Ashkan Karbasfrooshan on LinkedIn: YouTube dominates streaming, forcing media companies to decide whether… (2024)

While it's undeniably true that WatchMojo bootstrapped its way to profitability (after 6 years of losses!) & is one of the few profitable digital media companies to find product/market fit, build a community and brand that audiences are passionate about without a single penny in venture funding... let me share something that few know. About 4 years ago to the day, my long-time industry friend & advisor Peter Horan called me to see if I was open to bringing on a financial partner. After 100+ rejections (and a few offers) from VCs in the early days when I could have used the funding, by 2020 we had grown into a profitable machine that ran one of the largest channels on the dominant media & entertainment platforms of the 21st century, YouTube. Conventional wisdom was to pass, but in June 2020, Covid had effectively "Thanos'd" half the industries of the world (travel, restaurants, retail, etc) so with a bit of reflection, I decided it may be prudent to bring on a financial partner. Peter introduced me to Bruce Eatroff, Jonathan Barnes, Jonathan Grad and Brett Hickey from Star Mountain Capital and after six blissful months of due diligence, we formally brought them on as our partners, on December 31, 2020!They've been growing their differentiated private markets investment firm & now have several open roles, looking for new teammates to join them. I can attest that they have been great partners. With 85full-time employees, they've grown prudently, but rapidly. With a culture that includes being 100% employee-owned, they're looking to hire in their Tampa, Florida office. 1) Analyst/Associate, Direct Credit Underwriting: an individual with 1-4 years of experience in private credit, private equity, investment banking, corporate finance, or a related field.2) Financial Operations Analysts: individuals with demonstrated command over financial controls, fund accounting, reporting and analytics, and desire to interact directly with senior management, business owners, and other leading private fund managers.3) Business Development Associates: individuals experienced in sales and client service eager to support senior Investor Relations Professionals as they build their distribution network.4) Client Services Associate: an individual experienced in handling investor inquiries with a focus on exceptional service, attention to detail, and has a highly personable approach.5) Executive Assistant: a highly qualified and tenured support professional to help a C-suite level professional.If anything stands out, you can find links to each role in the comments; and feel free to reach out to me and I can connect you to them... as well.

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Ah, the cycle of life. When I was 5, I had a mini briefcase with “I ❤️NY” on it. First time I went to NYC, it was with school, I was 17/18. Like many I fell in love. Studying finance but working in media, NY is the nexus of your profession. During my career I’d return frequently, but never moved there outright. It almost became a complex: something I seemed to want & chase but always proving elusive. Had my first daughter in 2008 & in 2009-10 we basically lived there: she literally took her first steps in Central Park. Once there, realized I didn’t need to live there. We moved back to Montreal and had a second daughter in 2010. In 2011-12 I was there 25x per year, chasing investors, seeking partners, pitching clients. As my team grew, I’d visit less. Eventually, ironically, once I “could” live there professionally & financially, it’s as if I no longer felt the “need” to do so. Now I’m there once a year. Still love it, but there are many other places around the world I could be… usually preferring to be with family. This morning, a month away from my daughter’s 16th birthday, I dropped her off for her first school trip to NYC. In that moment, I literally felt like my life flew by. I presume others have experienced similar things. I’m gonna go sit outside and gaze into the abyss that is life :)

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Montreal is a cosmopolitan city buried in a small-town mentality. All levels of governments are killing jobs & entire sectors of the economy, in Montreal, the city & province levels are the worst at it, ironically (not suggesting there's no good, but last night’s adventure downtown & other experiences show how entrepreneurs & business people are being hindered.We were 10 people from 2006-12, then grew to 25 by 2015 before skyrocketing to 60+ full time employees (FTEs) by 2017. After focusing our energies where we should, by Covid we settled at 40 FTE. We always had another 50-100 freelancers (FLs). Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) distinguishes FTEs vs FLs, seeking income tax revenues & protecting would-be employees from scrupulous employers who may favor contract work to forego health benefits, paid travel, etc. Fair.But Covid made our global workforce of 160 morea) remote,b) international,c) contract-based.In 2022 the provincial (i.e. state) government tightened French language laws: a few things made sense, most didn't, some just showed that bureaucrats in government are not business owners or operators. I’m perfectly bilingual & support its spirit because ultimately language is the backbone of any culture. At most, Montréal should be bilingual and the province of Quebec should be French instead of pretending otherwise. French-speaking folks in French-majority Quebec should not feel like second class citizens, they should be able to get the best jobs etc. We've already implemented the things that were possible.If we wanted to hire someone and that was a full time role in Montreal, we would hire them full time no questions asked or funny business. But given WFH/hybrid, why would we hire people in Montreal? You could argue we are the exception & most local firms don't have that luxury, but are we? Many jobs could be remote; would actually be more cost-effective in some times (this merits a separate article) while bringing in more experience because Montreal isn't NY, Toronto, London, San Francisco etc. But we are quite representative of what made Montreal Montreal: a media & entertainment brand harnessing local culture & flavor, packaging it like Cirque du Soleil & Just for Laughs for a global audience.I used to be idealistic about these things, but when government puts a big F u sign in your face, you don't bring yourself down, you take the high road but learn the lessons. Justifying a local hire becomes challenging, so if & when a local person resigns, at least subconsciously, the first question is "does this person need to be here?" With the rise of AI, I assure you over time, the question will be "is this even a job for a human?" For the record, we aren't looking at implementing AI in a wanton manner even though Hollywood already is and everyone in the media is testing it in parts of its production process.I always prided myself in job creation (and during the lean, tough years job preservation). I wish the government did too.

