Perceptric Forum

Simon Napier-Bell on the Music Industry

Chris Gilbey — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:35:26 +1100

Last weekend my old friend Simon Napier-Bell gave the music industry a serve that should ensure that he gets taken out to lunch by those people who still have expense accounts. The article is not, I hasten to add, a flattering picture of the business or the business practices that made it.

If you are at all interested in the music industry you should read it. Simon is one of the few people that I know who has the benefit of knowing quite intimately all of the big players who made the music industry what it is today - Ahmet Ertegun, Clive Davis, Mo Ostin, Tommy Mottola.... these are the serious players in the game.

Simon told me that he will never be able to make a deal again in the music business as a result of the article. That may be true. But a lot of people who want the goods on the big wheels will perhaps want to talk to Simon...

Back In Oz

Chris Gilbey — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:15:17 +1000

I got back from doing the rounds of VC's on Sunday. Took the day off on Monday and didn't check email once. Its great to do that now and again.

My last couple of days were really hectic. On Thursday evening I flew up to Portland to meet with Steve Marshall from New Group and his creative team early Friday morning. Great bunch of people! And they have a tremendous client list too.

Before I got on the plane I had to connect on the phone with the founder of one of the companies that I visited in SF though. He had not been able to get to the meeting on Thursday - got caught in a hurricane in the mid west that closed all the airports. Very interesting guy. Ex-hedge fund manager who had over $300M under management when he was in the game, who has moved into playing in the public company arena.

He told me that with a couple of acquisitions that he is about to make their company, across all its sites, will be just behind MySpace in terms of monthly discrete visitors!

In Palo Alto

Chris Gilbey — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:06:22 +1000

For the last two days I have been doing meetings in Sandhill Road.

Met with some very smart (and successful) people. And they ask good questions too...

Sometimes I wonder though, how they really do make the decisions they do.... Yesterday I was in a meeting and dropped in passing the name of a company that has just been snapped up, reportedly for round $300M, and said I thought that the underlying technology seemed pretty trivial. The VC smiled, and said to me that he agreed. It had started out as something quite different, but they had made some changes, and then 6 million people started using it regularly and that is what commanded the value. Well, I get that. But I wonder how much luck is involved in the decision making process.

And that is because in almost the same breath we talked about another company that was sold recently for about $20M. The VC said that he had looked at about 75 companies doing almost exactly the same thing (video fx for user created content) and passed on all of them.

So when does a feature become a product?

Guy Kawasaki Talks Truemors.com

chrisbroad — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:21:32 +1000

Why Truemors ? an extract from the About us section of Truemors.com

Take a note of their belief in demonstrative technology — products/solutions that enable the open exhibition and expression of information, emotions, and opinions.

" First, call us romantics, but we believe in the democratization of information—that is, access for everyone to everything. A long time ago royalty and religious leaders had scribes. Around 600 the Chinese printed using negative reliefs. Around 1450 Johann Gutenberg combined hundreds of years of progress into the screw printing press.

Fast forward to 1985 when Apple (Macintosh), Aldus (PageMaker), and Adobe (PostScript) produced “desktop publishing.” A few years later people could create web sites. Then blogging appeared on the scene. Still, people needed a computer and a blogging tool like WordPress or TypePad to disseminate information.

As Steve Jobs would say, “There must be a better way.” Not that Truemors is in the same league as Gutenberg, Apple, Aldus, Adobe, etc., but now people just need a phone or web access to tell the world.

Second, we also believe in demonstrative technology—that is, products that enable the open exhibition and expression of information, emotions, and opinions. Where democratization implies that the many can read the content of the few, demonstrative technology enables the many to create content too. Thus, Truemors is the melding of democratization and demonstration—and you thought it was just a web site. "

Video Market Heating Up

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 21 May 2007 06:39:31 +1000
When I was in Silicon Valley a few weeks ago one of the responses I had from a VC was, "Video is a hot space. But its been hot for a while now. So we are very selective now. You are never too late for the party, but you will have to have developed the business to a higher standard this year than you would have last year, to get our attention". Sounds fair enough to me.

But it appears that as the announcements come faster and faster the dynamics of both what is of interest and what the values are are changing rapidly too. Microsoft bought aQuantive (at a big multiple too!). And now rumours that Google is going to buy Feedburner. That in turn seems to be increasing the temperature of the marketplace.... particularly for investments in video related businesses.

This week we should be ready for the Vquence Alpha to be released. Timing, timing, timing....

VQUENCE meets Guy KAWASAKI

chrisbroad — Tue, 15 May 2007 12:29:34 +1000

I had an opportunity to meet Guy KAWASAKI last week at an AMCHAM event in HK.

An Apple Fellow, and now MD at Garage Technology Ventures www.garage.com , Guy makes for a compelling funny and pithy speaker.

I got talking to him about VQUENCE and his main comment was show people what a vquence is and also – so when do you ship ?

He sent me a copy of his ppt. centered around his latest book ‘The Art of the Start’ and I managed to get a picture with him “advertising” VQUENCE.

In conclusion he told us to 'kick butt' and after reading our white paper said " ..I could make the case that it's a very valuable service for people who are pushing out video. "

He also mentioned a neat company called iStockphoto.com which he is mentioning around on his travels - it's cool .

Vquence Debuts

Richard McKinnon — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:23:49 +1100
It's no surprise we like video. It's the future. So good news. Today we announce a heavyweight contender launching into the video arena. We know it remakes content on the web. Why? Chris Gilbey founded it with a very fine technology thinker, Silvia Pfeiffer.

