We had an interesting chat with Ms. “Natasha Robinson”, Co-Founder & CMO at the California- USA based start-up “MediaNest”
Below is the interview we conducted with her:
1. What is it exactly that you do and what your start-up is all about?
MediaNest makes it incredibly easy to publish, manage, transcode,
search optimize & measure video marketing campaigns on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
Tumblr & more.
2. When has your startup been founded? And what stage is your startup currently at?
Our start-up MediaNest was founded in 2014. The MediaNest
online video distribution, management, publishing, search engine optimization &
marketing app is now in Public Beta.
3. What is your startup’s business model and how does it work?
MediaNest has a monthly subscription plans that are $49, $129 & $249
per month. For Enterprise customers we can create a custom plan that fits their
video marketing needs. More details can be found here:
http://medianest.com/pricing.html
4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?
The MediaNest Team is: Julien Khaleghy – CEO & Co-Founder, Natasha Robinson – CMO &
Co-Founder and Andrew Foo – CTO & Co-Founder. Julien and Andrew met playing poker
in Austin. I met the Julien and Andrew via AngelList.
5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your
product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique
about you and what’s new about what you make?
Unlike other options in the marketplace we are platform agnostic. Our users can publish & get
analytics for their videos on video sites like YouTube, DailyMotion & Vimeo, social
sites like Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr, international sites like RuTube & YouMaker
and niche sites like Funny or Die & Live Leak.
6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has your startup achieved so far?
MediaNest currently has over 200 users including the video
camera company GoPro. In less than 6 months we launched our Alpha, our Private Beta
& Public Beta.
7. Who are your competitors? And what is your start-up’s competitive advantage over
them?
Our closest competitor is TubeMogul. The advantage we
have over them are our built-in video seo tools & that we allow publishing on all of
the major social media sites that matter to video content creators.
8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?
Like any start-up we work hard to grow our user numbers. Two things have helped us
connect with key customers: our existing network of contacts in marketing and our
Accelerator, Boomtown.
9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?
Fans are engaging with video content on social media sites outside
of YouTube. With Facebook now being the leader in Desktop Video Views – surpassing
YouTube – video creators can no longer simply focus video marketing efforts on
YouTube alone. Your customer is on Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr, so brands, agencies
and content creators need to ensure their video content is there as well.
10. Why are you going to succeed?
The MediaNest Team really understands the domain: Julien built & ran Next Wave Media (nextwavemedia.fr); one
of the top digital content networks in France (Nielsen Rankings). Andrew built
KeySEO, a web analytics tool that was able to analyze Google referrals in real time
& extract unavailable keywords. And I have over 10 years of experience in the
online video industry; working on the Product & Marketing teams at Viacom, MySpace,
Fox and Salesforce.
11. If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand
into?
The great thing about being platform agnostic and being
a data driven company is that we are able to see how users interact with the same
video on different platforms & understand the characteristics that make some videos
more viral on one platform vs another. We believe there are many ways to apply this
to grow our product offerings.
12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build your start-up based on?
Video marketing was key to Julien building his previous company
into one of the France’s largest digital content networks. Unsatisfied with the
online video distribution tools that existed in the market, he decided to build his
own. That was the impetus to create MediaNest.
13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?
Our customer feedback has helped us build tools like our Video Title Engine that
provide less friction for them to get more views while saving them time.
14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?
We are focused on building our team and like any start-up in San
Francisco we believe our biggest problem will be finding technical talent in a city
where everyone is competing for that talent.
15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?
Video Creators, Brands & Marketers need marketing tools that create efficiencies in their content
marketing work flow. With MediaNest they no longer have to log into multiple video
sites & social networks to upload content and analyze their campaign performance.
All of their video and reports are in one place, allowing cross-platform video
analysis.
16. How did customers / users find out about you?
Customers find MediaNest via a number of channels which include: referrals from other
websites, search engines queries, word of mouth and social media.
17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?
Our customers are Video Content Creators, Brands & Agencies.
Our target customers are Brands creating 15 or more video content pieces a week who
are asked to do more with less, Agencies who are called on to manage, create &
promote a variety of video content pieces for clients and Content Creators who star
in, write, edit, produce & market 5 or more videos a week for Video Channels such as
YouTube, DailyMotion & Vimeo.
18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try
you?
New MediaNest customers come from our personal networks,
referrals and online marketing channels. They try us because we provide one place
to accomplish many of their video marketing tasks and our pricing is easy to
understand.
19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?
To quote GoPro: “MediaNest allows me to quickly and efficiently upload
videos to multiple destinations. Our Formula Drift fans are demanding and MediaNest
helps us get videos up fast!”- Tom Masiero, Digital Growth at Formula Drift Holdings
20. How are you going to scale? (Min. 150 characters): MediaNest has product-market
fit and after testing various sales processes & customer acquisition models to we
will scale by growing our resources & our team.
21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking
for?
The great things about having Solopreneur content
creators on our app is that they are utilizing new platforms like Vine & WhatsApp to
drive more video videos. In the new year we’ll be releasing features to help all of
our users reach their audiences on emerging channels.
22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand
your start-up’s operations accordingly?
MediaNest was built with international audiences in mind. This is why over 10 of our 30 supported sites
for video publishing are international video platforms & social networks.
23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your
goals?
Over the last two year marketers have seen the rise of
Content Marketing. And in the last, year we’ve seen that video content marketing is
a big hit with customers; with 64%–85% of those who view product videos being more
likely to buy a product. By 2018, 84% of all Internet traffic will be video. This
growth and the feedback from our customers let us know we are building the right
product at the right time.
24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you
currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?
We are excited about what the New Year looks like for MediaNest and
will be growing our technical team. You can reach us by using the Contact form on
our site here: http://MediaNest.com/contact.html
25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals
(VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the
first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?
We are raising funds to bring on new team members, increase office
space and cover backend system costs. Potential partners and investors should
contact our CEO Julien Khaleghy at: Julien At MediaNest Dot Com.
26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?
I would advise fresh entrepreneurs to stay focused on their product, talk to their
customers, then talk to their customers again and not take ‘no’ personally.
27. Finally, do you have any other comments that you would like to add?
Launched in support of the recent #GivingTuesday, we offer our online video distribution &
social media marketing tools for free to qualified nonprofits. They can apply here:
http://medianest.com/non-profit-tools.html
