thedailyway

Today I could be well over $100,000 richer. This week I was blasted all over the tabloids because of a picture a friend posted on my Facebook in which I am hot tubbing with Richard Branson and Harry Styles - a band member of an apparently quite famous band called One Direction who had recently split from an apparently even more famous American singer called Taylor Swift. 

Hey SF people, can you help? 

My brother and I and a few friends are creating an entrepreneurs mansion in San Francisco. We are looking for an EPIC 5/6 bedroom mansion that will become our home for the next 6 months. 

The housing market is really tough at the moment with the valley booming and the America’s cup coming to SF.

Perhaps you know a property developer who is looking for some exposure?

Or maybe you have a rich friend who has a house in San Francisco and is going to be away this summer and wants to rent it out?

If you do know anyone please email me hermioneway@newspepper.com  

Today I had a moment with my sink;

I was brushing my teeth this morning when I started to admire how sexy the sink was.

Sounds crazy, but look at that thing, it’s so shiny and modern and big - it’s the kind of clean, minimalist sink someone who had a really posh house would have in their bathroom. Someone who had made lots of money would have a sink like that, It’s like the sink my old school friend had in her house when we were growing up - they also had helicopters and a yacht and cupboards full of loads of opulent treats. Her Dad made loads of money as a car salesman. I used to think ‘I want a sink like that when I grow up’. 

And here I am, standing in a house that I live in, and whilst I don’t own the house, I do pay the rent with money that I have earned, so it’s kind of my sink… at least for a while. 

My fucking sink! Yes my shiny, white, sexy sink, so shiny I can almost see my reflection in it.

How the hell did I manage to earn enough money to live in a house with a sexy sink like that? Ok, so I live in a shared house with 5 other entrepreneurs and we all share the sink, but still, I always dreamed of brushing my teeth in a sink like that. 

I remember the sink at my mum’s house growing up  - it was so old the white had turned to a yellowish brown and it had holes and black marks on it from a burnt out candle and the neck of the sink had lost it’s casing so the metal pipes were exposed and there were cobwebs all around it. 

We lived in some pretty tough conditions, my school clothes were from thrift stores and my poor mother couldn’t operate a washing machine to save her life. I’m not trying to say ‘poor me’ I’m just telling you how it was and I also understand poverty is all relative- For example, In Sierra Leone I saw real- soon to die because there’s not enough food- type of poverty. 

The more success I have I my career the more anxiety I get; the past year was so bad I’ve had chronic tooth ache from grinding my teeth when I sleep from stress. I’ve also has chronic insomnia and panic attacks, but I’ve worked out It’s not because of the direct stress of business per-say, it’s the stress of worrying that it will all fall down, collapse;

That I’ll have to go back to having a shitty sink with cracks in it and stains on the porcelain. 

But sometimes it’s the little things that make you realize how far you’ve come and why you love what you do- for me it’s being able to afford black cabs in London (I took the tube and buses for years) and this morning’s moment with my sink. 

What metrics do you use for measuring your success? 

Hermione, I follow you on twitter for about 1 year. I’m a french entrepreneur in SF (social media). All I can say is if you want to create a viable business about content media, you have to provide something unique. There are so many bloggers, so many journalists around there who debate about same stories. We all know your face, the way you talk, the way you think… and we read your information because you show us a different aspect of Silicon Valley, of Technology (behind the scene)… you express a different opinion or at least a different way to inform.

So, if I had to decide for you I would probably chose Concent production company. It’s not the easiest path but definitely the best way to build a viable brand and a viable business model. 
I have also maybe an other suggestion for you if you want to make money as soon as possible. As you know there are so much startups and companies who tried to promote themselves… Usually they suck, because entrepreneurs always talk about technology, features and boring stuffs. You could provide a service which can help us to promote our company in a different way (more emotional)… an advertising coverage. You”re good to talk to people, most of entrepreneurs/geek people not.

I’m sure a lot would pay few grants to have a info/video produce by your team to share on the internet, customers, investors… 

RE: Crowd sourcing a business model 

Hey Internets, 

I’m confused. I’m currently sitting in my bed on this lovely Saturday evening in San Francisco writing a pretty In-depth business plan for a meeting with investors in London at the end of March. 

I’m looking to take on a bigger round of angel investment because I want to scale and grow my company Newspepper, but I’m also a little stuck over which way to take the company moving forward and, you know what they say, two minds are better than one, so I was hoping a few million might be even better, and we could sort-of crowd source the best business model together? 

I would greatly appreciate your help, and most of you are far more experienced than me so I would be humbled to hear your advice; 

The reason why I am confused is with the online content landscape dramatically changing there are so many directions I could take the business model of the company in and I’m finding it difficult to evaluate which would be best given the rapidly evolving online media environment. 

When I originally started out I wanted to create a model like Current TV where students and graduates could get paid work experience for content creation or citizen journalists (hence the name Newspepper, like Newspaper) could upload news in return for a percentage of the advertising revenue. This is now the model of the YouTube Partner Program where Google shares advertising revenue with content creators- over 100 content creators are earning six figure salaries, sharing their daily lives on YouTube, aka ShayCarl style. 

