Apr 29, 2024
We’ve been talking to dozens of investors to get feedback on what would make us a great VC-backed company, and everyone asked the same question. What is your defensible moat?
I love this question. Everyone thinks I’m going to say we are the only ads manager with free GenAI commercials, which is true. They are then ready to pounce on this answer with the fact that big tech companies like Google are working on offering Generative AI creatives and will “featurize” us. But GenAI alone is not our moat...
Simplicity is.
It takes less than 2 minutes to generate a commercial using streamr.ai and launch on Streaming TV apps such as Hulu, Max, Samsung TV Plus, and thousands more. In fact, streamr is so easy to use that we definitely have the first customer who launched their TV commercial from a smartphone!
The streamr team has worked in big tech. Removing friction to make products easier to use is impossible in these massive bureaucracies. The best example is unfolding right in front of our eyes. Google’s horrific response to ChatGPT has led millions to vote with their time and money for AI-driven solutions that make what they want to accomplish dead simple.
Elon Musk's "algorithm" is a great blueprint for doing whatever it takes to reduce friction in your product. After talking to dozens of customers, we made some hard decisions to delete features that every other ads manager has.
Some decisions were easy. We use geolocation to automatically determine targeting for a business with a physical store vs. giving them the option to choose things like "DMA." No actual small business owner knows what the heck a DMA is. Nor should they!
Other features we cut are pretty crazy. Right now, if you want to advertise on streamr, you can't select a date range for your campaign. You either launch when you are ready or you don't. I admit. This one keeps me up at night. What if a business wants to plan ahead? Nope. Launch now or come back later. We may add a date range down the road, but we will only do so if customers demand it. We will also challenge ourselves to add it in a way that doesn't add more friction.
streamr.ai is far and away the easiest and most affordable advertising solution in the Streaming TV space because of these hard decisions. One of our favorite early testimonials was from the owner of "Virtual X Kitchen," who said, "Running an ad with Streamr was so easy it felt like a scam!" streamr is definitely not a scam. It's what happens when you actually build a product easy enough for a used Harley Davidson dealership in Ohio or a catering restaurant on Long Island to use.
Only 500 advertisers dominate TV spend, whereas 9 million advertise on search and social, spending $300B+ per year. streamr enables millions of new businesses to advertise on TV who never thought they could before because it was too expensive and complicated. That's no longer the case with streamr. Simplicity is how we win alongside our customers.
Don’t take my word for it. See what some of our customers have to say in the new streamr.ai testimonials section on the homepage!