Full Transcript:

Bob Cringely: Bringing television to the Internet and doing it elegantly is a challenge that well frankly hasn’t been met yet, but it may be about to from a new technology from of all places Evanston, Illinois called Neokast. Adam how did you get in the software business? Or do you consider this, the software business?

Adam Johnson: I do consider the software business, but overall I consider more of a technology which includes network infrastructure. So, the way I got into it to answer your question is I met Stefan who is our lead developer and actually that innovative genius behind Neokast and our streaming protocols. He was a student and he is the student for Northewestern a Ph D., student and I had actually met him and like recruited him for another project which was an online accounting project and we had began to talk about his research and what he was doing and looked into different applications for how we could use his talents and create a commercial entity out of that.

Stefan Birrer: I was personally, I was interested in doing like something on my own like even when I, before I just went to like higher studies I was dreaming off like doing like my own little hardware shop or something, because I started actually hardware first and ---, but I was like kind of focus it after all, like presume my studies and that went on and so like at some point I met Adam and suddenly like we realized that we both had like visions in terms of like, how we could do things and it slowly grow, I mean I met him, we build the trust relationship, we started to share our views, our visions and there was a huge overlap and the longer we new each other that the more the term of became to actually pursue our vision.

Bob Cringely: What you call this thing, I mean this Neokast, what you think of it as?

Adam Johnson: Its an online video distribution network that includes live streaming and offers people feature length that even greater than feature length content, I mean people can be streaming 24 hours a day seven days a week, so it creates the opportunity for broadcast on the Internet in the same way that television is available to you anytime you want to turn it on, this is available to you anytime you want to turn it on. As you can see it just continuously plays. It’s unlike what is out there in terms of download video because it continuously streams and that is the totally new thing for us and our mind in terms of the scalability, because it couples different technologies that exist in the new way that makes it more feasible.

Stefan Birrer: It’s a networking technology which integrates of course in the video technology. So, we have already developed our own video transport technology as far as, for example you talk about video containers right that video encoding and video containers. So, we are using our own video container and we try to be as open as possible in terms of video codec’s so that we can actually use different codec’s to go over our network so we’ve kind of that’s our openness. So, we don’t want to cut it down a narrow way like the opportunity is based on like we only can do this, we try to be open minded in that sense.

Bob Cringely: As a user it appears Neokast is, there is a essentially a transmitter and receiver and the transmitter is sending out a continuous stream of video data and the receiver receives it and then displays it so I can watch whatever you are broadcasting from here I can, in South Carolina where I am, I can connect to with in, I can watch it. What’s happening in between?

Stefan Birrer: It depends of course on how many users are connecting to the same content right, but there is a –

Bob Cringely: No, why is that, why is it dependent on that?

Stefan Birrer: So we use an newer concepts, we basically use the people which watch content stream to participate in the forwarding, so they share part of the load in terms of the network and so that makes it scalable because as more and more users count to view a particular stream, they add some bandwidth resources, which you don’t have to provide at the server. So, that’s where we are able to provide the service at the very low cost at the cost sometimes even free for some services. So, that’s the uniqueness about when you look at this where you look at what was video technologies like 5-years ago. They were all centralized server technologies and people struggle to get enough bandwidth to the server that they can support like thousands of viewers at the same time, so they came up with the more distribute solutions like CDNs those days, which still like host the bandwidth in datacenters, but they have like lots of demo over the world, but they still have to maintain all this datacenters, but this is the next step, so now you even moved basically about the datacenters split it up and move to the home, homes of the users right its like while I watch a stream I am serving something back into the network.

Bob Cringely: Let’s contrast to two examples. One is CNN, desides that they want to establish a channel a Neokast channel to, so anyone on the internet anywhere can watch the live feed of some CNN network and the alternative then is me and I decide that I am going to put up a continuous reel of my home movies to allow the world to watch my children grow up

Adam Johnson: Okay.

Bob Cringely: But, it is just like --- one hour of video this is going over and over again I am so- I am a very low volume player and CNN is presumably high volume player.

Adam Johnson: Yes.

Bob Cringely: How do you relate business wise to them and to me?

Adam Johnson: Well, you would both have different options, we will be offering a free service for streaming, if that’s what you wanted to do. Presumably, I don’t know how popular your kids are.

Bob Cringely: Not very popular at all, they are cute.

