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Jeff Brenner and Peter Kealteka.
That's right. Good to go. Good afternoon everyone. Great to be here.
[xx]
My names's Jeff Brenner as he mentioned, this is Peter Kealteka. And we're here to share our vision of the future of browsing the internet on tablets. Before we do that, let's take a quick look at what Tech Crunch looks like today on an iPad. As you can see, it's not bad. But it's clearly not built for reading on a tablet.
The content, the most important part is only given about 40 percent of the screen. And the rest is really just clutter. You have the ads on the side, the buttons on the top and the bottom that you don't always need. There's no real swipe interface. Everything here is built for click and scroll on a desktop.
Now wouldn't it be great if our favorite sites could be tailored to more of that tablet experience? Well that's exactly what we're going to show you today with Presley. A platform for making publications look and feel amazing on tablet browsers. So let's check out TechCrunch looks like on Pressly.
The first thing you would do, you enter in the URL, just as when you typically browse the web. Our technology will automatically detect that you're on iPad and deliver the Presley optimized version. And right away, you can see this is a totally different experience. This is the way the internet is suppose to be on an iPad.
And it's simple, you just swipe the pages. Tap on an article to launch it fullscreen. Articles are paginated. We support article to article browsing. So this allows you to take through the entire content in the nice start to finish experience. If there's an image associated with an article, tap on it for a closer look.
We support font resizing. And just pinch to close the article. Now we want to keep it as clean and as focused on content as possible, so we hid the navigation until you need it. A simple two-finger swipe down will reveal the sections at the top, and you scroll along. Or, a simple two-finger swipe up reveals really great page navigation along the bottom.
I gotta tell you guys, when you use this, you can't tell the difference between this and a native iPad app. If you want, you can hit the home icon. It will take you back to the start. Pressly works in any orientation and the content looks great. We also support various types of content whether its video or photo galleries.
We'll show some of this stuff in a second. But that's not all. With Pressly, we're also redefiningfind in advertising. Pressly enables publishers to include full screen, interactive tablet ads, in between articles. And because they are built with HTML5, these can be just as interactive as anything you have ever seen online before.
Check out this 360 we built, swap round, you can zoom in, we can embed audio, we can embed hot spots. There's a lot of stuff we can do with it, and we really feel like these types of experiences are the future of advertising. That's also how we're going to make money. So we're working with our launch partners, and looking at a couple of options.
The first is a revenue share on the tablet ads or platform supports. Another is to have us working directly with advertisers to bring these full screen interstitial tablet ads to the publishers remnant inventory. Now there are some other solutions out there doing some similar things. But there's just one problem with all the other guys.
Everything they build It's exactly the same. Let's take a look just how unique and different each Pressly publication can be. We put this together today for the demo that's on stage. This is the big picture from the Boston Globe. You can see, completely different experience than what we showed you from the Tech Crunch demo.
The photo galleries look great, it's really engaging. We have another one here for CNN. Again these are just for demo purposes. We put this together just for, on stage here. Completely different UX, very visual as apposed to the Tech Crunch one that we threw up, and it maintains the publishers brand.
So how does it work?
Well, it's very simple. All the publisher does is include any online content feed whether it's RSS, Twitter, or Custom CMS and plugs it in to our Pressly engine. That Pressly's ready to start producing, full screen swipe able HTML5 apps, instantly and automatically. What's amazing, those custom designs I showed you, our technology is so flexible, they can be up and running in less than three days.
We also have Library. Default templates were an even suit to market for publishers. So today we're also really excited, because we've been getting some traction with this. Some really great publishers. A couple we'll mention right now. The Economist, we're working with the Economist Groups Media Lab on a very exciting new prototype that we can't wait to show you guys.
Back home in Canada we're working with some publishers. Including Transcontinental Media, and the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. So keep your eyes peeled, because we have some really great products coming, being launched on Pressly from some really great publishers. To conclude, there will be 300,000,000 tablets in the market by 2015.
And we're confident, Pressly is going to change the way people discover and experience their favorite content on these devices. We also know, Pressly can help publishers better monetize their content in a brand new and powerful way. So if you're interested, log on to Pressly.com today. Check out the live tech demo that we have, and let us know what you think.
Thank you.
With bonus points for ending exactly on time. So, Dustin, jumpin.
