Brad Jefferson & Animoto.com - The end of slideshows!

(note: the italian version of this article is available on 7th Floor online magazine)

The web of the late 90's was pretty different from what we are now living online. I recall that, at the startup I used to work for, new features were developed only taking into account the product (surely of high quality) and people were just a marginal aspect. The value proposition was centered in offering our customers the best contents of a certain type, and this should have been enough to be successful. Tom Friedman defines this as the capability of "downloading", that is, to have access to the information. But always according to Friedman, the real internet revolution has begun when people had the opportunity of "uploading" their own contents to the web.

Today's websites focus their energy on the uploading factor. Take Amazon.com as an example, they have made their mayor strength through their customer's opinions. We are navigating in the river of new sites that have been called the Web 2.0, many of whom are just copies of each other.

I met Brad Jefferson, co-founder and CEO of Animoto.com, one of this new uploading sites that declares "the end of slideshows".

Animoto was born a bit by chance (see the garage story) and with a very definite dream. Says Brad: "Our passion is automating the creative process for creating video content that has the type of production value you'd expect to see in film or television. Simply put, when users upload their images and music to Animoto our technology should be able to infer the best way to put it all together into a video - all with a click of a button. We want anyone to be able to make professional looking videos, not just super technical people who own and know sophisticated editing software".

So the next time that you'll come back from a trip (or other event) full of digital photos, why don't you upload the best of them to flickr and then, with a song that reminds you of that experience, you make a video and share it with your friends? It won't be just a normal video, check out this one:

garage story
Animoto was founded by four 30-year-old buddies which went together to high school and three of them to college too. Their common link has always been that they're all incredibly passionate people who love to work hard and inspire each other. Brad specialized in enterprise software at company called Onyx Software, while the other three found themselves working in film, television and music.

"The idea for Animoto came from Stevie Clifton, our CTO, while he was doing documentary work for ABC. As a motion graphics artist, Stevie was responsible for the special effects and motion design that was incorporated into various ABC documentaries. Yet, Stevie is also a software engineer so he was always inventing ways to make his motion graphics job easier by automating certain aspects of his daily grind. One night at a NY hole-in-the-wall sake bar Stevie started drawing up some of his job automation ideas on a dirty napkin for Jason Hsiao, our President. After hearing the idea Jason basically said, "Stevie, that's great that you've come up with a way to automate your job but if we could implement this technology through the Internet so anyone could access it that would be something really special." Jason shared the business idea with me and I was hooked. We then pulled in Stevie's brother, Tom Clifton, our Creative Director, to round out our founding team".

business model
Animoto is based on the freemium (free + premium) model. Registered users can create 30 second Animoto videos for free. Creating a full-length video costs $3 USD or $30 USD for an annual all-access pass that allows for the creation of unlimited full-length videos. "We've also been experimenting with opt-in advertising that we call 'Distractions.' We've found that there's lots of commercial demand for our technology so expect to see some interesting developments on that front in 2008".

funding
Brad explains their starting funding: "We bootstrapped our first six months to create the Animoto.com alpha release. We launched the alpha site to friends and family in March 2007 and the feedback was very positive (albeit, it was from our loved ones). While we were thrilled that our alpha testers were loving Animoto.com, our stomachs sank a bit as we started our budget number crunching".

It takes a lot of processor power to render each unique video creation with a high quality production value, not to mention the bandwidth and storage needs.

"If our site was to become as popular as we had hoped the cost to run the infrastructure was going to mean that we'd require a fairly substantial infusion of cash which is something we wanted to avoid in order to maintain our ownership. We spent a lot of time planning for success so instead of rushing to launch Animoto.com publicly we took a step back and decided to completely re-architect our technical infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS)".

They decided to sacrifice nearly four months to move Animoto.com to AWS, but they knew it was the right thing to do. During that period they continued to improve everything about the site and, more importantly, that extra time gave Brad enough time to find the right investors for Animoto. "With the new technical infrastructure our capital requirements were smaller. In fact, our capital requirements were so small that I was able to look no further than our family and friends to raise sufficient funds to complete our Series A private placement".

the launch
The site was launched as a private alpha in March 2007 and the private beta in July 2007. "Once we felt the private beta was solid we picked August 14, 2007, as our public launch date and a couple weeks before launch we invited a bunch a tech bloggers to take a sneak peak". Tech bloggers loved the service and wrote favorably about Animoto and August 14th was the D-day for the press release which made them public.

"In hindsight, we probably should have focused less on the tech circles and more on mainstream audiences; that's where our marketing focus is now".

relationships
Animoto allows users to retrieve photos from sites like Picasa, Flickr, Facebook and SmugMug to create videos and during 2008 the team will concentrate in strengthening the links with these and other communities.

