The Exchanges

Q How expensive was, as an average sizzle reel today, three to four minutes long?

A Uh, we were spending probably 50 to 60 grand every time we were creating a sizzle at minimum. And the budgets were outrageous. I mean, and this was actually bootstrapped, right? So they'd spend considerably more sometimes. I think actually leveraging technology now, um, leveraging relationships, a lot of people get into it at different price points, which you're seeing in the content that's being created now digitally. Uh, but at the time, these guys were trying to create high quality production sizzles. To pitch to these networks, but they were getting, the door slammed on them. So I got integrally involved in the operational side. Once I realized that they were trying to, they were hemorrhaging a lot of money and we weren't getting any sort of, um, Any sort of road or pathway to any of this happening.

AI assessment note: “we were spending probably 50 to 60 grand every time we were creating a sizzle”

Q Yeah. Well, so JP, how is this? I mean, the closest thing I can think of Right now is something like Patreon. People who create videos will gate videos there, and their subscribers can pay a monthly fee to watch video, or they can pay per video, etc. How are you different from that?

A Yeah, Patreon is a great crowdsource mechanism, um, tipping donations and actually prepaying for, for publications. That's one piece of it, right? Which is one piece. With us, we have a flexible monetization system because not all content is monetized equally. You can monetize it with ad revenues, so you can get free content. You can monetize it with VOD or pay-per-view, right? Rentals, downloads. You can monetize it with SVOD, which is subscription-based revenues. If you're a large enough network or broadcaster, That you have multiple channels and multiple pieces of content, and then you can use the crowdsource approach to tipping and donations. So where we're different in a lot of people is the tools that you get, number one, to package your content. The distribution platform that we put together, which is going to be streaming as one umbrella ecosystem and all of the different monetization and marketing promotional tools that you get. And in addition to that, the supportive services the company will do from branded entertainment, product placement, um, revenue analysis, and working with our publishing partners to maximize their revenue potential.

AI assessment note: “So where we're different in a lot of people is the tools that you get”

Q people are going to listen to this, especially if they're watching the YouTube version, and they're going to like you because you seem like a cool dude, and they're going to go, why, why, why has he spent so much, even if you're wealthy as hell, why has he spent so much money before driving his first dollar in revenue? I mean, why can't you pre-sell this kind of thing?

A Um, we could, we looked at that model as well, right? So even if we pre-sold it, which means we'd have to charge the publishers something up front, um, and the entire company's mission was to create a disruptive system. We know that the money is going to come once we develop something that creates a new content category into a market, number one, and number two, really for the first time favors the publishers. I keep saying that because the whole focus of the company having gone through this rite of passage Haven't been involved in the industry for a number of years. Haven't seen what's being done. Creators don't have an opportunity to do what they love, which is actually create content for the rest of their lives. Most of them are not business savvy. So they ended up, they end up giving away entitlements and ownership and control of the pie to every intermediary that comes to takes. And a lot of times it's exploited, right?

AI assessment note: “So even if we pre-sold it, which means we'd have to charge the publishers”

Q Do it for me. Like, what are you quantifying? What are you measuring? Is like minutes, watch number of publishers you project. They're going to be using you. I mean, what is it?

A Yeah. Well, we have a duplication model. So simply put, we have a self-managed system. That's an invite only. Then we have a hierarchical structure in that, that we can power multiple different levels of publishers. So we can power anyone from a channel influencer all the way up to a broadcaster that owns a broadcast that bundles networks, that bundles channels, that bundles content, right? So within that hierarchical structure, we could power multiple levels of businesses. Within each level of business, we have some revenue analysis on each type of publisher level, and what they mean in terms of a, uh, a revenue potential, uh, return, or sorry, sorry, a revenue potential to the company. So we've taken that analysis and built a financial model based on that, and then it becomes purely a duplication model at that point.

AI assessment note: “we have some revenue analysis on each type of publisher level”

Q What is, what's the prize they're going after? I mean, let's say this is a real get to an exec. They like it. What is the size of the offer that, that, that, that they're going to offer for a call at eight, an eight episode pilot?

A Yeah, you're, it's amazing. They have different tier budgets. Well, first and foremost, if you're a new filmmaker and you're trying to break into the industry, almost near impossible to actually get a deal. But assuming that you do get a deal because you have some sort of a leverage position, Then you get an override on the budget. I mean, that's it. You try to negotiate some back end, but most of those deals, the back ends are stripped out. So what you do is you try to package the content. You try to package all of the talent around the content so that you're managing the talent. So if the talents actually break out in year two and year three, you're getting a piece of that by managing them as well. So it's a whole actual package you put together and kind of a, a, a two year, a three year roadmap. But most of these guys try to break it, break into it. They give away most of their leverage position, uh, um, upfront because they're trying to get the credits, right? The EP credits to produce it.

AI assessment note: “They have different tier budgets... Then you get an override on the budget.”

Q So where does, where does Streamy come into all this? What's the company doing? How do you make money?

A Yeah, so essentially what we did is we realized through this path that we were trying to, um, to, we realized how tough it was To actually break into the industry on the traditional side. During that same process, we also realized that there was a heavy migration to digital, right? So things were moving towards digital. Um, this was around the same time Facebook was IPO, had its IPO, right? Um, so you were getting a lot of, of, of content that was picture driven, even on social media, video content was probably 30 to 40% of the overall content. Now it's 80% plus, right? People aren't even watching As many pictures as there, unless they're Instagram, but most of it is video-based content. So we saw this entire shift happening, but we saw that there were inherent problems with this shift happening, right? So even present today, a creator or a publisher that's actually trying to, um, develop content, to distribute content digitally still has to go through certain gatekeepers as they did on the traditional side. You know, the Netflix, the YouTubes, And all of these companies, whether they're on the user-generated side or a closed-end system like Netflix, most of these publishers and creators are still beholden to them in some capacity, right? You see YouTube stripping away.

AI assessment note: “we saw that there were inherent problems with this shift happening”