Web Ink Now

Building and Funding Content Technology Companies

Yesterday I attended the SIIA Previews event in NYC. This is a forum for larger information companies and the VC community to have a chance to hear from a dozen or so new and interesting information and technology companies.

Ed Keating, who along with Larry Schwartz, President of Newstex produced the event, said he expects to do the event every year. "I like the notion that we have companies representing all parts of the value chain: Content creators, content distributors, & content protectors," Ed told me. Barry Graubart and John Blossom also blogged the event.

Joel Dreyfuss, Editor-in-Chief of Red Herring kicked off the event by describing the VC world now. "The mood is upbeat," Dreyfuss said. "Deals are happening. Money and ideas are flowing again. Now VC firms and other investors are investing at one third of the rate of 2000." According to Dreyfuss, the total VC investment (not just technology) was $25.75 billion in 2006 up 12% from 2005. "Where there’s money, there’s hope," he said.

Here are some of the more interesting companies (in my opinion) that presented at the event:

Decision Tree Media creates private-label web guides that drive qualified leads to sales channels. The service provides online education to teach people how to use complex products and is used by companies for lead generation. Create interactive guides for products like life insurance or long-term care insurance that then delivers an online offer that leads to an offline sales process. They say that leads close at twice the average of clients’ other lead sources. Traffic comes from Google search. Can plug in video testimonials too.

Generate, Inc. delivers real-time company intelligence with integrated social networking tools to deliver personalized information to business professionals. Generate G2 stands out as a tool for sales professionals and others who need to cultivate high level contacts. With an innovative combination of users’ own personal network of contacts, publicly available information, and premium news, the platform delivers the connections that drive business.

Eurekster empowers communities to own and refine site-based web search. The search and monetization platform enables the passion of community for customers in the social search and collaboration space.

Near-Time integrates a group weblog with wiki pages, team events and shared files in a hosted and secure collaborative environment. It helps people to collaborate and publish on the web and brings together web, intranet and extranet.

Pando Networks offers a free, simple to use application with an unprecedented underlying network architecture for rich-media content delivery. Growing by 30,000 installs a day this is a P2P network for transport of large (and huge) files.

RealTimeMatrix has pioneered break-through technology that enables anyone to get relevant content from the Web the instant it is published.

Attributor is creating a platform that provides transparency and accountability in online content use and licensing for the rapidly growing content economy.

In his keynote presentation, Fred Wilson, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures talked about Does Information Want to be Free? Wilson says that people and companies need to empower the advertising world about what we are interested in so we can receive targeted advertisements. When he said, "What is advertising?" Wilson answered his own question in exactly the way that I would: "The interruption model of advertising doesn't work."

It is interesting that many of the most interesting new companies (in my opinion) that are getting funded today are technologies for delivering marketing related content in welcome, non-interruption-based ways.

Cervélo Cycles and The New Rules of Marketing and PR

I'm a strong believer in "show, don't tell." While writing how-to ideas about The New Rules of Marketing and PR helps to illustrate the techniques of reaching your buyers directly, there's nothing like hearing from those who have been successful with the ideas that I evangelize.

This is the first in a series of case studies of successful uses of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. The best case studies will also appear in my book due out in late 2007. Watch this blog for many more case examples of reaching buyers directly with targeted messages.

Yes, the media is still important, but why not tell your story directly?

Gerard Vroomen will tell you that he is an engineer, not a marketer. He will tell you that the company he cofounded, Cervélo Cycles, does not have any marketing experts. But Vroomen is wrong. Why? He is obsessed with the buyers of his competition bikes and with the engineering-driven product he offers them. He's focused his company to help his customers win races—and they do; in the 2005 Tour de France, David Zabriskie rode the fastest time trial in TDF history on a Cervélo P3C at a speed of 54.676 kph (33.954 mph). Vroomen excels at using the web to tell cycling enthusiasts compelling stories, to educate them, to engage them in conversation, and to entertain them. Because he uses compelling web content in interesting ways and happens to sell a bunch of bikes in the process, Vroomen is a terrific marketer.

