BUSINESS BLOGS
BUSINESS BLOGS
category: business
01 Nov 2009

I keep telling myself not to post monthly updates of WatchMojo’s growth trajectory, and I mean it, but then every once in a while something else happens that blows me away.  This is one of those months.  I just announced how our offline reach has soared to over 15,000,000 consumers per month (think big screens in malls, gyms, coffee shops etc. broadcasting our content) which combined with our online reach of 5,000,000 uniques put our total reach at 20,000,000 consumers.  That is very cool. 

But today, I ran our October stats and I was floored, first, the graph, then some perspective, and finally some lessons:

Monthly Streams

All-time Streams

This is freaking insane.  When we launched the site in 2006, I used to look at the stats and I would ask myself: do people actually watch videos?  And if they do, do they watch anything other than cats falling off skateboards (well, and porn)?

Eventually, we found out that we had to take our videos to where people consumed them.  We did 550,000 streams in all of 2006, then did 13,000,000 in 2007.  Then 2008 saw a jump to 28,000,000 streams and in 2009 we will do 55,000,000 streams.

We decided to brand the videos heavily to WatchMojo.com, with opening and closing bumpers and lower-third watermark and all.  I thought it was crazy, I pushed for it because I figured if people pirated the content (who would want to do that anyway, was my own counter-argument) then at least we would get some branding.  But today this means our brand has been seen some 87,000,000 times online alone.

That’s the thing, that is only online.  This month I finally decided to run the numbers and see how much presence we had offline.  I fell off my chair.  Our videos - branded WatchMojo again - are seen in 2,000 retail locations and reach 15,000,000 consumers each month.  I will never forget when a would-be investor called me up an hour after we chatted and told me he saw us in a gas station in Los Angeles, or when a former host of ours saw us in a bagel shop in Chicago, or for that matter, when I heard that my former boss curses every time he lands on a site and sees our logo display before a video loads up.

I always laugh when Google scores heavy in InterBrand’s top brand survey because they never set out to build a brand but did so by focusing on the nuts and bolts. 

I always thought WatchMojo could become a strong brand (the logo was always intended to stick out).  I also thought the company could be big, very big; but the company’s popularity, reach, brand and position in the marketplace is starting to floor myself.  And I am a very ambitious and driven individual.   I want to make WatchMojo as successful financially as it has been operationally, and I know there’s lots of work to do on that front, but still…

We’ve had to overcome a lot:

- being a content company, which in the 2000s gets no respect from the media and investors alike,
- the 2006 lawsuit which was frivolous and we won, but almost killed us before we really took off,
- talking to VC groups and then seeing them turn around and fund our “competitors”, which wouldn’t be the end of the world, if it weren’t for…
- … seeing those very same companies scale back or shut down, only to leave a bad taste in the mouths of other would-be investors,
- there not being any ad format in online video that is popular, efficient and effective enough to move the needle, the way Google’s text ads did for search, despite the hundreds of millions that hapless VCs have made in the sector,
- being unfunded (forget being underfunded, I mean literally not funded - ever), so always having one foot in the grave and the other foot on the gas pedal,
- the 2008 recession which basically almost killed everything,
- the 2009 advertising market crumbling in H1.

Anyway, I’m not complaining.  In fact, I am very grateful.

As we finish Year 3 of WatchMojo’s operations, we have never laid off a single person and technically now have 50% more staff than we did last year (don’t know why I use the word “technically” since we do, in fact, have 50% more staff than last year this time).

Not only am I not complaining, I am counting my lucky stars that we:

- have such a great team,
- have an amazing product,
- provide a valuable service to countless other media companies, both new and traditional,
- are now finally counting amongst our clients marketers such as McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Coors Molson, Malibu Rum and many, many others.

How, on earth, did this all happen?

Well, for one, determination and persistence.  I’ve written on that before, here, here is the quote from former President Calvin Coolidge:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Determination and persistence is just one part of it, you need a lot of luck and timing… and of course, vision, ambition, execution and focus. 

I have no idea what the future holds… but I used to think we would get a lot of “street cred” if we jumped off the bridge like many others and raised a boatload of money.  The boat never came, the money wasn’t there… and some how we are now totally dominating the industry.

I’ve referred to Sequoia’s “Good Times RIP” presentation and the famous death spiral slide:

I was very concerned about not becoming Company A - you know, the company that didn’t take immediate action and lay off people so that maybe, just maybe, when the dust settled, it could become like Company A, who had the “courage” to lay off everyone and reset its operations.

But, I also didn’t want to be Company B, who recklessly laid off people because it got scared.

Then it hit me, we were neither company A or B, we were a company that was largely off the radar, doing our own thing.  We had written our own playbook and were in the process of writing our own history.  We were, in fact, Company C:

I don’t quite know who is Company A and Company B in our world, and I don’t care, all I know is that we’re coming on strong.  I have always said the beautiful thing about content is that it is not a zero-sum game, our wins won’t necessarily come at the expense of our competitors… but the more we compete in the marketplace, the more often we find ourselves winning.