Sam Sethi is an entrepreneur, technologist (entrepologist) and consultant. Sam has worked in the IT industry for over 15 years for companies like Microsoft (strategy director in MSN UK ), Netscape, Gateway Computers and CMGi, in a variety of senior technical and marketing roles. Most recently Sam has been charged with setting up TechCrunch UK.
I’m interviewing Sam this Wednesday morning (30th Aug 2006) for a PodLeaders podcast. We will be talking about TechCrunch, the Live Web (Web 2.0) and anything else that may arise in the questions!
As always, if you have questions you’d like me to put to him, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll put them to him.
Episode 43 of the PodLeaders show - 35 mins 18 secs
My guest on the show this week is Mike Hudack. Mike is the founder and CEO of video sharing site Blip.tv. Blip.tv seems to be getting rave reviews all over the blogosphere so having tried it and giving it the thumbs up myself I was keen to talk to Mike to learn more about him and about Blip.tv.
Here are the questions I asked Mike and the times I asked them:
Where does the name Hudack come from Mike? - 0:44
Apart from the Ukranian background Mike, tell us a bit about yourself… - 01:08
Tell us about Blip.tv, what is it? - 01:57
And what kind of numbers of people do you have uploading content onto Blip.tv? - 02:47
You mention YouTube, how do you account for their success? - 03:07
You have got to be worried about people uploading copyrighted content onto Blip.tv, how do you guard against that? - 04:21
What kind of monetisation model are you going after with Blip.tv? - 05:42
The CNN Exchange site allows citizen Journalists to upload video directly to CNN - is that how it works? - 06:55
And that’s using Blip.tv’s white-labelled software? - 07:43
I notice there is a section in the Blip.tv site for Pro accounts but it is, as yet, inactive. Is this something which is coming down the line? - 07:47
And do you have price points in mind yet? - 09:30
We talked briefly about the CNN deal. How did it come about? Did you approach them? Did they approach you? What was the story behind it? - 09:47
Do you see video podcasts overtaking audio podcasts in the next 6 months? - 10:20
First we had uploading of text, then images, then audio, now video - where is this going next? - 12:42
His terms and conditions grant “Blip.tv a license to distribute that content, either electronically or via other media, to users seeking to download it through the Blip.tv site or for purposes of other services provided by Blip.tv and to display such content on Blip.tv affiliated sites.�
Why not leave it at “a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish such Content solely for the purpose of providing the Service.� as current TOS frontrunner VideoEgg do?
Or what nonelectronic means of distribution are in the pipeline- video flipbooks? - 16:19
Please ask him what he thinks about moves by some of the larger telcos to try to create a two tier internet, despite the punter paying for net access. How will this affect services like his and his competitiors. Can they realistically afford to pay for QOS guarantees?? Would they even want to? - 20:23
How do you sell this idea to my mother as someone who knows what a computer is but can’t use it and may never. She has a TV with an on button and a remote. Does Blip.TV see her as a consumer or a content producer? Or is it too late for her generation/demographic? - 22:20
My questions again:
Is the convergence of video blogging with IPTV something you see coming soon? - 25:16
Are IPTV set-top boxes becoming more common? - 25:31
Is the ease with which people can now create and upload video now becoming a nightmare scenario for you in terms of disk and bandwidth? - 26:48
Is there a single standard file format emerging in video, the way mp3 has become the standard in audio? - 29:24
And finally, with the increase in video production do you see the ‘tubes’ becoming clogged? - 34:04
Episode 42 of the PodLeaders show - 30 mins 30 secs
My guest on the show this week is Mike McDerment. Mike is the CEO of FreshBooks. FreshBooks is a hosted invoicing application. I was interested to talk to Mike because of the growing acceptance of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model in the last year or so. Also, FreshBooks was of particular to me because of the perceived conservatism of accountants - I was curious to see how an online accounting application was faring in this space.
With 70,000 clients, they seem to be doing quite alright!
