BrandLive just acquired assets and a team virtual events platform from Notified.
Most of the time that'd barely make news.
So what's the big deal?
This acquisition actually has implications for you beyond just those two companies and their immediate customers.
As you'll hear V2's Aaron Cole and Roger Courville discuss in this thought-provoking episode of Thought Leader Conversations, they unveil the implications of this significant move for the virtual events and webinars industry. Tune in to stay ahead in the evolving landscape of virtual communication, including learning about:
Industry Consolidation: The acquisition of Notified by BrandLive represents a continued trend of market consolidation, where larger entities absorb smaller ones to expand their capabilities and streamline their market presence.
Enhancement of Features: The acquisition brings together BrandLive’s event management expertise with Notified’s technological assets, including a robust codebase and skilled personnel, potentially leading to an enriched feature set for virtual and hybrid events.
Market Evolution Post-COVID: The conversation highlights the evolving landscape of the virtual events industry post-COVID, emphasizing the stabilization and cautious optimism regarding future market developments.
Strategic Acquisition Benefits: By acquiring Notified, BrandLive potentially gains advanced functionalities and customer bases that could position them better against larger competitors in the virtual event space.
Future Integration Challenges: There are considerations on how BrandLive will integrate Notified's technologies and whether they will maintain separate platforms or combine them to streamline their service offerings.
Focus on Professional Event Services: Aaron discusses the importance of professional services in the virtual events industry, underscoring the need for expertise in managing complex event requirements that go beyond basic platform functionalities.
Implications for Marketing Strategies: There is a discussion on how such acquisitions can influence marketing strategies, with a focus on providing quality over quantity in event productions and leveraging new technologies to enhance user engagement and experience.
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Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
Keywords: #brandlive #hopin #virtualevents #futuretrends
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: So BrandLive acquires the virtual event platform and about a hundred employees from Notified, but why should you care? And what does this even mean for the industry? Hey, hello, and welcome to a reaction video. to use a YouTube ese kind of way of putting it. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations, usually talking to somebody on the outside, but today we're back on the inside because we're going to bring, uh, the, the head cook and bottle washer here on stage here momentarily, but you know that, uh, that all of these are sponsored by V2, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with this crew with us.
Series. Serious amount of experience. But with that, let me bring back, uh, Aaron Cole, fellow industry, old timer, co founder and CEO of virtual venues. And importantly, Yeah. Bottle washer. Right. Importantly though, a guy who recognizes how maturation in the tech industry does and doesn't affect things like the professional services that we do that go along with the technology developments and, and crazy things like acquisitions.
So Aaron, just out of curiosity, why, let's start with the why. Why do you think this is noteworthy as an acquisition and why even bother paying attention to it? Yeah.
[00:01:22] Aaron Cole: Yeah. Hey, and Roger, first of all, it's great to see you again. And I always love our time here. So thanks for thanks for your time and your energy and your effort and all of that stuff.
So, um, and it's actually been a while since we've had an opportunity for the two of us to talk. Um, but I do think this is a pretty interesting little, little, little point in our, in our, in our world here. Um, If there are, uh, people that may have listened to older conversations that we've had about the market and about, about acquisitions and, and where the market is going and all that, I think you will hear a lot of the very similar terms and themes in this conversation that we have talked about before.
So at very least, This is, uh, another great example of that continuation of some of those themes that we've already talked about. Primarily consolidation, obviously, with BrandLive consolidating the market via the acquisition of, uh, of Notified. Um, in my world and as I look at this decision, it again, like I just said, is a, is a continuation of these larger picture items as our market continues to evolve and, and post COVID begins to kind of get a little bit more stability.
We are kind of feeling, um, I do feel that we've got a fairly good base now. Um, a lot of people are fairly cautiously optimistic with where the market's going to be going from an industry standpoint. Um, and so this, this is a, this is a, this is an interesting. acquisition on a couple reasons, but underlying all of that is that larger level consolidation topic.
And as you just mentioned, that essentially in this, uh, particular acquisition, uh, code base, client list, obviously, and a lot of obviously very smart and talented people from the Notify team that are going to be now working underneath. The second part that I don't think we'll probably get to a lot of this, but I feel like it's worth mentioning just in passing is that this also is going to be another Uh, almost side effect of the condu consolidation of essentially functionality and feature sets and, and essentially where our market is going from a design standpoint.
Um, I, I've heard you mention actually Roger, um, uh, some of those, uh, truths about how a market as it emerges, as it matures, um, that natural consolidation of players down to a functional. larger, uh, player market with a couple of smaller markets around, they're kind of feeding off of it. That's clearly where we're going.
And that's inevitable, but that's going to have an impact on the functionalities that we all take for granted and, and less players is going to mean a little bit of a difference in terms of how features are implemented, what those features are. Um, AI is obviously not going anywhere and that's going to continue to be a very big part of it.
[00:04:17] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? I think if my, Recollection of marketing history is correct. It was Al Rees and Jack Trout who wrote the first book on positioning or kind of really put that word on the map in the 80s. And it was them that pointed out that as markets mature, they tend to shake out to two or three dominant players.
Right. Who have the bulk of market share and then a whole bunch of other, other, Competitors that neither need to niche or die, right? Yeah. And, and, um, I think one of the things that I think is interesting because I think, um, it says something about brand lives strategy. You know, when we think about who are, who are those 800 pound gorillas in space?
You know, the, I, I think there's a bifurcation that isn't often recognized because the volume of instances, the volume of, of people using web video, audio conferencing is driven by meetings. Right. So when you think about who are the, the, the big horses, whether it's the telcos or Microsoft or Cisco or, or whoever, you know, they're all driven around the meetings stuff and they don't tend to do events really well.
[00:05:32] Aaron Cole: Yeah.
[00:05:34] Roger Courville, CSP: Which is a very different works flow, different life cycle. And, you know, here's brand live who acquires. Some really killer expertise because the folks that notified formerly in Toronto, et cetera, et cetera Have some legit expertise in in the events space And I think we even just see that acknowledgment by like Google because brand live just did a deal with Google To tack on basically events on to Google meet why because Google meets not a webinar platform It's not a it's not your virtual event platform.
[00:06:12] Aaron Cole: Totally agree. And I think that Um, uh It's another, again, example of how the market, um, is, is, is maturing, but then also again, shaking out, you know, what I just, I was just thinking when you were, when you were, uh, just talking, I was on a, on a call, um, with another one of our providers, we, we very often will fill the role of like an advisory kind of product assessment, kind of a, kind of a design.
Um, uh, in this particular, uh, call, there were two things that, that they brought up that, um, um, Of course, wrote it on a sticky note, but now I'm, I'm not seeing it here, but, um, they, they brought up two things that I thought were fairly important or fairly interesting. The first one that they brought up was, um, was the idea that quantity has turned into quality.
So, number one, we're not just sitting there trying to throw, uh, Massive amounts of information, massive amounts of data, or massive amounts of meetings to the market. We understand the need to put out quantity stuff because we have to do that as a way to ensure that we're getting above all of that noise that's currently in the market, all of that consolidation, all of that traffic, and all of that, you know, Uh, other elements trying to gather and grab my attention as a consumer.
And the other one, um, was, was a word that I've heard bantered about a couple times, but the fact that it was in the lexicon of this platform and in their thought process, I thought was significant. And that was the term deminar. So, you know, the word demonstration combined with the word webinar. So building on that whole idea of, of show me, don't tell me type of a mentality where.
They're seeing, they're understanding that their audiences want to be shown, they want to see things, they want to kick the tires in real time, uh, and so, allowing them to make their own decisions in their time and then follow up with questions and then follow up to learn more. Um, so essentially giving them a little bit of that control that might not have always been from a marketing standpoint.