"We see social platforms like OpenSocial and Facebook as great ways to get more people familiar with Animoto. The very nature - and brilliance - of a social platform, however, means that social networks like those from Google and Facebook can benefit from the value of apps like ours without needing to acquire companies like us".

In any case, during the first months of Animoto's life, several companies have expressed their interest in what these guys are cooking. "It was pretty cool to hear from Google and be invited to their campus to join their OpenSocial initiative just a few weeks after our public launch".

advice for entrepreneurs

• There's nothing better than working with people you really trust, admire and are inspired by
• Prove the feasibility of your idea as early as possible
• Plan for success; failure means you simply move on to the next idea
• Always take more investment than you think you need if it's available

Animoto in brief
- birthdate: Aug 2006
- employees / age range: 7 full-time & 4 part-time / 23-32 yrs old
- target audience: anyone who has access to digital images
- pc, mac, linux or who cares as long as it does the job? "I use a PC for my business function but all of our engineers and designers use Macs. Our entire web infrastructure is on Linux".
- success: in the first four months since launching, Animoto video creations have been viewed more than 10 million times.

"We thought Animoto videos from MySpace bands would account for a large percentage of these views since Animoto is the perfect music video creator but it's been amazing and inspiring to see the different types of videos our users are creating with Animoto: snowboarders touting their latest insanities, Facebook-fanatics crafting their latest "who-am-I" video profiles, football teams reliving their big Friday night win, animal-lovers that can't stop sending us videos of their pets, online daters trying to score just one date with a normal person, DJ's recreating that last night of Burning Man, models and actors working on their portfolio submissions, jazz quartets experimenting with live performance visuals, bikers bragging about the latest mountain they've conquered with evidence of bruises and blood, nature photographers showcasing their latest spread, real estate brokers looking to get top dollar for their listings, third-grade students surprising their teachers with their class presentations, illustrators discovering how to inject their art with even more life, conference speakers needing to kick-start their sleepy audiences, party organizers promoting the next hot bar scene, car enthusiasts boasting their new rims, brides creating the perfect wedding videos, aspiring film writers producing clever comedy shorts, memorabilia collectors showing off their collections, new parents proudly announcing the arrival of their new one, and even families keeping in touch with their sons and daughters serving in Iraq".

On Brad

Brad is 32 years old, married with a daughter who was born January 13, 2008. He was born in California and grew up outside of Seattle. Attended Dartmouth College and played American football all four years ("we went 10-0 and won the Ivy League my Jr. year").

His interests include anything that involves physical activity but favorites include football, mountain biking, running, skiing, snowboarding. His latest hobbies include photography and home improvement.

check out his LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bradjefferson

- Past experience that was useful for launching Animoto: "At Onyx Software, I managed various teams and was always involved in the selling and implementing of our software. I use my sales and management skills everyday at Animoto. Near the end of my tenure at Onyx I managed the team that provided a lot of the reports to our Board of Directors. At the time, Onyx was a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ. I've found the skills of being able to analyze a company from a top-down and bottom-up perspective essential".

- What digital app/site/service has changed your working experience for good? "the iPhone"

- Digital entrepreneurs you admire? "All who give back in an philanthropic way".

Digital Entrepreneurs - Jay Bhatti of Spock.com

Digital Entrepreneurs are those entrepreneurs that embrace an idea and make it real using digital resources. Some of them create a new search engine, which lives only in a world of bits and bytes (eg. Google and Yahoo), others jump from a digital platform to the "real" world (like Amazon, etc). Nowadays no one argues about the capacity of these entrepreneurs of creating real business (money!).

Let me introduce you to Jay Bhatti, co-founder of Spock.com. I met Jay just by chance, as I was registered to Spock and he contacted me to ask for suggestions on how to improve the website (he contacted all the power users). We did this interview for the Italian business magazine 7th Floor.


Even if it might seem obvious, the name of this "people" search engine has no relation whatsoever with Star Trek. When Jay and Jaideep Singh (co-founder of Spock with Jay) came up with the idea, Spock was supposed to mean "Single Point of Contact by Keyword" - which is the foundation of Spock today, the ability to search for anyone by keywords (tags).

Spock.com was thought to be a search engine for people (someone called it the Who's Who 2.0), with the aim to find any person in the world. The main difference with other search engines is that Spock acts as a "meta-engine", that supports itself on all the other existing websites, with a particular accent on social networking ones. But its main differentiating trait is that it itself becomes "social" because it allows users to add the information that characterizes a given person, and to vote on that added by others, thus judging the validity of it. So when you look up for someone, you'll find not only links to that persons profile on Wikipedia, Linkedin, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc, but also tags, news, relationships, photos and quotes added and voted by other visitors.


What is your dream for Spock.com?
I want Spock to become the number 1 search application in the world for People. When anyone in the world thinks of searching for people online, they should think of Spock first. When anyone wants to search even within their own network of friends for the right person, they should go first to Spock.


