Over the past 5 1/2 years of business, we have a fallen into a variety of processes and systems. Some are convoluted, some are purely convenience. In almost every case, they were implemented in the heat of the moment and rarely received refinement. We often had huge dreams of building an entire platform for not only managing audio and video publishing, but also providing all of the tools we need to run and build Castfire. In reality, we have found this is a very poor use of our engineering focus.

In the last 6 weeks, we have started putting process in place and locking in our use of 3rd party services. Our engineering time is extremely valuable, so maximizing our time working on core functionality is key. On that note, here are some of the key companies that we rely on as we scale sales and account management while keeping our engineers focused on our publishing platform.

Highrise
We had been using Salesforce for almost two years but found that it was overwhelming for our small sales staff. Unfortunately, during setup, we tried to populate it with all of our contacts throughout the years. The result was a database filled with inactive records and poorly categorized. While Salesforce is a very strong SaaS platform, we needed something simpler.

Enter Highrise from 37Signals, which is a very simple CRM for small businesses. The cost savings was not only substantial, but it also allowed for everyone in the company to have access to the data. We have now begun consolidating all of user management, pipeline, and marketing efforts within Highrise. Our goal by the end of the year is to use Highrise to do monthly reviews of not only our pipeline, but also existing accounts. It will aggregate everything from marketing emails, billing, support and more into a single place. Even early into this process, it has increased our productivity and our internal conversations about Castfire.

Zendesk
We have been a Zendesk customer since July, 2008. They have provided a wonderful support system that has grown dramatically over the years. The email workflow for support tickets has been essential for us. With the addition of Randall Bennett, we have begun taking advantage of the knowledge base and forum functionality as well. We are looking forward to utilizing the integration with GoodData to provide reporting on our response times and the types of tickets.

In our goal to consolidate around Highrise, this October, we will be utilizing their webhooks implementation to add tickets to Highrise automatically. Unfortunately, it is not a simple process to integrate immediately, however, it should only take a couple of hours with some creativity.

Freshbooks
Prior to March, 2009, our billing process was a partially automated, fully pain in the ass system. While there is a separate datawarehouse for every client on Castfire, representing all usage of our platform, the actual process of getting invoices out was slow and painful. It involved quite a bit of back and forth over emailed spreadsheets and often incurred delays.

We implemented the Freshbooks API in less than a week, fully automating the monthly process of creating invoices. While we still incur delays on certain months as we QA all of the billing, we have found that Freshbooks is rock solid and is a fabulous invoicing system. It is such a valuable tool for Castfire it is painful to think of the days we did not use Freshbooks.

In October, we will also be integrating our Freshbooks solution with Highrise. While there is not an existing solution, webhooks again to the rescue. This is a huge step in being able to review account status from a single application.

The most difficult aspect of our billing process has been the refinement of our pricing model. While the iteration process has led us to a greatly simplified model that is resonating with customers, it is a nightmare to keep up with the variety of historical models. We are beginning to consolidate all customers to a single model, but it has been a struggle. Simplifying our pricing model not only makes it easier for our customers, it makes it much easier for our operations staff to accurately bill each month.

MailChimp
There are a ton of email marketing companies on the market. As we have been heavy on video and engineering expertise, and admittedly light on marketing expertise, we looked for a solution that was easy, offered tons of functionality and, most importantly, would walk us through the process of managing our newsletter. Mailchimp has provided us all of the functionality in a simple to use interface with fantastic pricing.

As a bonus, their integration with Highrise is great. We are able to gather all of the stats from our email marketing directly into our CRM to provide a single dashboard to review our current and pipeline customers. All of the functionality was enabled in about 10 mouse clicks. Amazing.

Google Apps
This is the basis of it all for the Castfire team. Google has rolled out an amazing suite of tools for our team. I am not sure where we would be if we had to put together Mail, Calendar, IM, Office apps and simple wikis on our own. I can promise you that it would not be as reliable, would not be as complete and would not allow our engineers to focus on our core business. This has been a major win for Castfire.

The ability for web applications to interact through APIs and Webhooks makes life so much easier for start ups. We picked best of breed solutions and connected them, utilizing very little of our engineering time. We are thrilled with what we have put together in the past 6 weeks and look forward to refining this the remainder of the year. Thanks to all of the companies and open technologies that have made this possible.

While Castfire powers video for a number of NFL teams, we’re very proud to announce that the Seattle Sounders is the first of hopefully many MLS teams to use Castifre to manage, monetize and reach their fans online as well as via mobile and in the living room!

Digitaria did a phenomenal job integrating Castfire and allowing fans to browse for exactly the video that they are looking for – or just see what’s available. For example, you find specific games, events and videos of particular players – as always, good work Digitaria (www.digitaria.com)!

