Below we have slides presenting two very different viewpoints on the recent perceived crisis and subsequent second .com bust. We find them extremely insightful
Sequoia on the first pack is one of the largest technology funds in the world. They generally push for extreme development of a business and have huge successes under their belt, such as Google, Yahoo! and countless others.
The Whiner Jerkins is actually a fake. I’d like to point out that there exists no Whiner Jerkins. I know that everyone’s talking about it as if it were real but it’s not. It’s a deck of slides made by a Matt Maroon, which is actually very insightful and self-sarcastic.
All Hands Meeting, by Whiner Jerkins, link in Scribd
All Hands Meeting, by Whiner Jerkins, link in Docstoc
Personally I just feel vindicated over the countless arguments I’ve had on how popular Hulu would become and how fragile Seesmic’s business model is. Let us also keep in mind that while Youtube was snatched for an obscene amount of money from Google, it was never profitable, and one can argue that it will never be.
That does not go to say that these companies haven’t successfully transformed our perception of the web, or that they didn’t innovate. Just that business success ended up being an entirely different matter.
4 comments
“Youtube was snatched for an obscene amount of money from Google, it was never profitable, and one can argue that it will never be.”
OHHH PLEASE, DO TRY AND ARGUE THIS OUT…
WE ARE ALL EARS…
Youtube started out with 10.5$ m in venture capital. It never sported ads and towards the time is was acquired by Google (when it had 60% of video viewings on the Internet) it was burning 1.5$ m per month for bandwidth costs.
They had negotiated for another 10$ m as a _loan_ not VC when Google decided to buy them out. Apparently Google wasn’t looking at Youtube as a business but as explained by Brin and Page, it was seen as a social achievement which they wanted to finance.
To this date Youtube has only experimented with revenue models such as ads, and they don’t charge for affiliation programmes.
It’s also of note that they’re burning a great deal of money for deals with record and media labels for legal protection, since they’re carrying a large amount of illegal content. If carrying this content could be profitable, I think that the content companies would put it at some place of their own. In fact, such an attempt is Hulu which despite the scepticism of alternative media (prominent podcasters especially lambasted it) is doing great.
All in all, I see no solid revenue engine for Youtube.
Will dlntfiieey join, sounds like a great idea. Couple of thoughts do we have a high level plan on what we intend to discuss. Also will you also be involved to mentor the discussion, it should add strong value if you and others could drive the discussion and maybe have Q&As addressing a specific aspect in the entire startup process.
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