

$70 million Veoh.com filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Letter from Founder. - staunch
http://www.dmitryshapiro.com/blog/?p=160

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ALee
Well, that's what it costs to set the stage for an important DMCA ruling:
[http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/required-reading-
user-g...](http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/required-reading-user-
generated-content-sites-io-g)

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hackerbob
"To fund Veoh’s YouTube-sized ambitions, apparently. Sources familiar with the
company tell me that during its go-go days, it was spending as much as $4
million a month on a bloated staff and infrastructure.

But Veoh only generated something like $12 million in sales over its 5-year
life, and most of that was in the past couple years, sources said."

source:[http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100211/universal-music-
gro...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100211/universal-music-group-didnt-
help-veoh-but-it-didnt-kill-it/)

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hendzen
This is just another case of a major problem with user generated video sites -
nobody has figured out how to make any money off of them. Maybe Google will
eventually make Youtube profitable, but how much time and money have they
invested already?

~~~
blhack
Don't be so quick to assume that youtube is losing money. Most of the analysis
(and by that I mean guesses) of their financials assume that they're spending
_gargantuan_ amounts of money on bandwidth. What the people making these
[un]educated guesses seem to ignore is that google is effectively a tier 1
bandwidth provider. It's very likely that they're paying little to _nothing_
for bandwidth.

This is, of course, also just a huge guess.

~~~
_delirium
While it seems likely that's true (to me, anyway), it does still mean that for
anyone who _isn't_ a tier 1 ISP, and therefore does have to pay out the
gargantuan bandwidth costs, it's quite difficult to profit from video
websites.

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mccon104
i love this post, not so much for what they said- none of it too terribly
surprising- but for what commenter #3 (Mike Cane) had to say:

    
    
      Really, I feel like banging my head against a wall by leaving this Comment,
      but dammit, Veoh going under makes me mad. You were better than YouTube. 
      I recommended the hell out of you … and then you stabbed us all in the back. 
      You revamped at one point and took away crucial ease of discovery options 
      (like WTF did you take away recently uploaded by length as an option?), you 
      kept changing the damned player software, and your support staff in forums 
      ignored all the complaints about the revamp. You guys shot yourselves in 
      the head and only now do you wind up at the inevitable end. Had you frikkin 
      LISTENED over a year ago, you might have escaped this fate. Using the lawsuit 
      as an excuse is utter BS. This is YOUR failure. This pisses me off to no end 
      because Veoh deserved to thrive. Next time, LISTEN to your fanatical users, 
      goddammit. Learn at least THAT much.

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muhfuhkuh
Startup rule #4080: Never... everevereverever... require a download of
anything unless it works a) in the browser and b) on countless other websites.
In other words, you better be Adobe if you're gonna push a standalone player
on users.

See also: joost.

~~~
dazzawazza
I have a feeling that people said the same thing to Spotify:

"You'll never compete with Last.FM", "No one will install an app", "Media
companies will never allow their assets to be installed on a PC, even in an
encrypted database"

While I get your point, I'm not sure it's a rule.

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rebelvc
The VC time bomb is ticking for everyone else.

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pedalpete
is a $12 million dollar run rate something to be proud of? Or am I just
misreading the letter?

~~~
staunch
He's saying run rate (meaning annualized revenue) not burn rate.

~~~
Skeuomorph
Meaning revenue if this particular latest good month were multiplied by 12,
which, if growing, gives a number larger than actual annual revenue.

