The screengrab below from
...and it's not just YouTube - online video is exploding everywhere.
So why is Blinkx fucking up so badly?
Tuesday 24 July 2012
Online video is exploding - so why is Blinkx moving so slowly and doing so badly?
...and it's not just YouTube - online video is exploding everywhere.
So why is Blinkx fucking up so badly?
Monday 23 July 2012
Open letter to 'Brian' Mukherjee, the new CEO of Blinkx
Dear Mr. Mukherjee
As a long-term shareholder of Blinkx (I bought in about 6
months after the IPO) I am writing to congratulate you on your appointment as
CEO of the company, and to highlight what I and other shareholders regard as Chandratillake's
major failings and where, as shareholders, we would like to see the company
make major changes/improvements in the future. For me, these changes fall under
several headings:
1/ Comms/PR/IR/presentation. To date Blinkx's
corporate comms has been utterly appalling. RNSs are released for seemingly
trivial deals, and big news is released not at all or badly - why two days to
release an RNS about the AOL deal (and even then only because news of the deal
had leaked online)? I and other shareholder have actually had the phone put
down on us by Blinkx staff when we have called to ask questions and identified
ourselves as shareholders - such behaviour is completely unacceptable and would
not be necessary if the company released news in a consistent and competent
manner. In my opinion one of the worst aspects of Chandratillake's time as CEO was his
paranoid secrecy - often, I suspect, to cover up his failures. I very much hope
that this changes going forward.
2/ Advertising. I work in the IT industry Mr
Mukherjee - and yet nobody I talk to, either in work or outside it, has ever heard of Blinkx. Rather strange,
don't you think, for "the world's largest video search engine"? If
indeed that claim is true, how much truer would it be if word of Blinkx spread
virally among users? I've long thought that an occasional TV ad campaign in the
UK and US could pay massive dividends in driving traffic to the site, raising
the company's profile among the public and with potential partners, and
reassuring shareholders. Assuming of course that Blinkx's search technology is
really as good as shareholders have been told for the last 5 years.
3/ App strategy. Blinkx's app strategy to date -
if you can call it a strategy - has been at best disorganised and at worst
completely insane. Apps have been made for platforms whose users can be counted
in the tens of thousands, yet no apps have been made for popular platforms. Why no Blinkx iOS app? - if there is a reason, then the company should state what
that reason is, because otherwise it just looks like rank incompetence. And if
Blinkx is going to create apps, they should advertise (see my point 2 above) to
let people know they are there. The Blinkx app on Android OS has been
downloaded 5,000-10,000 times - and yet according to Wikipedia Android has an
installed base of c.331 million units! Why
so few downloads? Because nobody knows who Blinkx are or what they do!
4/ Product strategy. Throughout Blinkx's life
products have been developed which have been trumped as the Next Big Thing,
only to disappear without trace or explanation. Transaction Hijacking was
mentioned in the IPO prospectus as a source of future revenue - it never
appeared. Cheep was in beta for 2 years, before the beta ended and it too
vanished (so far as shareholders know), without a word of explanation. I'm sure
you're aware that 2 years is longer than Instagram took to be created, grow its
team to a dozen people, get 20 million users, and be bought by Facebook for
$1bn. Which brings me nicely onto:
5/ Lack of strategic, transformational deals; moving
too slowly. One simple question to ask about Blinkx is this: if the
technology is really so great, why does the company need to create apps at all,
why isn't its search technology being integrated into, for example, the Samsung
Smart TV OS? Or Facebook? Or Yahoo!? AOL was a good start (although
shareholders still don't know what it will mean to the bottom line), but the IT
sector - let alone the online video sector - is moving at hyperspeed, yet
Blinkx seems to be moving at a snail's pace (as I mentioned above - 2 years in
beta for Cheep before disappearing without trace? Really?). Why, for example,
isn't Blinkx doing something like Zeebox (social TV)? Why did Blinxk take so
long to bring an action that the passing off case against Blinkbox was thrown
out? The company needs to move much faster, be much more nimble and agile so it
can respond to a very rapidly-changing environment: and it needs landmark,
transformational deals or partnerships.
