The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Blockboard CEO & Founder Matt Wasserlauf

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

Blockboard CEO & Founder Matt Wasserlauf Blockboard.co

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast.

We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. We certainly appreciate you guys. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of all the great videos we're doing. For those of you who are live on all the different channels we're broadcasting right now, welcome.

Please give us comments and stuff in the things. And if you give us some great questions, we might put them up on the screen for everyone to see and make you famous. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. Goodreads. See all the wonderful things we have over there. And also go see all our channels, our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, there's so many, Instagram, TikTok, all that sort of good stuff. Go follow us over there and you can see us there as well. Today we have Matt

Wasiloff on the show. He is the founder of Blockboard, and he's a very interesting gentleman, and he's going to be talking to us about some of his history and what he does. Matt was one of the original distributors of the TV business known as The Visionary, who revolutionized advertising by enticing television advertisers to invest their marketing dollars online. In 2020, iMedia recognized Matt with the Conviction Award for his unwavering belief and conviction in the future of video beyond TV. In 2004, he founded Broadband Enterprises, the industry's first online video company, and founded the mobile video platform Torrential in 2013. He recently sold Torrential to the television company ITN, the leading unwired broadcast network.

In May of 2019, Matt launched his newest and arguably most exciting venture yet, Blockboard, a new digital distribution platform service that utilizes blockchain technology to distribute videos. And what do you know? Sure enough, we have him on the show. Welcome to the show, Matt. How are you?

Chris, great to meet you. Great to see you and great to be here. Thank you. And it's great to have you as well. Welcome to the show. Give us a little bit of background on who you are and maybe a little bit more on maybe, I don't know, what a childhood or upbringing got you to this point or got you into this industry.

And let's talk about some of your companies. Okay, great. Thanks, Chris. Well, great to be here. Thanks for having me. When I pass from this earth, I think of my epitaph, it'll say, the first guy that put video ads on the web. That's my claim to fame.

That was about a little over 20 years ago. But you asked what led me here? And I would say growing up, there was a popular show on TV called 30 something. And I remember watching that and seeing these two guys build an ad agency. And I just love that whole idea of creative and media. And that's I pursued that passion got into advertising, and I guess in the late 90s saw the world changing. And this whole notion of streaming video that today is booming and becoming commonplace back then was the shiny new thing. I had to do it. I had to figure it out.

And 20 years later, we're off to the races. It's an exciting time to be in our space. But that's what got me from there to here. There you go. So you're the CEO and founder of this company. Tell us about it and what you guys are doing. So we have rebuilt the video ecosystem on the blockchain. And that's another hot topic of the day.

Blockchain, cryptocurrency is stealing the headlines. Everyone's talking about Bitcoin and Ethereum. We and I saw the real opportunity with blockchain as a public. Ultimately, that's really what it is. It gives anyone the ability to trace back to and see with full transparency, smart contracts, how things work. And that was an opportunity that I thought could really help advance the digital video industry. I was a pioneer in this space. I've seen it grow from zero to what's today around $50 billion of advertising. And what's lacking most in the space is transparency and trust. So we set off two years ago to build block, essentially video distribution on the blockchain.

We use Ethereum because we find it to be the easiest to build on. And off we go. So we're doing just that. We're distributing video ads and video content on the blockchain and providing our customers full transparency. So it's an exciting thing where we're revealing a lot to our customers and they're excited about the result. Do you handle the production or do you handle the part of digital advertising, just putting them on ads on different platforms or how does the whole package work? Yeah. I mean, we do it all. Chris, the fact that we've had 20 years of

experience, I work with essentially the same team I've worked with back 20 years ago. What's exciting is I worked with this team at CBS. We were the first digital ad guys at CBS not working under Mel Karmazin back then. And those guys have helped me build Blackboard today. That team that we're working together is essentially providing end-to-end services. So when you say, are you doing the production? Yes, we are. We're producing a lot of these assets for our customers. We're distributing those assets. We're measuring those assets. So we're doing it all end to end and the results are terrific. That's awesome. That's great.

