SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
$16m Just Raised and 1 Billion Monthly Active Views with Ashish Patel of NowThis EP 215
01 Apr 2016
Chapter 1: What insights does Ashish Patel share about the media landscape?
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Chapter 2: How does NowThis create engaging content for social media?
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Chapter 3: What strategies does Ashish use to optimize video retention?
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His name is Ashish Patel, and he's the publisher at NowThis and manages its social data and insights and distribution teams.
Chapter 4: How does NowThis handle branded content campaigns?
Ashish concurrently holds the title of executive in residence at LearHippo Ventures. Previously, Ashish was global head of social media at Vice. Ashish is a graduate of the university of Pennsylvania and it was named to the 2016 Forbes 30 under 30 list. All right, let's go to the top of Ashish.
So Ashish, help me understand then maybe last, tell us a story about like the last customer you guys worked with. You have Biden on your homepage, Joe Biden is, I mean, was this a, was that just a news story or tell us the story of actually a paid customer?
Chapter 5: What role does data play in content creation at NowThis?
Sure. And just kind of speaking to our homepage, actually, in early 2015, we decided to just remove our homepage in general or what the traditional kind of homepage experience is. So up until we put up this Biden article, sorry, Biden interview, our homepage basically just said the words that, you know, homepage, even the word sounds old. Find us where you live on social.
and we were just directing to those feeds. So, uh, again, we're very atypical in the sense that, um, that the website isn't what you would see from a traditional publisher. Uh, we're looking to kind of revamp it and see what we can do. And likely, uh, as opposed to a traditional content experience, we'll have kind of single issue focus on, uh, that homepage.
Um, What about the revenue? What about the revenue side? Yeah. How's that work?
Chapter 6: How does Ashish Patel prepare for interviews with high-profile guests?
Yeah, sure. So speaking to, uh, some branded content, um, customers. So, most recently, uh, you know, we did a campaign with, um, with shell, uh, looking at a lot of, uh, gas company. Yes. With the, with the gas company shell shell, uh, is funding a lot of interesting innovations.
Uh, we did a few videos, uh, on some of, uh, the innovations that, uh, they're funding, such as, you know, for example, there was a kinetic light, uh, where, you know, to help, uh, provide electricity to areas where the infrastructure is not readily available. There's people that developed a gravity light where essentially you could stick rocks in a bag.
Bag carries a lot of weight, gravity does the trick and through kinetic energy helps you create electricity and light up rooms for school children, et cetera. So that was one case. We call that type of execution original episodic.
Chapter 7: What are some challenges faced in the fast-paced media environment?
So how many... Just give us a sense of how many minutes of video or seconds of video did you produce for them across all the different brand assets, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and anywhere else?
Sure. And I don't have a full view into the branded side as I'm minding more on the editorial side of the house. But in total, in a general package beyond Shell, what we'd like to do is at least 4 or 5 what we call hero assets that are generally about a minute to two minutes long. Uh, we do format specific, uh, you know, different types of assets for different, uh, different platforms.
So generally the, uh, the channels that we, uh, um, activate branded content are our Facebook, uh, where we do have those minutes to two minute assets. Uh, we have special, uh, edits of those that we put on for Instagram and,
Chapter 8: What advice does Ashish Patel give to young entrepreneurs?
Be on Instagram, Twitter is a good syndication point for our branded. And then we have done a few executions on Snapchat, but not too many at this point.
It's got to be ramping. I saw when I was doing a bit of research, it looks like your president is now also at Snapchat. So I assume that's got to be heating up.
Yes, our former president left for Snapchat early last year. But yeah, I mean, I think us with all publishers are trying to figure out the best way to activate on Snapchat.
So like the interesting question I have for you is like, so there's these companies right now, let's say like a personal brand like me, right?
You create a three minute or a two minute video and then you ask yourself, okay, do I just take this video and as I'm recording it and editing and creating the content and make sure there are 15 second clips that can stand by themselves on Instagram, put the two minute one up on, on, on Facebook. And then like, how do you then tie in real time video, things like Periscope and Snapchat.
I mean, yeah, Get me in your brain. As an editor, when you're on-site shooting new content, how do you plan ahead so that it works well on any of these platforms?
So planning ahead is very difficult because we are a news focused company. I mean, I'd say news with a little end because we do cover, you know, kind of trending internet, things that are trending on the internet and whatnot. But yeah, I mean, the trick is really about flexibility and really understanding the end points of consumption.
So again, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, it's like we really, really think about the end user and why they're on those platforms. The idea is that, you know, on our side that we staff people that are basically mirroring our target audience on the other side. So we have, you know, an 18 year old on Snapchat talking to an 18 year old on Snapchat.
Um, you just give that 18 year old access to the now this Snapchat and then they're the ones managing that.
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