Archive for January, 2009

I had a talk with Adam Tuttle yesterday and I just have to quote him on this:

“Online video advertising is like sex in high school: Everybody talks about it, nobody really does it and the ones doing it are pretty bad at it”

As you know, we are currently focusing heavily on the UK market. I’m spending a lot of my time here and there’s a lot of exciting things happening. Last week I was at OneAlfredPlace attending the perfectly organized MTM London event with the topic the future of advertising.

Next week, on Tuesday Feb 3rd, there will be a WebTV meetup at Century. We, being Videoplaza, are buying the drinks, hoping to meet interesting people in the industry. The event is organized by Drew Ellis together with Bill Gash who helps us out in the UK.

This meetup has its roots from the Chinwag UK WebTV list (make sure to sign up here!) and there has been one meetup before arranged by Sarah Platt among others.

So if you are into the online video space in any way, make sure to head over to Century in Soho (map) next Tuesday Feb 3rd at 6.30pm. Sign up at the Ning community here to find out more and RSVP.

I put this here just to have something visual :) The photo is from our office warming last March in Stockholm.

Being part of a startup it’s hard to tell what to really think of the economic downturn. On the one hand, the climate is definitely tougher for businesses in general (and for ad funded ones in particular), but on the other hand the tougher climate effectively kills off some of the ‘not-so-good’ competitors, making more room for the surviving ones.

Hopefully, another consequence is that there might be more unemployed smart people out there ready to join your own endeavor.

That’s why I really regret that I’m unable to attend the 24 hour business camp that’s being held here in Stockholm January 21-23.

The event is sponsored by some of the old media giants (Bonnier R&D, Mindpark) and the concept is strikingly attractive to me. 90 of the most clever Swedish entrepreneurs gather to invent 52 new business ideas during 24 hours.

Not only do I guess that every attendee will get greatly inspired — this is where every company should go to hook up with smart people that get the new business environment.

Since I’m unable to attend myself I can only hope that some of my attending friends can get the others to take a look at our call for talented flash devs. Hopefully there is a match.

For those of you out there that are still able to attend this event, do what you can to clear your diaries. This is certainly the place to get into the entrepreneurial loop right now. And hopefully one or two of the 52 new startups will survive the current climate and grow into future successes.

It’s been almost nine months since we officially launched our talent hunt and since then we have expanded our team from just us three original founders to nine great people who are all a major part of what Videoplaza is today.

Recruiting a new person is probably one of the most rewarding things you get to do when you found a business – every person you add to the team really transforms the company. In a startup, you’re never just another employee – this is where you really get to make a difference.

Today, we have once again switched our head light back on. It was never really out, but now we know for sure: We need to find our next Flash master who can help us further enhance the little box of magic that is our product.

As we see it, if you are the person we are looking for, you’re gonna get a great deal of say-so in our company. Not only will you get the opportunity of heading our plugin development team, you will also get to work closely with our clients (major media companies) helping them to get as profitable as possible by implementing our technology.

Earlier on, we were mostly looking for young talented people with great potential. While we still appreciate potential, we think that you have a few years of experience working proffessionally with Flash development in a team.

At Videoplaza you will get to have a lot of fun. If you are talented, you will be in good company, working with some of the most skilled developers there is to find. We are all young and brilliant and we don’t fear to build a multinational business.

So if you think that you might be the person pictured above, please head over to the join us page and then drop us an email.

If you aren’t the person we’re looking for, perhaps you know him/her? Please help us out by spreading the word.

TV4’s new free ad funded catch-up service TV4 Replay is up and running, and so are campaigns from Sweden’s largest advertiser ICA, Ford, SAS and the Red Cross. The formats used are pre- and midrolls (our iRolls), overlays and companion banners.

The launch has been rather good to us and Murphy hasn’t shown up, yet.

Try the service here (only when in Sweden) or the screen cast here. All feedback is appreciated, either as a comment below or by email.

I’m honored to finally offically present to you three new carefully chosen people joining the Videoplaza team. They will all help Videoplaza with the usual stuff non-execs do – sharing their expertise, opening up their network and asking the right questions.

Joining our board is Rolf Skoglund, the guy setting up Microsoft’s fourth out-of-US office in the Nordics in 1985. Rolf is the kind of person you immediately like as he is very humble and has both feet on the ground. Rolf will be the “old wise guy” (sorry Rolf, I mean old as in experienced :) ) on the board as he’s been around for a while.

We also have two senior advisors joining us, Andy Chen, who is VP of Digital Solutions at Viacom International / MTV Europe and Joakim Jardenberg who among many things heads up the joint venture between 5 print media houses, Mindpark.

Worth to mention is that all of our non-execs are also investors and stake holders in the company.

More about our non-execs here.