Comments on: Elevator Pitch Friday: Marcellus makes delivering video cheap and easy

By: pete hotchkiss

pete hotchkiss — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:24:56 +0000

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

By: Akash

Akash — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:00:02 +0000

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!

By: Sandeep

Sandeep — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:06:01 +0000

Good Luck Preetam!!

By: preetam mukherjee

preetam mukherjee — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:54:44 +0000

@ startupnews & geraldo: thanks for the nice words!

By: Geraldo Riveira

Geraldo Riveira — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:36:16 +0000

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.

By: Startup News

Startup News — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:05:12 +0000

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 !

By: Gordon Page

Gordon Page — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:19:13 +0000

*yawn* another video startup. nothing to see here, move on people….

By: andrew

andrew — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 02:13:15 +0000

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.

By: Joe, the plumber

Joe, the plumber — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 01:17:53 +0000

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?

By: Akash

Akash — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:18:34 +0000

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.

By: George

George — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:40:56 +0000

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.

By: preetam mukherjee

preetam mukherjee — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:12:07 +0000

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.

By: Victor Caballero

Victor Caballero — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:53:38 +0000

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.

By: The TechCrunch Effect « the marcellus weblog

The TechCrunch Effect « the marcellus weblog — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:46:37 +0000

[...] a comment » We just got featured on TechCrunch, and of course, the effect was that traffic went through the roof. We had a fairly decent number of [...]

By: preetam mukherjee

preetam mukherjee — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:05:44 +0000

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

By: Akash

Akash — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:25:56 +0000

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.

By: preetam mukherjee

preetam mukherjee — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:27:54 +0000

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.

By: N Sankar

N Sankar — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:20:49 +0000

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..

By: MDH

MDH — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:38:18 +0000

LOL. Marcellus. Similar fate in store too.

http://tinyurl.com/5re9m8

By: preetam mukherjee

preetam mukherjee — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:14:31 +0000

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”?

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:00:27 +0000

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?

By: Andy, Head in ASS

Andy, Head in ASS — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:46:06 +0000

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.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:44:33 +0000

“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.

By: preetam mukherjee

preetam mukherjee — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:59:11 +0000

Hi Andy,
Check out the TechCrunch Pitches submission form: http://pitches....h.com/pitch/new

By: Andy Boulder

Andy Boulder — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:37:30 +0000

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?