From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 1:24 AM
To: Fulltime@metatv.com
Subject: Capt Midnight: MetaTV Leads a Misleading Fishy Event
Report from Red Herring NDA 2000
Monday and Tuesday 10/30-10/31
We closed out a very busy October at the exclusive Red Herring NDA 2000 event where MetaTV was invited to exhibit (one of 20 companies in an invite only list) and Andrew L was invited to speak on a panel (one of only 5 panels over the course of the 2 days).
By the way, in case you didn’t know, Red Herring (apart from being a famous mag) is the term for the glossy IPO prospectus that is distributed when a company files for IPO. It’s a rather ironic term given that “Red Herring” literally means “misleading or a distraction from the actual fact”. Ironic until you realize that an IPO prospectus these days is worded so cautiously (because companies are worried about being sued for misleading investors) that it literally contains mostly all the reasons why “you shouldn’t invest in a company”.
Anyway back to the event. This was the perfect plaice for a conference. We had our exhibit set up proudly once again demoing our award winning E! Online syndication. Talking up a storm about our value proposition, we were very well received by all that came by (the attendee list ranged from high powered investors (Salmon Smith Barney was represented) to VP’s and CEO’s of new and established high technology firms). In fact, we repeatedly heard “oh you guys are so well positioned, are you the sole provider in this space?” and “wow you are really far along with your technology”. Amusingly enough, one of the funniest moments came yesterday when an attendee noticed our Etrade syndicated PowerPoint screen shot. His reaction was “Oh my God! Is that live? The NASDAQ is way up! I thought it was down today.”
Yes, not only do we have the power to transform eBusinesses from the Web to iTV, we are also able to move the major equity markets with an old snapshot of the indices, for the halibut, when times were a little more euphoric than they are now.
Most of the other exhibiting companies were not as far along as we were, they were literally looking to hook up with some funding. The exception being Fusion One, who announced that they had raised capital to the tuna $80M at the conference.
All was not sardines and cream however, there were attendees that came over to debate the merits of iTV and to cast their doubts as to whether it would take off in the manner that was being forecasted. All this lead to quite a bit of good natured verbal jousting and da baiting (ever see Bob Barker take on Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore? Rent the movie and you’ll see what I mean). That segue leads me perfectly to the main event, Andrew L’s panel session.
On the panel was a senior VP of Programming for Yahoo Vision, a senior writer at Red Herring who wrote an article on “Maybe the TV’s should just stay Dumb” – Aug 2000 issue, which basically took the position of casting doubts about the future of iTV. A consultant from Booz Hamilton, a representative from Web TV and a very influential VC from East-West Partners.
The panel was moderated by the founder and CEO of Red Herring himself Tony Perkins.
The panel was titled “The Anti-trend, why convergence of appliances are destined to fail in 2001”. In essence, the topic was one that aimed to evoke discussion about whether or not iTV would be a reality.
Without going into excruciating detail, I sat in the front roe to witness the lively discussion on the topic. Andrew was really able to bring out MetaTV’s position (having to be subtle as no pitching was allowed) while at the same time engaging the topic at hand. Some of the key discussion points were:
1) Who owns the revenue model
2) What will be the level of consumer adoption
3) Content suppliers are just not going to receive VC funding, infrastructure and technology plays are much more compelling
4) The winners are the ones who can distribute their content in a platform agnostic fashion
5) The advent of DVR/PVR will require that advertising paradigms change as the notion of prime time goes out the window
6) Consumers will gravitate to iTV applications without even knowing that they are iTV – EPG, Weather, enhanced Hamachi, VOD
7) It would be a mistake for Hollywood to create content for distribution in a PC medium, but would be compelling for delivery in an enhanced TV medium
8) What can be deployed today and how will it scale
and so forth …
Through all of this, our ability to be adaptive to platforms and consumer preferences matched perfectly to the overall conclusion of the panel. Which continues to be, lots of opinions/debates on whether or not iTV will take off and which technologies will prevail. But 2 things are clear:
1) you need to be in the game with a porpose
2) you need to be flexible and be able to change your strategy/tactics or even change the game entirely at a moments notice to succeed.
At MetaTV we of course do both, and a whole lot more.
No one could ever accuse us of being “a fish out of water” (extra credit if you found all the named fish (and mammals) in this Capt Midnight).
