> “I couldn’t find answers. I would sort of disappear, and I would hide, and I would make YouTube videos for my channel because at least I would be able yield something,” Neistat said. “I don’t think I’m giving CNN what I want to give them, and I don’t think they’re getting value from me.”
Sounds like things went poorly. Anyone know if this affected his earn-out (if there was one) or if they're just calling this whole thing a bust?
Beyond the Beme platform itself, I'm greatly troubled by this SV notion that you can crowdsource objectivity, as if we have ever received a rational analysis from a mob.
Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.
Not only that, but because Facebook is an online platform, they'll be fighting not only typical online security threats, but mass bot/troll campaigns to influence the result.
So people who at some point liked enough anti-vaxers posts to cross the threshold will never ever see any article presenting the facts that prove it's not true? And beside why would you want to serve users only the things that they agree with? It's not good for them, just makes them more stupid & easier targets for disinformation, but it's not good for Facebook neither because people love arguing online and cutting it down means also cutting the user interaction with the platform too.
That's my process, which has pretty much resulted in
mainly reading scholarly publications from working scientists/researchers/philosophers (as opposed to NDT/Michio sorts; smart fellows, but not really producing new physics).
Outside STEM it's just "culture" which, for me, has never held my attention for long. My mind seems to abstract it all into "Dopamine hit only, almost always lacking any truly new utility."
Internet celebrity seems even more superfluous to me than Hollywood. Now we have average joes peddling randomness at us en masse. Cause that's exactly what we need more of; noise.
> Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.
It doesn't really matter. Groupthink is already "sanctioned" by the group. If something gets flagged as "non-factual" it will just embolden all the supporters of that thing.
Are there people that actually want to implement "Surprisingly Popular" for voting in political candidates? It seems useful for things like finding the correct answer to a factual question, but I have no idea how it would work in politics.
It's less about politics than it is about the "wisdom of the crowds". For example, it'd be really useful to get info from traders if they have special information about how the market will move.
Wasn't there a post in the past few weeks that lampooned the "founder's farewell message for a failed startup" and catalogued the typical elements of such a message? This one seems to fit that mold perfectly.
CNN bought a brand and not a product. In fact the only “product” the company had (beme) was shut down at acquisition. Seems like they simply never managed to translate some smart enthusiastic people into a viable product.
Sad, but seemed like a predictable outcome. Neistat is great, but never saw how his approach would succeed inside a large corporate operation or how he could monetize the “brand” beyond his very successful YouTube following.
hmm. He did sold the company for millions of dollars to CNN. Should have made more money than most "venture startup video platform CEO"s in their lifetime.
There are plenty of startups started by celebrities which burned a lot of money and died. Of course, the popularity of Casey must be a factor for the CNN acquisition but you can't tell that as the only one.
Not OP and I have no inside info, but if we take the $25m as given and assume that investors owned 20-30% on a $2m check with a vanilla preferred that brings the founders/team share down to somewhere in the the $17.5-20m range with the lion's share going to the founders.
Sounds nice, right?!
But, and this is admittedly a big assumption, this smelt like an acquihire at the time so I imagine the deal was structured in a way that allowed the financial investors to cash out with a respectable return while the founders committed to some form of earn-out to ensure their commitment and loyalty to making the platform a success for CNN. Given how quickly the shutdown occurred, you have to assume they didn't meet the metrics in the buy-out so will be leaving some (a lot?) of that purchase price on the table. If we assume a 50% discount that brings the net price down to under $10m split across a group of 10+ employees with the two founders presumably capturing about 80% of that. After tax ~ possibly at their prevailing income tax rate vs long-term capital gains ~ he may have realized a low-single digit million exit which is nothing to sneeze at for the vast majority of us especially given the quick turnaround. Now, if CNN negotiated hard on the earn-out or the investors had something other than 1x preferred it's possible that number is significantly lower, but none of us really know.
I get the impression they bought the company expecting Neistat would allow them to tap into his vlogging audience to spread their political agenda so he would become something like a new-wave news anchor. I expect it went something like this...
Them: "Hey Casey, you should vlog the womans march"
Him: "Nah, I'm going to go surfing with my buddies".
I bet this lead to a lot of frustration from both sides when Neistat didn't want to play along.
I found a couple of mirrors of the video. They have the same title, but they have slightly different content, so I'm not sure which was the one that was linked.
CNN is in its MTV transition phase. Remember when MTV played videos? We'll be saying: Remember when CNN did news? I don't blame CNN; the issue is their funding doesn't allow for complete independence. They need to shift programming to keep ad dollars coming in and they're looking for their "The Real World".
