The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Matt Wasserlauf, CEO and Founder of BLOCKBOARD Interview

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Matt Wasserlauf, CEO and Founder of BLOCKBOARD Interview Myblockboard.com

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, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. I don't know if your brain's bleeding, but the lawyer said that since we offer brain bleeding in the intro there, that we have to have disclosed that we're not responsible for anyone's

brain bleeding. It's kind of like when you park at the store, but they say they're not responsible for those carts that they ram into your car. It's kind of like that. Anyway, guys, be sure to refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Remember, the Chris Voss Show is a show that loves you. It's a family, and it's a show too, as well. It's a family that loves you, but doesn't judge you, the best kind of family there is. In fact, that might be your only family at this point, really. I've seen some of you folks. Anyway, guys, I'm just teasing. Go to LinkedIn newsletter. LinkedIn newsletter, people love that thing. The big LinkedIn group, 122,000 people over there on LinkedIn, it's quite the thing now. Also go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok.

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founder on the show. He's going to be talking to us about his company, what he does, some of the aspects of leadership, and all that good stuff. Matt Wasloff is on the show with us. He's the CEO and founder of Blockboard. This is his second appearance, so he's becoming quite the regular on the show. He is one of the original disruptors of the TV business and is his second appearance, so he's becoming quite the regular on the show. He is one of the original disruptors of the TV business and is 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 co-founded the mobile video platform Torrential in 2013. He recently sold Torrential to his television company, ITN, the leading unwired broadcast network. And in May of 2019, he launched his newest and arguably, arguably, it's very arguable, most exciting venture yet, Blockboard, a new digital distribution platform service that utilizes blockchain technology to distribute videos. Welcome to the show, Matt. How are you? Great to be here, Chris. Thanks so much. It's good to have you back as well. Can you give us your.com so people can look you guys up on the interwebages?

I'm sorry, what? Can you give us your.com so people can look you up on the interwebages? Myblockboard.com. Myblockboard.com. There you go. There you go. So welcome back to the show. And tell us again what Blockboard is. Give us an

overview, if you would. Sure. Well, great to be back, Chris and my Blockboard. Well, our company is called Blockboard. Our website is myblockboard.com. Blockboard founded three years ago to reset the entire digital video advertising industry on the blockchain. And the reason I did that is digital video has become a bit of a mess as we've grown up in the industry. We're a $50 billion industry today, which is quite remarkable, but there's a lot of issues and challenges in the industry. Most stridently is fraud. Roughly 40% of that $50 billion is just not running properly. And quite frankly, it's running in front of bots. It's not making it to the human targets that we're intending to send it to.

So it needed a reset. And that's what I delivered by rebuilding the ecosystem, the marketplace on top of Ethereum. So, you know, there is now is the fraud you're talking about where, you know, they have the bots, they're clicking on ads and running up ad costs? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. Why is that? How is that?

Is that like an evil thing that the competitors are doing to run up your ad dollars? Or they just, what causes it? Yeah, I would like to say the incentives are far greater for the bad guys than the good guys. And unfortunately, it's true. So what's happened is as we've automated the entire marketplace, the fancy word in our industry is called programmatic. As we've programmatically automated the industry, there's just less human touch human eyes on this stuff and so the bad actors make it relative it's relatively easy for them to get their hands on that dough there's a lot of that money is being poorly spent and and that's what we're aiming to fix and we're well on our way there you go

who are the customers that you usually service and assist in the company? Today, we're working with some big brands, but we're working with some smaller brands too. Anyone that wants to execute and drive real results is our customers. But the big ones that you've certainly heard of are Chipotle. Dexcom is a diabetic treatment. News is one of our customers. So we have some big brands, but we work with so many companies who we like to say are the ones that are most closest to the results, that are looking for real results. And so what sort of services do you provide to your clients? End-to-end video, digital video. So the big trend and the big exciting aspect of digital today is called CTV, connected TV.

So much of video today is being streamed, and that's coming directly at the expense of linear TV that we used to watch over the air on our local television stations. So now is more and more, certainly the younger generations, but really everybody is turning on their video providers. Some of the ones that are most commonly bandied about, Netflix is now in advertising, Paramount, Klaus, Peacock, all these major media companies are now really driving the growth of their viewership in CTV or streaming television. Wow.

Everything is about streaming. It's really surprising to me because I used to pay. One of the reasons I always avoided Hulu was because of the ads. And I'm like, why am I paying to see ads? And the same thing on HBO Max. I'm like, their ads are for HBO Max, which are kind of palpable. But seeing Netflix getting into the game, I was like, wow, okay, that's different. Yeah, no, it's different.

