A few comparable companies include Webshots, flickr, Ofoto, Shutterfly, and Snapfish. While these companies deal only with still images, there are some similarities with YouTube. None of these companies have had exceptional exits. Apparently Shutterfly is preparing to file its IPO. Ofoto and Snapfish were acquired by Kodak and HP, respectively, although financial terms were not disclosed. Another comparable is Blogger, acquired by Google in for an undisclosed amount.
I first met with the company three weeks ago, and we are in pole position for the financing. Several VCs have been cold calling the company, and a few media companies have also approached YouTube. YouTube has a great founding team that has hit on several promising themes.
The company follows a trend of user-generated content that started with text biogs , images flickr, webshots, ofoto , and audio podcasting. Video is a natural next step, and YouTube is well positioned to capture the lead. The company has not yet enabled advertising revenue streams. But our checks with Yahoo! We will rapidly need to surround the company with management talent, specifically a CEO.
Founded by three early PayPal employees. Two engineers, one designer. Seed-stage investment opportunity. Top 10, internet site within two months of launch. All videos are encoded and rendered in Quicktime. Quicktime has lower penetration than Flash, so users may be faced with needing to download the player to experience the site. The also claim to draw inspiration from flickr, and launched in February Vimeo also uses Quicktime.
Their site layout is not very intuitive, and makes it hard to find content e. The graph below shows the comparative daily pageviews for YouTube, Dailymotion and Vimeo. Community photo sites share many features with YouTube: tagging, social networking, discussion groups, ease-of-use.
However, they seem focused on still images rather than video. YouTube admits that it drew inspiration from the popular site Flickr. Reid Hoffman was in investor in Flickr, and assures the YouTube team that they have no plans to launch a video product in the next years.
Webshots is another potential competitor. The founding team all just left the company, and it unclear how much new product innovation there is. Webshots seems very focused on photos for now. The main online photo sharing services, Ofoto, Shutterfly, and Snapfish, are also potential competitors.
They do not have community-like features. They also earn revenue primarily from printing. As a result, I think they will remain focused on photos.
There are several popular online entertainment sites that have significant traffic: Big-boys, ebaumsworld, ifilm. You are guaranteed to have something interesting, something shocking to watch when you visit these sites.
However, the disadvantage is that they can never transition their sites into an actual product. If I were to categorize the content on YouTube today, I would break it down into two large categories: personal videos and viral videos. The viral videos, due to copyrights and obscene content, I admit, big-boys and ebaumsworld may beat us there. Although, we have seen our share of viral videos on YouTube. The bigger draw for YouTube is all the personal videos, the ones of your pet, your kid, your family, your vacation, so on.
Big-boys and ebaumsworld, due to their origins, can never transition their product into something that hosts these other types of files. Google and Yahoo are building video search products.
In neither case are they providing the simple consumer upload and share experience, nor the community features. Putfile and Ourmedia. Finally, there are companies such as the Open Media Network and Brigthcove that are focused on the delivery of mainstream video over the Internet. As mentioned previously, in order to keep costs down, our video distribution technology is built on clusters with multiple machines in each cluster for redundancy and higher throughput.
When a video is uploaded to the site, it is sent to a single machine within a single cluster. Newly uploaded videos are picked up by two services running on each of the machines, 1 convert and 2 replicate. The converter will analyze the video and look at things like framerates, aspect ratios vs , audio encoding sampling rates, audio codec , and the video codec used on the original video.
As part of this process, video stills of each video are also generated. While all this is going on, the replication service is standing by looking for videos that need to be replicated.
The best part about this technology is that it really is infinitely scalable. The video serving technology provides a substantial barrier to entry. Good Subscriber Account active since Shortcuts. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile.
Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news. Paige Leskin. YouTube launched 15 years ago to the public as a single, easy-to-use destination for hosting and sharing the internet's videos. By the summer of , YouTube's cofounders — Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim — were looking to scale up, and needed venture capital funding to do so.
Most founders associate pitch decks with a fundraise. However, investment memos have made a presence in the space over the last few years. If you are a founder that is more confident in your writing ability, an investment memo might make sense for you. Check out our tips and templates for creating an investment memo below:. Investments memos are a powerful tool that can be used to power fundraising narratives, project guidelines, product pitches, and much more.
They are becoming an increasingly important tool as communication continues to move to digital mediums.
Memos are an easy way for stakeholders to form conviction around an idea. This is especially true when it comes to sharing an investment memo with potential investors but also holds true when using a memo for a product or strategic decision. When it comes to using investment memos for attracting investment it can be a great tool to build relationships. By being able to clearly articulate why someone should invest in your startup, investors will be able to build conviction as mentioned above and move on.
This not only helps you get a quick answer but also demonstrates that you value their time and sets an expectation for communication moving forward. Investment memos are a surefire way to create alignment amongst your stakeholders.
If raising capital, it will keep your current and potential investors in the loop with your messaging and the status of your round. If communicating with your team over a decision or project, it will keep everyone in the loop and on the same page as the project moves forward. Ultimately, it can act as a source of truth to look back on post memo.
Traditionally speaking a pitch deck is at the backbone of a venture capital fundraise. Over the last few years, investment memos have become an integral tool of fundraising.
More founders, especially those with strong writing skills, are turning to memos and written communication over the traditional pitch deck. Oftentimes a pitch deck is passed around and can be taken out of context. If there is simply an image or chart on a slide that can be deciphered in many different ways and can take the control of the story away from you.
The investment memo has the ability to stand on its own. By sending a memo in advance you do not have to worry about the investors missing any context.
Investors will be able to read and digest the memo on their own. Opposed to a pitch deck that may require a pitch and narrative around different components. A memo will allow investors to quickly pass or take the next meeting. This way you can spend time on the firms that are truly interested.
When it comes down to it there is no way to know if a pitch deck or memo is going to be shared to outside stakeholders. As we mentioned above using a memo allows you to control the story if it does happen. When creating a memo for investment there are a few key components that the strongest investment memos will include:.
Why should I care? What is the purpose of the memo? Are you searching for investment? Be clear and concise in your purpose so investors can quickly understand what the purpose of your company and memo is. What point of friction are you attacking? Money is made at points of friction. Define the problem you are solving and what the current process and pain point looks like. How are you removing extracting value from that friction point?
How are you improving the current solutions? What makes your solution or product offering unique and have an edge in the market? How much value can you conceivably capture from this new offering? Be able to clearly define your market size and use the sections below to demonstrate how you will penetrate the market.
If the market is so big there must be others after it, right? While some argue that competition is not a good thing, a Blue Ocean approach to entering the market shows you have thoughtfully evaluated where others have failed and understand how to attack those areas.
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