I've followed Bourdain through his many network changes, but his latest shows on CNN aren't the same. CNN is still relatively dry. Not for want of trying though... witness the number of times their newscasters shouted "shithole" with glee recently. :)
Personally, Neistat is not appealing to me, but he had an existing audience that I guess CNN execs were willing to give it a shot. That to me is desperation, not execution.
Wow, MTV is a perfect metaphor if you grew up in the 80s/90s. I may have to start using that. Its all 'talking heads' and filler now. I wonder if they still have independent coverage of anything outside dc or nyc.
So as a user of the Beme Panel app (the 2nd app, created after the CNN acquisition), I thought its core idea was fascinating. The ability to quickly panel and poll people on news topics directly via a phone app instead of invasive text or phone calls seems something worthwhile to invest in. Using it felt more like joining a group for a conversation rather than being prodded by pollsters.
What didn't make sense to me is why they didn't "step on the gas" and accelerate the speed of their app development and content. I overall enjoyed the Beme youtube vids and it seemed they were finally honing in on the right track, and as mentioned earlier the Beme Panels app showed promise.
However, the videos were a bit infrequent, not pumping out as much video content as competitors VICE or Vox, or even CNN's own previous acquisition "Great Big Story". The Panels app was still in closed beta and only brought in a trickle of users instead of trying to bring in even more to provide more data points and diversity of content/conversation.
Being a subscriber to Casey's YouTube channel, it seems to me that Casey is the kind of person that's a self-starter that likes to change things up a lot (which works for YouTube vids), but when it comes to consistently working on something that's more finite for long periods of time he doesn't have the knack for it.
OUTPUT: They didn't make enough videos. 41 Videos in 6 Months 7.7 million views. 10 of them were Casey and not the Beme crew.
The production was good and the stories were interesting in a Vice type of way BUT they didn't output enough content. On YouTube amount of content is more valuable than production quality.
After Casey's latest launch of Beme (pre CNN), he shed some additional insight into the money Beme had raised and how they spend it. To date, Beme has now raised $6,000,000+ (presumably $6,619,242 assuming a $4 Million Series A on top of the existing stated Seed round).
The first launch of Beme led to 400,000 downloads in the first 6 days. Users posted 1 million videos in that same time frame. While there were breakout areas or "10s of thousands of consistent users, "after the cool down from the initial launch, they saw user engagement fall and realized the product was not working. There was hope that there was still validity in the concept (posting unedited - authentic video footage); however, the app needed a redesign to thoroughly test the concept.
Beme has 11 full time employees (10 of which are technical, 1 of which runs their social media communities (Jack)). Casey does not collect a salary from Beme. With this being said, it sounds as if Casey does not include himself in this employee count as he would most likely fall into the non-technical category. Beme splits their employees into 3 teams. Most likely these are divided by platform: Android, iOS, and Web.
The burn rate for these 11 employees is $180,000/month or $2,160,000/ year. Beme has the option to monetize through in-app advertising, in-app purchases, and selling of user data. With no signs that any 3 of these revenue streams have been activated at this time these expenses are being paid for from the venture capital money raised.
The second release has seen a surge in downloads to over 1 million, with added engagement after the first 8 days of launch. Time will tell if the added interest is purely based off of Casey's current social clout, or if the concept has legs to become a standalone sharing platform.
Failed acquisition: dog bites man story. Strange though that the acquired company principal is roaming around bad mouthing the acquirer rather than "focusing on strategic projects" or gardening.
63 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadSounds like things went poorly. Anyone know if this affected his earn-out (if there was one) or if they're just calling this whole thing a bust?
Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.
Taking a small subsection of a group and painting it as the majority is one of the oldest disinformation tactics.
AKA stereotype
Perhaps they meant "Usually right from the perspective of the individual doing the picking and choosing."
But you jump straight to "AUTHORITARIAN POWER WILL CRUSH USSSS!"
If you're interested in history, who is "usually right" and add them to your list of follows.
Is it cars? Who do you agree with?
By the standard of the person you are showing the news to.
C.f.: collaborative filtering. Or how Netflix recommends movies.
Outside STEM it's just "culture" which, for me, has never held my attention for long. My mind seems to abstract it all into "Dopamine hit only, almost always lacking any truly new utility."
Internet celebrity seems even more superfluous to me than Hollywood. Now we have average joes peddling randomness at us en masse. Cause that's exactly what we need more of; noise.
It doesn't really matter. Groupthink is already "sanctioned" by the group. If something gets flagged as "non-factual" it will just embolden all the supporters of that thing.
- http://news.mit.edu/2017/algorithm-better-wisdom-crowds-0125
- https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/02/06/crowd-wisdom-surpr...
Although it seems like there needs to be more research on the boundary cases
> Look at this fucking cheetah.