But it's also going to be a solve for viewers because they're getting fatigued now having to pay all these different providers a subscription fee. So what do you do to offset that? You introduce the ad model, and that's what Netflix is really going to help try to drive through the industry. And the other major media companies that are now in CTV, they're fluent on advertising and have been for 50, 60 years. So it's going to help ultimately the viewers offset those subscription costs. Yeah, it's, it's, they're kind of, you know, it's, it's so wild. There's so many streaming services, but we're, we're kind of digressing and getting off the

thing here. You guys hosted recently a block board upfront or I'm sorry, up next upfront at a friars club. Tell us about that show. Yeah, I'm a little excited, Chris. And yet you're right. Since we talked last, I, I, I'm a former television guy, worked for CBS, I worked for Warner Brothers.

And so the whole idea of the upfront season is something that I've always known. And even at some of my prior companies like Brubbitt Enterprises, I actually hosted an upfront as well. So when I started Blockboard a few years ago, I had my eye on that. And really what we used our up next event to do during the upfront season was to introduce ourselves. It was sort of our coming out party. So I had an opportunity to tell the industry, the world, this is who we are. This is what we do. These are some of our customers and these are the results that we're driving for the industry. So

it was a really great event. Ron and Sana from CNBC hosted it. We were able to introduce ourselves, our executive team. And most importantly, we've got these customers of ours who are really excited about what we do. Now, one of the reasons you named the company Blockboard, I think, I'm assuming, I'm jumping to conclusions here, is you guys use blockchain technology to create transparency with your clients. Is that the reason you named your company? That's it. That's it.

And it flowed off the tongue. It sounded great. It sounded great. I ran with it. Now we run around. We are Blockboard. Yes. Truth be told, Chris, it wasn't the first name that I thought of.

I originally named the company Video ICO. I had notions of doing an initial coin offering to fund the business. But when that went away and the crypto markets kind of, you know, didn't look so stable as we're learning today, I wanted to get away from the ICO concept and I renamed the company BlockBlock. That's awesome. That's awesome. So that's the reason you named it. How do you use it to be transparent with clients? How does your clients use it, I guess? Yeah, that was why I signed up to do this.

The industry today is run by the biggest companies, all of which you've heard of, YouTube, Facebook, Trade Desk. They all operate in black boxes. So for customers of ours and all customers, they're just not getting any transparency. They don't see how their ads are being run. They're not given a look under the hood at these companies. And because they drive, you know, the Googles and Facebooks drive the preponderance of advertising, they don't have to.

So we're at check on them. And that's how we use blockchain. Blockchain is a public ledger. So by using this public ledger, we're able to now show how the advertising is running from beginning to end. They could see where their ads are running. They could see that they're reaching the right intended audiences. We allow them to get very granular.

And then we show it all the way to sale, to the actual results. And that's what nobody in the industry has done before. So we're really excited about that transparency, that level of transparency. Are you finding more and more clients are really concerned about those end results in sales versus, I guess, what they call click-throughs in branding? A hundred percent. Now that we're tipping into recession, Chris, it's what all these advertisers and marketers are looking at now. They have to know how they're spending their money and that they're spending it wisely. So it's becoming more and more a theme and our clients are telling us how important it is to them. So yes.

Yeah. I mean, everyone's going to be tighter for money and everything else. I mean, it's kind of crazy what we've been through in the past three or four years. I was joking with my Facebook people. I'm like, you know,

2020 is looking pretty good right now. If we could go back to that, I don't know. It might have been better. No, at least things were cheap. I don't know. no i mean inflation's a whole nother thing and that we we're focused on digital ad fraud i can't i can't i can't divert

to tackle inflation i'm gonna let the powers that be yeah i mean you can only handle a few things one of the things you guys refer to is secondary kpi what is that tell us a little bit more about that yeah so in in our in our little circle of digital advertising chris what what we have ultimately the biggest brands that have driven the digital ad business for so long starting with the proctor and gambles and the general motors and such they have made it their business to use the digital medium to brand themselves. You know, they want to get, if P&G is introducing Pantene shampoo, they want to put their Pantene commercials on the web and make sure everyone sees it. And the way that they measure that

is through the impressions, the reach and the frequency. How many impressions, how many people did they hit with that Pantene commercial? And reach and frequency has been the predominant metric that the industry looks to, to say success or failure. What is starting to happen, we just touched on this with this potential recession looming, is the availability of real end results like sales in a tough marketplace a tough economy like today and the these same advertisers are saying wait a minute you know i reached all these people but what are the sales how how how did money just get spent? What's the end result? And because that data is now available in digital, they are starting to look at what had historically been secondary KPIs.

