Hey guys, Rudy here. It’s been a little over two years since Techstars Cloud Demo Day 2016. Since we stood on that stage, we’ve rolled out tons of product upgrades, feature releases, and seen tremendous team growth, and I am extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished in the past two years.
I really think we need to create a timeline of the major milestones and accomplishments we’ve conquered thus far on this journey. This will make it extremely easy for screenplay adaptation for the Switchboard Live movie.
Anyhoo… One particular tidbit that we learned and also implemented while in program is the importance of staying laser focus while achieving short-term goals created. These goals (aka big rocks) should be focused on moving the needle for a specific time period; ie on a week by week basis. We would have weekly meetings to present the changes of our goals in front of the entire cohort to chat about the “big rocks” for the company the roadblocks and what we plan to accomplish in the upcoming week.
We need to get back into this rhythm again; holding team members accountable for the goals and tasks that they set and re implementing a system to celebrate the mini weekly wins. In the game of startup up there are tons of ups and downs and you need all of the wins you can get 😉
I’ll be sitting on the alumni panel at the upcoming Techstars Roadshow: An Evening With Techstars and Friends in Philadelphia — rescheduled for Wednesday, March 28th thanks to the snow *shakes fist at clouds* — and I hope to see you all there!
_ Here’s footage from our presentation at Techstars Cloud Demo Day 2016, complete with a transcript for those who don’t want to turn on the audio and enjoy the scintillating sound of my voice._
https://www.youtube.com/embed/sFJnlZGVTAM
Hey guys. My name is Rudy Ellis, and I’m the CEO and co-founder of Switchboard Live, and we built the world’s first live audience network for streaming. I’m not here to talk about another app like Meerkat or Periscope, or even the next YouTube. I’m here to talk about an opportunity in the projected $100B market that these apps and platforms have created – something no one’s tapped into until now.
2015 has already been called the start of a new live era, but as more apps, more platforms, more video channels come online, live audiences are becoming much more dispersed and fragmented, making it extremely difficult and expensive for brands and sponsors to reach viewers. See, this is where Switchboard Live comes in. We’ve developed the technology to power the world’s first live audience network. What that means is content creators can now tap into an audience that’s directly tailored to their brands and sponsorships.
The problem is, before Switchboard Live, a single live event can only be delivered to one channel at a single time at one moment. Content creators and producers had to rely on paid advertising and social media to cajole viewers into watching that single channel for a single moment or miss out on all the money and time that they spent.
With Switchboard Live, a single live event can coexist across hundreds of separate channels across multiple streaming platforms, live and in real time. To illustrate how effective this can be, here’s some data from one of our clients, Dick Clark Productions, and their event The Streamys, an award show for famous people on the internet. Despite best efforts to drive viewers to the show, traditional promotional efforts only delivered an estimated 77,000 viewers to The Streamys homepage. But, in contrast, utilizing Switchboard Live’s unique distribution strategy, we syndicated that same event across multiple high-volume channels and video platforms, delivering an additional 480,000 viewers with minimum effort.
All in all, Switchboard Live outperformed traditional promotion efforts nearly 7 to 1, with an increased revenue for that event, and directly translated into higher sponsorship values and greater exposure for their brands. Best of all, we’re just scratching the surface of what we can do here. Over the past 15 months, we’ve built nearly $90,000 across an array of enterprise clients. From Monster Energy to TedX to the Pope’s visit with Congress, brands and organizations are realizing higher returns with Switchboard Live.
Interesting tidbit before we move on: Techstars, in partnership with Rackspace, is currently using Switchboard Live to stream Demo Day across the entire Techstars network – live – as we speak.
Hey mom!
It doesn’t stop there. We’re constantly evolving the Switchboard Live live audience network. Our current road map includes the development of a highly scalable, self-service online marketplace that will allow content creators direct access to live audiences specifically tailored to their budget and brand demographics. With Switchboard Live, I get an audience that’s 10 times bigger and 10 times more targeted than I had in the past, and I get to charge a premium for sponsorship because I’m delivering that audience at scale.
Our team is made up of some live video and software development experts, and we’re working with some of the top minds in the live video cells and experiential marketing space. If you’re as excited as I am, and know as we are, that we’ve indeed entered into a live era, then it’s clear that Switchboard Live is uniquely positioned to allow content creators everywhere to tap into the full potential of the live experience.
If you’d like to learn more, please visit our demo table in the back. My name is Rudy, and this is Switchboard Live – the world’s first live audience for streaming. Thank you.
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