can ruin you literally. These stories get out and it scares the crap out of everyone especially since it is very hard to actually figure what it will cost you. This is what is called the walled garden. You can pick flowers from within the garden all you want but stick your arm over the wall and it gets cleaved off clean leaving you bleeding and you don't even notice until you try to reach for your wallet. Ok maybe a bit dramatic but you get the point.

Music

Music on your cellphone is going to be so ridiculously huge. Why do you think Apple decided to build the iPhone? The iPOD is pretty cool with roughly 100 Million shipped so far ... a big number. But this is puny in comparison to the cell phone market which is estimated at 1 Billion units per year!!!! The market for music on cell phones, excluding ringtones, has been pegged at several billion dollars by the end of this decade. If you don't think people are going to listen to audio on their phones, you're once again way out to lunch. Stay with the tour! It is already happening everywhere else.

Instant Messaging

People of all ages are glued to their instant messengers. They chit chat back and forth sending cute emoticons ... lots of fun and useful too actually. IMs are coming to your phone and it will be very popular. I already have it on my pocket PC running windows mobile. I remember my wife MSNing with her mom as we were returning from Nova Scotia this summer and stopping by their cottage in Quebec on the way back. We were in the car and grandma was on the laptop we gave her. We decided Raclette would be a good idea for supper and she had it mostly ready by the time we got there ... it paid for itself right there!

Bluetooth

Bluetooth was actually a old Norse king. For some reason, he inspired a pretty exciting new wireless technology for close range communication. Bluetooth is being embedded in most laptops, many cell phones and even cars these days. It has been years in the making but this is now taking off like absolutely crazy. Many people are now making some pretty neat accessories such as headphones. I tried out a new pair being launched by Motorola at the show which was playing music from one of their music phones. It sounded great. I also checked out a retrofit kit from Motorola that allows you to connect to your existing card stereo over bluetooth ... sounded great from the cell phone. They were also demoing a small GPS puck that communicates with cell phones and PDA over bluetooth. I checked out an ultraportable 20G hard drive Seagate is launching called DAVE. You leave it in your pocket and you can stream music or video from it to your portable and save files and pictures to it. It worked very nicely over bluetooth (though it also has wifi I believe). I would be shocked if we didn't see cameras, portable screens and zillions of other bluetooth gadgets in the coming months and years.

Anyway, I have hockey at 7AM so I best retire to sleepland. More on 3GSM and cool stuff in the next post.

Cheers,

Allan

pretty cool stuff

During my last post, I promised I would identify some companies with cool technology I discovered at the Dow Jownes Technology Ventures conference I attended in San Jose last week. I suspect many of you may be interested in checking out some of these services. I share these without my VC hat on, just pure consumer perspective. Some of these companies may be trying to raise money but not all of them are.

Before, I get to that, I would like to signal a change to this blog. I have used this blog to share some thoughts on start-ups and to give people a sense for how I plan on building my new company and make it successful. Not everyone is interested in start-up topics and I have found many great resources/blogs written by others that do a great job of that (I've included link at the right of the page). As I find new ones, I'll share them with you but won't elaborate too much. A new blog I started reading is:

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/

Note that I've also added a feature to my blog that allows you to type in your email and you will receive new and exciting posts from me in your inbox saving you the trouble of going to the web page or setting up an RSS reader. Look just below my profile. You barely have to lift a finger. Am I nice or what!!

I'm going to be migrating the topic to more cool topics in the space of music and video services, cool multi-media gadgets and evolution of multi-media. We all listen to radio, music, news, watch tv and go to movies and view movies at home. This space is experiencing dramatic changes. On the surface, things may still appear the same with people mostly watching broadcast t.v., listening to broadcast radio or reading newspapers. However, people are increasingly moving away from broadcast and spending time and effort to pick and choose what they want, when and where they want it. Add to that people's interest in more reality based content and people's desire to be heard and you get a major shift in how people will be entertained. The one thing that became clear from the conference is that there is a MAJOR shift in advertising dollars from broadcast to online services going on right about now. So ... hang on ... cause things are about to get interesting!

Cool stuff and companies:

www.earcandy.fm
-this is the URL for my new company. There is no website yet (just bought the URL last night). I'll let you know when the site is up and running
-will definitely be looking for $$

www.personiva.com

-have developed technology that puts you in real commercials
-the demo consisted of the presenter taking a picture of someone in the crowd and uploading it to their server. He then played a pepsi commercial (the one with the guy from SNL dancing on the car) and his face was automatically replaced with the picture of the guy in the crowd, complete with moving eyebrows and lips!
-the idea is that commercials become much more interesting when you're in them. It was really funny and they figure you'll forward the commercial to all your friends
-profitable and looking for investment in first half 2007

www.motionbox.com

-allows you to upload your personal videos, easily edit them and tag different sections so you can find the sections of interest later and search your library of videos
-also allows you to pick certain selections of the video and share those with others. For example, I filmed the hockey game and I share with you the times when your kid was on the ice
-these guys have done a very good job of making the interface ultra simple to use

www.mystrands.com

-have developed algorithms that allow certain types of services, such as music, to figure out what you might like next
-this doesn't seem very exciting on the surface but the applications that come out of this can be very powerful. There is just so much information out there that figuring out what you might be interested based on your history and preferences, together with others like you could be huge. Basically like search (google) but more proactive.
-one product that has popped out of this base is called partystrands. This is a system aimed at bars and clubs that allow people to text the music they want to hear ... essentially a social jukebox. Their requests and other messages and pictures go up on the various big screen tvs throughout the club together with advertising.
-launching in US and Spain (CEO is from Barcelona)
-unsure if they are raising money

www.fliptrack.com

-not launched yet (can put in your email and they'll contact you when the service is available)
-allows you to pick a song and synchronize pictures and videos to it
-they have over one hundred songs you can use, including lyrics.
-the founder showed pictures of his kids acting out the ABCs to the song ... very cute
-adding the music to a slide show makes it much more compelling, especially if you can synchronize it
-looks very easy to use
-currently trying to raise $1M

www.ejamming.com

-service that allows people to play music together, over the internet
-target is amateur and professional musicians, music education ...
-key trick is a timestamp based system to synchronize everyone since delays through the internet can be variable and mess things up
-you can use MIDI based instruments (like keyboards) or convert analog to MIDI using a small box so that you can plug in microphones, guitars ...
-with the scheduling challenges I see with "Funding Bad Habits", the dudes that play in my basement, together with the challenges I have scheduling keyboard and singing lessons, I could certainly see myself using this
-I spoke with the founders and execs of the company and you could not find a more passionate group!
-they are currently trying to raise an A round in the next few months.

I'm going to leave it at that for now. There are a few more cool companies I'd like to share but you've probably had more than enough by now.

Cheers,

Allan Isfan
Entrepreneur with an Iron Ring