Primary KPI, reach and frequency. Secondary KPI, sales. And that secondary KPI is now becoming suplee. They're really looking at more and more as the primary key performance index. That's

important. You've got to have the sales on the bottom line, right? Get all the eyeballs you want. If you don't get sales, it doesn't matter. Where I was truly inspired to start Blockboard, Chris, was a few years ago. P&G, JPMorgan Chase, a couple of other major advertisers did what were called turn-off experiments. And they essentially took their $ million dollars of digital ad spend and turned it off and then analyzed the sales what was the ramification the ramp the ramification was

zero change so for a hundred million dollars of ad spend png is looking and saying, wait, I just turned that off, but my sales are the same. It was an indictment on our industry. Oh, wow. And so as one of the pioneers in space, one of the first guys to throw video ads on the web, I took that personally. Wow. I took that personally. Yeah. What are we doing here? So I took it upon myself and I leaned over to talk to some of my peers, tech partners, and I said, how can we fix this?

What's this blockchain thing? How can we build and fix this and remedy this problem? And that's what we've done. That's awesome, man. I mean, it's so important for people to, you know, make sales. I mean, I've seen a lot of people that spend eyeballs. I mean, I don't know. There's, there's, there's some people that seem to buy for eyeballs like Coke and stuff. I don't know. Sometimes they're beers, you know, like Miller Light and stuff. I don't know. Sometimes I question, I guess that they have the money to

spend for like, you know, buying Superbowl ads or something. I guess at this certain point where you're buying for branding, but most people, you know, want Super Bowl ads or something. I guess at this certain point where you're buying for branding, but most people, you know, want sales, or I guess people buying those already have sales, so they can do what they want. Plenty of sales, I guess, if you're Coca-Cola. So tell us about Blockbuster Studios' original programming. What programs do you do, and how do you integrate?

Yeah, so as I said, I'm a former television guy, and I've had my hands on some of the biggest tv shows in history quite frankly i worked at warner brothers when we launched friends er i worked at cbs when we launched i actually was part of the launch team with survivor wow i've i got i have chops when i started broadband enterprises that was also a big part of our company was rolling out these new types of original programs for digital and so long the long history in doing this stuff and we brought that that capability to blackboard as well so for the new social media and you know online video networks we're pushing programming out on behalf of our advertisers. So our big show is called Feel Ageless.

Jennifer Pate, who I've worked with in the past with her program, Webby Award winning program, Jen and Barb Mom Life. So Feel Ageless, we've had Henkel sponsor. Henkel is Renews It and All Liquid D detergent. They sponsored Feel Ageless and we created great webisodic programming that we distributed on Blackboard. Excuse me.

Yeah, so it's been a nice part of our company and something that our advertisers have been leveraging. And that just integrates right into the show, huh? We actually integrate the products elegantly into the content and edit it for these new networks, particularly social media. So it's been a home run and we often put an action in that content. So for Henkel, we offered a washer and dryer, and we got 80,000 emails.

People were clicking to win the washer and dryer, and we were getting great action off of that content. That's where the power of the digital video media really lies. And so that's one of the things that we're excited about. That really is amazing. I mean, people always respond to that sort of stuff. I remember back in the day with our mortgage company, we'd offer like a giveaway for a TV.

And of course, we were running radio ads. This is how old I am. And yeah, the phones light up and everything else, you know, when you're running that ad. Yeah. People like to see you. Free is fun. Free is good.

They love that stuff. So what do you see is upcoming next for your company? And then also for the field of, of advertising. So we're really, really pumped about July here. We're now in July, we're unveiling the beta of our self-service platform. So we're actually, you know, allow our marketers for the first time to go on, put their hands on the keyboard and execute video buys themselves. So that's a real game changer for us. We're excited about that. So as I said, it's going to be in the beta. We'll take the feedback and we'll form the product off of that feedback, but it's a big deal and it's really going to set the future of our company

in motion for the coming two to three years and going forward. So that's a big deal, and it's really going to set the future of our company in motion for the coming two to three years and going forward. So that's a big, big part of what we're excited about. Do a lot of your competitors have that sort of offer? Well, certainly they do. Trade Desk is the big one in the industry. So to be able to offer that same service that Trade Desk offers but do it with pre-verification to eliminate that fraud is huge. And that's what I'm really, really excited about. Yeah, the fraud's crazy.