The company went public today in Sydney and Santa Monica. Read the release. Remember the name.

Vquence remakes Internet Video
Video Startup Launches.

Sydney, Australia/Santa Monica,Ca

Australian start up video search, socialization and advertising company, Vquence, commences business today at the heart of the Internet hotspot, video, promising to remake the web experience.

“The Internet is now driven by video. The video quotient of any business or consumer communication: the VQ:is becoming the key factor of success” said co-founder and CEO, Chris Gilbey,

“Vquence helps solve revenue problems for content owners. We make finding videos easy for consumers. We hasten content distribution.”

Vquence provides a one stop shop for content owners to monetize video to consumers under one seamless umbrella. Vquence has a patent pending for an instantaneous approach to clickable video.

“Vquence’s technology and business model turn today’s video assets and costs into online reach and revenue. Consumers, publishers and content owners are united by Vquence” Gilbey noted.

The basis of Vquence is a technology leading video search engine. Users easily discover relevant video content. An authoring toolset then permits easy creation of a playlist of thin sliced videos (or ‘vquence’). The vquence is presented through a specialised video player. This playlist will play in any Web page. Users can cut and paste the code for their vquence into a blog or web page. Dynamic insertion by Vquence places ads into the vquence, based on relevance.

“Vquence boosts social networks.” Gilbey said, adding “Consumers find and aggregate video, then share it widely. They get paid. Content creators and publishers are rewarded from embedded ads in the vquences their communities share.

Initial seed funding to establish Vquence came from Information City Australia Limited, a Melbourne innovation incubator.

“This changes the market dynamic. Consumers become legitimate distributors of the video asset rather than pirates. In contrast, old school DRM brakes distribution” Gilbey said, continuing:

“Vquence gives consumers the ability to opt in or out of ads. Advertisers are getting smarter and making their messages more personal. Passive consumers no longer exist. It’s a community driven outlook now – with the emergence of almost a hive mind. The wisdom of crowds is a powerful market force.”

Vquence was formed in July 2006 by Gilbey and Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, a former CSIRO research scientist. Gilbey is a long time entrepreneur in the content and technology arenas, a former CEO of Lake Technology who consulted to Dolby Laboratories for two years on a global basis.

Dr Pfeiffer is a leading authority on Digital Media Analysis. During a seven year stint at CSIRO she led the team that developed Annodex, an open source platform for video distribution, and her continuing research over the last decade has deepened industry’s understanding of how to apply algorithms to analyse and mediate video content.

“Vquence takes the World Wide Web immeasurably closer towards a Web of Videos, where people build communities around video content published anywhere on the Web. But, uniquely, Vquence guarantees the original content owner will not lose an audience or their content.” Dr Pfeiffer noted.

“Video is the centre of the internet’s next big leap forward. Vquence will be one of the key accelerators.” Pfeiffer said.

The Vquence R&D team is internationally spread and headquartered in Sydney. The company expects to announce a slate of initial customers that includes media and content companies in both the US and Australia.

“Vquence lets consumers click through video and go beyond. Previously, all you could do was click to a video. Vquence is transformational. Vquence gives media publishers the powerful tools of comprehensive, easy search of all their video assets, and then super-distribution.” Dr Pfeiffer concluded.

About Vquence. Vquence is a video search, socialization, and advertising company that has a comprehensive model of monetizing video for content owners to consumers. Demonstrations of the technology are being conducted under NDA. The Vquence website has more information on the company. www.vquence.com. The company has offices in Sydney Australia and Santa Monica Ca.

Google Hits 500

Chris Gilbey — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 07:54:18 +1100
Google has hit $500.
The company is now Silicon Valley's second most valuable business, behind Cisco Systems, eclipsing the likes of Intel, the world's largest computer chip maker, and Hewlett-Packard, a high-tech pioneer that also started in a garage 67 years ago.
Think about the acquisition of YouTube and the history.

Rupert buys MySpace for $600MM. Does a deal with Google to supply ads with a guarantee of $900MM. MySpace now paid for. News stock goes up 20%. How can that be bad?

So YouTube comes on the market. The potential had to be there that Rupert would buy YouTube and do another MySpace. So Google jumps in. This time pays with scrip. So no impact on their cash position and minimal dilution.

So now the acquisition in real terms is on the way to costing nothing and the guys from YouTube are on the way to being worth $2Binstead of the $1.65 Billion that they started with. Amazing.

MOG

Chris Gilbey — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 08:40:01 +1000
Came across an interesting new music play called MOG.

A simple app that looks at the music on your hard drive and also your iPod, checks the most popular, most listened to etc, and shares this info with friends.

So the idea is that you get to find out first what is cool.... And they have a whole lot of artists signed up to the concept, so you get to hear what some of you favourite musicians think is cool too....

Favcast Media

Chris Gilbey — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 06:46:05 +1000
Over at Favcast Media Paul Poutanen is blogging about video online. And he has some interesting insights and observations to make - he also has a start up that is in the space which I believe is still in stealth mode, but no doubt we will find out when he is ready...!

One of the companies that he blogs about today is called TurnHere, which to me is an indication of things to come: a massive increase in the use of video in ads, and frankly a confusion in the market place of what an ad means. Is it online product placement? Or an infomercial? Or what:

There is no doubt that we are at the beginning of the true video age - the time in history when the community has the means to take hold of the message and to communicate it.

And isn't it ironic that this should happen pretty much at the same time as there has been such a massive shift in both the perceived and real interpretation of what freedom of speech means?