And then as a marketer, what I'm looking for, um, I'm looking for tools that are going to allow me to do that, that are going to allow me to cultivate that interest in my markets for the tools that I am providing, or I'm trying to get people to look at. Um, and so I, I agree with what you're saying, and I think that, again, it's, it's just interesting to watch how things have changed, and especially with BrandLive.
I think there's a lot of elements to that, um, which I know we're going to probably get into here a little bit, uh, BrandLive being another type of a, type of a platform that not historically has been involved or present to a large degree in the virtual events industry. until now.
[00:08:53] Roger Courville, CSP: Right.
[00:08:54] Aaron Cole: Until this acquisition.
Well, I
[00:08:55] Roger Courville, CSP: mean, they're say in, in Portland, which is where V2 is based. And that's where I lived until last year. And so I was particularly interested when I, when this new company bubbles up doing virtual events. So to speak, um, right in my own backyard because, you know, Portland, Oregon, crazy enough, was the birthplace of professional services, professional event services, right?
That's quite literally where the whole thing started. And then I found that, oh yeah, BrandLive is, I don't know if it, I would have called it more like Um, video production information tools and you know, and, and, and they brought a new twist to that, but it wasn't somebody that we ever ran into as in, Oh, should we use zoom on 24 brand live now?
There's never part of that conversation, right? So then acquiring the code base, the talent base, um, that could be, that could be interesting. If you think about it, there aren't that many, yeah. Technology companies who are pure plays in events. Right. Like on 24 is an events company, right? You don't fire up on 24 to have a virtual meeting with three people.
Right. Right. And so brand live could, could make a space, you know, could make a, you know, could make a mark for themselves in, in the virtual space.
[00:10:24] Aaron Cole: Right. Well, I, I do think that's exactly kind of the goal. And, and, um, I agree with you. We, we did not, it was very rare that, that. Historically, we would run into brand live and I agree with your kind of assessment.
I've always kind of thought of the more is that that kind of higher quality video library streaming type of a design that provided you with some, you know, more professional focused video production abilities. In some ways, it's not that different than like a stream yard, for example, where you can, you know, you can do lower thirds, you can do layers, you can do things like that.
Um, they have absolutely, that's, that's what I would say where they started, um, and in the past couple of years, they have absolutely pivoted to being able to do events and things like that, but it's been on, um, uh, on a fairly small scale from a market standpoint, and obviously, uh, something that was solely enclosed within the technology of what BrandLife has built out, and that's exactly why, to your point, I think that this play By acquiring notified, acquiring the code, acquiring the bodies, the mindset, the mind share, as well as the client base, um, is fairly significant.
And that does absolutely kind of tell you, I think, where they're looking to go. I do feel like there's several, um, variables in that, that I think are going to be fairly interesting to watch. Um, But I think it's very clear where, where, where their mindset is and is and where they're going. It's in some ways similar to one of the conversations we had not too long ago about with RingCentral acquiring Hopin, you know, where RingCentral literally had no presence in this market.
Um, and then with the acquisition of Hopin, essentially came in and bought that and owned, you know, the next day a fairly significant player in the virtual environment, virtual, uh, uh, industry. Um, there's no doubt they got a hell of a price tag and a hell of a deal with purchasing Hoppin for whatever it was, the 40 million that they did.
I don't think it's been released what notified, uh, was, was sold at. That's obviously a big part of it in terms of, you know, how much of that investment it is, but, but still that underlying principle of, of, of buying your way into the market, essentially immediately kind of using those elements is, is, um, it's pretty noteworthy on where they're looking to go.
[00:12:46] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, I'm looking at one of the releases and it says the CEO brand. I don't remember the CEO's name at, uh, brand live, but it says his vision is to roll up the quote unquote, roll up the whole enterprise webinar space. into its platform, but you know, I think that's interesting because
if we just focus on events online, onsite hybrid, but it's a different use case than meetings as we've already, as we've already talked about, but importantly, and I think this is one of those things where if I was out there in the industry, if I, whether I was a, you know, marketer at a, at a company and wanting to keep an eye on what's going on, I think.
It might be worth keeping an eye on to say, where and how do they bring these things together? Do they end up trying to roll it all into one platform?
[00:13:45] Aaron Cole: Yes.
[00:13:45] Roger Courville, CSP: And migrate customers, or do they keep them separate? Because there are different use cases, right? I mean, it's not unlike You know, using some of the finer details of, of using, say, um, zoom webinar or on 24 versus using, um, ECA M Live or OBS or a a, a live stream, right?
Mm-Hmm. or stream yard. Or when you get into the nuts and bolts, there are some differences. That might, that are important to marketers and they never bubble up in daily meetings because that's just not, that's not what we do.
[00:14:25] Aaron Cole: Right, right. But that is, that is one of the core principles of virtual events in terms of those things.
Um, to your point again, you know, when you have the CEO of your company doing an all hands, that use case might only be used maybe four times a year. But a damn sure is a pretty important one, you know, in terms of how you use and your, your ideas of that product and how well it works. And so if there are feature sets that work perfectly for the thousands of meetings that you might be running, you know, or your, your, your world might be running your teams, your company might be running.
But it doesn't work for those four events that the CEO wants to be speaking to the company. That's going to be problematic. And again, it really kind of highlights that point about there is, there is kind of that dichotomy in the industry in terms of, of, of the tools they're designing their feature sets.
I think it's inevitable that, um, brand live. Well, let me back up. I think there's a large question mark about the code, right? And where is that going to go? Obviously, it would seem, you know, you assume and you know that brand live obviously went through the code and went through and is either identifying elements that they can pull off.
Notified's new product cloud has been around for a couple, couple years now. Um, to what degree? What? Brand live either bought or to what degree brand live is looking at Notified as one of those those, uh, those code bases that we've actually talked a lot before They've been around for so long and there are so many iterations.
That's a very very very deep Codebase with a lot of baggage, essentially, potentially there, you know, because of how long it's been and because of how many iterations and because of all of the work that's entailed in building that up, you know, they don't have a brand new start from scratch code base that was built in 19 or that was built in 2024.
They have code base that was built in. That's a big deal. And so understanding and, and, and I would imagine BrandLive is very much looking and drilling into that. Um, because I don't see how, if they're just going to take that existing older code base and, and, and rebrand it, swap it over, convert, um, their existing client base to this new tool.
Um, I'm not sure that's going to be that, that raging success that they want it to be. Um, being smart about that code. And again, to what degree cloud is a part of it. You know, the other thing that I, that I thought was noted noteworthy was that notified is keeping the IR and the PR platforms, which, which are iterations of, of cloud.
Um, So that's, that's a, that's an interesting thing. Um, but those are big elements and, and it does directly answer that question of where is, where does brand live want to be in a year from now? I think we, we, we kind of guessed that we kind of know that bigger question, where are they going to be in a year from now?
That's not quite as easy to answer because of these larger questions about the code base, client base, things like that. So. As you
[00:17:35] Roger Courville, CSP: were talking and just describing some of the back behind the scenes challenges, I was just thinking, Oh, what is, who is their audience and what is their likely challenge or what did it, what's the thing to keep an eye out for?
And it just dawned on me, right? One of the per perennial challenges for senior marketing management, and this is also true in, in, in training as a, as a vertical. But one of the challenges is that, that, that. you get with vertical use cases within the company is this tension between IT buys something and deploys it out to everybody versus the specialized use case that I have, right?
And, you know, Microsoft's opportunity or Cisco's opportunity is they, they own all the desktops. And so now all of a sudden, bam, you know, 30, 000 people in your enterprise. Also now have Microsoft Teams, which is great if you just need to have a meeting, but it's not so great if you need to do an event, um, has its, has its quirks, right?
And, uh, consequently, um, one of those points of differentiation is, isn't, is the marketer or the leader who needs to make a decision, needs to be able to justify why they're going to go spend. You know, 40 grand on, on, on platform X, as opposed to just use the thing I already get in a sense for free from, from my team and, and meaning you have to be able to think about what is the value that these additional features bring to the table.
