Tattletech Hot Seat with Jeff Coe, Business Expansionist

Jeff Coe. Sevenload shareholder and former Director of International, wine enthusiast, Aussie, smarmy humorist and Business Expansionist. Yea if we can now have titles like Futurist, Ideologist and Chief Creative Officer, we think that Business Expansionist is the exact term for Jeff Coe. We met via mutual Danish angel maverick and friend Morten Lund and talked over glasses of wine and ended up here.  Jeff’s main focus is with venture backed start ups in Technology, Communication and Media and to expand them in both physical size as well as strategy and product til they are where they should be, and then some.

Jeff currently works with several technology based business venture start ups who are in stealth mode as their Business Expansionist. We decided to throw him a variety of questions to see where his head really is. He did not disappoint. You can follow Jeff on Twitter at @hrcolors.

Tattletech: Slate Magazine recently said that Spotify is what iTunes would be like if Apple decided to give everything away for free What do you think about Spotify and why do you think that Apple didn’t do this?  What’s your prediction on where  the market end up?

Jeff Coe: Well I will have to answer that question in a couple of parts. 1) Apple was never a content company, but a hardware/technology company. The whole reason they made itunes was as an auxiliary product to the ipod (I don’t personally know SJ, so this is of course my opinion only) and it worked a treat, just like what they have done with the iPhone App Store (no point selling a flash sports car that runs on peanuts if people could never tank up on peanuts). There was never an obvious play to make money from the content (hence the % pay back to labels and publishers), so exploring other business models other than transaction based, was not important to them. 2) Spotify and what I think of it is a little more sensitive for me to answer – As being a pioneer owner of firstly a transaction based music service in the late 90”s and then more recently a shareholder of a adfunded video portal, I have dabbled with both models. The adfunded model is seriously floored in many ways and I see that even Spotify have identified the need to pursue a pay per model and they are increasingly leaning towards the more widely seen Freemium model of offering the basics for free and then hoping (by providing better tech/ service/content) they can get people to pay a subscription. To be incredibly blunt though I see the winner as the company who can control all areas of consumption (phone/TV/web) and combine everything into one, so the user is playing a flat fee for all his content needs across all screens and content desires.

TT; So we know you are a wine connoisseur and you have a website, OzzieWineDude, what is your favorite grape variety and why do you love it?

JC: I would never call myself a connoisseur or an expert, as whenever I believe I know what I am talking about, that which I am talking about changes, and I no longer know what I am talking about!

I started to write them down and I had 80% of all grape varieties… so I love any good wine J But I really want to taste  PINGUS 2003 RIBERA DEL DUERO, 1976 Penfolds Grange Hermitage, and 2003 Domaine de la Vieille Julienne Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee Reservee. Then I could lie down and die

TT; What do you think VCs are looking for these days in start ups?

JC: That’s a broad question as there are some shitty VC’s out there and some really good ones, and so I will answer to what I am looking for and ‘pretend’ I am one of the good ones.

There are three integral parts to any successful business and for me they start in this order (usually based on what order you in the real world see things by). A) A good idea, and this is obvious, but an investor wants to see something that makes sense straight up…. Which can be summed up in a 30 second pitch basically, as if it is incomplete, complex or incoherent, then I would go the other way. I want someone to come up to me and say “This is the idea”, ”This is how much money I want”, ”this is why I want the money’,  ”and this is how much money you are going to make when we are done”.   B) Good people, I won’t even start to tell you how people can screw up a good product, in fact I remember talking to Stevie Wonders manager when I was young and in the music biz and he said ‘A shitty band can go a long way with a good manager, but a great band will go nowhere with a shitty manager”.  C) Relevance, being that we all follow trends or are influenced in some ways by our surrounds, so if I am a VC from Berlin who specializes in the Mobile Phone and you come to me with a great idea and great team doing something with small fish in Argentina, it will be hard for you to convince me to invest, as your idea will just not be relevant to me, no matter how great it is.

TT: How do you think traditional “mainstream” television programming has driven the creation of so much user generated content – is this a zero sum game?

JC: Apart from the obvious reasons such as people want to be famous or at least experience five minutes of notoriety, UGC is the best possible platform for people to share/indulge in niche interests. Mainstream TV is a linear form of “you must watch this because our user group said you would like it”, where the web/phone has opened up the ability for people to find specialized content where maybe only a handful of people would enjoy. Mainstream TV is also not interactive (it is dumb) and people are becoming more and more used to being directly involved in the content they consume, hence UGC’s rise in popularity even with or in parallel to mainstream TV programming.

TT: In the wake of the Pirate Bay ruling and the Swedish Pirate Party winning a seat in the European Parliament, where do you see the future of copyright system and internet privacy headed?

If I could answer this question, then I would be “god” as this is the same question being asked by the music industry and has been asked for nearly 15 years now. People want quality content, but quality content costs money, so someone has to pay for this. If you look at sport as an example, people are more than willing to pay a fortune to see a football game on TV, however this is real time and this real time makes the policing of it easier for the IP holder. So, with TV content and Music you do not have this “real-time” advantage to police the service…. Or do you? As mentioned earlier, enhancing the product with user interaction could be the golden egg, as people will be prepared to pay for something they think is worth paying for which they cannot get free elsewhere, and the combining of real time interaction within content, could be the value that brings out the wallet.

TT: In a fight to the death, who would you put your money on – Superman or Aquaman?

JC: Superman. I personally don’t like super heroes though… I just like… Heroes!

– JLH

Tags: Business Expansionist, Jeff Coe, Morten Lund