Yeah sure, so, first of all I just wanted to apologize to you guys, you have incredibly bad luck, I think we're both flip board investors.
Yeah.
And you know, I have to say that I have a huge ton of respect for the team over there. And I think they're really off to a great start. And I don't feel like your product is going to be different shaded enough against a player like that in the field. It's different if you think the teams not quite executing well, or there's something wrong with the other products.
But the things you spoke to seem quite fixable, if they really are sort of the fundamental differentiation. And I guess I don't have much of a question, but I'm just curious.
Well, I can address that pretty so, I mean with flip board, the very focus at the moment is at the iPad. Strictly needed. So today Pressly works on Android, it works on Playbook, it's a web technology, right? They're working on non-iPad, right? Yes, I'm sure they are, right?
Yeah.
It's also a web technology that's in the control of the in control. Right, so they're able to sit there and manage their content, manage their brand, and profit from it. So it works great, it's a great consumer product. We like it. We use it a but I think there is definitely room for us to be in the market especially with the web.
Sorry, what did you say was the differentiation?
I said the differentiation is because right now we're on the web, so we're cross platform.
I see. Right.
We give publishers the ability to have better control over their content. And you know, like them we're bringing opportunities for them to better monetize their content.
Yeah. To ask the. Why would people who have content on the web already want it to be repackaged into a different browser on the web?
Okay. I want to add a few points to that. So, we love Clipboard. It was inspiring obviously to see the application. But the fact is we feel that especially publications... they should live in a web standard content. I mean being cross platform, better distribution, easier to share, Clipboard also, I think what they do best is actually content discovery.
I mean, experience obviously you've nailed, but it's the discovery that's great. But for publishers, they already have destination that people are already going to their tablets. And we have talked to many publishers. Obviously with these great names, we're talking to many more. And already 5% to 15% of their traffic is coming from an IPad.
The most popular app on the IPad is Safari, as it will be on a lot of different things. We're going to get the Smart Phones, etc. Publishers maintain the relationship with the client. They are still the destination whereas Clipboard is not, you know? So they're... its actually, it's different. And I think at the end of the day, the big Thing is, people's natural behavior, they go to the web to find content, to browse content, to Google for content, to find it, to share it.
And that's where we really plug in. We're leveraging that behavior as it stands today.
I want to bring in somebody who's not a Clipboard investor, so Michael, do you want to jump in?
From a user perspective, it looks terrific. I can't wait to see more sites that use these technologies, so that's business model question. You showed great, the Master card ad was awesome. The question is for a publisher, what's the break even you're taking a Techron site let's say. There's certain economics in how everything is placed.
Now all of a sudden this comes along, and I've got to make up that revenue, my business managers gonna go nuts. Saying ok, I need to make at least that much revenue. How does this fix that? So, one thing, first of all, there's no upfront cost to the publisher. Right. Because of the revenue share, the more profitable they are, the more profitable we are.
So, we talked to a lot of publishers, as Peter can attest to. An upfront capital expenditure? Not happening right now for the good majority of publishers that we're talking to. So, instead, we're working together on a win-win situation. We're sharing the revenue. That 360 ad is actually incredibly simple to build.
We already have the tools. It's six images. They send it over and we can pre-package that and have that out in less than a day.
And also full page interstitals, we actually surveyed tons of publishers. We looked at what are they selling a banner at for, versus a full page interstitial. At minimum, at baseline, it's double. So, if traffic you're getting through a tablet, and you can sell your advertising for double, and we took a small percentage of that Then it's a no brainer.
Not only, especially, what this comes down to is this is a consumer product. Because if consumers love it and its more engaging, they can actually increase their CPM, their impressions, serve better advertisements, and it's just going to work. And further to that, there's also the opportunity where as we grow this publisher networkAnd we can actually take the remnant out of inventory, and start actually bringing advertisements to the publishers.
Josh, we bring in, so we don't run out of time.
So. I did a bunch of work with news streams for Google News, and I like the idea that you're presenting ads in the same sort of format, more like magazines. I think that's actually the sort of brand advertising is something that actually doesn't have that much of a place on the web. The worry is that people who have development shops are going to be able to build whatever they want.
