LinkedIn just got its massive $1B valuation from a wide array of investors, and all of it was orchestrated by none other Allen & Co., who is making more and more inroads in West Coast digital media and IT firms.
Interesting to see this video, via Paid Content, of the investors talking about their investment… not surprising, you don’t see anyone from Allen, who stay in the background, as always.
Digg this Blog
Share on Facebook
WatchMojo on Twitter
WatchMojo on YouTube
Add to Favorites
WatchMojo NewsletterIt’s not really a surprise that the Top 10 video sites are largely traditional media companies who own content, so in that vein, yes, content is king. YouTube is the disruptor, no doubt, and they command a whopping 70% market share though the large majority of those streams go unmonetized. Once again, it’s worth asking what the value of a stream is.
We syndicate our library through YouTube and monetize our content… but professional content is not representative of the fare you find on YouTube.
It’s also not a surprise then, that video is becoming an outlier online: traditional media companies actually have a shot at defending their terrain online… because over time it’s not unlikely for them to generate more revenues from offline revenues than technology companies that aspire to disrupt these. In fact, YouTube is becoming the killer not of media companies but other video oriented tech startups.
Good lines from Evan Williams, of Blogger and Twitter fame:
- Angel money is the food that fuels you to build your engine. VC money is the fuel that you put in the engine.
- People ask: how much money do you need? It’s never about that. It’s how much can you give, get at a reasonable price, use appropriately.
- VC money: get if you know where you’re going. Angel money: when you havent narrowed down your options
- There’s a rule: no matter how much you raise, you’ll always spend it in 12 months.
Good lines from Jeff Clavier, hyper investor:
- if you can avoid getting financing, dont get financing. avoid dealing with us.
- the minute you close on financing, you close on options
Other gems:
- the biggest difference difference between angel and VC: VC has more toxicity in terms.
Read more. I am not sure I like Williams’ line about “There’s a rule: no matter how much you raise, you’ll always spend it in 12 months,” but I’ve not raised a penny for WatchMojo.com because “VC has more toxicity in terms” and mainly: “if you can avoid getting financing, dont get financing. avoid dealing with us.”.
Amen. You start a company not to be your own boss but not have to put up with a lack of ethics, or politics, or BS etc., but yet when you raise money, you get that en masse, why? Because “the money people will remove you”, not because you’re not doing your job necessarily, but because it’s in their financial incentive to do so, after all, after a company raises money, a big chunk of the founder’s shares are taken away from him and scheduled to vest over time.
What do you think happens if the founder is out? Those shares are up for grabs. Who gets them? Not the founder!
I’m not sure why Paid Content has disabled the embed option on this video (UPDATE: it was a glitch)… but here is something from one of Paid Content’s 72 conferences themed “Economics of…”
Watch it here. [Hmm… maybe that is why they’ve disabled the embed option, no? And maybe hulu’s disabling of the embed function this morning was no accident].
UPDATE: Glitch fixed, here is the embed:
I don’t know of too many publicly-traded companies who raise money from VCs, but here’s one: Answers.com. I owned the stock but it was in the toilet for a while so I got out, at a loss.
Incidentally, Redpoint - whose claim to fame is funding Intermix (MySpace) and Right Media - backed Intermix when it too was publicly traded. This is actually something I always refer to: not to take anything away from them, but MySpace was far from the accidental success story. For one, it could leverage eUniverse’s burgeoning traffic. Second, it had a lot of funding… and most importantly, Friendster began to trip up on itself and its board’s ineptitude, largesse and prematurely grandiose vision at a time it should have focused on the product’s nuts and bolts.
The latest comScore stats are out: video streams in the US remain above 10B (and above search queries), but they fell in April from March.
Hmm… maybe this is the sign of the video bubble bursting? I doubt it.
Related:
Mark Cuban says that he’ll “take hulu over YouTube anyday” but I think that comparing these sites now is akin to comparing apples with oranges… or rather, a flea market with a boutique shop on Rodeo Drive. Don’t get me wrong, more often than not, the flea market might actually have what users are looking for… but the producers whose products are on display probably like the confines of the boutique shop better. Ultimately, who wins in the end? I’m not sure it’s an either or scenario. Sure, broadly speaking - like Facebook vs. MySpace - these sites compete… but fay after day, the services are actually diverging.
I wrote more on this in Quantity vs. Quality.
Disclaimer: WatchMojo.com syndicates content to both Hulu, YouTube and MySpace TV
PLAY