So to my understanding, you guys guarantee success and sales using the blockchain technology. So what does that mean to a brand or a company that's working with you? Often the brands and the agencies will ask us not knowing what blockchain really is or what it represents. So there's a lot of education that goes into it. But at the end of the day, what the customers are getting are the results that they're looking for. So if a brand comes to us and says, listen, all I'm really looking for is sales. I want to take this ad. I want to push it out to my customers, and I want to sell the product. We will map the deal so that they see a return

on their investment. And that's something that I knew was lacking in the marketplace. What a lot of the vendors and from the largest to the smallest in the video space, so I'm talking about from YouTube and Facebook and through the chain. What they're not doing is holding the client's hand, understanding what that KPI is, a key performance index. And the example I was using is sales.

So for my customer, if I understand that's what they're looking for, sales, we will run that campaign and show them the results and the sales. And that's what we're doing differently than everybody else in the business. That's pretty amazing. Not a lot of people offer a guarantee of success in any industry, really. So we call ourselves the video accountability company. Oh, wow. We're proud of that. And really, we couldn't call ourselves the video accountability company if we weren't delivering results.

So it is exciting. It is different. No one else is doing it. So, Chris, you're helping me. I'm able to get this out there. I want to tell the world. We'll bring the goods. There you go.

That's a great deal in my book. Back when we started my companies, one of the things we did is we offered a guarantee. We're like, try us for 30 days. If you don't like us, don't pay the bill. And when people hear that, they go, you must really believe what you do. So we should probably check you out. So that makes all the difference, really. Totally. That's the right message. There you go. So you guys create original content for clients. So tell us about some of the content that you create and how you customize it for your brands. Great. I actually started in the TV industry before I got into this crazy business of streaming videos.

And I mentioned CBS at the top of the call. CBS, I had worked at Warner Brothers. So I've had my hands in the formation of content for my whole 30-year career. I can tell you I sold Friends when it was first coming out. And I remember TV networks telling me, it'll never work. Friends? It's a fad. I actually got the same feedback when I started selling Survivor at CBS.

Oh, wow. I had clients saying, it's taped. It's not live. I said, no, we're going to tape it. We're going to go to the island of Borneo, and we're going to tape this, and then we'll play it to America. It'll never work. It's not going to work. 20 years later, Chris, it's in first-run television.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Friends is back too now. It's crazy, man. It's crazy, that show. So, yeah, I've been in content for a long time and I love it. I'm passionate about it. I see huge opportunity now in streaming video because you have all these new networks, all these new streaming video apps, and what they're really lacking is content. So we bring those chops to clients. Sometimes they're interested, sometimes they're not.

So what we'll often do for a client is just run their video ads and that's fine. But the real opportunity for these clients, marketers, advertisers is content because the world is begging for it. There's a lack of it. There's a lack of good stuff. So yeah, for a good number of clients, we are creating great new content. The show I get really excited about is Feel Ageless. I've worked with Jennifer Pate for 15 years. Her first show was called Jen and Barb Mom Life. So she was teaching in America about how to be a mom. And she's now come back to me and the market with a show called Feel Ageless to teach in America about how to take care of you. And so we focus on 40, 50 plus, and we're having a great run.

We actually did our first deals with Henkel, a consumer packaged goods company that sold all liquid detergent, Renuze it, air freshener. And during the pandemic, when everyone was home, she was talking to America about how to take care of the house, how to take care of your family. We integrated those products into the show and boom, we had huge results. People clicked, people registered, people bought product. It was a great first debut. And now we're negotiating in this current upfront season new customers. That's one show in particular, but we do a great many programs. You bring up a good point, too, in what you've said, because sometimes I'll see ads or I'll see stuff like that that's really low content. I'll see it on Facebook. It'll be on my wall, and it's really low content. I'll see it on Facebook. It'll be on my wall and it's really awful. And there's nothing worse than when you look at some of those ads,

especially for people in marketing, where you go, wow, what a missed opportunity. What a waste of money. And so having good high quality stuff instead of, I don't know, having your nephew do it or something, it can make all the difference because I've seen those ads actually. It not only is about just selling,

