A Newport Beach company that allows for personalities and experts in various categories to create subscription-based video channels recently has racked up big distribution partners. Pivotshare has signed with Seattle-based Amazon.com to put content on its new Amazon Prime Add-On program, and more recently signed a distribution deal with LeEco, a China-based technology and entertainment conglomerate that acquired Irvine-based Vizio Inc. this past summer.
“Distribution is really the most valuable element,” said Chris Woolsey, Pivotshare’s liaison between customers and engineers. “If you have amazing content but no way to get it out to a large market, then it’s not worth it.”
Pivotshare enables personalities, such as fitness guru Jillian Michaels, to create a series of videos similar to those that can be found on TV and DVDs. Other categories include wrestling, arts and culture, and religion.
Pivotshare gives everyone who creates content on its subscription channels marketing tools to build an audience, though it tends to work better if the creators already have an audience, Woolsey said. So Pivotshare actively seeks out influencers such as Michael and tries to recruit them to put their content on the platform rather than established sites like YouTube that don’t charge viewers for most of their content.
Pivotshare’s patent-pending algorithm tracks the revenue that each channel generates. Contributors get paid at the end of each month based on the value they’ve provided to the channel tied to viewership metrics.
The company launched in 2011 and has raised $3.6 million, Woolsey said.
New Record Label in Town
A Newport Beach entertainment company has launched a record label focused on positive, socially-conscious music with the intent of showcasing soul and rhythm and blues. Primus Entertainment started the Primus Records label.
Primus, which traditionally has overseen film, TV and theater development projects, has expanded into music under the auspices of founder and Chief Executive Lamar Jones, former senior vice president at Viacom Media Networks.
Primus also is putting on weekly music showcases at EnVy Lounge in Newport Beach in the former space of TEN nightclub on Wednesday nights from 8 p.m. to midnight that feature musicians from Los Angeles.
Through the showcases, Jones has put together a girl group called 3rd Dimension, which is one of the first groups the new label will produce.
“People say you can’t do things like this in Orange County,” Jones said. “I live here. I feel like it would be really cool to bring something different to the community.”
Designer-Client Matchup
A new Costa Mesa company that matches software designers with those that need their services has learned what works and doesn’t work in terms of making money.
Design Inc. just launched a third version of its platform. The company started out in June, and the first two versions were attempts to fully automate the matchmaking process. It was challenging, though, to make money that way, because the company couldn’t get a cut of the deals that transpired after designers and clients connected through its platform, co-founder and Chief Executive Marc Hemeon said.
The new approach features an introduction-based model through which customers post what they need and the thousands of designers on the platform that specialize in user interface and visual design pay $5 to bid on each project. Customers receive five bids back to choose from.
The design services offered include logos, website and mobile app design and custom projects.
Hemeon was a digital, software and graphic designer for about two decades. He created a startup with three friends in 2010 called Fflick, which was acquired by YouTube. Fflick is a movie-recommendation site based on people’s Twitter postings.
He and co-founder Bjoern Zinssmeister, who serves as chief technical officer, created Design Inc. because of the perceived void of designers in Silicon Valley, although the startup has a global reach.
“If you go by the metric that when you build a software company, you want one designer for every 10 engineers, than we’re about 150,000 designers short in Silicon Valley right now,” he said. “There’s more than 11,000 companies in Silicon Valley. Even when I was at Google, people were always asking me, ‘Do you know a designer?’”
But focusing too tightly on Silicon Valley didn’t work, Hemeon said, because the global market for designers doesn’t have the same needs or budget.
“Our designers have worked for Google and Facebook and Twitter,” he said. “They’re some of the best. We built our initial version of Design Inc. around the idea that companies would hire designers purely on the clout of their name recognition and the companies they worked for. That assumption turned out not to be true.”
Hemeon said he also wants to dispel any misconceptions as to what a designer does.
“Most people think all designers do is create buttons, colors, typeography and layout,” he said. “That is literally 5% of what they do. Designers help businesses solve problems, like increasing their revenue or building their audience. … They just happen to use graphics, layout and visuals to accomplish their solutions.”
Hemeon said Design Inc. closed a seed round of approximately $2 million in March.
