SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
MediaMash Raising $1.5m So You Can Own Your Audience
03 Feb 2021
Chapter 1: What is MediaMash and how does it benefit brands and influencers?
And so Donna, what do people pay on average to get access to the platform? And is it monthly, a SaaS fee?
Yeah. So that's been a little bit of an issue for us. It depends on how much video you have, how many players you want, if you want it to have e-comm. So we can't just give out like a, like pricing chart. Um, but basically it's around $10,000 a month.
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Now look, I never want money to be the reason you can't listen to episodes. On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Donna Valario. She's a digital strategist and was fortunate to be part of the team who founded the hybrid video platform MediaMash.Tech as the CEO.
The platform is geared for brands and influencers with large audiences. It helps keep the audience in their universe while fostering brand development and reducing reliance on social channels. Donna, you ready to take us to the top?
I am.
Cancel culture is a real thing. There are big influencers very nervous about building and investing in social media platforms that might ban them later on down the road. How does your business play into this trend?
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Chapter 2: How does cancel culture affect influencer marketing strategies?
Okay. Got it. Five plus three. Okay. That's great. And so, I mean, let me ask you a question. You built an agency before this. Usually if someone launches a SaaS company on top of an agency, they can get their first couple of customers very fast because you just sell it to agency customers. Are you building the wrong products to upsell to your historical agency customers?
No, actually it's just been a matter of getting the platform done and to where we want it. I have, plans to have a whole partner program for agencies because I think it's a great fit for them right now. They can upsell this to their existing customers. Video is so important to brands and advertisers right now.
Then with a platform, they can do all kinds of reporting because we get really deep analytics. So it's a real value add for agencies. And right now, look, advertisers are scrambling for what they're going to do with the loss of the cookie. social media is very expensive now. Nothing is free. So by driving traffic back to your website, you solve so many problems.
And then you really can, you can have an exit pop up. You can have e-comm on your website. There's so many things that you're, you're doing on your website that you can't do on the social channels. And also like if you're on YouTube, it's so distracting. I was watching your videos yesterday and like the other videos that come up on the side. I mean, it's so easy to be taken off topic.
And then brand safety, I'm getting ads for things that are your competitors, you know what I mean? So It just makes so much more sense to bring everything back to your website.
I mean, if I posted all the videos on my website, I would have to hardcore market every single one of them into one of my owned assets, which would be my email list. By posting them on YouTube and having YouTube subscribers, YouTube brings me views as well. So it's not as simple as just saying, it's distracting on YouTube, let's put it on my website.
I wouldn't have as many views if I put it on my website.
Right. I'm not saying that not to put it on YouTube, but I think by starting to put it on your website, then you'll get that search engine benefit. And then the search engines will start sending people to your website instead of YouTube. But also then you change all your marketing to make sure that you're using your website link instead of sending it to YouTube.
Talk to me about this first person that is using this. What's the, who is the influencer?
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Chapter 3: How does MediaMash generate revenue from influencers?
We, you know, I did the calculation. So at the end of the year, I think we could be at 70K MRR. And then that would bring us to like a million ARR for the year.
Yeah. I mean, 83K in MRR would be a million, a million dollar run rate. But I mean, in order to go down this venture path that you're going down, you have to sell a story that represents a cultural shift, right? Where people can see how you're going to grow this into a billion dollar company. Again, that's what happens when you take VC.
I haven't heard you tell any like macro story where you just light up, where it's clear to me, you're going to do this for a decade and it's going to be a new big billion dollar trend.
Okay. So media, we're all media companies right now, right? Everyone needs to be a media company. Brands need to have their own like Media, they need to control it. They need brand safety. They need to be able to tell their story. Consumer product brands right now are like, they're having so many problems. They're even having competition by Amazon and all the direct to consumers.
So even media, even consumer products really need their own media brand. And I like to tell the story of, and I was telling the story and then it happened. CVS, right? So you have CVS, they're this huge brand. Are there CVSs out on the West Coast? Yeah, uh-huh. So they have this huge audience. You're always buying, you know, you're getting your prescriptions, you're getting your cosmetics.
So say they have a channel and it's the CVS, you know, after hours for seniors and they have senior tips, senior stuff, what's going on for seniors. And then Fiber One has a commercial.
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Chapter 4: What is the pricing model for accessing MediaMash's platform?
It's a native ad done for CVS. It's not intrusive. But then right there while you're watching it on your device, you can add the Fiber One to your cart. And CVS actually just did that. They're creating this whole media company so that they can control their audience and the way they monetize their video.
Yeah, but how are they going to go get seniors? You know, you know, 3 million seniors watch Fox News every night or CNN every night. So 501 can market there because there's a built in audience. How is CBS going to convince 3 million seniors to tune into their show every night? I mean, that does just not sound interesting to me at all.
Well, you're not a senior, but... I mean, by the way, I don't think my parents who are seniors would say, I'm really excited about watching the CBS channel tonight. I can't wait to sit down and watch CBS. I mean, they're watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.
They need to make it interesting, but also people aren't watching TV traditionally the way they used to anymore, right? So you're scrolling through something, you go on CBS website to find something, you'll find the CBS channel. My kids never go to the TV, ever. They don't know what Fox News is. They don't know what the stations are. You know what I mean? So they're not seniors.
They're not seniors.
They are not seniors. You are correct. But if I'm a senior and I'm going to check on my prescription or I'm at my, on my doctor's office, you know, I could then be directed towards the CVS website. Got it. I don't think it's that much. So maybe seniors. So teenagers, you know, if they were talking about acne care,
and a teenager is scrolling, maybe they would go to the CVS website because they could put something right in their cart and get it immediately.
Well, we'll see. You can prove me wrong and just sign up customers and come back and brag a year later. I hope you do that. And in the meantime, though, let's wrap up here, Donna, with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book.
It's not really a business book, but I love Open by Andre Agassi because it talks about persistence and just being a winner.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did MediaMash face in its early days?
I'm single. I have two kids and two dogs.
Two dogs. I love that. Okay. And can I ask how old you are?
I am 54.
Take us back to your 20 year old self. What's something you wish that she knew?
I wish she knew what I knew now.
Give me something specific.
I just feel like I wish she had the confidence I have now more than anything. And I said, That's kind of hard to get unless you've gone through 54 years of life.
Guys, there you have it. Donna building Media Mash. She believes that brands should post their own video content on their own website so they can control the audience. She's testing a thesis out, building this SaaS company on top of what used to be her agency. Now working on this full time with two other co-founders. They got a team of eight people total.
They raised $250,000 about, oh, call it many months ago. They're now out of that cash, looking to raise one or close to being out, raising $1.5 million to keep the vision growing. They've got one customer, I call it $120,000 ACV, a pilot. They're going to see if they can go from one customer to 10 over the next year and hopefully get up to about a million dollar run rate. We will be watching.
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