Panel Members (L to R): Mathew, Thomas, Darryl, Mike
- Panel:
- Mathew Ingram (Globe&Mail)
- Darryl Ballantyne (Lyricfind)
- Thomas Whitaker
- Mike Kirkup (RIM)
- Rick Segal:
- You can get funded
- Good news:
- Canada is a big market (e.g. Toronto Tourist market is $4 billion/year)
- Canada is a friendly and ‘small’ market
- Bad news:
- Some business are outstanding but not VC investments
- Some plans are amazing but not on target for particular VC firms
- Process is fairly straightforward but not fun
- There are lots of walking wounded from the last bubble
- Good people with good ideas will get funded
- Used to see a lot of biz plans with ‘customer logo salad’ but now we see ‘blog logo salad’
- TechCrunch, etc.
- What’s the problem?
- Lyricfind: name that tune
- Everyone can remember the words but not the name
- People are highly engaged with song lyrics
- Everything in music industry moving to digital (whether labels like it or not)
- Lyrics were a wild-west of user contributed and inaccurate content
- Could be the hook that can pull in users
- None of the music services wanted to go to 3k publishing contents and get licensing
- Thomas:
- A lot of companies don’t do IT internally or adopt new applications
- Lyricfind: name that tune
- What’s the solution?
- Lyricfind:
- We go out, get the licensing, and resell as a clearinghouse
- Thomas:
- Come up with a drop-dead simple tool that enables people to adopt new tech
- Lyricfind:
- What’s the bet?
- Lyricfind:
- We knew these sites were getting serious traffic
- We knew consumers wanted to scroll through lyrics on their iPod
- We knew publishers would see this as a ‘free money’ add-on to their existing business
- A lot of the deals we’re doing are ad rev share but clients aren’t going to go away
- Everyone is spending more time at home since they don’t have money to go out so they browse our content
- We’re inherently a content company
- Lyricfind:
- What do people have to believe to go to the next step?
- Lyricfind:
- There’s consumer demand for the content
- The content adds value to music delivery
- Lyricfind:
- Who’s going to buy your company:
- Lyricfind:
- There are companies that provide music meta data or licensing
- Digital music companies who are our clients
- Some partners
- Anyone who provides digital music services
- Lyricfind:
- Darryl Ballantyne
- Tried in 2002 but couldn’t get licensing
- Music industry was trying to shut down the Internet
- Started again in 2005
- Freeloaded off parents to save money
- Recruited people to the board who had contacts in the record industry
- Went to LA to work for a label and recruited his boss to the board
- Gave credibility without having money
- Worked from home, then got office space in exchange for being in-house IT, setup a fake PBX and redirected to cellphones
- Did a big deal with Real Networks by setting up fake rooms in the office they borrowing from income trust
- Brought in all of their friends to fill in the office
- Switched his stuff to a private office and a partner into a cube
- Had a sign printed and put above the income trust sign
- Had a hot friend come and be the receptionist
- Always listed their address with a suite number to look bigger
- Got publishers to understand this was found money they were leaving on the table
- We’re not targeting 10m consumers, we’re targeting 100 digital music companies
- Coverage in mainstream blogs like TechCrunch is important but not key to their business
- Don’t turn away publicity
- Tried in 2002 but couldn’t get licensing
- Thomas Whitaker
- SMS marketing company
- Consulting systems integration
- ________(current company – missed the name)
- A lot of companies don’t do IT
- Solutions
- Has pitched Rick 6 times and never got him
- Chamber of commerce, local paper, Globe&Mail is the right coverage for my customers
- We’re members at 10 Chambers and a dozen Trade Associations
- Wrote an article series called Get Connected about how mobile is helping SMEs
- That audience doesn’t know that you can do things like mobile CRM on a BlackBerry
- Organic growth starts at a grassroots
- Ideas come from reading a lot, observing a lot, writing ideas down
- Ideas can pop into your head just from observing: people put their phones down on tables in restaurants and bars so why aren’t they showing ads?
- Pitching makes you better at pitching. My first pitches were horrible but they’re getting better and better
- Mathew Ingram
- Timing is everything
- Hitting a journalist when they’re working on a story about your industry is key
- Humanize yourself or your solution
- Journalists are people — you need to resonate with them
- If someone doesn’t write about you, don’t send them an email saying they’re a moron
- Consumer facing web apps or services should care about TechCrunch, but they’re not always right
- Twitter has had service outages, lost features, but still running strong
- You can overcome negative coverage from the mainstream blogs, but it’s harder
- Better to have lots of people talking about you negatively than no one talking at all
- One good reason to read TechCrunch: finding out if other people are doing the same thing as you
- Wish I could do mobile payments so I wouldn’t need a wallet
- Bill Gates thought pen computing would be big a few years ago and lots of people agreed but it wasn’t — don’t be discouraged
- One of the problems I have is looking at what my friends are doing and thinking it’s a great market
- Markets are much bigger than a handful of people
- Timing is everything
- Mike Kirkup
- Humanizing is key
- Last thing I want to see is “this will put Microsoft out of business” or “sell 100x more BlackBerries”
- If you come to us put together and have done your homework, that resonates
- If you get blown off the first time, call us on it
- Timing is everything — we might blow you off the first time because we’re busy
- Best relationships have come from people who fought back
- If you want 1000s of people to know about your BlackBerry product, don’t send an email. Put it on BlackBerry Cool or CrackBerry
- We watch these blogs and get leads for partners from them
- It’s easy to feed content to those guys — give them text and pictures
- When you go talk to companies like RIM, MS, Apple, ask them how many companies are doing the same thing
- We have at least 6 companies who think they’re the only ones building the next generation social network for mobile differentiated by location-based services
- Mobile and micro payments are big feature requests for us
- Balance between lifestyle and business on the same device is also key
- A lot of people who come to pitch us haven’t thought through the actual sales channel and mechanics of their market
- How am I going to get people to pay for this?
- Questions:
- Are you going to VCs for validation or for money? For the ideas you don’t get funded on, do you let them go?
- Thomas: For money. Rick turned me down on SMS marketing but I found some Angel financing. Still made a lot of mistakes and one fatal one.
- Rick: a lot of times, people come in and say “You think it’s a good idea?” “No, it’s stupid.” but I’m a user group of 1 and the wrong guy to ask. Most VCs will give you their personal opinion that should go into your giant pile of opinions but not carry more weight
- Darryl: Rick didn’t fund us multiple times but eventually said “I really should have bought you the first time you came in.” so don’t take one person’s opinion
- Are you going to VCs for validation or for money? For the ideas you don’t get funded on, do you let them go?