> He doesn't slow down, he doesn't get distracted.
> If you slow down he will catch you and he will tear your FUCKING HEART OUT.
> Work Harder
> Work Faster
US startup culture is weird, man. Who, in good conscience, says something like that to their employees?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ob4hS6ymCJZOVA_F7KTvMcFJc5z...
Sad, but seemed like a predictable outcome. Neistat is great, but never saw how his approach would succeed inside a large corporate operation or how he could monetize the “brand” beyond his very successful YouTube following.
Casey Neistat is a talented daily lifestyle vlogger, and apparently not a talented venture startup video platform CEO.
Somewhat irrelevant though, as he takes home annual-salary-sized checks for every video that he puts on youtube.
I thought Beme was dumb, just curious to learn more about the mechanics of this kind of deal.
Sounds nice, right?!
But, and this is admittedly a big assumption, this smelt like an acquihire at the time so I imagine the deal was structured in a way that allowed the financial investors to cash out with a respectable return while the founders committed to some form of earn-out to ensure their commitment and loyalty to making the platform a success for CNN. Given how quickly the shutdown occurred, you have to assume they didn't meet the metrics in the buy-out so will be leaving some (a lot?) of that purchase price on the table. If we assume a 50% discount that brings the net price down to under $10m split across a group of 10+ employees with the two founders presumably capturing about 80% of that. After tax ~ possibly at their prevailing income tax rate vs long-term capital gains ~ he may have realized a low-single digit million exit which is nothing to sneeze at for the vast majority of us especially given the quick turnaround. Now, if CNN negotiated hard on the earn-out or the investors had something other than 1x preferred it's possible that number is significantly lower, but none of us really know.
Them: "Hey Casey, you should vlog the womans march" Him: "Nah, I'm going to go surfing with my buddies".
I bet this lead to a lot of frustration from both sides when Neistat didn't want to play along.
https://youtu.be/8dVbO9BJa80
https://youtu.be/46RDiwfknu4
I've followed Bourdain through his many network changes, but his latest shows on CNN aren't the same. CNN is still relatively dry. Not for want of trying though... witness the number of times their newscasters shouted "shithole" with glee recently. :)
Personally, Neistat is not appealing to me, but he had an existing audience that I guess CNN execs were willing to give it a shot. That to me is desperation, not execution.
It's always been that way, other than brief exceptions (the 1991 Gulf War was probably the longest).
What didn't make sense to me is why they didn't "step on the gas" and accelerate the speed of their app development and content. I overall enjoyed the Beme youtube vids and it seemed they were finally honing in on the right track, and as mentioned earlier the Beme Panels app showed promise.
However, the videos were a bit infrequent, not pumping out as much video content as competitors VICE or Vox, or even CNN's own previous acquisition "Great Big Story". The Panels app was still in closed beta and only brought in a trickle of users instead of trying to bring in even more to provide more data points and diversity of content/conversation.
Being a subscriber to Casey's YouTube channel, it seems to me that Casey is the kind of person that's a self-starter that likes to change things up a lot (which works for YouTube vids), but when it comes to consistently working on something that's more finite for long periods of time he doesn't have the knack for it.
The production was good and the stories were interesting in a Vice type of way BUT they didn't output enough content. On YouTube amount of content is more valuable than production quality.
PS Casey states that Beme is moving into CNN and will still actually produce content. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfIhBu0TZBs
The first launch of Beme led to 400,000 downloads in the first 6 days. Users posted 1 million videos in that same time frame. While there were breakout areas or "10s of thousands of consistent users, "after the cool down from the initial launch, they saw user engagement fall and realized the product was not working. There was hope that there was still validity in the concept (posting unedited - authentic video footage); however, the app needed a redesign to thoroughly test the concept.
Beme has 11 full time employees (10 of which are technical, 1 of which runs their social media communities (Jack)). Casey does not collect a salary from Beme. With this being said, it sounds as if Casey does not include himself in this employee count as he would most likely fall into the non-technical category. Beme splits their employees into 3 teams. Most likely these are divided by platform: Android, iOS, and Web.
The burn rate for these 11 employees is $180,000/month or $2,160,000/ year. Beme has the option to monetize through in-app advertising, in-app purchases, and selling of user data. With no signs that any 3 of these revenue streams have been activated at this time these expenses are being paid for from the venture capital money raised.
The second release has seen a surge in downloads to over 1 million, with added engagement after the first 8 days of launch. Time will tell if the added interest is purely based off of Casey's current social clout, or if the concept has legs to become a standalone sharing platform.
https://techcrunch.com/video/casey-neistats-youtube-life/519...
Then again, good on Casey Neistat for squeezing out hopefully a cool few million from CNN.