Re: Portland

Not true. We’ve raised 50m in 3 consecutive rounds from tier 1 vcs. In fact we are about to close a 4th dedicated just for growth oriented initiatives.

Portland has been a very efficient location for us and hasn’t proven difficult with the sand hill road mafia. Here’s the key, tho: revenue. Get ebitda positive and you are on easy street. If instead you are a pre revenue you can go from splashcast to outcast in no time. Also splashcast raised it’s money in a different climate in 2007 than today. Also, I’d take issue with their CEOs comment that their series A lacked re right players therefore no Tier1 vc would touch them in Series B. Conventional wisdom says this is true, but why did they call it series A? Why not classify it as seed? My guess is they have a valuation and board control issue and this is not a Portland vs Seattle issue.

I’m also a bit confused about the modality of tv watching inside a social environment. In other words, I can understand why the networks want to inject longform content inside fb but I’m a bit dubious about users’ desire to consume it. True, if you have a group centered around The Office, why not have it available. Makes sense. But why isn’t this just a fb app that fb launches? What’s splashcasts value add?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the idea butrather haven’t read a clear articulation of the compelling rationale for why users will adopt this and what the lock out is for spalshcast given that it doesn’t own the content nor does it run the social network. It doesn’t even own the social graph data, does it? Can it deliver unique intelligent targeting that fb alone couldn’t already do. Whats the value in becoming a dumb pipe? Except absorbing the hosting or data transfer and web dev expenses?

“SocialTV” in theory already exists, it’s called HSN and QVC and on the web YouTube and vimeo have done a good job distributing unmonetizable content. But if veoh can’t make it work with 80m and mike Eisner and crackle and revvr are stalled out, where does this leave splashcast?

I’m questioning the very premise that fb is necessarily the right strategy. To me, it’s like looking for your list keys where the light is good. It “seems” like a no brainer launch inside fb, but is that in fact true? I believe if they were to think more critically about video and it’s value, they might come up with a variety of monetization strategies of which “social tv” is but one.

Seriously – best of luck to the future of SplashCast and let me know if I can help.

I don’t want to see f…ing twitting idiots replacing WSJ. I don’t want to see the world where imbecile ‘hi-tech’ bloggers with their overblown egos have replaced my Economist and Business Week.

Plain sh..t and egotistic BS must be separated from the well thought over content.

“Chatter,” in contract, is video time (versus real time). This makes more sense for recorded/on demand content where you don’t have a massive audience simultaneously watching.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just layer twitter over hulu etc?

You point out one of the three main factors: how “guided” is the experience. The more guided, the greater the submission rate.

The other major factor is ease of submission for obvious reasons.

The final factor is public/private. Users generally feel more free to submit in relatively private settings like Facebook.

What was the incentive for the user to create content?

Seems to me like this site allowed users to generate content, but didn’t have any compelling reason for users to create any particular type of content.

Check out this excellent talk by Ben Huh of Icanhazcheezburger.com about the reasoning behind online communities and generated content. After all, he’s made a profitable business out of people who are willing to create stupid pictures again and again.

http://www.benh...a-presentation/

SplashCast is shutting down its UGC product.

SplashCast’s Social TV product (where we’ve found traction) lives on.

See recent TechCrunch article on Social TV (great stuff):
http://www.tech...ut-the-chatter/

Of course, the funding of Portland tech startups is generally 1/10-1/20th of what they’d have received if based in California. So, it’s amazing they stayed alive as long as they did.

But, there are no second-rounds for PDX based ventures, you die fast there, but, get great coffee, microbrews and pinot noir along the way.

It is curious that one of the most cost efficient locations for living is one of the worst locations for VC funds. The talent is in Portland and you don’t have to pay them much, but, the money just doesn’t happen in any meaningful way there.

As Erick wrote in the post, we have learned a lot in the last few years about the balance between producers and consumers of content. Even with as simple a publishing tool as Twitter, there are far more listeners than writers.

To be clear: this move allows us to focus 100% on developing the Social TV product, via partnerships with Hulu, Sony BMG, and others.

We believe very strongly that Social TV will play a critical role in the evolution of online video.

While it can be difficult for entrepreneurs to accept, sometimes it is best for the development of a new idea / product to join forces with a larger, better-resourced company. We have come to terms with this and look forward to taking Social TV to the next level.

Thanks,
Mike
CEO / SplashCast

In all seriousness, how did they raise any money to begin with?