I think the world of Fred Wilson, so this isn’t a criticism of what he said, but it does reveal a lot about the chasm between media, technology companies and the VCs that fund these. In the excerpt below, Fred is talking on his blog about a NYT article on Veoh:
Veoh came in as an also ran in the web video sweepstakes. We all know that YouTube won that one going away. But instead of giving up, they’ve copied Joost and build a client side app that acts as a set-top box style interface to video. But, and this is a big but, instead of going and asking permission from the content ownes like Joost is doing, Veoh is just pulling all the stuff that’s already on the web. That’s the way to do it. Nobody wants a closed system anymore other than the content owners. Open wins, closed fails. My only beef is with Todd Dagres’s quote (Todd is a friend who sits on Veoh’s board). Todd says:
“We are going to try to be friendly to content owners,” said Todd Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital who serves on the Veoh board. “We are going to try to be the white-hat company.”
Not exactly Todd. Joost is the while hat company. That’s why Veoh is going to win and they are going to lose.
I can’t think of anything more revealing about the distrust and disdain between media companies and tech outfits that essentially build businesses in a cavalier manner.
I actually like the fact that Veoh is not content to being in the shadows of YouTube, but when VCs give such positive reinforcement and credit to tech companies that show little concern for content-owners’ intellectual property, I wonder who is on the right side of ethics. Of course, Fred isn’t saying “Veoh should be the black hat video site”. But the fact that a winner needs to do things in such a brazen way when it does not own the underlying asset is questionable. Of course, I’m biased as a content guy, even though as a web video content guy I do look to Veoh and YouTube as a promotional platform, I understand why TV executives would disagree… In fact, I wonder how VCs would feel if I allowed myself to build a business on tech companies’ assets without their permission and then turned around and said “I’m doing them a favor, can’t you see?”
Don’t get me wrong, I have far more sympathy for technology entrepreneurs than established and entrenched media companies who put their own bottom line ahead of their customers’ interests and desires, but reading that boldfaced quote makes me wonder a lot about what kind of values we want entrepreneurs to adopt. Worst part, that’s Fred Wilson, not exactly one of the types that gives VCs a bad name! I can just imagine what kind of an incentive some entrepreneurs are given to raid established businesses for their own success.
Related:
- Chasm between tech and media firms
- Silicon Valley must adapt, too
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WatchMojo NewsletterI’m not as smitten with Mozilla Firefox as I should be, perhaps, but today marks an interesting anniversary: four years ago today, AOL killed Netscape and that spawned Mozilla. Mozilla Firefox has become the leading challenger to MSFT’s Internet Explorer, and while only some 13% of the world is on it, apparently, in some areas of Europe it has grown to become quite a ferocious foe of Redmond’s near-monopolistic browser.
In four years time, what will Mozilla Firefox’s market share be in 2011?
I was trying to put up a Poll Daddy poll but the darn thing kept crashing… so if you have a guess, leave it in the comments.