Adam Johnson: They wouldn’t generate much revenue at least not relative to CNN.

Bob Cringely: I think what I am suggesting is what if, I didn’t have any revenue goals?

Adam Johnson: Right

Bob Cringely: May be I didn’t care about revenue I just cared about getting out there.

Adam Johnson: Then what I would say is you would want to use our free service and you can stream that all you want 24 hours a day/seven days a week and the only limitations is you wouldn't actually be able to generate revenue off that directly, because you wouldn’t have user authentication therefore no one would pay for what they can get for free, right. So, if someone wants to charge at our site then they are going to have to be authenticated by our network otherwise they won’t receive the permissions to view the streams. So, with the free you can offer that and potentially at some point which we haven’t decided yet on how you want to implement or if we want to implement there would be available ads and things like that, that we would include in the free, but that hasn’t been decided or determined yet. So, but right now because of our streaming technology the cost is so low that our strategy is just to get users and we want people using it and the assumption is that if we can get users, we'll worry about making money down the line.

Bob Cringely: Sure, what about CNN?

Adam Johnson: And with regards CNN it depends on how they wanted to set up their network. If they wanted to set it up on their servers and their closed network and control it and administer it themselves. We would actually to be willing to license our protocol to them with non exclusive license that would allow them to serve their content and not be directly interfering with our content, hopefully. But, that what would be an option for them or if they want to just logon like a normal user, they would actually be able to and use our Pro-Version. If they wanted to charge or if they wanted to be ad free guaranteed or if they want to just be serving up from their site in a way that is within their control with all the Pro-Versions of like controlling bit rates, controlling all the codec’s, controlling everything that they wanted, that’s the way that a Pro producer would, they would use our Pro service and they would just logon and create a Pro account and embed the player into their website and they would be set, they could actually even make it available and use the traffic from our side, they can make it available on both and they can make it available on CNN site and in our site or they can make it available on one or not the other.

Bob Cringely: This is the streaming technology. So, can you stream live video that I cover the news and have it appear live?

Stefan Birrer: Yes you can stream live videos, you can stream archived videos. So, streaming doesn’t know as can include live content, but also can contain archived contents. So, it would be similar more or like that you actually have already a pre-recorded movie, you just put in into the network you don’t even need to be online to stream it all the time you just, its in the network and people would be able to watch it.

Bob Cringely: It’s in the network and people would be able, you mean once you inject in to it, it persists.

Stefan Birrer: You can … that’s an option you can do actually, I mean that’s going, the one the next step right, it is like we are pretty far as streaming technology and basically what we also do is archiving, right, so you will be able, let say you stream live, you use, you choose okay I going to archive this stream and when its archived its going to be available in the network. So, you go away get on to your live cast, whatever your call it and then its in the network, so people can go and watch its like a TIVO but it’s a fully distributed.

Bob Cringely: Tell me about the moment, if there was a moment when you realized what it was you had?

Adam Johnson: I continue to realize that actually, what happened was it started with a spark, started with a concept, something where it is like you see the potential, you got a lot of thing, everyone has a bunch of options.

Bob Cringely: Tell me the story.

Adam Johnson: Well, I was working at the Stock Exchange and it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing it was more of a 9 to 5 type of situation where you show up and you kind of work for somebody they tell you what to do, so you start to look for opportunities in your life, you start say okay, well this isn’t the one I wanted to do, so what do I want to do and things appear to you and then you look long enough you start to be able to discern between the opportunities, what has valid potential and what doesn’t, because you’ve gone down enough dead end roads are enough, or seen enough people take off or have problems that you can kind of identify what the characteristic something that could pass the potential to be successful are. I just saw it, I mean as soon as I met Stefan I was like this guy knows what he is doing, he really has a concept for what needs to be done in this area and has the talent to do it.

Stefan Birrer: The reason started like enabling some, enabling a service that in this case of Neokast is like live streaming for a large audience at a scale and a quality that’s unmatched, we want to provide something that user actually like to use it. Its like a “wow, I loved to be on Neokast, I want to use that service”, because the user loves it, that’s all just we put it out there for them, for us to make money for someone else to make money, but obviously people will make money of it, but the user has to love to be there, right. Its more that just money and it’s a vision behind a network.

Adam Johnson: Now, this is all I do and then that even fades away at the point where I don’t care, well do I want to sleep or do I want to do this, we almost end up choosing to work on Neokast…