6/ Alignment of interests. Underpinning most of
the problems I outline above is one fundamental issue: Chandratillake never
bought any shares in Blinkx with his own money and held them for any length of time. He had share options, of course, which he exercised
whenever he thought the share price had got ahead of itself; but he never once,
so far as I am aware, bought any shares in the open market with his own money.
As a consequence there was always a suspicion that his interests were not
aligned with those of shareholders and it was that lack of focus which was
behind so many of the other issue. I would urge you and the rest of the senior
management team to purchase a significant stake in Blinkx with your own money
so that shareholders can be assured that the interests of management are
directly aligned with those of shareholders.
I'm sure I'm not the only shareholder who wants to see an
end to what I and many other shareholders regard as the cackhanded, incompetent
mismanagement of Blinkx that characterised Chandratillake's period as CEO. I
hope that you will rapidly move to stamp your own authority on the company and
usher in a new era of much more open communications with shareholders and the
City, faster product development and
better product delivery, more and better strategic deals in a very fast-moving
environment, and as a consequence of all that far better delivery of
shareholder value - a concept that seemed to be totally alien to Chandratillake
(but then as I mention above, he wasn't a shareholder).
I wish you the very best of luck with what will I'm sure
be a very difficult task.
Yours sincerely,
Simon Merlini
One Week of Mayer at Yahoo: Whither Ross? New Old Yahoos? More Search? Product Side “Elated!”
Good gracious, what a difference a week makes — at Yahoo, at least.
With the installation of former Googler Marissa Mayer as its new CEO, the troubled Silicon Valley Internet giant bought itself a boatload of attention for the bold choice, and another tanker full of champagne dreams that it might have finally gotten a leader to take it out of its perpetual state of perpetualness.
“Let’s be clear, she is our last hope,” said one board member to me, a sentiment that I also heard from another; and so, too, from a lot of execs and rank-and-file around the company.
from All Things D
Saturday 21 July 2012
Eyes Wide Open
By Chris Elliott
He’s 34, going on 35, highly personable, and – axiomatic for a
Cambridge-educated computer whiz with a clever idea - a
multi-millionaire.
Suranga Chandratillake sits quietly in a restaurant in Grand Arcade,
eating scrambled eggs and mushrooms on toast, and in between mouthfuls,
talks about his life, money, and what might be the Next Big Thing
hovering beyond the high-tech horizon.
A protégé of Mike Lynch of Autonomy fame, his own bright notion was
the creation of a piece of software that enables people to search the
internet for video, and the result, in 2004, was the Autonomy spin-out
blinkx, which in the intervening years has grown to become the world’s
biggest video search engine. From its website, viewers can jump off to
35 million hours of content, including movies. Three years after it was
founded, the company staged a highly successful IPO, and its latest
yearend results revealed a healthy rise in revenue, up 73 per cent from
£42 million to £72 million.
From its beginnings in Cambridge with a handful of staff, its
workforce now extends to 270 people, with a headquarters in San
Francisco, a sales team in London, and other employees in Arizona,
Boston, Seattle and Montreal. The Cambridge team, who are mainly
R&D, numbers 8.
Suranga, the CEO, lives and works mostly in Silicon Valley, but he
comes back to Cambridge, where he studied computer science, whenever he
can.
“blinkx has grown dramatically since 2011,” he says. “It’s partly
that demand for what we do has increased, and partly that we’ve made a
number of deals and acquisitions. Two years ago, we were achieving about
$30 million revenue, and now we’re getting close to $120 million – and
we’re profitable.
“It means we have i
ncreased our workforce, up from 120 people to 270, and we are hiring more people, including in Cambridge.”