I've heard it just is really out of control. I've heard of evil fraud where competitors are harming people. It's the runoff of costs and stuff. Chris, the top three fraud rings, okay? Drugs, number one. Digital ad fraud, number two. Illicit gun sales, three. Wow.

I am focused, really focused on number two, and we're going to fix that. So that's where it lies. It's a big deal. That sounds like something that's, yeah, is a definite real problem and all that good stuff. So, you know, you've started a lot of companies. How many companies have you started so far? Cause I know there's a lot in the bio. This is my third. This is third. Yeah. So you've been, and you've been doing this for how many years is starting to get digital video for 20 plus years and just media in general, my career is 31 years old is 31 years old.

31 years old. So let's talk about leadership because my book Beacons Leadership and the forthcoming book, we'll be talking about leadership again. Ad nauseum, I guess people have to get sick of leadership from me. But talk to us about what leadership means to you. When I say the word, excuse me, when I say the word leadership, what does that mean to you? And how is that integrated maybe into some of the things you've done over the years? It means everything to me. I mean, you know, why I'm doing what I'm doing is I feel great about our mission.

And I have a team of people who share in our mission. And we're, you know, we're locking arms and doing this together. And that to me is the essence of everything we're about at Blockboard. So I have a funny exchange with my head of sales and marketing. He's a guy named Matt Timothy. I actually worked for him when I was at CBS. And we talked late at night in the CBS offices, could good guys win? We were always saying, could the good guys win?

Because we would see some of the people that we worked for and worked with in the halls of CBS, and we weren't sure what the answer was. And now, 20-plus years later, as we do what we do today at BlockBord, we laugh. Yes, good guys can win. And that to me is the essence of how I lead and we lead as a company. You really have to have a strong mission and a strong purpose for what it is you're doing. And that conviction is what drives us, and it's shared across our team. That's how I lead.

And the byproduct of that leadership is we grow people. We help people evolve and build not only their careers by doing great things and accomplishing so much, but also we develop them as people, you know, and they're able to grow and able to, you know, manage and produce and do these things that help them evolve as a person. So all of that is my, you know, long-winded way of saying leadership is so, so vital and how you lead. And the style might be different and change, but for us, it really starts at that mission level and having that shared purpose and then going and getting after it. There you go.

Yeah. I mean, that makes all the difference in the world. And, you know, you find yourself as a CEO or starting companies in positions of leadership. I never really thought about how I would, you know, oh, I got to lead people now. I thought I just, I thought when they made me CEO, you know, you just pass people around and tell them what to do all the time. But you find out that it's something completely different where you have to inspire people and and drive them you just can't you know crack a whip and tell them what to do all the time yeah and and it's well said but chris you know when we were at cbs and mel carmisen was running the company he cracked the whip that's that was his style that was the way he went about it you know they would they would send around what this is late 90s early 2000s they would send around what they called mail mail. And this mail mail was pretty much telling the sales force, if you don't produce, you're gone.

You know, that was his style. Well, you know, that's his particular style. But I think that definitely requires a new way and a new, new, new type of leadership these days. But you know, that's, that's how I lead. Yeah. I think, I think it's evolved from some of what he's done. I mean, I'm sure there's still managers that run that way, but you know, nowadays where

you have the great resignation, you have people that have all these choices and, and you know, you, you kind of have a new, I mean, the Gen Zs and the millennials are kind of known as people that they want to feel a little bit more connected to their work and feel like there's some sort of life value to it. And if they don't like it, you know, they're quitting en masse these days and moving to other places and the competition's high. So, you know, you've got an almost, you know, you can lead people with fear or you can lead people with, you know, drive and motivation and inspire them. To me, inspiration is a much better driver in doing stuff. But, you know, the sticker or vision, I suppose, is what it comes to. Yeah, I violently agree with that.

Definitely. There's going to be a lot of people starting companies here in the future with this recession. Out of these recessions always comes people that want to go to the next level. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show, Matt. Thank you for coming on. Thank you, Chris. There you go. Great to see you again.

It's good to see you again, too, and talk about some of these different topics that people can know about. Give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs, please. Myblockboard.com is where you can find us. And we are Blockboard. And I'm certainly available across all social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, what have you. But myblockboard.com. There you go. Thanks so much for tuning in.

Go to YouTube.com. For us, that's Chris Voss. Be sure to give us some reviews there on the iTunes. You go to iTunes, hit the review section. Give us five stars and say nice things about us and all that good stuff. We certainly appreciate it. Also go to all the LinkedIn stuff, LinkedIn newsletter,

the big LinkedIn group and all those web places we have on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time. Thanks, Swiss.