And um, Quite fortunately, that's one of those things that, you know, we have a chance to, to help people with because you mentioned earlier that sometimes we, we come in and are a bit like consultants. right? Because we're power users. And just, just in case you happen to be listening to this and you don't know who virtual venues is, we're not a technology company.
We're a professional services company. So we don't make Webex or zoom or on 24. Um, you know, we provide the pro services around that. Um, but the point is oftentimes, and I knew this when I was doing independent consulting, uh, I won't name the vendor that I did a lot of work for, but they knew. that generally their platform was really underutilized.
One of the big challenges is they had some cool features and nobody, nobody, they didn't get used because people didn't know they actually existed. They actually did some research and found that people didn't know what they had. Well, that's one of those things I think is an opportunity for brand live because they have a little more clarity by just being focused on the event space with regard to being here.
Um, to understanding, ah, our current offer fills this segment of the marketer's use case. What Notified brings to the table fills this other segment of the marketer's use case. And they'll, they'll be able to articulate that in a way that, that a really big telco or somebody like that can. Yeah.
[00:20:52] Aaron Cole: And, and, um, I agree totally.
And I think that that's obviously, or would be a, would be a very strong strategy for brand life. You know, even if nothing were as they're looking at the client base of Notified, which they now own, you know, there, there's probably quite a bit there that might make use of that from a synergy standpoint.
And I do think it's also, even if you flip it and look at on the other side of, of the coin, um, Everybody that I've heard from, uh, at Notified is, is excited about this acquisition. I haven't, I haven't heard from any, a single person that does not feel like this is a good decision for the Notified position standing employees in the market.
You know, I think you can, um, you can maybe make a little bit of a, of a, of an infer, inforation that, that you, you might call this a little bit of a lifeline to Notified. Um, Or to at least to that product. Um, we've had conversations before about, uh, when cloud was released, which was, um, I'll say, I'll say it in a way that I think even, you know, the notified people would agree with it.
It was released. a little bit in response to where the market had pushed them in the middle of COVID when all of these platforms like Hopin, Bizaboos of the world, those things that came up and literally exploded overnight because of that use case and that ability to just immediately spin things up. Um, if cloud had been released a couple of years earlier and maybe not a response to that market, I think our, our industry would, would absolutely be in a different world right now.
Um, but I can't help but wonder.
[00:22:32] Roger Courville, CSP: It was, it was a great idea that was five years right late.
[00:22:36] Aaron Cole: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so I can't help but wonder, you know, um, from that standpoint, um, You know, you've got a great product. If you don't necessarily have the resources to make sure that you can get that in front of everybody so that it becomes a great product, you don't have a great product.
And so there might very well be a little bit of that where, where the, the teams that are now working underneath brand live, that idea of where a cloud would be, if that was a part of, of the code base, that is a part of this acquisition. Um, maybe that means that brand live is going to be. in a position financially and otherwise to help push that forward because it is, it is a very good product.
There's no doubt about it.
[00:23:15] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. And aside
[00:23:16] Aaron Cole: from those discussions, you know, about the code base, aside from those discussions about where it's at in the market now, reactionary versus anticipating it. Sorry, go ahead. What are you going to say?
[00:23:25] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, no, I was just going to say, I'm just corroborating. Uh, and cause, you know, if you go back enough time, There was a time when Adobe Connect was the only platform that had a CMS driven way of approaching things, right?
It required a paradigm shift, right? But the idea of having a central cloud based, um, central repository of elements that you could utilize, reuse, etc. Um, was a very different way of thinking. Then, then firing up, go to webinar, creating one instance and right. And then that instance gets torn down and hope you got that
[00:24:11] Aaron Cole: data goes nowhere, right?
Yeah. Which is not, which is not
[00:24:14] Roger Courville, CSP: the case anywhere longer for go to webinar. I'm just using a, an example from way back then. Right. And so that was, and I think notified what they did with the cloud. Um, looked really good and there are still companies that are just now catching up to some of those concepts.
I mean, I'm going to zoom just literally just in the last few months implemented the ability to create a poll external to the meeting. and then draw, you know, you say, which of these polls do I want in, in this particular media, right? I mean, they're, I mean, that's not a, that's not a new idea.
[00:24:53] Aaron Cole: No, very true.
[00:24:56] Roger Courville, CSP: And, and then the way that plays itself out with regard to reporting, right? If you wanted to report on how did people answer that poll across the 73 events that I had this year, you'd have to do it all manually when all those individual events. So anyway, I just, I think there are some really good things that
[00:25:16] Aaron Cole: brings
[00:25:17] Roger Courville, CSP: to the table for brand live.
[00:25:19] Aaron Cole: Totally. And, and I, and I got a, I got a cop. I, I have been a lover and an admirer from, from way back when, because of the amount of, um, customization and the, the depth of their, of the reporting of that platform. It, it, it's astounding, especially when you think about the fact that that, what that was when that was rolled out, you know, um, Decade ago without, without exaggerating, that's astounding, you know?
And so there's absolutely a value there that, that, what I think we're both kind of saying is, is that where, where does BrandLive take it from here? And I think it's safe to say that, that, you know, the client base is obviously there. So you've got the revenue, they need to keep the client base there, keep them happy.
That's not going to be just, Hey, this is, you know, same as usual. There's going to have to be some consolidation. BrandLive is obviously, I'm sure, Looking at finding ways to increase that adoption with, you know, either a mix up or, or BrandLife products into, into Notified's client base, vice versa, you know, all of those things, obviously.
Um, one thing we haven't even talked about here yet today is the fact that they've also brought over and then acquired the, the virtual environment business of Notified, which BrandLife has had no. presence in the virtual environment element, which is a very big part of Notified. And that's interesting because all of a sudden now they, they have a fairly established presence in that market.
Um, you know, obviously relying on the talent and the very smart people that are, that are behind that product, but that's a part of that acquisition. And so that's another thing that's very interesting to me, you know, is, is thinking through and probably watching what they do with that product. Okay.
Contingent on the quality and the retention of the talent that they brought over that has been running that product up until this point, you know, that's not necessarily coming from anyone in brand live because they haven't done that before, you know, so interesting, but
[00:27:30] Roger Courville, CSP: yeah, I'm excited for the folks at notified because I think they'll get knock on wood.
We'll get some of the attention. That they deserve the, you know, a, a, a change of reporting relationship. Anytime there's a significant shift, nodding, you know, not, uh, including, um, an acquisition means that you've got a different executive team with a different set of priorities. And, you know, they're, they'll be sorting some things out, but, um, but because, you know, one of the companies that I co founded, Eighteen years ago was sold to one of the companies that was acquired by one of the companies that was acquired by one of the companies that is actually now notified,
[00:28:11] Aaron Cole: you
[00:28:13] Roger Courville, CSP: know, notified was part of, I mean, the, the, the big owner with was Apollo.
Right? Hedge fund. Yes. So, not unsurprisingly, um, all of the hardcore events stuff struggles to get noticed in big broad roll ups in telcos, you know, right. And you know, when you're part of West and West has all this conference call business and a whole bunch of other, right. There's a, it's, it's a specialized use case because it's, it's just so different.
And so, right. Um, I think, I think it'll be like you just brought up the, like the virtual environments that has a high degree of opportunity, but it has a high degree of complexity, right? There's, that's a labor intensive thing to go make it all sing because of the degree of complexity and the number of options you've got.
You're not just pushing a button and saying, Hey, I'm going to share a poll.
[00:29:09] Aaron Cole: Right, right. And by default, notified. Always came at that equation from the, from the stance of extremely high complexity, you know, and so they, they have to actively walk that back from a complexity standpoint, because it's not necessarily.
in line with where the market is going. The market is going towards streamlining, um, ease of adoption, faster build. I don't think that says that they're not looking and interested in reporting and in, uh, you know, consolidation of different platforms together to talk and things like that. But, um, they've had to come at that from that standpoint of, of actually kind of watering down by dialing back things.