The deals have included hook-ups with AOL and Disney, and the
acquisitions include Burst Media, the internet advertising network.
He says: “I challenge people to think of something we haven’t got a
video on. These days we can cover pretty much any topic you can think
of. Our software trawls over the internet looking for any video content,
just like Google looks for a web page. Wherever we find video, we use
technology developed in Cambridge to analyse it and make it searchable,
so you can look for a particular scene. We’re not moving the video -
it’s left where it is, so there’s no need for any legal agreement or
relationship with whoever made it. That’s great, it works for free, but
in order to make money we have to show ads, and we are now getting them.
“The economic situation hasn’t affected us at all. We have
approximately doubled our sales revenue year on year for the past five
years, and we haven’t had any issues selling ads.”
The strength of blinkx, Suranga freely admits, is the enthusiasm of
the people who work for it. Recently, he drew them together for what he
called “a technology summit” at a venue in Austin, Texas, for two days
of activities, dominated by programming. “The idea was we’d start some
programming in teams, about 12 noon, and finish at 7pm, but two of the
teams got into it so much they carried on until 10pm, and one was still
going at 3 in the morning. When you work with people like that, you
can’t help but get excited about what you’re doing.”
Cambridge and San Francisco are very similar in breeding that kind of talent, he says.
“Both places are great examples of where everything worked online
very early on. I remember when I was in Cambridge in 2001, there were
very active social communities doing things like rating businesses,
creating directories and so on, which didn’t exist in cities five or six
times Cambridge’s size. It’s because in Cambridge you have a very high
density of people who get it, and who are interested in it, and not just
younger people. Older people do too. It’s a fallacy to say they don’t
get technology. They just don’t find the technology itself very
interesting, but rather what they can do with it. You may not know how
microprocessors work, the way the people at ARM do, but you don’t have
to understand that to contact your grandchild by email. There’s been a
revolution in business in the past 10 years. Back then a lot of the
focus was on technology itself, and now it’s on using technology to give
people some new experience. It depends on technology, but it’s not
about technology. A good example is Facebook. There’s great technology
behind it, but it’s basically a very simple concept, and very human. You
don’t need to know how it works, you just know it’s something useful,
something you want to do.
“The huge flotation of Facebook shows how difficult it is going to be
getting accurate valuations on those sort of companies. The market
didn’t really know what Facebook was worth. But from the perspective of
the company itself, they pretty much had to go public. The senior team
there probably would have been happy to stay as a private company, but
the reality was that the investors who had poured in so much money in
the early days were ready to see a return, an exit. And once you’ve
decided to do an IPO you might as well raise as much money as you can.
The banks that helped Facebook do that are now hurting – but they knew
what they were in for, they’re grown-ups.
“blinkx is a very different company, but we too are providing a very
human thing. The great companies being built now are those, small and
large, that look at how the world, and the way we approach the world,
can change because of technology. It could be a really simple idea –
like a service I‘ve come across called Get Around, a small start-up. If
you own a car, it allows you to rent your car to anybody else who has
signed up to it, via your mobile phone. It won’t be as big as Facebook,
of course, but it’s a fun thing, and pretty much everyone will soon have
a phone on them that’s connected to the internet – we need to think
about what you can do with that kind of connectivity.”
So what will be the Next Big Thing?
“One idea that seems to be taking off is connected TVs - using
services like ours through a TV set that’s connected to the internet.
It’s still very small. Engineers have been talking about it for years,
but actually it takes a while to get going, and for the average man on
the street to start wanting to use it, which I think is now happening.
This year, maybe next year, it will be big.”
The onset of his mid-30s has prompted him, with a certain amused
detachment, to consider his lifestyle. He says: “I turn 35 this year –
I’m an old man. I own a house in the States, I’m married, I have a baby.
It’s all over. I used to enjoy travelling around a lot, but now I’m
doing much less of it. When you’re in your 20s, and there’s no one
relying on you, as a partner, a parent, everything is exciting.”
