Their Saturday evening was approaching midnight five years ago when Jeff Greenberg, wrapping up another 70-hour work week at Ingram Micro Inc., made an offhand comment to co-worker Michael Harano that the pair should go into business together.
“We figured we should do this on our own and see if we could make more money,” Harano recalls. “Or at least get some free time.”
The pair hasn’t yet joined Orange County’s billionaire club,far from it,and both admit that they put plenty of hours into their Irvine company, Digevent Inc. But they’re confident the 15-person operation, which broadcasts corporate events and a collection of its own television-like shows over the Internet, will dramatically alter the way businesses communicate to everyone from investors to customers.
Growth Prospects
The company is finishing up a $1 million round of financing, and Greenberg, the company’s chief executive, expects the firm to grow this year to 50 people as it begins a marketing push and opens its Northern California and East Coast studios.
The 9-month-old company hopes to make its name part of the vernacular by combining the sound and motion of television with the interactivity of the Internet through a series of web broadcasts,or “digital events.” Digevent officials are promoting the idea as a way for businesses to conduct meetings with shareholders, promote new products or offer training sessions.
In addition, Digevent hosts its own weekly interactive shows on everything from personal finance to playing guitar, an expression of Greenberg’s creative streak. Greenberg, a 36-year-old art major who once ran Ingram’s in-house multimedia department, manages the content side of the businesses, while Harano takes care of financials. Mike Gibas is responsible for developing Digevent’s technology, and Melissa May, who’s been with the company since the beginning, heads marketing communications.
The programs present a television-like picture on viewers’ computer screens alongside a window that displays web pages with more information and links to related resources. At the same time, viewers can take part in polls and submit questions to speakers.
Digevent’s staff handles the look and feel of the studio or live event, the broadcasting process and the accompanying web content and screens, and routes messages and questions from viewers. While Digevent officials admit their audience for most live shows numbers “in the dozens,” they say many more people view archived content; Greenberg says the company gets e-mail from viewers all over the world.
The idea sprang from the pair’s earlier venture, a web-design firm called Computer Image and Design Inc. that operates separately. (Harano still heads CIAD, in addition to his duties as Digevent’s chief operating officer.) A CIAD client wanted to broadcast one of its meetings over the Internet. When CIAD finally found an outside company to help broadcast the event, the bill came to $20,000.
“That got me thinking,” Greenberg says. “There’s a margin in there somewhere.”
Corporate Interest
Apparently, other companies are thinking about Internet multimedia, too. Within six weeks of officially launching, Digevent has signed on several customers, including storage equipment maker Iomega Corp. and the wireless industry trade organization CDMA Development Group. Though Digevent is not profitable, officials said, the company is generating revenue and they expect it to break even soon.
Several other companies, including Lake Forest-based VideoScape.net, offer similar technology and services. Greenberg says he hopes to distinguish Digevent with a higher level of behind-the-scenes planning, a heartier infrastructure and more creativity.
Still, content-oriented dot-coms historically have not generated investor enthusiasm, and with many potential funders demanding a clearer path to profitability, Greenberg admits his business strategy could change.
“This feels like the early days of television,” he says. “There are a lot of things we don’t know about this new medium. That’s part of why we’re here, to figure out which models work.”
Streaming video over the Internet has become commonplace, but content producers are still working out how to integrate the video stream with data and two-way messaging. Yahoo! recently launched a similar financial news service called FinanceVision, and music sites such as PreviewTunes.com integrate data and streaming multimedia onto a single browser window.
But with Digevent’s business-to-business service focus and highly targeted advertising possibilities, Greenberg says he’s sure he can make a business case.
In addition to service fees for putting on the web events for companies and charging companies to advertise on its own programs, Digevent is considering a variety of pay-per-view and sponsorship options.
And ultimately, both Greenberg and Harano say, their jobs are far more rewarding than when they were in the corporate arena.
“If I didn’t have to work, I’d be sitting on a beach drawing pictures,” Greenberg says. “But this is a pretty good compromise.” n