Um, to get to that level that like a hop in or again, like a visible or whatever is actually running at. from that complexity and that feature standpoint. So it's even, it's even how they're looking at it, you know, um, and how they've approached it from before that I think is going to actually weigh into those discussions.
And I, another thing you just said that, that triggered a thought from me as well is, you know, when you are talking about the Apollos of the world, you know, we, we, we are, we are a very small industry. You know, in the larger picture of where the business world functions, I'm going to argue that we're in an extremely important industry because it's largely how these markets and these businesses communicate, but from a asset management standpoint, aka Apollo, whoever, um, It's pretty small.
And so I think it is very, very easy. It's a rounding error. Right. Exactly. I think it's very easy for those groups to essentially, you know, not recognize the value of that rounding error or not recognize the value of or the actual importance of where, um, where this market sits within that larger, larger ecosystem.
Um, and where is notified. Now Notified's got IR and PR, um, or Apollo does, you know, IR and PR, um, obviously important elements, but it's noteworthy and interesting to me that that's what they're, they're moving forward. Those things are absolutely, um, elements that I think a Apollo, type company would probably sense the value in a more traditional standpoint because of the requirements, because of how those are, are, um, are utilized by publicly traded companies, for example, or, or any larger companies, um, maybe less so value, you know, with, with other things that events run.
[00:31:52] Roger Courville, CSP: I don't know that they would admit it, but Apollo is a bunch of financial analysts. So they, they get conference calls.
[00:32:05] Aaron Cole: I. R. gets conference calls. I mean, yeah. Right. I, I, to this day, been able to figure that out.
[00:32:13] Roger Courville, CSP: To one of the points that you just made, I think, I think Brand Live, And I'm, I'm, I don't have any insider knowledge of the brand live. I don't, I'm just making some hopefully educated guesses. I always got the sense that they had a, a mindset, a lot more like an agency and agency tends to work in a job shop sort of mentality where I'm going to go work with the client and it's a, it's a sizable deal and I'm going to go put all of the pieces together the way that.
I. That client wants, which is different than buying a piece of software that I'm trying to scale and make it so user friendly that you don't ever have to call my tech support line because it's just so bonehead easy to use. You can just use it, right? Um, and So it'll be interesting to kind of see where they take that because I think I think they're used to managing that complexity They are with the nature of how they have served customers and before
[00:33:20] Aaron Cole: and I and I think that I mean I I would look at that again from what our what our industry does and especially v2 in general I mean, we we know we understand we we know our lane to be that you know, Customer relationship type of mentality where we are working directly with the people that we are fortunate to work with to produce essentially, you know, zero failure.
very high level, high quality type of events. I love that focus because in a lot of ways, it's, it's identical to the focus that, that V2 has had for whatever, it's been 15 years now. And I do think that that, I agree with you, Roger. I think that that has been a larger, um, focus of BrandLive as they have grown their market share, um, with that kind of focus.
And, um, It will be interesting to, to, to agree with you where that's going to go and, and to see kind of where that, how that will evolve, you know, um, when they are suddenly overnight, this much larger company. Um, they've got some great people to your point that they're bringing over with Notified, you know, and so that's a strong connection.
Um, I'm excited for everyone that's a part of that transition because it's obviously something that, that, um, people are excited about and are seeing a value. from their standpoint. Um, let's see where they're at in a year, you know? Um, I think we both know where they want to be. We know where they want to go.
Let's see where they're at in a year and Yeah. Well, and it'll be,
[00:34:50] Roger Courville, CSP: we'll, we'll, the people with the political power in the process recognize the brain trust that they just acquired is notified. It's got some sharp cookies. You know, and one of those, one of those things that I, I look forward to your point to where they're at in a year, keeping an eye on is seeing where that bubbles up for us, right?
Because as we talked about when we just started, started the conversation, we were not in a place where we were bumping into them because their platform solved a different problem, right? Now, because, because our value proposition is, Hey, we're going to go be expert on, on On platforms so that you can be , you can go focus on what you do, right?
Because anybody who's ever been in the back end of like on 24 goes, oh, I could do this. And, but, and if you're smart, you figure out, oh, but how much value is created by somebody like a. Adam on our staff who does nothing but be in the back end on 24 all day every day of the week and helps create value that you would you would spend forever trying to DIY yourself.
Yes, you know, I mean, I think there's an opportunity for us to even look at notified again since we've Like you said, it was two years ago when we were kind of looking at him going, Oh, is this, it just was a miss at the time.
[00:36:21] Aaron Cole: Yep. Yep. It didn't, it didn't fit unfortunately with where, where the market, uh, where we were at in the market.
Um, but yeah, no, I, I, I agree. We, um, We focus on technology. We're never going to be the talent, but who we work with, they are going to be the talent. They are going to be the ones that are the ones giving the message on the stage that we provide, and we're not doing our job if we're not keeping abreast of where, where the market's going, where the feature sets are going, who the players are, and, and making a concerted effort to work with.
In very close relationships with the best possible platforms for the, the, the, the use cases that we have defined and the use cases that our clients need us to have expertise in. So, yeah, I, I, I have no doubt that, you know, if they grow, then we're going to talk, you know, and see where we end up with that.
The
[00:37:21] Roger Courville, CSP: challenge with a mature industry like we are now is the differentiation in platforms is in really small little details, right? Not about, Oh, you've got polls and we've got polls. Everybody's got, and it's, and it's there. And then how it facilitates workflow, right? Because events are about workflow, right?
They have a life cycle. And, um, and I think that's one of the places where, where. Professional assistance really helps you mine value and, and bring that out in terms of creating experiences for your end user. Right,
[00:38:04] Aaron Cole: right. Or at the very least be aware of it and the very least know that there are options, you know.
So, um, and I still do feel, I agree with you completely and it goes right along with that. The whole, that whole larger discussion of consolidation, you know, which, which is not going away and which has. Has had such an impact on our market naturally as it, as it should. Um, there still are going to be, uh, platforms that function better in certain circumstances compared to others.
And, and some of that, absolutely. A large part of that arguably is licensing costs. Now, you know, if everyone has the same way of doing things in terms of how you're building scenes or whatever it happens to be, that becomes less of a driver. Um, but those drivers are still there. And, and at the very least, knowing what those drivers are, being aware of them, being able to consciously decide what's important, what's not important, is a good thing.
A good stance to be at when you're looking to assess and make these choices.
[00:39:07] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, Aaron, appreciate you taking a little moment just to share some of the wealth of stuff anytime, brain of yours, . Uh, any final thoughts here before we, I'm gonna get to do,
[00:39:18] Aaron Cole: I'm gonna go start washing some dishes here next, but, uh, I'll get to that.
Um, no. Anyways, I, I appreciate your time, Roger. I, I thank you. I, I love these calls and, and it, and I, I, um. I think it's again, it's fascinating and I, I feel so incredibly fortunate that, that, that we're in a position in this industry to kind of be able to watch and to see where these things are going. Um, this is an incredibly dynamic industry and it's an incredibly, uh, It's incredible to watch where this industry has gone, even, even if you just put the bookends around the last four years, you know, it's insane.
And so, um, first of all, you know, congratulations obviously to BrandLive, congratulations to Notified, um, we're excited. We want to see, we want to see success. We want to see you guys succeed and we're excited. And obviously, um, it's a big move that we'll be cheering on the sidelines for and watching as it goes, that doesn't necessarily change where we're at.
Obviously as a business, you know, we're going to stay on our lane. We're going to work on providing that unparalleled level of. production and assistance with the clients that we have, um, you know, and we'll be watching, you know, so I don't think it really changes anything that we're doing. It's, it's just a very interesting milestone, you know, and, and let's see where, where, where that little side shoot, uh, takes us, you know, in a year or two from now.