This was one of the key points Suranga made when he gave a lecture to
students at Cambridge University’s computer laboratory, where he
himself began his career, and he knows that like him, an enormous well
of future genius is bubbling up there. “The talent is amazing in
Cambridge. I would like to double the size of our office again here.
That’s not just because of the rich vein of talent in the university,
but also because the city itself attracts very smart people. It’s driven
by the university, but it’s bigger than the university. The only place
where brains and technology are respected and feted as much is Silicon
Valley.”
He is watching with interest to see how the city’s fledgling
enterprises bear up in the years ahead, aware of worries that too little
money is being made available to enable new companies to take wing
early on. It has been suggested that the new rich kids on the block –
the Mark Zuckerbergs, and the Mike Lynches, who made £500
million on the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett Packard – may be the
groundbreakers’ new godparents, especially Lynch, who is now back in
town.
“blinkx was lucky. We essentially skipped the whole seed funding
stage, thanks to the backing of Autonomy. But a lot of venture capital
is run by finance people, money managers. It’s important not to
generalise, but many of them find it hard to really understand the
cutting edge, and as a result, they tend to be conservative rather than
venturesome. Again, Facebook is a good example. When the initial
investment was made, there was no talk of profits, but the rewards have
come in to the tune of billions of dollars. One of the things that is
working well in Silicon Valley, and which I hope is growing in
Cambridge, is that in the very early stages of a business, people who
have done it before themselves, who understand technology, and the
random, messy nature of innovation, are coming forward to fund things.
You have to take a portfolio approach and realise that of the 20 things
you fund, a decent chunk of them will not succeed - and you have to be
OK with that.
“The Autonomy sale created a number of millionaires, and ARM is doing
that too. I would hope that those people, who have experienced the
craziness of having an idea, with no understanding of how to make a
business of it, will now turn round and say, now that I have all the
money I need for life, I want to put a small percentage of it back
into the community.”
He himself is a rich man. “I’m a millionaire, a few times over. The
obvious things about having a lot of money are the toys you can buy -
but what I’ve found is the biggest thing that money gets you is freedom.
Once you have a certain amount, you can buy any house you want to, and
you don’t necessarily have to work every day. It means you can do what
you want to do, and enjoy it. Most people don’t stop working, because
that would be boring, but you can choose what you do, and can stop
working for a period if you want. That’s a great thing.
“I intend to keep working. I grew up in Manchester, and one of the
things I learned about there was the Industrial Revolution. I’m a huge
fan of Lowry, and I remember looking at his paintings, and thinking how
exciting it must have been to be one of the engineers or the
industrialists - maybe less so if you were a mill worker – at that time
of change.
“The period I happen to live and work in now is going through a
similar revolution, and there’s just as much excitement and opportunity
in it. For me, whatever happens to blinkx, I just know there’ll be many
other exciting things to do, and I intend to do them.”
--------------
'I’m a millionaire, a few times over'
absolute stunning lack of empathy for shareholders, many of whom have seen up to an 80% drop in the value of their Blinkx holding in large part, in my opinion, because of Chandratillake's failings as a CEO.
He hasn't been replaced one minute too soon in my view, and indeed if I'd had my way he would have gone years ago. Time now to see what Brian Mukherjee can do - and he'd better do it quick, because I'm sure I'm not the only shareholder that is totally out of patience with this company and the way it has been (mis)managed.
Bye-bye Chandratillake, and good riddance. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out...
Lynch eyes Aurasma buy-back
Mike Lynch, the Cambridge UK entrepreneur who built Autonomy
Corporation may soon be talking to his old employee HP again – about
buying back Aurasma, its augmented reality division based.
Aurasma, based in Cambridge and London, is enjoying increased global
traction and Lynch is said to be keen to reclaiming this particular
jewel from HP/Autonomy’s crown.
