Is there more room in the market aside from YouTube?  This group of startups is hoping to break through the YouTube strangle-hold with innovative offerings that offered niche content, viral components, interaction with live video, or live TV on a PC.

Moderator: Jeremy Toeman, Livedigitally.com

Judges:
Steven Li, Webex
David Hornik, August Capital
Steven Horowitz, Yahoo!

FORA.tv
Aggregates the top public content around political, social and cultural issues from around the world and enables users to engage in the conversation.  It allows users the ability to zoom into a chapter or a transcript; download the content in any format, submit a link, or place it on digg. FORA.tv supports video blogs from subject matter experts and provides them a place where have an online conversation around an issue.  The startup has partnered with organizations such as The Commonwealth Club and C-SPAN, and the Hoover Institution.  FORA.tv's basic premise is to offer public events around world online, overcoming the frustration some people with TV news programming. The judges acknowledged there is a need to distributed well produced social content, they noted that FORA.tv was targeting the anti-YouTube crowd and that the market was not large enough and needed to make their content more mainstream.  They also commented that the web is about taking the cost out of producing content and making it easy for people to find it.

SplashCast
SplashCast is a mixed media platform for creating, mixing and syndicating content channels through an embedded player. The company has a vast media library that users can access and then modify with authoring tools and then embed their content or distribute customized content to their friends.  They offer a free ad supported accounts, paid accounts with less intrusive ads and also offer branded video channels within Facebook, which has caught the interest of record labels, video bloggers, and political groups.  The judges commented that SplashCast going after the longtail with a focus on distribution, but noted that distribution is ultimately across a set of social networks behind it and NOT behind the technology.  Judges wanted to know which part of SplashCast's business model was the most important over the long run?  SplashCast sees its advertising revenue being most significant over the long run, but that in the short term the company's branded channels are a great revenue stream.  One of the judges pressed SplashCast here and wondered whether they should focus entirely on advertising revenue as there might be a trade off with company focus. SplashCast was confident that it could pursue both simultaneously and not loose focus.

UStream.tv
This startup is a platform that lets people with a camera and an internet connection broadcast live video to the web.  Live interactive video lets people build connections with their audiences and turn this into a viewer experience.  UStream deals with Live and recorded content. Live for Ustream enables you to interact with the video, broadcaster and participate in it live. Their business model will be ad supported free services coupled with “pro-sumer” services or broadcasters who will be selling their content.  Judges wanted to know what is going to make live casting interesting and whether Ustream had measures in place to eliminate questionable content that is broadcast.  One judge commented that small bands could use UStream's tools to promote their live shows in advance and that this market segment would be a strong fit. Both the judges and presenter agreed that content acquisition would be the company's biggest challenge. 

Zattoo
Zattoo delivers live TV on your computer and is like a virtual cable network for your PC.  It acquires, transports, and presents streaming video in one application for all channels for broadband users anywhere.  Zattoo's live content takes 3-8 seconds to switch a channel, so during this time, it monetizes those seconds between the switching of the channels to display ads.  The company partners with broadcasters and advertisers to serve viewers with a wide selection of content from various sources in one easy-to-use interface.  The judges noted that there have already been several previous attempts to surplant TV, but ultimately these companies were unable to provide a wide array of content choices beside porn.  Judges also wanted to know how Zattoo validated its business model that its ad revenue could at some point in time exceed its content cost.  Zattoo commented that in negotiating with content providers, their request for fixed cost and revenue share and other revenue streams vary by provider.  Zattoo also confirmed that it had patents pending to set up a defensible barrier to entry.  Judges wanted to know what Zattoo was doing to get U.S.-based content companies lined up but also agreed that targeting expats in the U.S. was an ideal target market.