The Cervélo site includes detailed information about each model, bikes that can cost from $3,000 to $5,000 or more. An online museum showcases production models and interesting prototypes from the early days of the company. Competitive cycling enthusiasts can sign up for an email newsletter, download audio including interviews with the athletes, or check out the blog. Cervélo-sponsored Team CSC wins races, and you can follow the action on the Cervélo’s Team CSC pages, which include news and bike race photos. And Cervélo has launched Cervélo.tv, an online channel with product features, race reports, and cycling celebrity interviews.

"Our goal is education," Vroomen says. "We have a technical product and we're the most engineering-driven company in the industry. Most bike companies don't employ a single engineer, and we have eight. So we want to have that engineering focus stand out with the content on the site. We don't sell on the newest paint job. So on the site, we're not spending our time creating fluff. Instead we have a good set of content."

Ryan Patch is the sort of customer Cervélo wants to reach. An amateur triathlon competitor on the Vortex Racing team, Patch says, "On the Cervélo site I can learn that Bobby Julich from Team CSC rides the same bike that is available to me. And it’s not just that they are riding, but they are doing really well. I can see how someone from Team CSC won the Giro de Italia on a Cervélo. That's mind-blowing that I can get the same bike that the pros are riding. I can ride the same gear. Cervélo has as much street cred as you can have with shaved legs."

Patch says that if you’re looking to buy a new bike, if you are a hard-core consumer, then there is a great deal of information on the Cervélo site about the bikes' technology, construction, and specs—all in great detail. "What I really like about this Web site is how it retains an impression of authenticity and it gives off the aura of legitimacy, being based in fact, not fluff," Patch says.

Vroomen writes all of the content for the Cervélo site himself, and the site was built by a chiropractor who moonlights as a Web designer. There's a content management tool built in, so Vroomen can update the site himself. You wouldn’t call the site fancy, but it works. "We get negative feedback from web designers about our site," Vroomen says. "But we have great comments from customers."

Because of the keyword rich cycling content available on the site, Vroomen says, Cervélo gets the same amount of search engine traffic as many sites for bike companies that are ten times bigger. Cervélo is growing very quickly, but Vroomen is quick to note that growth is not the result of any one thing. "We take as gospel that people have to see the product five different ways to really get the credibility. They have to see the bike on the site, on TV in a pro race, at the dealer, and on a blog."

Vroomen says building out the web marketing at Cervélo takes a lot of time, but it is simple and cost effective. "This is the future for companies like us," he says. "You can be very small and niche and sell your products all over the world. It's amazing when we go into a new country the amount of name recognition we have. The Internet gives you opportunities you never had before. And its not rocket science. It's pretty easy to figure out."

Community Building

This weekend my family went into New York to experience Christo's latest work, The Gates. While it is not surprisingly receiving mixed reviews (it is art, after all)  it is getting a whole lot of people talking. Getting people talking about your work is one of marketing's holy grails and it remains a mysterious process that can't be tidily reduced to a marketing formula. Luckily, there are tools available to at least lubricate locution, and some people out there putting them to work well. In a column yesterday, Poynter Online covered an innovation by the Ventura County Star in which the assitant managing editor is using a blog to provide a peek into the paper's internal processes. This provides better-than-real-time feedback for the paper and helps build a sense of community and involvement that helps make relationships that last.

Boston Globe Sports: cashing in on the Web

Since this is Super Bowl weekend and a hometown team is once again battling it out to be the best in the world, I'm spending more time with The Boston Globe sports section.  But what I find to be fascinating is how the Globe has made use of interactive content on the Boston Globe sports section on the Web.

This is not the typical re-purposing of print content. Instead, Globe editors and sports reporters  provide visitors with tons of ways to interact, including hundreds of active message boards on detailed New England Patriots minutia, a Boston Globe sports blog, surveys to take, statistics to analyze and much more.

The site serves as a great vehicle to generate advertising and sponsorship opportunities for businesses that want to reach Boston's rabid sports fans. According to Ken Richieri, Vice President at the New York Times Company (which owns the Boston Globe) speaking at the SIIA Information Industry Summit this week in New York, The Globe's Boston.com generates 145 million page views per month and boasts 4 million unique visitors per month.

All print media companies can learn from the example of The Boston Globe and its Boston.com site: interactive content is a great way to cash in.