Full Transcript:

Joshua Kinberg: My name is Joshua Kinberg. And I am the Founder, CEO of FireAnt. We are about to release our new FireAnt MediaPlayer and Aggregator, which you see here for windows. We have a windows of Mac version. We also just launched our new website, which is a sort of TV guide for internet TV channels. We now have almost 20,000 channels listed over a million episodes aggregated, and we provide search and discovery interface for finding what you want to subscribe to from these channels that are syndicated from all over the web. That website, that guide is also inside a FireAnt. So it’s like our itunes store sorts. And you can browse and discover channels. You can subscribe to them, and you can download and play, just on any video format. We support windows media, Quick time, flash, Real Player other codecs as well. You can download and play, you can watch full screen. You can also view the RSS information that goes with that video cast, and you can also go back to the website within FireAnt, so we have an integrated web browser as well. So here I am watching the make podcasts, and I can go right back to the make site. So little different than itunes is that we actually drive traffic back to your site from your podcasts. In addition to that we can take any video format, and we can transcode it and sink to different portable devices. So today we support AR Codes, PSP, ipods, various mobile phones. So I am going to queue up rocket boom here, that I have sink to my mobile.

Ed Kohler: T-Mobile dash

Joshua Kinberg: Right, on my T-mobile Dash. I can watch rocket boom or whatever channels I enjoy from internet TV.

Ed Kohler: So, content creators rather than having to create all the different encodings. If they are pushing their stuff to FireAnt really just promoting FireAnt, people will create their own PSP or itunes version if that’s the way they want.

Joshua Kinberg: Right. Exactly. Sort of like itunes where if you --- for itunes you have to create the ipod compatible format, and then people can subscribe an itunes sink to an ipod, with FireAnt you can do that except they can sink to just about any device out there, where constantly adding more devices, and working with different hardware manufacturers. So that’s basically FireAnt in nutshell. Then we were doing business wise as we are actually taking our whole platform and offering it as a white label service. So if you are a media company for corporate communications, you can basically get your own media player similar to itunes, but it’s your own media player. With your own branding, your own corporate identity, your channels can be administered through online web based interface. You can control what channels are pre-loaded, and what categories they are in. And you can sink to various portable devices. We can also include interstitial ads or banner ads. So you can have your player sponsored and promoted through different advertising programs, and gig rate usage stats, know who is watching the video and when and how they are using this software.

Ed Kohler: So for example if I was in charge of communications internally like Earnst and Young like some large company like that, I can create the custom version of FireAnt. Communicate internally and you check how many people are actually watching the videos will be putting out as well then, could be like Earnst and Young TV access.

Joshua Kinberg: You can use on your corporate intranet. We can also do various customization so that for instance if you wanted this for your corporate communications, only this content can only plan this player. So it’s more privatized in that way or private viewing experience. So there are various custom ad ons we have on top of our core platform, and that’s fine.

Ed Kohler: Ok. So there are other video aggregaters out there. Probably the biggest one today is still probably itunes, and to differentiate yourself with them. Why would some one run both. I mean for the music they probably still didn’t have itunes on there, so why should they use you for video?

Joshua Kinberg: Well, itunes is definitely a great application. I use it too and it’s great if you have an ipod, but there are some key differences here. One is well some technical differences. We support more formats in just quick time, so just about any video format can play in FireAnt. We have an integrated web browser, so it would actually drives traffic back to your website, itunes actually doesn’t provide any link outs. So once your content is in the itunes, your viewers are in the itunes, and they might be going in to the itunes store, and downloading Lost, which is great, but you are losing that brand engagement, that you would otherwise have with your own media environment. And as I said we have the integrated browser, people can drive back to your website. We support BitTorrent, so you can do BitTorrent downloads and save on the economic, so the bandwidth costs distribute large HD files or long format files. So there is some key differences with the itunes also, transcoding and sinking to more than just the ipod. There is also other devices. There is Sony PSPs, there is billions of mobile phones out there, they can play video, there is orkut’s devices, there is creative zen devices in Microsoft Zunes, and if you go to CES, there is 100s of portable video devices. So locking at just to the ipod, that’s only one device. So those are some of the key differences, additionally if you are a private label customer of FireAnt, your own media player, your own branding, your own channels, integrated ads, usage Sats. So it’s a really custom environment that keeps viewers really engaged with your brand, and that’s something really important.

Ed Kohler: It seems like you started around the same time as Democracy player, but you have taken your products in a certainly different direction. I think they are more of an open source non-profit model. How would you explain differences there?

Joshua Kinberg: We definitely know the guys of democracy pretty well. We did start around the same time, actually we came up with our first version of FireAnt on the Mac, they just on blog torrent, which was pretty cool way of publishing torrents on your blog. So there are some similarities. There is some technical differences because they are open source model, and there is some business differences because they are non-profiting, we are a corporation. So with just some different things that they can do, and some different things that we can do, but we started with very similar concepts, basically trying to create, distribute it internet TV. When we started these projects pretty much in late 2004, when we started, came out the first version January 2005. We were very embedded in the video blogging community, and it really came through a grass roots effort, kind of working with our friends, who are at the time, there were only 20 video bloggers in the world, that were distributing with RSS. All 20 of them were in FireAnt. And therefore all our buddies in New York, and a few other places. Though the spaces really growing up since then, but I think we share some common philosophies with Democracy essentially also that video on the net or video online video channels, and so forth, they are going to exist all over the place. They are not just going to be at YouTube, and they are not just going to be at Blip. They are going to be all over the internet, and really FireAnt as an aggregator tool, can take video from different places all around the internet, and put it together in one place for one consistent viewing experience, no matter what format the video is because even though there is a lot of Flash video now, there are still a lot of other video formats out there.

So having something that plays anything, that connects to any device, we are also working on connecting to set-top boxes, and X-box and Sony PS3, and other devices. So really we see videos existing everywhere, and giving users of choice to subscribe to what they want, and watch it on whatever environment they want, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s on their set-top, whether it’s on their PC.

Ed Kohler: So when you are not coding FireAnt, you actually have time to kick back and watch some videos. How do you go about doing that? Do you watch on your computer or you are connecting your computer on your flat screen TV like, what’s your personal preference?

Joshua Kinberg: Personal preference. I actually watch when it comes to internet video, I actually watch a lot of it on my PC on my laptop or my Mac, I'm dual system. So, I do watch a lot of it online. I do because I am always testing FireAnt, and I have all these different devices that I am working with. So I am always doing compatibility testing with different devices, but Yeah, I watch primarily on my computer I would say this time, but it’s really nice to be able to take the cool stuff with me. The stuff I really like, I want to show somebody and just flip out of PSP or an ipod or something I will say, “Oh, this is a really cool video that I saw”.

Ed Kohler: Have you received any funding, how is the business, how far you are working out?

Joshua Kinberg: We are still in early stage. We have six people. We are located in San Francisco. Most of it’s been self-funded. We have had some friends and family loans. We also had some additional bridge loans. We are looking at raising an angel round, coming up very soon, increasing operations, and expanding our business. We recently will be releasing very soon, our first custom white label products with Dutch public television network called VPRO. We are very excited about this. So VPRO will have their VPRO media player, that has VPRO Dutch Public TV channels, and so forth and we are really excited about that, and that will be launching very soon hopefully in April.