Katalyst Media founders Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg were in Silicon Valley today. They stopped by TechCrunch HQ (aka my house) before heading off to more important meetings with Dan Rosensweig at Quadrangle Group (and the former COO of Yahoo) and YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley.
The reason for the visit? They are preparing to launch new interactive web content (with an emphasis on the interactive part) and are doing a bit of a road show to see what Silicon Valley thinks of their ideas. I had a chance to see some of the content and hear their monetization strategy. And while I can’t say much yet, this is clearly going to be really entertaining stuff. Advertisers in particular are likely to flock to the platform.
The two decided to focus on the web after a trial run with AOL that began in 2006. That partnership eventually fizzled – rumor is the content was a little too racy for AOL’s taste.
The new content isn’t just entertaining, it’s highly engaging with users and they definitely have a monetization strategy that goes beyond display and pre/post roll ads.
And Kutcher won’t be trying to lock people into interacting with content under their rules. “If people steal our stuff, it’s fantastic” he said.
Suddenly Katalyst Media is doing more than producing video, they’re now building software. That means they need to hire more developers. Their most important hire is a new CTO, Kutcher said. Prepare your resumes.
Sorry for the teaser on this. More to come.