They're going to want to. So you're sort of left to newspapers and other publishers that don't actually have infrastructure or teams to build this. And I just remember for years and years they've always been these mobile rewriting websites so you turn your ad and then you know, you click on a link on your phone, and it ends up redirecting you to the front page of some crappy mobile rewriting website.
And I worry that you're going to be like HTML 5 version of that. Right? All right.
So I got it. We thought of that, obviously, and we built a platform, where people publishers can build on top of it. And eventually it's going to reach an equilibrium point where it's going to make economic sense. And further to that if we bring in these, which advertisers cannot do right now then it's going to work.
But it comes down to economic value.
Why can't they do it?
The publishers are really great at a couple things. One is telling stories. Right, so a lot of publishers we talked to aren't able to go out there and innovate necessarily in certain spaces. Where we have spent the nine months. I mean in a year it's gonna be another add given. Right.
Right. But you know, the one thing is, this using Pressly, they can be up and running in three days. Okay. Eileen, I want bring in.
I think a lot of good points have been made. I think it's really beautiful. But I would encourage you to try to figure it out, because you do have player in the space it is, building a consumer brand, a consumer destination to really focus on. Maybe you focus on certain verticals. Or a different market approach, or different business model approach so that you do have a clear differentiation.
Right.
We feel publishers need this actually.
Maybe we misclarified something. So Pressly someone would go to TechCrunch.com to get the Pressly experience. We're not necessarily like Pressly.com.
So you're not trying to create a consumer.
No,no,no.
It's not like we're competing with.
Exactly with Clipboard directly. We're giving publishers to have their own Clipboard for the web is what it comes down.
Okay, we're out of time. Big round of applause for Pressly.
Thank you. And of course the start ups that come back will get one more chance to pitch in the finals if the judges decide. Ok, let's move on as quickly as possible to our next start up. When they take the stage this is a Bitcasa .
TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Pressly is an HTML5-based platform that turns online publications into tablet-friendly websites that work on the iPad, Android tablets or the BlackBerry PlayBook. The sites it produces are nearly indistinguishable from their native counterparts, like Flipboard and Zite for example, offering a similar experience for browsing through articles, images and videos. Navigation is designed for the tablet interface, using common gestures like multi-touch swipes and pinches.
Pressly’s platform includes five customizable templates as a starting point, each designed with the needs of different publishers in mind. One template is more text-driven, while others are better for browsing through photos or videos. Like native apps, navigating a Pressly-built site uses intuitive gestures, like a 2-finger swipe up or down to reveal quick navigation and a pinch to close articles.
The templating engine can pull in a variety of data feeds, too, like JSON, XML, RSS or Twitter and WordPress content.
Despite the end product’s similarities to today’s popular tablet magazines, Pressly isn’t designed to be an alternative to building a native app for the iPad or another tablet. In fact, the company isn’t even a big proponent of saving URLs as homescreen icons. Instead, Pressly wants to leverage the popularity of tablets’ most popular application, the browser, to immediately deliver tablet-optimized experiences to those surfing the Web.
In addition, because these sites are just HTML pages, publishers can integrate all the common functions found in a traditional website, including analytics, advertising, payment processing, store finders and more. And Pressly includes its own ad platform which lets publishers and advertisers insert rich media ads into the tablet-friendly site. These ads can include videos, photos, links, hot spots, social sharing buttons, detailed tracking mechanisms and they can even be displayed as 360-degree immersive views.
Pressly is currently working with Canadian Living Magazine, Transcontinental Media Group and The Toronto Star (Canada’s largest daily) as well as with the The Economist’s digital team in New York on a new, yet-to-be-announced product prototype.
If you’re on a tablet computer, you can see a demo of Pressly in action here.
The company’s founders include CEO Jeff Brenner, CTO Peter Kieltyka, Marketing and Media Lead Tobin Dalrymple and Business Development Lead Chi Chen. Brenner and Kieltyka previously founded a consulting business called NuLayer, which built over 17 successful Web and iOS projects including the popular sports app for theScore, as well as social photo sharing startup Crowdreel, winner of the 2009 Twitter Chirp conference.
NuLayer has a minority partner in theScore, but Pressly itself has no direct funding. Pricing for the platform has yet to be determined.
AL: Really beautiful. Need to focus on certain verticals.
A: We feel publishers need this. This isn’t competing with Flipboard directly.
DM: I’m Flipboard investor, not sure your product is there yet.