Aurasma MD Martina King quit the company not long after senior
Autonomy management had resigned in frustration at the way HP was
handling integration of the Cambridge businesses – acquired for more
than $11bn last year.
Lynch could use a new technology fund – revealed today by US
business and financial news site Bloomberg – as vehicle for the
buyback.
Bloomberg has reported that Lynch’s new investment company will be based in London but confirmed Business Weekly’s 2011 exclusive that worldwide plays would be on the agenda.
The new venture is good news for software businesses everywhere – a
venture capitalist who really understands technology and what it takes
to build a world class software company.
from Business Weekly
Friday 20 July 2012
Bye Bye Chandratillake - and good riddance...
Blinkx Plc
Directorate Change
RNS Number : 0204I
Blinkx Plc
19 July 2012
blinkx plc
("blinkx" or "the Company")
Directorate Change
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - July 19, 2012. The Board of blinkx plc (LSE: blnx; "blinkx" or "Company") is pleased to announce today the broadening of the senior leadership team following a period of significant growth.
Suranga Chandratillake, the Founder and current Chief Executive Officer of
the Company, has assumed the role of President and Chief Strategy
Officer of blinkx and will continue serving as an Executive Member on
its Board. In this position, he will be responsible for advancing and
evangelizing the Company's technology and product vision, and exploring
new opportunities for growth. He will remain prominently involved in
relationships with Investors, Partners and Advertisers.
Chief Operating Officer Subhransu
("Brian") Mukherjee has been appointed CEO of blinkx and an Executive
Member of its Board of Directors with immediate effect. As the CEO,
Brian will be responsible for the overall leadership of the Company and
the development and execution of the Company's strategy, which includes
leveraging the significant opportunities created by the recent
acquisitions of Burst Media, Inc. and Prime Visibility Media Group, Inc.
(PVMG).
Brian (45) brings over 12 years of
executive management and operating experience at Public and Private
companies in the technology and media sectors to the CEO role. Brian
joined blinkx in 2011 through the acquisition of PVMG, where he was the
President, CEO and a Director. Prior to PVMG, Brian was at Miva, Inc.
(NASDAQ:MIVA), where he ran the Media Division globally. Before Miva,
Brian led the acquisition of and ran the Contract Management Solutions
Group at Selectica (NASDAQ: SLTC). During his career, Brian has also
held Executive positions in Silicon Valley-based Internet, Mobile and
Services startups, where he was responsible for raising capital,
acquiring companies, building high performance teams and expanding
partnerships to accelerate revenue and profitability growth. Brian
started his career as an Engineer and a Management Consultant and holds
BE and MS degrees in Engineering. He also holds an MBA from the
University of Chicago.
Commenting on the appointment, Anthony Bettencourt, non-executive Chairman of blinkx, said:
"Under Suranga's leadership, blinkx has been transformed from a start-up to a successful, profitable business
with over 300 employees and several major acquisitions under its belt.
blinkx is a fast-growing company in a rapidly changing industry, and its
technology and IP still have potential that remains untapped. At this
stage of any Company's growth, ensuring the executive management team is
set up to maximize the opportunities ahead is a key strategic
imperative. When Suranga recommended that we consider moving Brian into
the CEO role, it was clearly the right decision for the business. The
Board felt that Brian had the right set of skills and operating
experience to take the company forward as it continues to extend its
leadership position in Online Video. This will allow Suranga to focus
on strategic product initiatives and creating new opportunities for
blinkx technology, while maintaining a prominent role with external
stakeholders."
Suranga Chandratillake added:
"Founding this company and building it
from an idea to a business with over $100M in revenue over the past five
years has been an incomparable experience. blinkx is a thriving and
profitable business already, but it is also, at its core, a technology
company with the potential for massive further innovation, and I believe
the opportunity ahead of us requires a broader set of complementary
management skills. I first met Brian five years ago and have watched
him operate and grow multiple companies in our industry. Over the past
nine months, working side by side with him at blinkx, I have seen him in
action and know him to be an accomplished leader with deep management
and operational experience. He will be excellent as our CEO and I am
delighted to welcome him to the role."