We'll, we'll be watching.
[00:40:45] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, with that, I will also say and close with this, um, Aaron is really, really accessible. So if you want to pick his brain, pick up the phone and give a shout, because one of the things that, uh, you probably figured out if you're still listening by now is, um, we've been doing this a long dang time and, and the good news is I still like it.
You know, it's, we're still at a pace where we really enjoy working with the clients that we get to work with and, and in the way that we help them. get to help them. And, and, uh, it's crazy how many more white hairs are on my chin than when I started. So, well, with that, glad you joined us for another episode of V2's Thought Leader Conversation Series.
We'll see you on the next time around.
ORIGINAL UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
When we (Roger!) recorded this the first time, a glitch left us with an unusable recording -- so we did it again. But if you're a "deep cuts" kind of person, the original transcript has a few comments that were different.
So BrandLive acquires virtual event platform and about a hundred employees from notified, but what does that mean? In fact, more importantly, why should you care? Well, hello, and welcome to a reaction video to use YouTube ease kind of language. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of thought leader conversations sponsored by the crew here at virtual venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual event.
production team and hybrid event production team with this really experienced crew who will help you achieve results by helping you focus on something other than the technology. And, uh, with me today, and this is going to be a little bit different, with me today is Aaron Cole, uh, co founder and CEO of Virtual Venues, but fellow industry old timer.
And one of the things that he and I do is start talking about these acquisitions. When, when we've been around and countable in decades, now the question starts to be, Oh, what are we observing? Cause man, I remember when they acquired them and they acquired them. And, and importantly, a guy who, uh, Aaron is a guy who recognizes how maturation in the tech industry does and doesn't affect customers.
And importantly, with regard to us, the professional services that go with the use cases like what we do here. Yeah. Welcome Aaron. It's great to see you Roger, thanks for having me on. Yeah, so, you know, why is, let's just start with the why questions. Why is this noteworthy, and why should anybody even.
Bother spending time talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, um, I think, I think this is noteworthy, number one. Uh, I think, I think, uh, if, if there, if there are people that have, uh, possibly listened to some, some of our conversations earlier, um, I think in this conversation today, there's gonna gonna be a lot of very similar themes that you're gonna hear.
And I think that in itself is noteworthy because it is this continuation. Primarily of consolidation. So we're talking about consolidation of platforms, consolidation, you know, of the players in the market. Um, I feel like our, um, our industry post COVID, it's been a long, crazy road, but I think there is stability now.
There is a more defined use case and adoption trend that I think we can start really hanging out on. Um, but, but the platforms themselves are very much still kind of in that aggressive competition market and, and, uh, kind of mindset. A lot of the brand new consoles and platforms that came into being, you know, right around COVID, I think those are the ones that we're going to expect to see a lot of movement on.
Neither brand live. I have neither notified or two of those, but I do still think that it's interesting from a platform standpoint. And the other thing that I think is worthwhile is again, going back to the whole consolidation idea. Um, you've mentioned before, Roger, that mature markets tend to evolve into that.
Consolidation of, of, from where there's many down to few. And that also can kind of be defined from a feature and functionality standpoint. And I think we're seeing that too. Just the idea of having fewer and fewer platforms or competitors in the market is naturally going to lead to a more homogenous design of all of the tools that we live in.
And all the tools that we work with to produce virtual events. And I think we're starting to see that as well as a similar adoption of feature sets and probably AI is probably one of the biggest ones of those. So I think that there's a lot there. And I think that again, if you are really kind of taking a look at the market, watching that evolution, it's impossible not to really see this as.
Just yet another step in that long road of consolidation and kind of redefining of our market post COVID. Yeah, you know, I, I mean, I really, uh, I so appreciate because you are out there talking to clients and partners and, uh, people in the, that are deep in the industry every day. And I, I so appreciate your perspective.
I draw on the kind of the theoretical work of Clayton Christensen, who was a Harvard prof who, who wrote some pretty, um, insightful books. One of which I wrote, I draw on called seeing what's next. And if there's, and one of the points that he makes in that, in that book is that. As markets mature, they evolve from feature competitiveness to business model competitiveness, right?
And, um, the point that you just made, right? I mean, when we started, there were feature differences with regard to various platforms. Oh, these guys have polling and this platform doesn't have polling. You know, of course, that goes way, way back when. you know, somebody owed Moses five bucks and that's when I started the industry.
But, but the business model competitiveness starts to then bifurcate, right? Maturing markets tend to roll up to a few players who acquire, acquire technology and a variety of things along the way. And then niche players who kind of like divide up what's left of the market. And, you know, and, uh, I know we were probably going to comment on this later, but.
But one of the challenges that, um, I think Notified had was that they had this, they developed this cool new stuff, but it didn't have some kind of distinction, right? It's the kind of thing that would have been cool if it had been developed five years earlier. And BrandLive had kind of carved out their niche and, um, Anyway, so just out of curiosity from an overall high level, um, observation, what are you seeing and hearing?
Well, I think you're largely right, um, uh, that what I use the term of consolidation, I think is, is, is largely,
I completely agree with you, Roger, when you're talking about, um, I don't think we can, again, talk enough about COVID and the impact, unfortunately, that it's had on our industry, but it has. And, um, the influx of energy, money, businesses that literally poured into our business in our, in our, um, in our market, when COVID was, uh, was present, um, and a factor changed everything literally overnight.
And so it's, it's inevitable that that's, you know, that pool's going to dry up, that pool's going to kind of kind of figure out where it's going to go. Maybe it's going to run off. Maybe it's, it's not going to stay stationary and very clearly. As the market gets back to the new normal about where we're at.
That's that drying up, that consolidation down. And to your point, I think there are a lot of things that we can sit here and talk through about, you know, like notified, um, uh, That's a company that we've been involved with for at least four or five different names. I'd have to go back and count. Right. But you know what I mean?
You know what I mean? It's like they've, that, that, that's, that's a story brand. That's a story company with a lot of innovation that's behind it. Um, but translating that to new products, new customers, new developments, new ideas can sometimes be a little bit of a leap. And so, um, I just think that's fairly interesting and it's something that is worth kind of keeping our eye on within that, uh, that consolidation kind of mindset.
And the other thing that I was going to say that I think maybe will answer your question a little bit more too. Um, anecdotally, I was, I was on a, uh, call last week that was for another one of our, uh, platform that we, we work quite a bit with and we actively participate in future. Feature set calls where we're talking about it, kind of giving ideas and feedback and stuff on growth enhancement, feature sets, things like that.
And, and, and, and they brought up two phrases that I thought were interesting enough. Um, I even actually put them down onto a sticky note here, which for me that, that, you know, if it's on the sticky note, that says it's something I need to do. But the first thing that they said that I thought was interesting was, uh, they, they, they used, uh, the phrase.
Quantity has turned, I'm sorry, quantity has turned into quality. Interesting. And that really much goes in mindset with some of the things that we've already been talking about. We're no longer just trying to fill this void of what's going on and just shoveling stuff into a content space where people can consume it.
We need to get smarter with our content, we need to get smarter with our implementation of it, and find ways to be more efficient. And I think that's interesting in itself. The other one that, uh, that I thought was interesting was they also used the term that I've gradually heard people use more and more, but the fact that this was in their lexicon now, to me, was significant.
And that was the term, Deminar. Combination of the word demo, demonstration with the word webinar, the idea that, you know, people are going to go to a demonar to get a live video, a live demo, and then learn more about the product. And it's very much aligned around that whole idea of showing and not just sitting there telling.
Um, I think that's another thing that, that people are starting to realize is more and more important where audiences are wanting to see things in real time, uh, kick to tires and then learn more about those, you know, either during an hour or afterwards. Um, and if I'm a marketer, that's, those are the kind of cool, the kind of tools that I want to adopt are tools that are going to help me be more involved and more efficient with my time.
