It’s Elevator Pitch Friday, which means another startup has created a video that’s worth showing you. This week’s presentation comes from Marcellus, a startup that wants to dramatically reduce the cost for companies to deliver video on their websites.
Marcellus wants to make delivering video cheap, easy, and on demand, by offering video delivering through the Software-as-a-Service model. This greatly reduces both the infrastructure costs and human capital needed to deliver video on websites, while making it far more flexible and scalable for companies to use. And, because Marcellus charges companies a metered rate for delivering video, companies can use as much or as little of Marcellus’ service as needed.
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USD 0.45 for every extra GB of bandwidth used? Ouch
WHat a friggin joke….4 ads per 1.5 minutes?
LMFAO
Nobody will sit thru that many ads. Hulu puts 4 ads max for 22 mins of premium content.
One shouldn’t even show 1 ad per video, so divide that proposed ad revenue by 5 and were at $0.80 earned$ per 1.75 spent.
Nice try. This probably runs on AWS.
Interesting, but not really revolutionary.
There are a descent number of competitors, one of which is:
http://www.bitsontherun.com/plans-and-pricing/
They offer 10 gig of transfer for 20 euros. They accept many more file types, and don’t charge you a dime for storage. Additionally, they have a very straight forward API for uploading video from your web app. I’ve looked on the site, and can’t seem to find any information about marcellus’ api, if they even have one.
Couple that with the fact that they’re using AWS, which charges about 17 cents/gig. The reason people keep going to large companies for these kinds of enterprise solutions is because they can actually offer a good ROI. Not to mention free services like:
http://www.softlayer.com/
or any of the dozens of video portals out there that allow you to use their API’s at no charge.
Looking forward to a good SaaS in terms of video streaming.
Did he say blog or “viki”. Haha.
4 ads per video is ridiculous.
I have been providing hosted VOD to adult guys, these days they dont want to spend more then 8 - 10 cents a GB for BW.
This is another “me-too” startup trying a slight variation in pricing model. Hope your burn rate is low in this kind of environment.
Thanks alot for posting this! I will have to look into it. Anyone else have any other low cost sites like this?
I don’t get it. Why not just use YouTube or Vimeo to host a minute long video on your blog or ‘viki’? I mean, it’s free… and I don’t have to clutter it with ads to make back the money I spent to host it. I’ll take the free route, and Vimeo gives me enough control and high quality service. Thanks!
Exactly - and if there video product is so great why didnt they use it showcase this film. 0 in the credibility stakes for me on this one
What part of “crowded market” does this company not understand? A new pricing model isn’t enough of a differentiator when BrightCove, Maven, VMIX, Move, ThePlatform, etc. already have a pretty solid lock on this market.
@chad and Ian.
I think that this site has a lot of potential.
What I am looking for is a site that will host my videos for free without distributing them across their content network. If my site offers uploads to users, then I want to keep that content on my site alone. Alot of the free sites dont do this for obvious reasons. They would just be giving me free video hosting which is of course uneconomical.
Guys-
First, thanks for the comments!
Individually:
@Sarcastic Math Whiz Guy: Yes, we do run on AWS, but more importantly, have you heard of overlay ads?
@Oliver: API in the works. BTW: BitsOnTheRun = Great service. And you’re right- we’re not revolutionary. We’re going to be doing a few things very differently from what you’ve seen in the market, and doing them very well, hopefully better. I’m going to be writing about these things on our blog over the next few weeks, so do stay tuned. And yes- video quality will be beautiful. =)
@P.Venkman: yeah..i have that W vs. V problem. It’s a pronunciation blunder and I hope you will pardon my transgression.
@Jay: Interesting..do shoot me an e-mail. I’d like to discuss this further with you. pm (at) marcellus (dot) tv
@Me Too: burn rate is unbelievably low..like you wouldn’t believe.
@ Scott: thank you and thank you! Other examples would be Ooyala, Magnify, BitsonTheRun..and quite a few more. I’ll leave it to you to do the price comparisons.
@Chad: YouTube and Marcellus aren’t in the same ballpark. We aren’t even in the same league. Heck, some folks will argue that we’re not even playing the same sport!
@ Ian Miller: Amen. We’re with you 102%- it is a bloody crowded market, and yet- folks are unable to build profitably online video businesses. So we’re starting out with a price differentiation, to establish a basis for ROI. Over the next eight months, we’re going to complement that with a focus on user engagement, distributed context aggregation, and a lot more.
Thanks for the (extremely relevant) comment.
“Yes, we do run on AWS, but more importantly, have you heard of overlay ads?”
If you have a video of 5min (PREMIUM content) then four overlays are still too much.
Putting Google Adsense/Banners as an overlay isn’t a way to earn back the costs!
And your clickthrough rate won’t be 1% with such overlays.
Good Luck Preetam!!
I did mean : “…profitablE online video businesses.” and not “profitablY online..”.
For about $5 you can buy a flash player and convert all your own videos and host them for a fraction of the cost of this so called “money saving” solution.
Have you guys checked at PandaStream http://pandastream.com/
Out of the box video encoding and of course streaming solution that can run out of the economical EC2/S3 combo.
Brajeshwar- Panda is an incredible solution.
If you’re willing to do a little programming and setup, you can be up and running with Panda in less than a day.
If you’re unwilling to do any programming/setup, you can be up and running with Marcellus in 10 minutes.
So you service amateurs and those with no money with an admittedly commodity product. So as soon as one of them generates any kind of money they will pay for someone to use Panda or just custom code an AWS-based system of their own.
More than likely, people will just use youtube until they gain a large falling at which point friends or family will throw them $2k to make a real go of it.
