PEZ Dispenser, anyone?

As the legend goes, eBay started when one young man wanted to impress his fiancée, a PEZ collector. When he couldn’t find any through traditional means, he launched the idea that became eBay in 1995. What do PEZ dispensers and the New Hampshire High Tech Council’s Entrepreneur Forum have in common? It was the “sizzle vs. steak” panel discussion about our two recent presentations from iPlayerHD and Securlytics. It turns out, you need a savory balance of both! (Steak and sizzle, that is.) And a ground breaking idea.

iPlayerHD’s goal is to corner the market as the most affordable high definition video publishing platform. Unlike others, iPlayerHD’s strength is their high fidelity, clear, crisp video quality at high bit rates. They provide uninterrupted video content without the trailer ads, pop-ups, and other branded messages that can distract the viewer from the intended message. iPlayerHD’s competitive edge is huge storage (30 GB) capacity, and high bandwidth (40 GB) at an affordable monthly recurring fee. With video, the quality is correlates to the “broadcasters” horsepower. If you’re watching from a souped-up computer and the video is being broadcast from a bow-wow, the video quality will look fuzzy and unprofessional. The trick is to broadcast with as much horsepower as you can muster for close-to-TV quality. For $ 30 per month, you can broadcast away, and video is the number one content type that SEO tools look for to stoke your inbound marketing campaign.

iPlayerHD was founded by Wes Moore, serial entrepreneur and inventor. His presentation was robust, well architected, and masterfully delivered within the fifteen minute time frame. No doubt he’s the guy to make this happen, he’s the type of CEO you can imagine on the morning news in Studio One delivering the goods without skipping a beat. Wes is Sampson fighting Goliath, YouTube. Can he do it? His premise is that YouTube takes you elsewhere and when you’re trying to sell something from your web-site. Ideally you want people to stay on your site and not deviate into YouTube land keeping your message and your content pure and focused.

For the evening, our distinguished panel for both presentations was Edward Bender, Special Ops, Dyn Inc., David Cutler, President of Creative Business Development, and Bill McCullen, Director for LaunchCapital in Boston. The panel’s comments started with David Cutler who immediately made the steak vs. sizzle analogy. He advised that iPlayerHD needs lots of sizzle (marketing) on their rock solid steak. He also said, “the only way to go is up”, meaning that customers are willing to pay for the right combination of features at a low cost without the overhead of features they don’t want. David’s advice was to find a tribe of passionate people, such as recording artists, who will create pull though demand. (Oh, by the way, it runs on iPlayerHD.)

Bill McCullen made the point that if price is the only differentiator, then iPlayerHD could “own the industry”. Wes presented a nice, neat competitive analysis grid that demonstrated that his plan vetted not just YouTube, but others charging for this service and providing various iterations of quality, bandwidth, and add-ons. Bill added that he loves to see bootstrapped companies who are making it happen and gaining market share before asking for investment. This demonstrates traction (customers) and revenue (or proof) that the concept is functioning and viable. Cha ching.

Ed Bender of Dyn made the suggestion to plug into platforms such as WordPress to become the ubiquitous HD platform of choice. The masses will follow, particularly if you grab the mobile market, hmm. Ed, who recently moved to New Hampshire from New York City and joined DYN, had the brilliant suggestion to hook your star to a strategic VC firm. Here the cross pollination of strategy, best practices, and doing what works will buzz from firm to firm in the portfolio to iPlayerHD. Safety in numbers, perhaps or is it a rising tide mentality? We’re glad Ed’s back in New Hampshire. I like his brain.

The second presenter for the evening was Mr. Vasu Ram, CEO for Securlytics, a firm specializing in securing IP content. According to IDC this year, “electronic content will grow 44 times in volume and 67 times in file count by 2020.” Content is vulnerable to hackers who can destroy a business or threaten to take down a government agency. Securlytics’ Lytica™ Framework provides usage analytics, security, and access control to secure, share, and track your content no matter what file type or format. This platform also tracks who is using the content and for what purpose. Their initial target application is eLearning and testing where more remote education and testing are happening. With accreditation, eLearning is susceptible to audits due to unethical behavior. Securlytics’ Lytica™ can provide an audit trail that could solve potential student issues and revenue losses for an education provider. Just this year, Cornell University reported that, “failing to secure content reduces Major eTraining Company’s Revenue by $2.8M”. The eLearning market alone is projected at $ 520 million and growing at 12% per year, this is a logical place to focus.

Securlytics came to the presentation with a question to solve, to attack vertical markets serially or in parallel and then to raise between $ 1 – 5 million depending on the strategy. From the panel, Ed Bender of Dyn questioned if eLearning is the market to focus on when you have other opportunities like government, legal, scientific research and pharmaceuticals. He also suggested that rather than trying to sell to data storage companies such as EMC as a customer, that this offering should be packaged as an OEM offering with EMC’s products.

Bill McCullen suggested that the marketing should be all about scaring prospects into investing in this service. This can be done through education, statistics, and very dynamic marketing programs. He also recommended that requesting $ 5 million in investment might be better after they have built the product and have a portfolio of customers. Bill said, “create smaller milestones, and nail them” to show investors measurable success.

David Cutler noted, “it’s all steak” without the sizzle. His advice was to better define sales channels, clarify differentiators, and then come up with a sizzling scary story that goes viral. For example, diplomas are being sold on Craig’s List because your university’s eLearning program has been hacked. Can you imagine the video? Priceless!

For iPlayerHD, I mentioned to Wes that the “i” in the name was genius. He can ride the coat tails of you know who. In fact, maybe these are just the people he should be talking to. Securlytics needs to attach itself to a killer app, like patient records, to become a defacto standard.

Just remember, when these guys are all over the Wall Street Journal, you saw them here first! It was another fun and educational night at the now NHHTC Entrepreneur Forum, same great people, just a different show. Will you join us in February for our next Entrepreneurial Forum? Join us, bring a friend, or make a new one. And don’t forget your PEZ dispenser. See you then!