Above the Crowd

Today Benchmark is excited to announce that we will be partners with Jason Kilar and Richard Tom on their next exciting project — Vessel . Working with amazing entrepreneurs is the number one reason we enjoy venture capital, and rarely do you have the opportunity to work with a team that has a track record like these two. While they are not planning to disclose any specifics today about the company, you can rest assured that they plan to bring their amazing product instincts and cultural leadership that were at the heart of Hulu’s success. We are also excited to be partnering again […]

“The clock on the wall’s moving slower My heart it sinks to the ground And the storm that I thought would blow over Clouds the light of the love that I found” – Fool in the Rain, Led Zeppelin More often than not, we here in Silicon Valley are prone to idealism. We see a scenario the way we want to see it, and make predictions that fit our view of how we think the world should work, or perhaps even how we would like the world to be. This is especially true when it comes to technology. Outsider “luddites” […]

[Follow Me on Twitter] We are clearly at a very important point in time when it comes to Internet video, especially video that is served to your television, but over the Internet (also known as “over-the-top” Internet video). Christmas of 2009 and Christmas of 2010 will mark the point in time that Internet menus began to show up in-mass on televisions, DVD players, and game machines. That said, one would be hard pressed to predict exactly how this market will evolve.  There are simply way more questions than answers. For example: Who will own the operating system layer? Who will own the menu “stack” […]

I recently spoke at AlwaysOn’s OnHollywood conference on the subject of today’s extremely dynamic online/Internet video world. Things are moving so amazingly fast that its extremely hard to predict specific outcomes. That said, I believe there are a number of critical issues to understand as we watch this market unfold over the next  few years.  Here is the video of the event:   And here are the slides: I wish they were synchronized, but alas after well over an hour of work, I gave up.  I believe that Google bought a company that will allow this, but they haven’t released the functionality yet on YouTube. […]

Many companies and visionaries have pontificated about the future of video ads and different techniques for monetizing online videos.  A big part of this is driven by the fact that while YouTube is a huge user success, its a less proven monetization success.  On a recent trip to NYC, an idea came up which I can’t get out of my head, and the more I think about it, the more I believe that it is the Holy Grail for the future of online advertising.  But before I disclose the big “ah-ha,” a few caveats: 1) No one will ever monetize commodity content well.  If the same […]