By Philip Naess
The November 2013 New York Video Meetup took place at the New York Media Center in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The organizer, Steven Rosenbaum, hosts the group’s monthly events. With the intention of discussing the fast-paced growing online video market, three presenters attempted to woo the crowd with their unique go at disrupting an already competitive field.
Rosenbaum said that he found it refreshing that each startup demonstrated a clear business strategy and willingness to innovate in order to cater to the online video marketplace. The media guru predicts an inevitable revolution in the orientation towards monetizing content, noting how “not very long ago people put their credit card on the web with great tribulation.”
Content Galaxy hopes to make monetizing instructional, entertainment, and news videos easier with its publishing platform for pooling premium content into paid channels. Founder and CEO, Steven Asherman, explained that the company’s patent-pending hosting service allows publishers and aggregators to combine videos from multiple sources. Subscribers pay a flat fee to stream unlimited video on a channel, and content providers and affiliate websites are paid based on actual subscriber usage. By motivating all parties involved to create affordable, well-edited channels, Content Galaxy is attempting to “fill the gaps between Netflix’s approach to high-end Hollywood productions, the iTunes item-by-item purchasing model, and YouTube’s free ad-sponsored clips.”
Nathaniel McNamara, president of Endless TV, hopes to disrupt the mobile TV experience. Endless TV has been described as the Pandora of online video; customers preselect genres of content they enjoy watching. The app utilizes a propriety algorithm that allows users to scroll through personalized preselected channels seamlessly. With zero lag time, Endless TV makes it easy for content providers to drive mobile news. The company has currently launched 16 mobile video apps for iOS and Android.
Mongrel FX has employed open-source tools to create low-cost, high quality CG video animations. By lowering the cost of CG animation, Mongrel FX believes it can create a niche market in the online video world. Founder Jeff Hipolito captivated the crowd with video clips of the badass female ninja heroine from the latest project on which the company has embarked. Currently under development, “The Rojin Protocol” is a feature length CG animated film in the sci-fi action genre.
The Meetup made it clear that each company is hoping to ride the rising tidal wave namely, online video monetization. A veteran in the field, Rosenbaum was impressed by each startup’s clear-cut revenue generating model. All the presenters “were really thinking about business, and it wasn’t pie in the sky. Three out of three presenters had an agenda with an end goal to create a business, and to me that’s a really important change in the way people look at media.”
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