Um, and help me cultivate that lead along the pipeline with as efficient of a way as possible. And that even feeds into the AI discussion as well too. Right. So there's a lot. Yeah. I, you know, I hate the word Deminar for the same reason I hate the word webinar.
squeeze into the same, into the same, you know, pile of mashed potatoes, but, but to your point and you used a critical word that I think probably rolls up into the more specific specific parts of, you know, uh, of the brand live and notified story that we're talking about here, which is real time. Right? The production of video has just, of course, exploded and the problem is, you know, every person on the planet only has 24 hours in the day and there's more YouTube content out there than we could, than we could watch if I, if I did nothing but watch YouTube till the day I die.
So then the question starts to become, how do I cut through the noise? And I think real time is a really powerful element. Sometimes that gets overlooked by people in the webinar space or the virtual event space. Because. I can interact and I can ask a question and sometimes I, You know, to the point that you used with regard to what people want out of something like a Deminar, it's I want to show up.
I'm, I have probably a use case in mind and you showed me most, maybe, you know, you showed me what you've got and maybe most of that fits what I need, but I've got a question and that one question is worth the entire hour for me to sit there because, because now I get to ask the sales engineer or the whoever's talking about something that is Explicitly and particularly relevant to me.
This isn't me searching through, you know, hours of YouTube video. This is me asking a real time question of someone who, who can answer my question that has some maybe down in the weeds specificity. But that's what's important to me. And that's the power of real time. And, and, and to be fair, I don't know Brand Live well enough to know Um, I know that they did something live around something that to me seemed like infomercials.
Now, To be fair, this is my little comment as we transition to kind of the, the next section of our, of our commentary. Uh, Brand Live is in Portland, Oregon, which is where Virtual Venues is headed. And up till a few months ago when I got married and moved, um, I lived in Portland for 34 years. So I did some poking.
I'm like, hey, who's this new company around here? And was this started by some, somebody that I know or something like that? And interestingly, they were so far from, you know, their focus was on video and a very different way of sharing their story that, that we never ran into them competitively, right? We didn't, we didn't, we didn't go, Oh, should we use zoom or live meeting or, or teams or Webex or go to.
Or brand live. I mean, it just never entered that discussion. And so I just kind of like put them on the back burner. Interestingly, you know, they've recently signed a deal with Google. There's a few things that maybe give us a hint about where they're thinking. So back to you, big picture kind of stuff. Um, compare and contrast.
What do you think about last week's announcement of BrandLive acquiring Notified? Yeah. I'll build on what you just went through, Roger, because I think it's exactly spot on. BrandLive, um, uh, is One of those companies that, that we very, very rarely, if ever, um, ran into on a competition standpoint, and again, to your point, it's largely because they, they were not actively occupying a traditional events streaming webinar webcasting type of design, you know, they, they, they very well have fit themselves into the niche of, of like, Video.
Go ahead. No, I was just going to finish your thought there, but I was just want to pause before you go too far because I want to set up a little context of what you're talking about here that I think is important for our listener. Okay. Um, all I was going to say with that was, um, uh, their, uh, their niche historically, uh, in my viewing of them has been focused on that, the content creation, specifically aligned for video and what I would call, uh, mid to higher level production abilities of, of content creation.
That video creation. So in some, some ways it's not, not different from, from a streamy yard where you're, you're adding layers, you're adding elements to the, to the video. But, but it's primarily in a video platform. It's not, not necessarily been something that, that you would, would again, think of and would, would expect to run an event off of with some of the.
based functionality that we frankly live and die on day in and day out. Right. That, my friend, and this is where I'm just going to add an exclamation point, I'm going to pause, do a little uh, side road off a rest area, and then we'll get you back on the highway. If you're listening to this and you don't know who Virtual Venues is, you should know that we don't make any technology.
Virtual Venues is simply professional services around existing technology. So we're always out there trying to source. And work with the best technologies relative to use cases. Right. So Aaron just mentioned something that was really critical and I think it'll come up a little bit later in, in our discussion, the use case, the workflow for an event.
a webinar, a live stream, something like that. That workflow is very different than say a meeting, right? You're going to have a virtual meeting. Everybody's, everybody's into this virtual thing now because of COVID, but you're going to have a virtual meeting and you go into your calendar and you hit, you know, you schedule something and you show up right at 3 p.
m. when it, because the meeting is supposed to start. Venn's are different, right? They got a life cycle and they need registration and they have, uh, other different objectives and they have different, um, you know, tools like, uh, levels of reporting requirements. I, I, I belabor the point simply because we don't make any of that technology here at Virtual Venues.
We work with, uh, Technologies that do, so we're used to looking at it from a little different perspective than, than probably most people. Right. And so when Aaron says, you know, they're talking to, you know, they're, they're looking at video and video production and maybe wrapping around some tools around video that's really different than say the typical paradigm that we're coming from.
where people are going, okay, we're using zoom for our regular meetings day in and day out. Now we need to hold an event with 600 people. Oh, we need some help with that because we need registration and blah, you know, professional presenter support or whatever. That's different than just being a video producer.
So, I know that's kind of a long winded explanation of the context here, but it's also part of why, how Aaron and I, because we both worked at Microsoft eons ago, etc. etc. Um, why we think about this from a professional services perspective, and why we think about this from a value creation in your enterprise perspective.
Because value is created or killed At a level that's whole a whole lot deeper than just the technology itself. All right Being in the managed services business, which is what I've always kind of defined us And where V2 sits absolutely puts us in a fairly unique standpoint, you know, and I think that, that honestly, um, to toot our own horn just a minute, I think that provides us with a vantage point that not a lot of people can have because we do have an ability to essentially be, um, On a very high level knowledge and skill sets, critiquing and understanding how intricate some of these, some of these systems essentially are.
Um, and being able to understand that and then apply that to a specific use case, to a specific client or a specific event even. Um, I think that's where we've shined in the past and I agree, Roger, with what you've said. Well, I mean, in a way it's, it's, It's kind of like why you want your stockbroker to have either disclosures or, or to, to be independent with regard to making a recommendation for you, right?
Because I mean, we're not, we don't have a, we don't have a dog in the fight in terms of going, Oh, on 24 is better than Webex or Webex is better than on 24. Because the question is, what's right for you. And if I worked at on 24, by golly, I'm selling you on 24 and trying to, and it's just a different, it's just a platform agnostic perspective that, that is very different.
All of that context aside back to brand live, acquiring notified. I think they add some interesting things to their portfolio. Keep on going, Mr. Cole. Yes, sir. And I, so, um, I mentioned a minute ago about we've already talked about consolidation quite a bit. Um, but there are other things of similarity that I think are also worth us pointing out here to your point roger That just mentioned a few minutes ago brand life.
I feel uh, this is indicative of of uh, Especially with the google announcement earlier earlier this week Um, they are rapidly looking to push into the events and web streaming type industries and the acquisition of a notified provides very similar again to what we were talking about several months ago with RingCentral.
RingCentral was not an event type platform or anything that you could even reasonably say had A significant presence in the virtual event business. That was their way in, and I do feel like what GrandLive is doing is fairly similar to that. Where they are instantly, obviously acquiring the client base, as well as the code base of Notified.
But then immediately having that presence online, how that works for it. I think we're all going to wait to see, but I think it's a very clear kind of play by brand live to essentially jump feet first into the pool and, uh, have a presence in a market that I think they have been looking at assessing, trying to get into finding a way to try to break into a little bit.
This is very clearly something that I think they saw represented a way for them to do it literally almost overnight. Yeah. Uh, you know, when I was at Microsoft 20 plus years ago in product marketing and I was doing all of the competitive analysis, one of the big challenges is that Microsoft thought horizontally, as in what touches everybody's desktop, you need a copy of Microsoft Word, you need a copy of Excel, and you need a copy, you need a, a virtual meeting platform, and we were in this event, in this space where, and they were kind of like befuddled.
