Hi, my name is Dina Kaplan. I'm one of the founders of blip.tv, and I'm fascinated by media, advertising, technology, people and travel. I believe Perl is somewhat old school and would like to learn more about Erlang.
There are days I smile at the diversity of activities you can run between in one day.
Mike inspired this post: on a day in the life of an entrepreneur.
Today I:
- Woke up early, but not early enough to get to the gym (grr).
- Found out my dry cleaner had a power outage yesterday so wasn’t able to clean my one jacket. And that it had been shipped out for cleaning at another facility. Began brainstorming about how to (a) track down the jacket for a meeting this afternoon or (b) buy a new one that isn’t too expensive.
- 8am Breakfast with Marc Cenedella, CEO of the TheLadders.com. Congratulated Marc on his recent wedding and on TheLadders being named in the top 20 of SAI’s list of most valuable start-ups. Discussed his honeymoon; and advice on managing start-ups.
- 9am Manicure (much neeeded)
- 9:30am Catch up on emails
- 10am Sent note to the NewspaperVideo Yahoo! Group. One member had (understandably) groused when our ISP failed us twice this week. I spoke with him for half an hour yesterday, and he sent a very supportive note back to the group that evening. Posted message thanking him and providing numbers for myself and Mike if anyone on the list has issues with blip.tv.
- Emailed YouTube about CPM ad serving question.
- Got advice from stylish friend about where to pick up an inexpensive jacket nearby in Soho.
- Wrote document formalizing new HR policy.
- Tried to get refund from ISP for the month (or two months) for their failure.
- Emailed with new distribution partner (not announced yet) about the last issue in our contract to send shows to them. Should have signatures on the document by tomorrow, or Monday at the latest.
- Rescheduled blip.tv finance meeting for the 4th time this month because someone is always sick.
- 10:30am Internal finance meeting about tracking deferred pro account revenue. Need to do some work on this spreadsheet, since not all the numbers match paypal, but we should finish this Monday. Learned Paypal issues reports, regularly, with errors and duplicate items. Worked on system to track and delete redundant paypal entries.
- Worked on options for employees.
- Worked with book-keeper to finalize list of Q3 blip.tv payouts and sent spreadsheet to Charles to be entered into the system so people’s dashboards are updated.
- 12:30 Lunch with video / blog start-up looking for distribution of a high quality fashion show plus funding.
- Sent pitch for the company to an angel investor friend and to a NYC media company that could do a strategic investment.
- Founders Club: emailed with sponsors and potential sponsors; and potential co-hosts.
- Ran out to buy jacket
- Celebrated our head of content’s birthday, Eric Mortensen.
- 2:30 Meeting with the son of one of our advertisers looking for a job in Web design. He was half an hour late, so the meeting time was crunched. Brought in our (amazing) blip.tv designer Allan Grinshtein for helpful advice.
- Thanked developer Angus McIntyre for saving a piece of Eric’s birthday cake.
- Worked on getting ISP refund again.
- Noticed a vendor suddenly began charging us 3% more, per month, for their services. Asked why; requested refund. Refund in process
- Sent out invitations to blip.tv party November 4th (come join - Mocca Lounge 7pm).
- 3pm In-person blip.tv meeting with a top media blog (my personal favorite) about potentially hosting their videos - with Eric and co-founder/CTO Justin Day. Good signs they might move to us.
- Prepared for meeting tomorrow with a NYC traditional media company with Justin. Had thought it was today. Was reason for needing jacket. Was moved to tomorrow.
- Recommended an entrepreneur for Fortune journalist covering a tech story.
- 5:15 In-person blip.tv meeting with an investment banker focused on media. Showed off, with Justin, new blip.tv app that brings content to the TV set (under NDA for now). We’re not interested in selling, but good to track the market and what the L.A. studios and NYC networks are thinking about Web video. His take: we’re a digital media MSO. We would say network. Will think about that.
Still to come: sending out more invites; finishing distribution contract and sending it off; options; tracking down the best contact at Verizon marketing; and a dinner party.
We feel blessed to be in such a high-growth market (projecting 80mm video views this month). Still in working-all-the-time start-up mode. But what makes this fun is having uber-talented co-founders, a great staff, and to be doing something we believe in and now see happening - making the best original Web shows sustainable.
Cheers to another day tomorrow.
