Next New Networks, Part 3
I’m going to try, in as few posts as possible, to create a coherent timeline of the short, eventful life of Next New Networks, an early, consequential moment in streaming video history.
From Part 1: Emil Rensing and I, with a huge assist from future Tumblr creator David Karp, stumbled into the brave new world of online video without much of a plan.
From Part 2: Our friend –my former partner at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, and our future Next New Networks partner– Jed Simmons introduced us to Spark Capital in Boston, who wanted to partner and fund Next New.
Part 3: Late 2006
What do we do now?
Once Spark signaled their interest, we needed to get serious. I still had Frederator Studios, my successful and increasingly busy independent cartoon production company, but the excitement of this opportunity was overwhelming. Even if I was significantly older than the typical internet entrepreneur, I felt that my background in media and production could be meaningful. The first phase of the consumer internet required deep engineering skills because the infrastructure was still somewhat nascent. Web 2.0 had developed enough tools that even someone with my limited skills could participate. Besides, I had Emil on my side, someone who had a unique understanding of the state of the tech world.
By summertime, after a variety of conversations and meetings, Emil and I settled on a co-founding team. Jed Simmons, of course. Emil had a start up friend –Tim Shey– who’d sold his DC based, interactive agency and moved to New York where he was consulting with some early stage video companies. I was stretched to thin to have an operating role in the joint, so we all agreed that my childhood friend and adult colleague Herb Scannell –former Vice Chairman of MTV Networks and CEO of Nickelodeon– would be a perfect CEO. Luckily, he agreed, and our management line up was in place. (David Karp would be our founding developer, until he launched Tumblr several months later, of course).
We can leave the machinations of filling out the A-round of investment aside. Suffice to say, many venture capitalists were uninterested in any idea that didn’t have unique software attached –we didn’t– but we put together an investor group and board of directors that were excited with our vision.
Next New Networks posters designed and illustrated by Frank Olinsky
Our vision? ah. yes. By the time we were on the road pitching our wares, we had taken the basics of VOD Cars and Channel Frederator and put together a plan that was based on “communities of interest,” which we felt would be the engines of viewership and growth. As Tim Shey later wrote:
Next New Networks popularized the ideas of videoblogging and advertiser-supported online video, and pioneered the multi-channel network (MCN) business model and the concept of audience development, assembling a diverse and successful portfolio of original programming including hit channels Barely Political, VSauce, and ThreadBanger, and a network of independent creators such as The Gregory Brothers—racking up over 2 billion video views and thirteen Webby Awards, more than any online media company at the time.
Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times was probably the writer that caught onto what we had accomplished better than most.
By March 2007, we were fully funded with our first round, expanded past the Frederator/NY office into a larger space in the same building on Park Avenue South, and started to put together an amazing start up staff that could actually execute. At least, what we’d morphed our vision into. Super distribution!
(More to come.)