I mean, I remember these conversations, they were befuddled that one or 2 percent of the instances, meaning one or 2 percent of the meetings produced more than 50 percent of the total minutes driven on the platform, right? Which which is, it was a weird thing, right? And so when I see Google partnering with brand live, Google has Google meet, right?
And they partner with brand live and I have not looked into the details of that. Other than BrandLive at an events level brings something to the table that Google Meet doesn't because Google Meet is just a competitor to Microsoft Office, right? Word, Excel, Meeting Platform, but I don't have something that fits the workflow.
Or the business case of the, of the events model when I need to shepherd a few hundred people through an event and guide that experience over the life cycle of that event, which is very different than you and I have in a 30 minute base meeting, right? And so this is my gut level to the point around brand live versus notified.
If what we were saying is true with regard to brand live being focused on video. Notified. Some part of the notified platform made sense to them, whether it's the registration or the reporting or some, uh, the, the live real time interaction tools, there's some part of that notified code base and level of expertise that I think fits into a really big vision.
And, uh, CEO's name at brand live, but that person, uh, even mentioned making future acquisitions based on a push into the events space. So I don't know if they see the world like C vent or a traditional webinar platform or more still from a streaming platform, but clearly they're playing with some big players in the context of Google.
And yet fit a niche that something like Google Meet doesn't meet any more than Microsoft Teams really meets. Right. Microsoft Teams doesn't really meet the event space very well. Right. Yep. And we're going to have to see, right? We're going to have to kind of see. I agree with you. Um, you know, I, I know we, uh, I don't think I've seen anywhere where there's been a number attached to.
Right. It's a sale of notified. Um, but you have to make an assumption that clearly looking into that code base, there were things that that peaked brand lives interest for a future acquisition. I hope so. You would think so. I do think when we're talking about these larger picture items, I do feel that, um, the code base of notified is something that's fairly important to this discussion.
Um, and it. Again, calls back to some of the things that we've talked about before on some of these, some of these, uh, calls, uh, in the past where, you know, by, by definition, platforms that have a longer history, without usually exception, aggregate more and more baggage, code baggage, call it whatever you want, where, where, where, exactly, you know, it's like, it's like, It becomes harder and harder for that as that as iteration iteration iteration is built upon a code base Um, it becomes harder and harder to maintain harder and harder to push that forward harder and harder to build something new off of it Notified for all the iterations that it's been through Um all the way back to stream 57 all the way back there There's a lot of different layers on there.
And so to what degree I don't know the answer to this, but I think you've hit on something there You piecemealing out certain elements of that code base that makes sense with where they're pushing their platform. That'll be incredibly interesting to see. Um, I hope, I hope that what we're not going to see is just essentially a, um, uh, a re, a rebranding and a, and a lipstick kind of do over of what was historically the notified platform in Toronto.
Type platform, um, with a brand life logo on it, because I think that's going to be problematic. Um, the code base in there will become problematic, I think, in the long run, just because of the nature of how deep that code base is. Um, and the cost to keep that up to speed and up to date with all the plugins, all the stuff that has to happen.
So I'm very interested to watch that and to see where that goes. You know, yeah, that's some wisdom there. Because one of the things that you've brought up is, you know, what, what might be the cost on several fronts of, evolving a set of clients to a new platform. And if you think about this from notified perspective or from brand lives perspective, there's probably three big buckets, right?
There's acquiring a code base, but there's also acquiring a set of clients. And then there is acquiring the brain trust of the hundred or so employees that came over. Right? So as a guy that's been around for way too long, I can tell you that when we left Microsoft and built a new platform, um, One of the fortunate things was one of the people that we brought with us was, was one of the originators of like the very first virtual event platform, registration platforms.
Brilliant guy. In fact, he was with Notified up till about a year ago, actually. So you probably remember Patrick Collins. But meaning the level of learning. that went into his brain in a sense we acquired for a very reasonable price in that same build by discussion, right? Do you go for write code and figure stuff out and then go, Oh, crap, we need to come out with version 2.
0 because version 1. 0 has got some, got some sufferability that, that we just don't want to suffer anymore. Uh, or do you acquire the brain trust that knows what that is? And, and you know, that could be a part of their strategy. Acquire some people who understand real time events, who acquire, who understand virtual events from a different perspective.
And, um, When I, a bunch of years ago, I did a really big competitive analysis for, for the, uh, the crew at GoTo. And at the time, and this is far enough back that it's more than five years ago. So I'm not, I'm not under NDA anymore, but I can say that one of the things that I recommended was the live platform.
isn't where to invest. My recommendation to them was that the first place to invest was in reporting and notification and building out other tools around the actual live event itself. So, anyway, I think it's potentially interesting to take what Notified has, whether it's customers, or code base or employees and, and append that to brand live because they could be very complimentary and maybe potentially a powerful combo.
Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. And I hope and I would love to see that because I don't think there's any shortage of the need for the continual improvement of our industry. I think that benefits everybody, you know, and I can tell you, um, Uh, everybody that I have talked to that is still not notified post this announcement is super excited.
So across the board, I think there, there is, um, I'm going to call it a little bit of relief. I think there's excitement from the steps of now, now there's a whole new potential way for us to move forward where that might not have been so evident or clear. You know, just as notified, being notified. And so, to your point, um, in terms of acquiring and really maximizing the value of what's up in here for all the people that they're bringing over, um, those people, from at least what I've heard, are pretty excited about it.
And so maybe that is a little bit of an ancillary kind of data point, um, You know, you can build off of. It's going to be interesting. It'll be something that'll be fun to watch. At least one of those people, and this is not most, but I know that at least one of those people is someone that worked for the company that I co founded when we left Microsoft in 2004.
And then we built a company that was acquired by Intercall that was acquired by West and, and, and kind of built on out. And that's exciting in part because I know that, that, that Apollo, the Apollo group, which is a hedge fund acquired, uh, acquired Entrato. And it would not be surprising because as the nature of like, say, activist investors and or hedge funds go, for them to start spinning off assets and going, Hey, this thing is worth more in pieces than it is as a whole.
And so, uh, and I think you're probably right. I think for the notified crew, that's probably a really good thing because you've got somebody that's focused on, a use case, understanding the virtual events world and doing something about it and going after it and understanding what growth is still available there.
And that's a whole lot different than being overseen by some like bunch of investment bankers. Right, right. Exactly. Well, and it's interesting, even if you read the notified, um, communications that came out post. announcement, you know, they are telling you that, that notified is turning attention to the IR and the PR style platforms.
That's where they're going once they sold off the events in the virtual environment. But honestly, those are all. Pretty much the same platform, just with a little bit of different tweaks in the code. So, interesting from a marketing standpoint, um, but I think it does kind of clarify, and there might very well be that kind of mentality of beginning to spin things off, um, I kind of think that might be even, you could kind of assign this to that kind of design, um, as a way to try to find where notify is going to go eventually.
you know, in the future. Um, so that's a very, no, that's an interesting point because what would a bunch of investment bankers understand? They wouldn't understand quarterly equities, investor calls, you know, analyst calls and that kind of stuff, you know, which is kind of its own, its own little niche in the space.
And is arguably very different than a lot of virtual events in the corporate world, right? Yep. Yep. Yep. And any final thoughts? Bring us, bring us home with your wisdom. So I think, um, boy, um, as always very, very interested. And, um, I, I can't tell you how much I love this industry because there's not a, It's not a boring day ever because again, we, for better or worse, we happen to sit in a pretty unique and dynamic market.
And it's just interesting. It's fascinating to watch changes like this kind of unfold. And, you know, we get, we get the privilege of, Watching where this goes and kind of seeing how it goes and, you know, wishing them the best obviously for it, wishing that our industry will continue to improve as a part of it.