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You don't have to be the first to market, but the first to scale. Google was the 13th search engine; similarly, YouTube wasn't the first video platform to try to capture mind share, market share, and global entertainment domination in web video. In WatchMojo's 19-years of history, we have seen a LOT of distribution companies as belligerents in this competition. Here are some of our licensing clients/partners over the years. In no order.RevverGubaDailyMotionSevenload MetacafeVideoEggMySpaceJambo MediaHiro MediaReal GravityPapageiEndiveDBGCollectiveMefeediaIGNVeohBBEScanscoutTremor mediaBlip .tvNBBCiExploreBreak .comTV .comHuluGlamTVAutonet TVSling MediaCanoeSympaticoVideoJugHowcast5MinZvueCurrent TVVidShadowWizzard MediaVMIXiThenticJoostBlinkxGo90AOLMSNYahooRoo/Kit DigitalVoxantThe News RoomThe FeedroomGrab Media, Google Videoand last, but certainly not least:YouTube

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Investor Paul Graham, on writing, below. In fact, inasmuch as Sigmund Freud said that sleep 1) allowed humans to process emotions & put baggage away & 2) helped humans process information and make sense of it, writing does the exact same things. I've learned a ton from reading, listening, watching etc. but writing coalesces things and makes sense of matters when previously they don't. But, writing isn't for everyone.

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As I sat and listened to our esteemed accountants present their audit to my board, I thought of a pair of stats that blew my mind. 1) In 19 years, we have had two bad debts. Two. Bad debts sometimes kill companies.2) And despite being what is effectively an ad supported business model, our average collection period has likely been 25 days. 25! Ah, I love the smell of wire transfers in the morning. I wouldn’t want to live 19 years like most media companies that chase fickle ad agencies & marketers to collect after 90-120 days.In entrepreneurship & operations, we sometimes forget about the basics, but given how firms die through cash flow woes, it’s important to pay attention to mundane things, as well.

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When I started WatchMojo, for the first 6 years (2006-11), I literally managed the company payroll-to-payroll. We ran out of money in Dec 2007 and then managed the business via debt, including many personal guaranteed ones! In fact, one reason I adopted a bi-monthly (24 payrolls/year) vs bi-weekly (26 payrolls/year) was to have less "anxiety-inducing" events per year. Over time, WatchMojo found "product/market" fit and - without any VC investment or production tax credits/subsidies - managed to break-even & become profitable. Eventually, I managed the company "annually" meaning I'd think long-term but ultimately focused on the near/mid-term given the fluid nature of the nascent web video industry. You could not get too excited about any new distribution licensing deal (with Hulu, Go90, et al.) because there was no guarantee those were real, sustainable, scalable, replicable revenue streams. As 2025 will mark our 20th year in business (!) I now find myself both thinking & acting - near-term (monthly performance, quarterly targets, annual budgets) but increasingly thinking - long-term (decades) not that dissimilar to how a Henry Luce managed Time Inc. - starting off with Time magazine, before expanding to Sports Illustrated, Fortune, LIFE, People. This means becoming comfortable with ignoring vapid trends that instinctively as an entrepreneur and operator I suspect are fleeting fads. It's challenging because your employees, advisors, investors, etc. over-think the near-term (which you cannot ignore), but you need to block out a ton of noise to continue to steer the ship in the right direction. I started as an entrepreneur obsessed with YES, but now realize the most valuable term in an entrepreneur's lexicon is NO (or rather, maybe/it depends :)

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Memorial Day reminder…

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Last year, content owners & producers who were producing 5-15 min videos were presented with a "barbell" opportunity/threat: - Shorts had emerged as burgeoning style (& length; it's not really a "format" & while we conflate Shorts with Vertical, over time this will also become different things)- while FAST Linear - or Free Ad Supported Television - was creating a "what's old is new again" with demand for longer, lean-back programming. Last week, I touched on the other new barbell dynamic (Neal Mohan seeking to go high end while offering AI tools for the masses to further democratize video production). In any case, as we had a large catalog of videos going back nearly 20 years, we began to create longer-form shows and distributed these across FAST. We recently soft-launched the feed on YouTube (link in comments). It was nice to see some fans appreciate the latest addictive offering, but also telling when some noticed "WatchMojo evolved into the VH1 hour long shows we'd binge on cable." Bingo, things coming full circle, since traditional media's reluctance to embrace web distribution & YouTube created a vacuum which we served.It also reminded me of a decade ago when people would ask me what our "mobile distribution" strategy was, I'd reply YouTube, confident Google's video platform would dominate mobile video consumption (it did). While Roku, Samsung Electronics, Tubi, Pluto TV have won the early innings of FAST (it's more like a best-of-seven series, but I digress), I remain bullish in YouTube's long-term prospects, especially since it's already the platform's fastest growing platform for many channels. Our FAST Linear Channel: - launched with hundreds of 60/120-minute shows, over 2000 hours of programming, - is programmed into 6 hour "blocks" (for now), - publishes 5-10 hours of new content each week. We can turn that up if we needed to, and Nexstar Media Group, Inc. launching a 24/7 news FAST channel is a sign of things to come in FAST. As the previous 5-10 years saw us develop & produce new shows (countdowns, but also trivia shows, documentaries, etc), the strategy is to leverage the original catalog/library on YouTube (the image attached breaks down the massive depth and scope across categories, languages, lengths). It's quite insane, but that's what 20 years of production looks like.That image is just YouTube, the total multi-platform reach and catalog inches us close to 100,000 video assets, which is a milestone as impressive as the 25 Billion views & 2 billion hours of watch time on YouTube.On YT, our entire network has published 72,677 videos (this includes Shorts,International etc)On Snap Inc. we have published 5,649 videos,On TikTok and Instagram, we have released 1,345 videos,And last but not least, on Facebook we have syndicated another 10,578 videos.Added up: we have a total of90,249pieces of content including all formats, derivatives, etc. across dozens of languages and in key geographies around the world.

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