A: Flipboard is iPad. Pressly is a Web tech (HTML5). Also, publishers can control content better. There’s room for us. Flipboard does content discovery on iPad, Pressly uses Safari or a Web browser to deliver tablet-friendly site.
MP: From user perspective, looks great. Biz model question about revenue share.
A: No upfront costs on revenue share with publishers - a win-win situation for both. If consumers love and is engaging, publishers can increase CPM’s. Can start bringing ad inventory to publishers.
JS: I like the ads. Worry is people with dev shops can build whatever they want, leaving you with newspapers, those without tools to build this.
A: Built platform where publishers can build on top of. Publishers are good at telling stories, not great at innovating like this.
Backstage interview:
The team from Pressly is here. They're backstage, and we're going to get their thoughts on how things went. So, do you think that the judges understood your product?
To some degree I mean right off the bat they compared us to flipboard. And, it's not exact, we're not flipboard. The experience is similar, it's obviously a tablet publishing platform, experience, but the, the difference is that it's web-based, and publishers maintain being the destination source.
And what happens obviously like, I guess they didn't really understand till the very end with Jeff's. Jeff brought up the comment was that when you for example go on to techcrunch.com, it will detect that you're from an ipad and it will redirect to a pro enabled site. And you know, whereas Flipboard is very much somewhere of a discovery engine.
So I just we had more time to kind of, talk through it but otherwise I feel we did ok. Are they torts or strong and I saw them kind of you know thinking through what we said. So take twenty seconds now and tell us what you wish you had said or you know, is there anything you want to add on to the discussion that took place on stage?
Well, I just think the big clarification is that Pressly is a tool for publishers, to create amazing experiences around their content. And they're leveraging the people and their use is already coming to their dot com websites. So we're not necessarily in direct competition with FlipBoard, but, as I mentioned, you know, we're happy to be compared to a company like them because we spent a lot of time you know getting our web based product as smooth as a native app so we are really excited about that and excited what's going to come next.
And you mentioned a retort. What's a retort that stands out?
Well, there's a few points. The fact that Safari or browsers on a iPad or a tablet in general or any device for that matter, is the most popular application. There's no question about that. And, these various different publisher sites are already getting five to fifteen percent as we Kind of surveying of ipad traffic.
So they have to cater to that audience. And the other point of audience, what pressly enables is the business model, which is full page advertisements and advertisements the difference between a banner ad and a full page ad is that the base line at least double so if you can make double the amount of money give us a little bit of a share get up and running in three days.
You don't have to worry about it with your work flow. It's a no brainer actually. And, I mean, this is the first step. The first step is getting consumers to love this type of experience it's getting them to come back, increase the impressions, and really, on a tablet, on this digital reading book, enable this advertisement.
Now, Once we get that, there's a potential of an ad network like a Google Ad Words for full page. There's just so many more steps. And, the fact is, the web, is not a preparatory format, like Flip Board, where the publishers have no control over. And Flip Board obviously is not going to be the only player in the market.
I mean, this is a huge market. We're talking publishing. We're talking the biggest one of the biggest markets shifting over into this digital form. There's no question about that there's going to be a lot of players and there's a lot of things. So, we're actually very confident with the product and I think that it's just I mean, you know, it's a long day.
For the presenters, right? Or for the judges and so forth, right? So, ya.
Any final thoughts.
You know we are excited to have what we are launching coming out so people can get their hands on it and really see just how amazing this product is. And you know we'd be happy to sit down with forward further and show them more of our product, and someone will come up with.
Pressly is an HTML5 publishing platform that automatically transforms online content, such as RSS feeds and social content, into interactive, cleanly-designed web apps for tablet web browsers. Pressly is currently optimized for the iPad.
Pressly’s web apps give publishers an easy, turn-key vehicle for displaying full-page, stylish tablet advertisements, that are more engaging than traditional online ads and are more effective with readers.
TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Pressly is an HTML5-based platform that turns online publications into tablet-friendly websites that work on the iPad, Android tablets or the BlackBerry PlayBook. The sites it produces are nearly indistinguishable from their native counterparts, like Flipboard and Zite for example, offering a similar experience for browsing through articles, images and videos. Navigation is designed for the tablet interface, using common gestures like multi-touch swipes and pinches.