but just about representing your- You didn't click on the nephew? No, I didn't click on the nephew. I don't know. Maybe I did to see just who's doing this, phoning this in. But then I left because they ended up paying the fee. But tell us a little bit about how that affects your brand too. If you don't have really good high quality ads, they're not hitting well, they're not presented well. They're not designed or filmed or sourced. Tell us how big of a difference that can be in just not only not fulfilling your brand or your ad sort of sales, but also just how it represents your brand. Yeah, no, it can have a huge impact. I have seen the majority of video ads produced and God knows how much money those marketers spent, but it's not cheap. And a lot of that video goes to waste. That's the word we're using now. Fraud is a tough

word for a lot of folks. So we're looking at what is billions, Chris, I'm not embellishing, billions of dollars of waste. So these video ads are put out there in the ether and very few people see them. So we're really focused on turning that around and fixing that so that when you produce and you spend your precious dollars producing great video, that the right people are seeing those ads. Human beings are seeing those ads and human beings are seeing those ads, and they're having a major impact. The opportunity is huge right now because when you do produce something great and you hit the right people, they respond. People are now watching video in their hands. They're holding the video. In the old days, I'm not going to date you, but I'm going to date myself. You watched a TV. You couldn't click or touch or buy something on the television. Today, all you have to do is click on your phone and you're buying that product. So the potential

is humongous and we are uncorking that potential right now. Yeah. And they're viewing it on usually high quality screens. I have a 4K sitting in front of me. The latest AT&T sends us all the latest phones and tablets. So we have the best screens and there's nothing worse. I've seen ads where the resolution doesn't work. And you're like, seriously, you didn't think that through on these screens? And I remember brands that have crappy ads because you just go, why pity you?

You're like, oh, you're that one brand who can't seem to get their ads and their ads look really awful or they're bad. And that makes all the difference in the world. So I guess one of your companies that you worked with was called 8 O'Clock Coffee. Can you share the success and some examples of how you create improved sales for them? So their current client, and we're working with them today. And they were looking for impact. I remember the gentleman, Mike Scalera is his name, who said, Matt, we're trying to sell coffee. It's a pandemic. People are making their own coffee. So all those folks that weren't going to Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts to buy their coffee, they're now dusting off the old coffee pot and making and brewing their own coffee. So he saw an opportunity and he said, we're looking for impact. We want to sell bags of coffee. So I said, streaming video,

that's what people are doing in their homes. That's what they're doing on their phones. Let's make an impact. Let's get some video out there and tell the world to go to their store and buy 8 o'clock coffee. And so he smartly had given us specific zip codes of where they were distributing those coffee bags and what stores. So Targets and Stop and Shops around the country. And we targeted those specific stores. And he also brought on Nielsen to measure the sales that were going to sell in those specific stores. So it was to my delight that we met over the holidays

and he brought me the Nielsen sales report. And he said, Matt, you four times my ad spend. It was one of those things that I couldn't necessarily predict what that would look like. But I knew that if we targeted those video ads to the right people, made sure that we validated all of that video on the blockchain, meaning we were reaching real human beings, not bots and fake traffic, that we would drive an impact. And we 4X their return on ad spend. So they're a really happy client. We did that vis-a-vis the largest video companies in the world. YouTube was one of them. And we showed that we can sell coffee. And it was exciting. They renewed. They're happy. We're building on that success. And now we want to help the rest of the marketing

world realize that potential. That's pretty amazing, especially during the coronavirus, because all bets were off on whatever, anything was going to happen during that thing or what people are going to spend. So that's awesome. One of the realizations we had, for example, with a podcast during the start of coronavirus is we're like, we actually have a captive audience consuming a lot more video because they're stuck at home

and they're trapped and they can't go out and do stuff. We just amped up what we were doing with the podcast and of course our video production on YouTube and stuff. But yeah, that's brilliant. What would you say sets you guys apart,

makes you guys different about what you guys do and maybe some of the other companies in the digital advertising space? Our technology, at the end of the day, is what differentiates us from everyone in the business. Our team built the first video network built the first video ad serving system, which was our technology then called Vindico, is back at it and really just rebuilding that same infrastructure only on the blockchain. So now through Ethereum, we're able to provide that transparency through smart contracts. That's the fancy term on blockchain. We put that information into a smart contract so that it is available to the marketer. They can see it. All

they have to do is log in and now you could see exactly where your video runs. Every impression is validated so they could see that it ran to the right people at the right time. And that transparency and those metrics is really the difference. That platform is what differentiates us from Trade Desk and YouTube and Facebook and every other major video provider out there. So that's the difference. There you go. And you can answer my next question about where some of the different places you place ads. What are OTT networks and how is that different than the old days of TV ads? So that's a fancy term you just said, Chris. OTT. OTT. Fancy now.