Here are the questions I asked Mike and the times in the interview I asked them:
Michael, welcome to the show. Before we get into FreshBooks, can you tell me a bit about yourself, what is your own background? - 0:37
So, FreshBooks is an online invoicing application? - 01:20
So that helps companies bill for their services? - 02:07
What kind of pricing are we talking about, is it going to cost me an arm and a leg? - 02:24
How is FreshBooks going to save me time? - 03:50
The people receiving the invoices, do they receive them by email? - 06:58
The person receiving the invoice, can they pay that invoice online through FreshBooks or do they have to go and cut a cheque? - 08:49
So if the client pays online, is the invoice automatically marked as paid? - 09:48
Do you only do billing, or do you handle expenses as well? - 10:17
How many clients do you have? - 11:29
What kind of geographic spread do they have? - 11:45
Do your users report any difference in their experience of the application depending on where they are based? - 12:09
And is the application localised for your users in other countries or is it all in English? - 13:03
Do you come across issues with different legislation in different countries (21%vat in Ireland vs. 17% in Spain, for example)? - 13:26
Are people happy to hand over their client details and their confidential information to a 3rd party? - 14:54
Recently we saw that MySpace was down due to power issues. How are you ensuring that FreshBooks doesn’t run into similar problems? - 16:59
The other side of that is that if my local telco loses Internet connectivity, I lose access to FreshBooks - 18:38
What kind of automation have you built into the system; is it possible to automate the export of my data, for example? - 19:59
Are there email or RSS notifications built into the system to alert me to invoice status changes, for example? - 22:21
What kind of API’s do you have available to clients for integration - 24:15
What kind of reporting systems do you have? - 25:13
Is there much competition in this space? - 26:27
Finally, where do you see the SaaS space going in the next few years? - 27:33
Is it not a bit scary for people yielding up control of their data? - 29:06
Episode 41 of the PodLeaders show - 15 mins 40 secs
This podcast is slightly different from the usual PodLeaders shows. It is shorter and the intro and outro music is not the usual. This is because this interview was done in conjunction with the IT@Cork members podcasts and is being cross-posted there. My guest on the show this week is Danny McLaughlin - Danny is the CEO of BT Ireland.
Danny and I had a fascinating discussion on BT Ireland, VOIP and the (lack of) broadband in Ireland.
Here are all the questions I asked Danny along with their times during the interview:
Welcome to the show.
Danny, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be Chief Exec of BT Ireland? - 0:24
I didn’t realise BT had operations in France and the US… - 1:03
What do BT do in Ireland? - 1:25
How long have you been the chief executive of BT Ireland? - 2:33
And how are you liking it here in Ireland? - 2:42
Where does BT Ireland lie in the Irish telecoms market? - 3:15
Dell has started blogging recently to address negative press and I notice BT UK are getting into blogs, are BT Ireland going to get into blogging/podcasting as well? - 4:01
Is voip affecting the telecoms sector negatively for voice traffic? - 5:09
And are programs like Skype affecting your network traffic given that they are peer to peer applications? - 6:19
Looking at the OECD figures, Ireland ranks very poorly when it comes to broadband both in terms of availability and price - what would you put that down to? - 6:54
I have heard COMREG referred to as a toothless tiger - they haven’t taken a case against any of the telcos yet and they have been in place quite a while now. Do you think they could be given more teeth to take people to task? - 8:01
Recently you guys walked away from the local loop unbundling discussions and that seems to have given them the reboot that was needed. Would you agree with that statement? - 9:10
Staying on the LLU theme, the BT LLU offering seems quite poor compared to the 6mb and 12mb offers from the likes of Smart and Magnet, and in the UK BSkyB will now be offering 16mb. What are BT Irelands plans for their LLU products? When are you going to start using ADSL2+? - 10:22
What do you see coming down the line in the next 2/3 years which will significantly affect the telecoms industry in Ireland? - 12:23
And finally, why did BT Ireland join IT@Cork? What benefits are you seeing from membership? - 14:26
Oops - I have just realised Danny’s surname is McLaughlin not McLoughlin as I have in the title here. I don’t want to change the post title for fear of breaking links to the post so I’m correcting it in the article and adding this notice.
After producing 40 PodLeaders episodes, I am curious to know who you, the listeners, are. Also, I am investigating trying to monetise this venture somewhat!
PodTrac is a company which connects podcasters to advertisers so I am trying to determine the audience profile to see if this site is suitable for advertising - if you are familiar with my blog, you will know that I don’t go overboard with advertising. Nor will I here.
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Mike Hudack is the founder and the CEO of video sharing service blip.tv which I reviewed here.
I’m interviewing Mike this Monday (7th Aug 2006) evening for a podcast. We will be talking about blip.tv, the video sharing space in general blip.tv’s recent CNN deal, digital media in general and anything else that may arise in the questions!
As always, if you have questions you’d like me to put to him, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll put them to him.