Brian Snyder is the Founder and CEO of Madbrook Publishing, an educational/entertainment company that publishes Everything Butt Art. Snyder says Everything Butt Art’s mission is to “teach kids to draw, always starting with the butt shape” which is a format that “really engages kids.”
After presenting on-stage during TechCrunch Disrupt, New York Snyder came into our studio for an Office Hours session with Hunch’s Chris Dixon and First Round Capital’s Josh Kopelman.
Snyder initially asked the two founders for advice on making his educational content “device-agnostic.” After sharing insights, Kopelman asked Snyder what kind of company he wanted build; “a venture backed company” or a “cash generation business?” Offering his two-cents on the venture world, Kopelman told Snyder “the more you are viewed as a platform, versus specific content I think improves your positioning.” While recognizing that there are successful content based businesses, Dixon agreed with Kopelman and told Snyder “venture style investors are weary of [content based businesses]. [Content] is sort of a bad word in the business because it is sort of hit driven.“
Kopelman concludes by telling Snyder “the challenge is, if someone is investing now they need to decide are we investing in this hit, are we investing in the Butt Art concept and if Butt Art works great, and if Butt Art fails does that mean the investment fails?” In essence, “am I investing in a title or am I investing in a company?”
Make sure to check out previous episodes of Founder Office Hours which feature entrepreneurs from SchedIt, Profitably, Dispatch.io, and Napkin Labs.
Madbrook, a 2011 NYC Disrupt Battlefield company, is building an immersive art, education, and entertainment platform that launched with their first brand, Everything Butt Art. Everything Butt Art uses a silly and immediately engaging approach to encourage creativity. The printed books, “Everything Butt Art at the ZOO” and “Everything Butt Art on the FARM” are available nationwide. “Everything Butt Art in the CITY” and “Everything Butt Art under the SEA” will be released April 1, 2012. Everything Butt Art’s first iPad app...
Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist and Managing Partner at First Round Capital. Previously, Kopelman founded Half.com, which was acquired by eBay in 2000. He remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual sales. In late 2003 Kopelman helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world’s first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later. In 2001 Kopelman co-founded the...
Chris Dixon is a Partner at and co-founder of Founder Collective. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, and Hunch, which was acquired by eBay. In addition to his work with Founder’s Collective, Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that...
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