Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: disruption

Blowtorch Wants to Disrupt Hollywood (and there’s a Minnesota connection)

"The Hollywood distribution model doesn’t work for the 18 to 24 year old demographic," says Kim Garretson, a Minneapolis-based business development consultant for Blowtorch Entertainment, a new film production startup based in California.Kimgarretsonblowtorch
"They want entertainment content here, there, and everywhere, in bite-sized portions. And they want it before they go to the theater." 
This fickle demographic is looking to be entertained, and for authenticity, he says. 

Does disruption sound like a big undertaking? Well, Blowtorch just announced $50 million in funding, so we can assume they’re serious. Garretson, a longtime Twin Cities startup veteran and business development whiz, left Best Buy last year, where he was a liaison to the venture capital community. Since then, he’s been quietly working in the Valley VC world, helping VCs vet deals and advising portfolio companies on distribution strategies. Garretson and a former business partner, Kelly Rodriques, went back into business together finding funding for early-stage deals. Then the Blowtorch deal came along. In addition to his involvement with the new company, Kim is currently finishing a business plan for a top Hollywood actor’s film company.

Rodrigues, who’s based in the Bay Area, recently became an entertainment and media industry venture partner for Seattle-based Ignition Partners. Last week, he announced the $50M first round for Blowtorch from Ignition and hedge funds, and now is well into launching the firm, where he’s taken on the CEO role. With his long background teaming with Garretson, he naturally turned to him as a business development adviser. "Blowtorch is disrupting the traditional Hollywood studio and distribution model for feature films targeting the college crowd," said Garretson. "Six feature films will be produced over the next 18 months, released as party-like events near the top 200 college campuses."

BlowtorchlogoThe company says its editorial vision is to "balance professional-grade
production with user participation to create a consistently engaging
experience." That will include full-length films,
professional-grade shorts, an online community, mobile offerings, and
live events. Blowtorch has assembled a diverse team of executives from
the entertainment, marketing, and technology industries with
expertise creating media for young adults. (This list is impressive — see the details here in the news release.)

The Secret Sauce: Getting Brands Involved
But the really interesting part of this whole thing, from a marketing standpoint, is how big advertisers will play in it. It should be no surprise that product placement and sponsorship by big brands is part of the plan here, especially when you look at the backgrounds of the management team and board. "We have set out to build a media company that delivers a consistently compelling experience that will lead to stronger engagement across all the channels our audience uses everyday," said CEO Rodrigues, "And we are confident we have found meaningful ways for marketers to be a part of this experience."  Garretson’s role in business development, he tells me, will be going after some of those deals with big brands.

On the user-gen side of the equation, the company has announced a contest called "The Blowtorch Short Film Big Screen Challenge."  BlowtorchcontestHere are the rules, short and sweet: "Submit a video of your best short film idea. The theme can be anything at all related to “TECHNOLOGY.”
Internet dating, killer robot vacuums, used time machine salesmen…whatever. Remember, it’s all about the idea, not how you shoot it. So, a video camera
is great, but a web-cam works too.
Shoot it, pitch it, just get your idea out there. If yours wins, we’ll fly
you out to LA to produce it for real.
Submit as many as you like, just keep them under 3 minutes."

By the way, funding like Blowtorch’s gets you some good PR, too. Check out the coverage that just magically 🙂 popped up in The Washington Post, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter….oh, and couple other rags you may have heard of: TechCrunch and PaidContent. Amazing what real marketing budgets can do, isn’t it?  And if you’re wondering what the budget will be to promote the films, I learned it’s $3 milllion — per film.

So, there you have it, gang. I keep telling you Twin Cities startup folks are into some interesting deals!
Just leave it to me, your trusty, intrepid bi-coastal reporter (left
coast and third coast), to fill you in on these Minnesota-California
connections (read: real money). I got more, too, so stay tuned….

UPDATE (12/29/07):  I love the fact that I got to this story before Fortune Magazine did.

Jeremy Allaire: Minnesota Boy Makes Good (Very Good)

I hooked up with Jeremy via email in advance of PC Forum, and asked him if he’d like to do a little interview at the event for my blog, which of course includes lots of readers back in the Twin Cities. And he quickly responded via Blackberry that he’d be happy to. Which I really appreciated, considering how Brightcove344x69 popular this guy is now with his hot, new startup, Brightcove. Jeremy and his company even had a major feature on page 1A of the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. So, despite being very busy at PC Forum (including as a panelist — see my previous post on business models), he graciously agreed to spend time chatting with me. What’s more, he had to endure several email attempts by me to hook up with him at the conference (thanks Jeremy!). Hey, it wasn’t easy finding a specific person in a group of 450, especially with things spread out over a large property like LaCosta.