The business makes no sense in the long term, and revenue will noot be very good short-term either.
Thanks for the diluting the startup-messaging though, I’m sure other startups appreciate a commodity with ZERO differentiation, thought, or innovation being considered on level ground.
Can’t you go work for Zoho or something?
Hi Alex,
I was dragged into the Panda discussion- and the way out was highlighting the simplicity factor.
Why don’t you swing by our site and request a trial account? I’m happy to set you up with one so you can make an informed decision about “zero differentiation”?
Your “burn rate is unbelievely low”. Are you operating on just “rice and curry”?
yeah….isn’t that something?
HAHA, the problem with this is that you are giving a message about how easy to use and cheap your solution is but you are using Youtube to do it.
Can you see the flaw, can you say deadpool?
Hi Andy,
Check out the TechCrunch Pitches submission form: http://pitches.techcrunch.com/pitch/new
WOW!
I’ve had fun bashing preetam and his stupid idea that is based on advertising at a time when the advertising market is shit and youtube hasn’t even properly monetized video yet, but
Andy Boulder may have made the DUMBEST COMMENT EVER.
LOL. Marcellus. Similar fate in store too.
http://tinyurl.com/5re9m8
I think ,Marcellus is in to an already crowded market (unbranded,free+branded) and the key here is to differentiate and attract volumes from (unbranded to branded delivery) at this price.
I am skeptical on attracting/driving volumes from users using free /unbranded channels,especially in terms of efforts and leadtimes even at this price amonst the existing and evolving competition.
But differentiating may help significantly. For intance catering/ streaming to the mobile users/formats/phones/publisher/advertiser eco-system..
Hey..thanks for the comment.
Agreed: very crowded market.
However, as I mentioned above, low pricing is our starting point. We’re getting our model together so that software costs and infrastructures are perennially low for content publishers.
Keep a watch out for us around Thanksgiving….mobile support + adaptive bandwidth playback + ad network integration.
Preetam, I’m still curious as to your differentiation vis-a-vis Brightcove, Maven, Ooyala and others? Is it in pricing?
To the person who commented on using YouTube APIs - it does not work for a pure white label publishing model. YouTube APIs and player can be used for simple “embed” scenario wherein minimal branding and customization is required.
Hiya-
Yes, price is the most obvious differentiation.
In addition:
+ centralized control: with Marcellus, you can track, manage, re-brand, monetize(via ads) and control different aspects of your player no matter where it has been re-distributed.
We believe that the key to success with online video is to commoditize(infrastructure + work-flow), democratize(publishing + distribution), and centralize(context + meta-information).
So our first step was to simplify the publishing work-flow and make it very cost-efficient.
Our second and third steps….I’ll tell you about ‘em if you shoot me an e-mail.
I love your blog posts!
pm (at) marcellus (dot) tv
Give Preetam and Marcellus some credit for effort especially in this climate.
Will Marcellus include some of the features sans syndication that TubeMogul offers? It seems so?
I just signed up for a trial.
Victor, I think the climate has a lot to do with the heat, but I’m very presumptuous by nature, so I won’t venture a guess.
Noticed your trial request- will make sure you get an account.
So the problem at least the way I understand things, it that its generally hard to monetize internet video because it so new. To just with that in mind, I would think this company will need a lot of capital on balance sheet. Secondly, my guess is that ad spend is probably very elastic and will contract during this global slowdown.
Preetam, this space is getting a little crowded. That’s not a bad thing, if you’re alone solving a problem, perhaps its not worth solving.
Video has become a first class object after many year. Just check out any site, you’ll see video being treated in the same way as images and text. i.e. the market is big and worth going after.
Measuring video ad rev is very tricky problem. If you just look at all measurements they only look at the in-stream ads or video ads (banner or companion). However, the video related revenue is not being tracked. i.e. video needs to have a lot more rev share attributed to it.
I’m signing up for a trial account.
hey preetam
congratz! i think marcellus totally stands to gain from the recession… with copany budgets being slashed, and unit managers having to “do more with less”, i can see how marcellus stands to gain from price differentiation….
but once others catch up (or down) to the price…. pray do tell - what is ur strategy then? have you guys thought of differentiating urselves thru video apps?
Preetam,
Pricing is an issue because it is not lower many competitors, in fact, it’s not even close because not everyone is using Akami or Limelight as their CDN. Some are using p2p or hybrid solution at a much lower cost for example. But I like is the direction Victor Caballero is going. If you offer services such as the social networking, twitter and mobile distribution as well as better reporting features than your competitors then you have something. I signed up for your email alerts. I look forward to hearing more about mobile next month.
*yawn* another video startup. nothing to see here, move on people….
LOL ! I love the way you guys are bashing “preetam” . Its funny . I would not pay attention to most of the comments because a lot of them dont know much about business, especially your buisness .
The fact that someone has done it before does not mean that there is no more room .. Have you gone to the store lately ..
There is not only one brand of bread or pens or milk or “whateever” .
The way to make is to carve a small niche for yourself .. at least he has invested his time, money and skills to do something that 99% of the people on earth cant do ..
Consumers by thing for different reasons - This is why some people may skip over a Ford Focus and go for a Mercedes . The argument that someone is already building a cheaper more reliable car doesnt always apply to a buyer ..
“preetam” Keep it up ! Good Luck !
Well said Startup News! “Nothing” is the easiest thing to do… all the best preetam! At least, your PR is working… give that PR guy a pat on the back.
@ startupnews & geraldo: thanks for the nice words!
Yeah!, keep it going Preetam. This is a good area to be in. You’ve taken the entrepreneurial leap, create your niche, and things will happen!