That’s it for now, till next time
Capt. Long John Silver
=Repeated post with fish, mammals and marine terms highlighted in Blue
From: Ramon Chen
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2000 1:24 AM
To: Fulltime@metatv.com
Subject: Capt Midnight: MetaTV Leads a Misleading Fishy Event
Report from Red Herring NDA 2000
Monday and Tuesday 10/30-10/31
We closed out a very busy October at the exclusive Red Herring NDA 2000 event where MetaTV was invited to exhibit (one of 20 companies in an invite only list) and Andrew L was invited to speak on a panel (one of only 5 panels over the course of the 2 days).
By the way, in case you didn’t know, Red Herring (apart from being a famous mag) is the term for the glossy IPO prospectus that is distributed when a company files for IPO. It’s a rather ironic term given that “Red Herring” literally means “misleading or a distraction from the actual fact”. Ironic until you realize that an IPO prospectus these days is worded so cautiously (because companies are worried about being sued for misleading investors) that it literally contains mostly all the reasons why “you shouldn’t invest in a company”.
Anyway back to the event. This was the perfect plaice for a conference. We had our exhibit set up proudly once again demoing our award winning E! Online syndication. Talking up a storm about our value proposition, we were very well received by all that came by (the attendee list ranged from high powered investors (Salmon Smith Barney was represented) to VP’s and CEO’s of new and established high technology firms). In fact, we repeatedly heard “oh you guys are so well positioned, are you the sole provider in this space?” and “wow you are really far along with your technology”. Amusingly enough, one of the funniest moments came yesterday when an attendee noticed our Etrade syndicated PowerPoint screen shot. His reaction was “Oh my God! Is that live? The NASDAQ is way up! I thought it was down today.”
Yes, not only do we have the power to transform eBusinesses from the Web to iTV, we are also able to move the major equity markets with an old snapshot of the indices, for the halibut, when times were a little more euphoric than they are now.
Most of the other exhibiting companies were not as far along as we were, they were literally looking to hook up with some funding. The exception being Fusion One, who announced that they had raised capital to the tuna $80M at the conference.
All was not sardines and cream however, there were attendees that came over to debate the merits of iTV and to cast their doubts as to whether it would take off in the manner that was being forecasted. All this lead to quite a bit of good natured verbal jousting and da baiting (ever see Bob Barker take on Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore? Rent the movie and you’ll see what I mean). That segue leads me perfectly to the main event, Andrew L’s panel session.
On the panel was a senior VP of Programming for Yahoo Vision, a senior writer at Red Herring who wrote an article on “Maybe the TV’s should just stay Dumb” – Aug 2000 issue, which basically took the position of casting doubts about the future of iTV. A consultant from Booz Hamilton, a representative from Web TV and a very influential VC from East-West Partners.
The panel was moderated by the founder and CEO of Red Herring himself Tony Perkins.
The panel was titled “The Anti-trend, why convergence of appliances are destined to fail in 2001”. In essence, the topic was one that aimed to evoke discussion about whether or not iTV would be a reality.
Without going into excruciating detail, I sat in the front roe to witness the lively discussion on the topic. Andrew was really able to bring out MetaTV’s position (having to be subtle as no pitching was allowed) while at the same time engaging the topic at hand. Some of the key discussion points were:
1) Who owns the revenue model
2) What will be the level of consumer adoption
3) Content suppliers are just not going to receive VC funding, infrastructure and technology plays are much more compelling
4) The winners are the ones who can distribute their content in a platform agnostic fashion
5) The advent of DVR/PVR will require that advertising paradigms change as the notion of prime time goes out the window
6) Consumers will gravitate to iTV applications without even knowing that they are iTV – EPG, Weather, enhanced Hamachi, VOD
7) It would be a mistake for Hollywood to create content for distribution in a PC medium, but would be compelling for delivery in an enhanced TV medium
8) What can be deployed today and how will it scale
and so forth …
Through all of this, our ability to be adaptive to platforms and consumer preferences matched perfectly to the overall conclusion of the panel. Which continues to be, lots of opinions/debates on whether or not iTV will take off and which technologies will prevail. But 2 things are clear:
1) you need to be in the game with a porpose
2) you need to be flexible and be able to change your strategy/tactics or even change the game entirely at a moments notice to succeed.
At MetaTV we of course do both, and a whole lot more.
No one could ever accuse us of being “a fish out of water” (extra credit if you found all the named fish (and mammals) in this Capt Midnight).
That’s it for now, till next time
Capt. Long John Silver