The business model in brief
Right now we are focused on developing the best user experience possible. Longer term, our business model is to display very rich and relevant ads and leads when people do a search on Spock. Very similar to the Google model where they capture intent based on your search.


Where did you get the money for the start-up?
Our funding came from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital. Two of the top consumer Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley. We also have small investments from some notable people in the Valley who are advisers to Spock. I think it is very important to get experienced advisers who have done several start-ups to help you through the process.


The "garage" story behind Spock
The garage story behind Spock is that Jay and Jaideep kept complaining about how hard it was to find the right person, even within their own networks, and how searching for people was so fragmented (across social networks, your address book, web documents, etc). They both quit their jobs and spent several months with no paycheck to finalize the vision and pitch to venture capitalists. During that time, Jay lived in Jaideep's Pool house for several months. So, its more of a "pool house" story than garage story. :-)


Follows Jay's advice for digital entrepreneurs willing to launch their own start-up:

do's.
1. Move Fast - The only things we regret so far is not moving faster. Its important as a start-up to move fast. From a development, marketing, to business development standpoint, it does you no good to move slow in todays digital world.

2. Hire the Best - This is the only place I recommend you take your time. Hire the best people possible. Make sure they are smart, motivated, and have the right attitude for your Company. Nothing is worse than hiring someone who you come to realize is not a good fit for your company. And nothing is more exciting when you hire really smart people who believe in your vision and can come up with even better ways of making the vision come true.

3. Be Open - We realized that the more open and transparent we were as a company to the outside world, the better the world responded. It's important that you share your vision with users and the Press. Make sure to say it every chance you get to anyone that will listen. It's important for you to set the vision and PR for your company. Don't let anyone else start defining what you are about.

dont's.
1. Do not be afraid of doing your own start-up. We all feel fear when thinking about doing a start-up. I had it too. But once I committed to it, it was the best decision I made in my life. But make sure that whatever field you get into you absolutely love and are willing to spend your waking day doing nothing but focusing your energy on your start-up and the market you are trying to attack.

2. Dont be afraid of criticism. Doing a start-up is a very hard thing for some people to imagine. Think about what some people say "you are going to start a company with no funding that is going to try to beat Google at something!" I say that if you believe strongly enough in your vision and yourself, you should not let anyone make you believe you cant do something. Make would-be entrepreneurs have ruined great opportunities when they let the wrong people influence them.

3. Dont ignore your users. You are nothing without customers and users. Make sure you listen and treat EVERY user as if they were your only customer. I make it a point at Spock to respond to every user that same day with the proper answer to their questions. Best of all, a lot of product ideas that we implemented were the direct result of user feedback!


Mobility is in Spock's roadmap, but before taking it to mobile, they want to make the online experience amazing.

Why should I look for someone on Spock and not in, for example, Wikipedia?
Wikipedia only give you famous people. Spock will give you anyone you are looking for in the world!

As I currently live in Italy, I asked Jay about their plans and plans & expectations for the Italian market and the rest of the World.

Italian Market - We want to have language support at some point (on the drawing board) for Italy. But most importantly, I want every online user in Italy to think of Spock as the best people search site in the world, and the most open, and the most free. Global - Same thing. We plan to make language support a higher priority next year and want to make sure that Spock is a global product that everyone in the world would have a need for.


To help him in this mission, Jay has recruited ambassadors and evangelists (like Andrey Golub in Italy) from whom he expects that they keep being honest with him on how to improve the service and really working to make sure that Spock is correctly represented in their markets. Jay really enjoy working with otheir ambassadors from all round the world. Most of all, he likes the open conversations they have on how to make Spock reach the potential they all think it has.


Spock in brief
- Spock birthdate: March 23, 2006
- Employees / age range: 25 employees, average age is 27
- Actual pageviews/unique users: over 1m+ unique and 15m+ page view per month (just in the first few months of launch with limited marketing)
- Target audience: anyone in the world who wants to search for people
- Pc, mac, linux or who cares as long as it does the job? They use all of them at Spock


Jay in brief

- 34 years old, Born in Punjab India, interests outside of Spock include reading and playing sports. Check out his Spock profile: http://www.spock.com/jay

- He has no past start-up experience and he says that "Nothing can prepare you for a start-up"

- What digital apps/sites/services have changed your working experience for good? Google Docs. I think they have a real shot at beating Microsoft Office.

- Apart from Spock, which recent digital apps/sites/services would you bet on? My bet would be on kayak.com and thefind.com - both are search sites that compile data and present it in a useful manner for users. One is travel related (kayak) the other is product related (thefind)

- Digital entrepreneurs you admire? I used to work at Microsoft and still have a lot of respect for what Bill Gates did for computing and his passion to make his vision come true.



For more info, check out Jay's presentation on Web2.0 expo on intrudersTV here