Check out http://www.soundersfc.com/News/Video-Landing.aspx

Castfire collaborates with XOS Digital to monetize and syndicate sports videos online, and via mobile and living room devices.

San Francisco, CA – October 29, 2009 — Castfire, Inc., a leading online video and audio publishing platform, is pleased to announce that it has partnered with XOS Digital to power the online distribution of content for XOS Digital’s sports clients.

Together, Castfire and XOS Digital have introduced the sports market to the results of a powerful and versatile video publishing platform, with XOS Digital handling monetization and syndication for its high-profile sports partners through use of the Castfire technology. The platform addresses transcoding to multiple formats, complex syndication management, advertising, analytics and monetization on all devices (web, mobile, living room).

Brian Walsh, Castfire’s CEO, said that “XOS is ingesting full-length football games, transcoding and syndicating content to hundreds of partner sites. The same content needs to be correctly and dynamically formatted based on the partner and device – an interview that is watched on a website will look different than if it’s watched on a mobile phone or in a fan’s living room. Also, we worked with XOS to ensure that the platform enables access to real-time analytics, which is very important to XOS Digital’s clients and advertisers.”

“We provided rigorous diligence in developing the right white-label platform,” said Sebastian Quinn, Director of Advertising, XOS Digital. “It was through our due diligence that we identified Castfire as the best solution, and we’ve been pleased to work with them for one of our biggest sports offerings to date.”

Castfire’s video publishing platform will now be integrated with TubeMogul’s tracking technology, unlocking data of unprecedented depth on how viewers interact with ads, content.

EMERYVILLE, CA – June 25, 2009 - TubeMogul, the Web’s most popular distribution and analytics service for online video, announced a partnership with innovative video publishing platform Castfire today.

Under the terms of the deal and resulting integration, TubeMogul’s InPlay technology will track rich video performance data from Castfire’s video player, including how much of a video is actually watched, whether viewers fast-forward or rewind, audience geography, what sites and search terms are referring viewers and much more.

The partnership is made all the more powerful by Castfire’s unique content management system, which allows video publishers to make live changes, swapping content and ads in and out of a video file on demand. This flexibility allows video publishers to experiment with different advertising, branding or cross promotions, tracking the results in audience engagement using TubeMogul’s analytics.

“In industry jargon, this partnership allows A/B testing on video in a way that has never been done before, with the ability to make changes based on live, audience interaction data” comments Brett Wilson, CEO and Co-Founder of TubeMogul. “This pushes the frontier of what’s possible in online video publishing and monetization by allowing publishers to compare different types of advertising and measure the effect on the viewer,” echoes Brian Walsh, CEO and Co-Founder of Castfire.

Additionally, Castfire users will now be able to utilize TubeMogul’s syndication technology from Castfire, automatically syndicating their videos to YouTube and up to two dozen other top video sharing sites with the click of a mouse. This feature set will be integrated into the existing Castfire CMS and will simplify and enhance the distribution and syndication of all content published by Castfire customers. This integrated toolset will provide powerful, cross-site analytics and video data whether content is viewed on a publisher’s site, one of its affiliates or on a high traffic site like YouTube.

About Castfire
Castfire is a video and audio publishing platform that helps companies manage and monetize large libraries of media content. The Castfire platform is a one stop white-labeled solution that allows publishers to reach their audience across multiple platforms and devices and increase their audience size by automating complex syndication relationships.

About TubeMogul
TubeMogul is the first online video analytics and distribution company serving publishers large and small who need independent information about video performance on the Internet and automated upload to the Web’s top video sharing sites. TubeMogul’s analytic technology aggregates video-viewing data from multiple sources to give publishers improved understanding of when, where and how often videos are watched. TubeMogul offers tracking far beyond the traditional metric of video “views.” TubeMogul InPlay, which can be activated within minutes, tracks rich viewership metrics such as audience engagement, attention span and site performance — all in real-time.

TV Week has a great article on the success of video properties, including a Castfire client, Ask a Ninja. We have been very fortunate to work with Ask a Ninja since March, 2007 – we are tremendous fans of the show.

Online Fame Easy; Ads Harder to Get – TVWeek – News

Near the top of the pile sit Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, who have parlayed their "Ask a Ninja" Web program into about $100,000 a month in ad revenue and income from merchandising and licensing.

Andy Plesser from Beet.tv follows up with:

Seems that Federated Media is doing a good job in selling ads for the show.  And the tiny San Francisco start-up CastFire is doing an impressive job in publishing the video.

Thanks, Andy!  You are correct – FM is killing it! They have taken advantage of Castfire’s functionality to rotate ads through archives and downloadable media to maximize profits for their publishers. We continue to see growth in all properties which is being accelerated with our Bebo, Facebook and video search engine integration.

Congrats to Kent and Doug on their continued success with Ask a Ninja.