S. Brian Mukherjee commented:
"I am honored and excited to have the
opportunity to lead blinkx in its next phase of growth. Suranga and the
founding team have done an exceptional job in leveraging unique
technology into a profitable business model. As a result, blinkx is now a
leading player in a sector that continues to gain momentum. Through
the acquisitions, the company has significantly expanded its commercial
and technology footprint. It now has a tremendous opportunity and an
established platform to accelerate revenue and profitability growth. I
look forward to working closely with the entire blinkx team and the
Board to pursue these opportunities and take the company to new
heights."
Enquiries
|
blinkx plc
|
+1 (415) 655 1450
|
|
S. Brian Mukherjee, CEO
|
|
|
Suranga Chandratillake, Founder & President
|
|
|
Frances Smith
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citigroup Global Markets Limited
|
+44 (0)207 986 4000
|
|
(NOMAD and Broker for blinkx plc)
|
|
|
Charles Lytle
|
|
|
Christopher Wren
|
|
|
|
|
|
FTI Consulting
|
+44 (0)20 7831 3113
|
|
Charles Palmer
|
|
|
Sophie McMillan
|
|
Additional information
While the company is not providing a full trading
update at this time, sales, operations and integration progress are in
line with expectations so far this half.
Subhransu Mukherjee, aged 45, is, or has been, a director of the following companies during the last 5 years.
|
Name of Company
|
Dates of appointment
|
|
Prime Visibility Media Group, Inc.
|
2010 - 2011
|
|
Zen Capital Partners, LLC
|
2009 - present
|
Mr. Mukherjee has options over 580,000 ordinary shares in the Company.
The Company confirms there is no other
information required to be disclosed pursuant to Schedule 2 paragraph
(g) of the AIM Rules.
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
Wednesday 18 July 2012
Aereo Shines With Limited Live TV on the Go
For all the talk about people who only watch downloaded television shows and movies on their computers and iPads, sometimes there’s nothing like live TV.
This week I tested a new product called Aereo, which may be an ideal fit for people who want on-the-go entertainment and don’t want to give up watching live TV shows or the ability to record and time-shift while watching.
from All Things Digital
This week I tested a new product called Aereo, which may be an ideal fit for people who want on-the-go entertainment and don’t want to give up watching live TV shows or the ability to record and time-shift while watching.
from All Things Digital
Saturday 14 July 2012
Saturday 7 July 2012
Opinion: I like YouView. There, I've said it
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/homecinema/opinion-i-like-youview-there-ive-said-it-50008505/
YouView box, interface and remote in hands-on video
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/homecinema/youview-box-interface-and-remote-in-hands-on-video-50008503/
Thursday 5 July 2012
Finally out of the box
"After years in the works, YouView has finally launched its web-connected set-top box service. But is it too little, too late? Andrew McDonald reports.
YouView’s launch this week brings to an end a tortuous development and long delays since the initiative was unveiled as Project Canvas in 2008.
But despite YouView chairman Lord Sugar’s insistence that the launch was a “great moment in British TV” and the service offers a “whole new way of experiencing TV,” the market has changed dramatically in the intervening years, with YouView no longer the groundbreaking proposition that it once promised to be..."
From C21Media
Wednesday 4 July 2012
YouView internet TV service launches in UK
"YouView, a service that combines
Freeview channels with online content, has finally announced its UK
consumer retail launch by the end of the month.The
company, chaired by Lord Sugar and invested in by the BBC, ITV, Channel
4, Channel Five, TalkTalk, BT and Aqiva, will offer Humax-based PVR
boxes via retail partners for £299 by the end of July. The project was
due to launch in 2010 and has cost £70m so far..."
from T3
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