Over the top. It was started probably many moons ago when people started bringing into their homes cable set-top boxes. And it would connect you with these fancy new platforms like Sony PlayStation and Xbox. And that's where the term OTT started. What OTT has now evolved into as we adopt all these new apps to stream video is, that's the fancy term for it, OTT. So now all these streaming apps that are providing a large amount of the new content out there and all the streaming audiences now are lopped into what's called OTT. And we are really the experts in how to administer video ads and content into those OTT apps and platforms. It's hard to measure.

For all the old line media companies, either they own their own streaming app. So Paramount, Viacom has Paramount Plus, Disney has Disney Plus, NBC has Peacock. So they're experts in distributing into their own environment, OTT environment. But there aren't many companies that are smart enough to know how to distribute and measure across all of them. Oh, wow. That's the expertise that we bring on our platform, Blackboard. That's awesome. That's awesome.

For broadcasting, one of the places we're broadcasting live is LinkedIn. Of course, there's a lot of C-class people over there. We have 130,000 group also on LinkedIn where the final video will go. If people are watching this and there's a potential that they would be a client of yours, what sort of fit would they be or who is your client so that they know that, I would fit probably working with these guys? The major marketers who today or yesteryear were the largest TV advertisers, those are our customers today. You mentioned 8 O'Clock Coffee being one of them. But we're tending to work with those marketers that are closest to the results.

So the marketers in 8 O'Clock Coffee is a great example. They cared about the results in their case sales right so if you're a major marketer and you're happy just getting those reach and frequency reports and being seeing that your ads are running everywhere and not really seeing the specific business results they're probably not our customers. Those customers and direct-to-consumer companies are a great example of this, that they need to see the sales or their business results really affected by their ad spend. That's who we're working with. That's really nice. So when someone works with you, what's the experience like? Is there a person

or team they work with specifically they're assigned to, they get to know? How does that onboarding and working with them, what does that look like to give people an idea? We're a service-oriented company. In all the businesses I've built with this team, we've always been service-oriented. I think we have, I know we have the best team in the industry. And we take that customer and understand from the outset what they want to achieve, what their goals are. And then we work collaboratively to put that plan together and go to market. So it's easy.

We try to keep the stuff simple. There you go. There you go. So what do you see the future of the advertising online video business being and the future of your company as well. Yeah, I think the future is incredible. Our market in streaming video is growing something like 40% a year. We were probably in the low tens of billions of dollars. We're now 50 and growing to $70 billion in just the next couple of years.

And that's pretty exciting growth. So I see amazing things for streaming video, digital video and advertising. I want to see that those ads work. That's my vision on this stuff and what I'm determined and I'm working with my team to assure. And so the next year, we haven't done an institutional round of capital. So that's in our near future. So we'll be doing a capital raise. But we're going to grow our team from the teens to tens and hundreds of people. And it's going to be on the back of those customers and those happy customers.

We see exciting days ahead. And I imagine you guys, one of the great things about working with you, you guys are up on all the latest stuff and everything else across the board. Companies can step into your system and they don't have to go learn, okay, what does Instagram do and what does YouTube do and what are the formats and all that. That's one of the things that always makes me mental is like LinkedIn has their own, like, yeah, do this size, yeah, I guess, over here doing this size. And then, of course, everything's changing.

It's very fluid. Instagram just made a huge change where they're like, we're not a photo thing anymore, we're a video thing. And you're like, okay. And so the great thing, I guess, about working with you guys is you guys are up on the latest bells and whistles. Yeah. And social media has made things a lot more complex. OTT is complex enough. So there is, but yes, we do try to keep it really simple. And we understand when we talk to a customer where they want to see their ads, where they, and that's a big part of that collaborative planning process, but it is incredibly complex, but we try to keep it simple.