I quickly realized without a huge round of funding I could not compete with properties like Current TV  or the then growing Facebook and I needed to pay my bills; so I stuck with the model of employing students and graduates to get paid internships in media and build a portfolio that would go towards their career, rather than working in a job that was totally irrelevant to their chosen career path, like mine had been pulling pints in the bar.

After a year at Newspepper, one of our first employees got a job as a camera man and editor at National Geographic because of the showreel he’d built whilst getting paid work with Newspepper and that for me, was success. 

But we encountered problems along the way; quality control was an issue -some students and graduates were incredibly professional and others were terrible, ruining jobs where clients had paid for content production that could not be rectified. 

We developed the Newspepper Star Rating system to solve that problem and it worked, students and graduates had to prove themselves before getting on our paid roster and now our production values are much higher. 

But instead of being an intern platform like Internmatch, Enternships or Internship.com which post internships placements to match with interns, we actually managed and mentored the Intern through the training and the job so our operating costs were a lot higher. 

In fact this is where the problem lay with our current model, because we train and manage each of our freelancers internally, our operating costs are very high. 

Sure we could easily become a platform that connects interns with Internships but there are already hundreds of those and that model is easily replicated. 

Since we’ve been trading in 2008 our product has essentially been content creation and distribution for brands. Clients include the BBC, Channel 4, Facebook, PayPal, Conde Naste, TechCrunch Europe,  Huddle and a whole host of other startups, mostly in the technology industry, given our network. 

We’ve also produced editorially driven content, creating the blog Techfluff.tv with an advertising revenue model, but my ever growing issue with content creation, especially in the news arena, is that it has become like content farming, where it’s a race to post the story first, rather than provide meaningful perspective. When a news story hits, pretty much all the blogs have exactly the same story and I get it; advertisers need the traffic for click through rate, but I can’t help thinking it’s become like automated journalism. 

But if these acquisitions/numbers are anything to go by: 

• Huffington Post sold to AOL $315million

• TechCrunch sold to AOL $25 million

• Read, Write Web sold to Say Media for $5 million

• Mashable valuation $50 million

Then content is a good game to be in right now. 

But how much longer will journalism ‘brands’ last as we move more and more towards the individual as their own brand and own media outlet.

As we witnessed with the Arab Spring and with Occupy, people all over the world are using social media to communicate and the Internet provides us all with the tools necessary to be content creators as the Internet has decreased costs and democratized media. 

So back to Newspepper, what are we passionate about?

We’re passionate about:

• video, especially live video
• working with young, excited people
• changing the world for the better
• and mobile 

Video: I’ve been championing online video for years and it’s only now that brands and advertisers realize the importance of video in communicating their brand to the next generation of media consumers  Ad spend on video is expected to reach $850million by 2015 compared with $150million in 2011.

Changing the world for the better: Say Media and Mevio’s model are interesting; they invest in content creators to reach wide distribution for their advertisers, but is that really changing the world for the better?

Mobile: There are 21 million iPhone 4 & 4S users, age 18-35, in the U.S alone and mobile media creation and consumption is growing. Apps like Camera + and SocialCam enable anyone to broadcast relatively high quality videos from anywhere and have millions of users. 

As of late Newspepper has been not only creating content for startups and brands but also finding advertisers to pay for the cost of production where the brand cannot afford to pay themselves. This is a great model, but I’m also wondering how scalable?

How about a platform that matches sponsorships with content much like Sponsorhub does for sponsorships and events? 

We are also interested in selling Silicon Valley concepts to TV networks as world-wide interest garners with Silicon Valley and we believe there are so many great stories to be told, every day it seems like there’s a new reality show being made about Silicon Valley, we want to tell more of the stories being made here to the world. 

We also incubate our own talent and projects, we do lots of boring corporate work to help us fund really exciting and hopefully impactful projects like Startup World and Silicon Valley Live.

We’re really overwhelmed by the power of what social media can do for people with platforms like Kickstarter and are impressed by people like Shira Lazar who has built up an online brand in What’s Trending  from scratch. 

So lets recap, 

Newspepper has: 

• A great list of clients worldwide ranging from the BBC, PayPal and Facebook to startups, mostly in the technology industry. 
• A global network of young, talented freelancers specializing in quality content (mainly video) production already vetted by us as producing quality work. 
• Extensive network, outreach and distribution with current videos reached over 4million a month through various networks. 
• Extensive understanding of online content creation around video and live video plus social media optimization 

What we care about: 

We’re passionate about:

• Video, especially live video.
• Working with young, excited people.
• Changing the world for the better utilizing online technology. 
• Mobile. 

What we could become? Options that we are exploring ( I really need your help here) 

• Back to our original model of being a platform for content creators (business model advertising). 
• A platform connecting content creators with brands and advertisers. (business model advertising). 
• Content production company producing online shows.
• Some really cool mobile app that we have not thought of yet. 

So what do you think Internets? As you can see I’m asking a tonne on questions and I’m all over the bloody place. We need focus.

What do you think is the best model we could become in the current digital media lanscape given our background and experience? 

What should we focus on? 

What is the best business proposition? 

Please leave your comments below. What can I give you in return for you time and feedback? Umm, err… not sure yet, but I can say you will be a part of our success and I will always pay it forward where I can. 

Hermione