One thing we didn't even talk about today that I think is going to be also another very interesting thing to talk about is to the degree of Notified's client base. Um, if they are going to go to the, to a new platform or if they're going to maintain the notified platform, what does that look like? Brand Life now has a virtual events business because they just acquired Notified's virtual event business.
They had nothing that even remotely completely competed against that. So that's complimentary for sure, but that's an interesting acquisition because it's something completely, it's a totally different beast. Interesting. So. That's pretty interesting too, so. You know what, we're not under any time constraint, let's, let's, let me push, push into that just a smidge.
Okay, sure. And here's, here's the reason I say that. We're having this discussion because Notified is a rebrand of Entrato. And we did an ever living ton. of work within Toronto, right, as a, as a, as a, as an external professional services managed services crew. And, and I think your, I think your point is, is, is I forget even where I was going to go with that.
You just said something that just made a lot of sense. I just wanted to like put an exclamation point on it, right? Because the Entrato slash now notified crew understands events and importantly the complexity of events at the platform level in a way that, that mirrored or, um, was kind of like the, the other side of the coin for what we do on the labor.
Level. Yes. Yes. Right. Because virtual events, hybrid events, have a degree of complexity. Um, that. that offer you a lot of points of failure, a lot of places where things can go wrong, which is the value of professional services or managed services. And that's part of why we're having this discussion, because we work within Toronto for so many years.
And, um, so it'll be interesting, I think, to see how, um, Brand Live brings that in because I mean, I'm sure they have their own professional services. Approach relative to producing video because anybody in the video space does and it might be interesting to see how they pull that together but If there is one thing that might be an interesting future discussion for us would be Where and how we provide services relative to brand live, right?
Tony I I'm That's a very interesting point, you know, um, and I think it's something that again, we're just going to watch and we're going to be pretty interested to see where it, where it eventually goes. Um, to your point, you mentioned a few minutes ago, uh, right at the beginning of our conversation about that whole idea of, you know, if they had, If they had been a few more years early with the release of certain things, one of those gifts was the newer notified platform.
I think we are, uh, I think the name is the notified cloud if I'm correct. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, which, which is in response in all honesty to the Hoppins. The, the, the, the more nimble startup virtual event platforms that all came to being or all completely blew up during COVID. Pre COVID, we were all using Entrato for virtual environments that were extremely complex.
And they're awesome because you can do insanely complex things with them. There's a downside to that. They're expensive. They don't stand up quickly. They do take a lot of. A lot of manpower, and a lot of testing, a lot of design work, things like that, and It was kind of one of those things that I remember distinctly thinking about when we first learned about the notified cloud, if I have that, that, that term right, was, man, I wish she, I wish that had been two years ago, because we would have been all over that.
And instead, we had to find a solution that was going to be more nimble. And that's kind of one of the reasons that we started looking at the Hopkins of the world, that we're really, you know, creating a platform with no code base baggage. Yes. building it from scratch with the latest technology that's available that day and not incorporating so much stuff beneath it.
I think that, that product is obviously where brand life is probably looking to, uh, to grow. In an industry that they've had no presence from before, which is really crazy, which is crazy, but it's cool. I mean, we'll see where they go, you know, and I think it's a great product. Uh, I want to see the licensing.
I want to see all of the stuff that we typically have, um, uh, run into before. And see where, where they go go with that. But it's gonna be interesting to watch. Anyway. We, well, no, I remember having that conversation two years ago with you. Right. And we're looking at the new stuff that they're rolling out and I, I was looking at this from the platform and labor and the kind of the strategic perspective in a, in a way that was different than the kind of the partner in terms and conditions way that you were looking at it.
But, right. I remember looking at this going, dang, they fricking thought through some things. Mm-Hmm. in a really good way. Yeah, yeah. The problem is that you're a little late to the party, right? So sometimes building a better mousetrap isn't how you take market leadership. And the world of marketing is full of those examples, right?
Hydrox had the first little chocolate sandwich cookie. We think of Oreos as the thing that I want to dip in my milk. And we don't go, Oh, I think I want Hydrox in milk. No, I want Oreos. And, and so the world has a lot of those stories. So timing is, is some part of that. And, and I just remember having that.
Essential. That thought at the time going 'cause, 'cause it didn't work for notified, which very well could be to brand lives benefit and to the, to the ultimate benefit of the clients that end up with brand Live. Right, right. Somebody who pulled that off was Zoom. All right, Zoom was founded by ex Webex engineers who said, Hey, if we're going to go, what's the Pareto principle?
What's the 80 20 rule here about, Hey, if we were just going to build a new platform from the ground up and ditch all of this technical debt and stuff that you were just talking about, we just wanted to, we just wanted to start fresh. What would we do? And they did it. And they did some, Zoom did some things really right coming out of an enterprise play, even though in a, in a historical sense, they were a little later to the party.
In a way, I think that's what Notified did, but they just didn't. just the timing wasn't right. And sadly, the timing, potentially the capital investment, all of that, I think was a little bit off. And again, that, that might exactly play into where brand life is looking at this because they might very well continue, um, to gain momentum and be able to invest in that product and actually push that forward way farther than notified could have ever done.
And that might, again, be an example of why. Um, at least from what I've heard on the street, you know, the notified employees of the world, they're, they're excited about this. The ones that are going to go over, you know, maybe that's that lifeline of, we know we've got a great product. It's been kind of sitting on the shelf because we can't get in front of the people that need to see it.
Right. Now it's something else. It's a product. But it's got a different name on it, but it'll still potentially be something that's worth paying attention to. It will be interesting because, uh, I remember how excited we were when we got acquired by Microsoft when I was at Placeware and we thought, Oh, finally, we get to go execute on our vision.
Got access to capital and markets and all kinds of things. Thanks. But at the end of the day, we were a rounding error and couldn't get to time to get anybody. And, and for a while, the place where it became live meeting and it languished and just was kind of the, you know, the, the. Yeah, it was a red headed stepchild.
It's not a done deal by any means. Yeah, so I mean, I can imagine folks at Brand Live going, Hey, we got this deal with Google and they own the world, and man, we can tack this on. Brand Live has the vision. The problem is Google may not have the vision, but that's probably another story for a different show.
Aaron Cole, any final thoughts on version 2? . No. Uh, I mean, we we're just gonna keep rolling on doing, doing what we do, you know, and I think, um, this is another interesting moment for us, us to kind of, kind of pause, regaining our perspective and find ways to continue to improve and focus on what we provide to our clients, which is, uh, going, going to be that top tier, tier professional event management services that, that we know, we, we do do well and we know, know that people, uh, engage us for.
We're never going to change. The industry is continually changing. And so it's on us to be aware of things. All of the stuff that we just talked about. This is our responsibility because it's in our wheelhouse. We're going to keep doing that and we're going to bring that and provide that value to our clients.
Uh, as we've done for now, whatever it is, 14 years, 15 years. It's crazy. And longer. in terms of how you, how long you and I have been in the space. By the way, none of this was white when we all started. And if you're listening, just listening to the podcast, I'm pointing to the little that the hairs on my chinny chin chin.
And, um, but I thank you for Aaron Cole, taking the time. Um, you know, one of the things coming, kind of coming back to end Where we began, why should you care? And the answer is because it is really important whether you work for a for-profit company or a not-for-profit company or wherever you happen to be, you've got a set of business objectives or organizational objectives that require not just execution, but gathering the data or ex figuring out how you're gonna scale your team or whatever that happens to be.
And you can. You can deep end on this stuff. And quite fortunately, knock on wood, a partner like Virtual Venues can mean that you don't, you can focus on the things that are important for you and you don't have to deep end on some of, some of this stuff that we're talking about because we've been doing this for way, way, way, way too long.
So anyway, Aaron, thanks again for being here and we'll get this up for our, our listeners here soon. And a thank you to each and every one of you for being part of another, uh, another episode of. Thought Leader Conversations with Virtual Venues.