We really do try to drill it down to what the goal is and then figure out how to achieve that goal and make it really crystal clear for the customer. And then what would you say to people, brands or market, I mean, marketers get at this point, but I still run into brands that still, they're like, ah, we're just fence sitting over social media. We're still fence sitting about online ads. There's still, there's a lot of retail space and they're still in that brick and mortar mindset, which is really weird because this has been around for a while, but they're still fence hitting and going, ah, maybe we'll see if it really turns into something like successful or big. What would you say to those folks that are still fence hitting or

where they're worried about misstepping as they move into this market because maybe they haven't tried it before? Any advice there? Yeah. it's important to not fence it because someone else is taking your business. If you're sitting on the fence, you're losing. And every day it's getting worse and worse. The audiences have really grown. I actually, we're talking to a big TV advertiser that hasn't really dipped their toe in the online pool yet. And my concern for them is their competitors who we've studied and researched and know how well they're doing, they're going to lose. If they don't do it, they're going to lose. So the days, you know, are growing more and more critical to

dip your toe in that pool. You don't have to jump in yet, but you really at least have to test. And that's actually a big thing for us. We're just asking for a test. We're not asking you to jump all the way in. Let's get a test going. Let's test, learn, and succeed, and then build. And you guys guarantee success. That really speaks to your systems and what you guys have built. I remember there's a lot of different examples of this, of different competitors moving to market and actually taking over larger brands. A good example, I think, if I recall rightly, was Barnes & Noble was talking. They were the big book brand. They own the market.

They were talking about going online. They were developing their websites and trying to get it together. And some little-known company called Amazon decided to beat them online to sell books. And the rest is history, as they say, in the Barnes & Noble file bankruptcy. Yeah, I know no one wants to hear it. I try to be as delicate as the Velvet Hammer, right? You don't want to tell a company that you're trying to win their business that they're going to go out of business if they don't.

The Velvet Hammer wins over time. And if we can get these companies to test and start to see that success, then I think the rest takes care of itself. There you go. There you go. Is there a certain budget that they need to have to work with you or is it best just to- That's a conversation I have every day with these customers. I always operated on a 50K. I do have and have experienced a lot of customers that cringe at a $50,000 level. So we've taken less. But I feel like $50,000, if you can stump me, it gives us enough room because the online video space has blown up. So you really don't want to throw, you don't want to be a needle in a haystack. You really want

to have something that's meaty enough that gives you enough of an opportunity to show what can be done. So $50,000 is usually the number I try to work with. There you go. Anything we haven't covered in talking about your company and what you guys are doing? You know what? This has been great, Chris. I think you've covered a lot of ground here. We're excited about what's happening. I think for the blockchain, steer clear of the fascination with cryptocurrency and kind of drill down into what's really material about this new operating system or this new computing system. They call it the fifth generation of computing, by the way, is the blockchain.

Is that where we're at now? Holy crap. I can't keep up. Yeah, fifth. We're on the fifth. But it's real. It's real. And there's an underpinning here that I think has the capability to make a real difference in the digital video industry. That's what we want to see. And we're excited about doing it. So there you go. There you go. This has been really insightful, Matt. I think it's something that people are going to really get into. I love the guarantee part. That's really money. Like I said, when you put offer a guarantee, you're really speaking to the, to your confidence and your acumen of being able to deliver, because if you didn't, you wouldn't guarantee anything. Cause you're like, I'm not sure if we can pull this baby

off. And you've been in the business for so many years. It makes a difference. Give us where people can find you on the interwebs, contact you and reach out. We're blockboard.co. I know that gets people a little nervous, but we're going to have to somehow get to Italy and find the domain holder blockboard.com. But until we do, we're blockboard.co. So that's where we live. But I'm on LinkedIn, Matt wasterloff and you can certainly

find me there and we're open for business so we we can't wait to talk to you there you go there you go matt thank you very much for spending time with us and just sharing your wonderful journey experience and your new company newest company newer company i should say uh and all that good stuff thank you thanks chris for having me appreciate it there you go and thanks for tuning in go to youtube.com 4ChessChrisFoss. Hit the bell notification. You can go to thechrissfossshow.com if you're watching this live. You can also go to goodreads.com

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