It’s hard to believe it will be 10 years this fall that Jeremy and his brother J.J. — just a couple of years out of Macalester College in St. Paul — plus the 25 or so young employees that were then part of Allaire Corp., picked up and moved the company, lock, stock, and barrel, to Cambridge, MA, at their VC’s suggestion. (That was after first considering but passing on Silicon Valley.) Thus began the legendary status of Allaire Corp. around our neck of the woods as the Web 1.0 company that got away — but one that made it very, very big in the process. The company grew to some 450 employees before being acquired for something north of $350 million by Macromedia, where Jeremy then served as CTO for three years (commuting from Boston to San Francisco, which he admits got old).

The move worked well for the company and the two Allaire brothers, Jeremy told me. Both took a strong liking to Cambridge and settled in, got married, and now have two kids each. I asked Jeremy of he ever gets back to visit his parents in Winona, MN. He said not often, but that he sees them regulary at another house they now have in the Boston area.

I also had to ask about the latest big development for J.J. — the acquisition of his startup, Onfolio, by Microsoft. (J.J. was originally scheduled to be at PC Forum and I’d planned to interview him as well, But, alas, he had to cancel due to obligations associated with the acquisition.) Jeremy told me it was a big win for J.J., for a company that he had just self-funded over the past few years. (After Allaire Corp. was acquired, Jeremy said the two didn’t really consider teaming up again in a new business, though they remain close personally — simply because they had different interests.) All six employees of Onfolio, including J.J., are now doing yet another big move — this time to Redmond. How does J.J. feel about that, I asked? “He’s really excited about it,” said Jeremy. First Ray Ozzie leaves Boston behind, now J.J…

Meantime, Jeremy, though he’s not planning to move himself anytime soon, is still quite the traveler, regularly shuttling between Brightcove’s home office in Cambridge and three others already set up: in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco (the cities that most of the major content producers and media companies call home, after all). He told me the company already has 50 employees and is heading to be double that soon.

What’s been the timeline of Brightcove’s short history to date? First, Jeremy told me, he incubated the idea at General Catalyst Partners in Boston for a year or so, after leaving Macromedia. He first presented the company and its planned business model at PC Forum in March 2005. From then through the fall, he and others at the firm began selectively getting the word out to key partners and content providers. That culminated with a presentation at the very well attended insider conference “Web 2.0” (sponsored by O’Reilly), which was held in San Francisco last fall. The company soon had a public debut via a story in the New York Times, which was then followed in February by the major front-page WSJ piece. (I asked Jeremy how he happened to choose his cracker-jack PR firm, SutherlandGold, based in San Francisco, and he said he met them at last year’s PC Forum! I had the opportunity to meet two of those folks at dinner one evening — Susan Cashen, formerly of TiVo, and Amy Janzen — where we shared some good conversation with my colleague Gary Bolles of Conferenza and Microcast Communications.)

So, fast forward, how is Brightcove sitting today? Very well indeed. Jeremy gave me a rundown: it already has 200 of what he calls “broadband channels” or content partners. And, since the company started what it called a “commercial preview” in November, for video producers, it has signed up 450 companies to date. It has 700 of its video “players” deployed, and it has 7000 titles already in its library. It also has an affiliate syndication program, and one client — Reuters — has 1000 affiliates signed up to date. With this Brightcove program for Reuters, any web site or blog can simply fill out a form, put some code into their web page, and become an instant video news broadcaster. (I plan to try it out myself!) Deals with other major media firms include the New York Times, and yet others are still in the works, including CBS (as touched on in the WSJ article) — though Jeremy had no new announcements he could tell me about quite yet.

My final question for Jeremy was this: What’s it like having Barry Diller on your board? “Oh, it’s great,” he said. “He’s a remarkably intelligent guy, with a strong strategic mind for online businesses. And he’s one of the most connected people on the planet.” Jeremy said it’s very rare for Diller’s firm, IAC/InterActiveCorp, to make minority investments, which they did on the case of Brightcove. They tend to only acquire companies outright. Diller sits on Brightcove’s board, which is also quite an achievement for the startup, since he only serves on two other boards: The Washington Post and Coca-Cola.

I closed by asking Jeremy about his management team, which he said is “tremendous.” It even includes one colleague from the early days of Allaire Corp., who was also a friend of his at Macalester College in St. Paul: Adam Berrey, now Brightcove’s VP of Marketing. Where was Jeremy off to next? San Francisco, he said, to keynote at the “VON” conference. And he was going to spend some time at his offices there as well, in addition to catching up with a guy I’ve since met who was employee #4 at Allaire Corp., Ben Cantlon. (Ben recently relocated back to Minneapolis but was visiting SF this week.)

Thanks for the interview, Jeremy, and best of luck as you continue disrupting the video distribution business!

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