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Gordon Daily — founder & CEO of BoxCast — on Cleveland entrepreneurship and the future of live streaming off the bat of a $20 million series A and series of strategic acquisitions.
Show Notes
Our conversation this week is with Gordon Daily!
Gordon is the founder & CEO of BoxCast which offers an end-to-end live streaming platform and is one of Cleveland’s fastest growing companies off the bat of a $20 million series A and series of strategic acquisitions.
BoxCast simplifies the whole process of streaming and video capture which historically has been complicated, risky, and expensive for organizations wishing to connect with their constituents. We cover a lot in this conversation from building hardware, Cleveland entrepreneurship, the future of BoxCast, and the wildest streamed content Gordon has come across! It’s been awesome to see BoxCast’s prolific growth over the last few years and hear the story of how they’ve made it happen. Take a listen and learn!
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Connect with Gordon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordon-daily-b47b8
Learn more about BoxCast: https://www.boxcast.com/
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Learn more about Jeffrey @ https://jeffreys.page
Connect with Jeffrey on Linkedin or on Twitter
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter
Creators & Guests
What is Lay of The Land?
Telling the stories of entrepreneurship and builders in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. Every Thursday, Jeffrey Stern helps map the Cleveland/NEO business ecosystem by talking to founders, investors, and community builders to learn what makes Cleveland/NEO special.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:00:00]:
It really is all about whatever you have to get the video into us, we'll get that video wherever you want to, however you want it to happen. And if you wanna broaden your reach, or you wanna charge more money, or you want to, add some overlay graphics or you wanna make it so it's closed captions so that the hearing impaired can listen, we kinda add all those little touches on there that make it perfect for these organizations that that really wanna do do right by their organization and put their best face forward.
Jeffrey Stern [00:00:23]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to The Lay of the Land podcast Where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today, we're talking about of BoxCast and the growing world of live streaming. Gordon Daley always had an entrepreneurial spirit, but he never let it quite take center stage in his life, that is until he founded BoxCast, which is a comprehensive, easy to use live video streaming solution for organizations. Gordon grew up in Pennsylvania, but Case Western Reserve University's baseball team ultimately brought him to Cleveland As he wanted to be a baseball player but ultimately realized he needed a plan b when he did not actually get signed. And this realization led him to Rockwell Automation, where he learned the importance of automation in minimizing the amount of mistakes a person can make And spent more than a decade in a variety of roles there prior to founding and leading BoxCast full time. BoxCast though takes those lessons of automation and makes live streaming as simple as plugging in a box.
Jeffrey Stern [00:01:40]:
Off the bat of its $20,000,000 series a fundraising Land a series of recent acquisitions, BoxCast has experienced tremendous growth over the last few years helping organizations meet the growing demand for remote accommodation. Gordon is really building an incredible organization here in Cleveland through BoxCast. And I hope you all enjoy our conversation. Earlier this week, I had just finished up exploration actually of that new red Land greenway, which which officially had opened, right on 25th. And I I was walking by the Detroit Superior Bridge, and I came across the BoxCast office With the logo signage there on the building, and it got me, kinda pretty excited for the conversation today just thinking about and and knowing how much You guys have grown over over the last few years, so definitely very excited to have you on to to tell Lay story of BoxCast and and all the work that you're doing there, Gordon.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:02:37]:
Oh, thanks for having me. It's it's a fun story to tell.
Jeffrey Stern [00:02:40]:
Yeah. So I I think like any good story, we we can start really at the the beginning. And Would love to just hear, you know, at a at a high level, what is BoxCast? And when you think about the founding story, you know, kind of the inspiration and impetus for for putting it together in the 1st place.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:02:58]:
Voxcast is actually a really interesting story of how we got started. I kind of sets the stage for what it is that we do. Almost 10 years ago now, it's crazy to think that it's been a decade that we've been at this because people think, oh, use this overnight success called BoxCast. About 10 years ago, a guy named Keith Jenkins at Jenkins Funeral Chapel in Rocky River, Ohio came to us and say, hey, I'd really like to do a website redesign for my website, and at that time I was working with some really close friends of mine from college just for fun after the day job just to Land of stay up on technology and what was new Land we said we'd be happy to build you a website for your funeral chapel and, we did it and it was great. And then he said, you know what would be really nice is if we could do just like in Las Vegas when people get married in Las Vegas and their family can't be there, they stream it. Can you help me stream funeral services because their loved ones can't be there either? And and we thought to ourselves, that's really a strange request. I mean, going back 10 years, who who would wanna tune into a funeral service? And we kinda partake him back by it, but he said, no, no, no. It makes a lot of sense because people can't come to these events.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:04:04]:
You know, lots of folks, their friends maybe are getting up in age or family members just can't escape from what their daily responsibilities require. And my job is just to help people facilitate the grieving process, and we said, you know what? You're right. He he said we can password protect it and it'd be great for the families. And so we ended up doing it. He paid us to build The system. But when we did it, he said there's a trick though. I just don't know anything about technology. I wanna bother with it, can you just like make it work? Because I don't want it to plug things in and configure software and to try to make this work every time.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:04:32]:
I just need it to work automatically. We thought to ourselves, that's The that's exactly what we do. We automate things. We were working at Rockwell Automation. We had about a 10 year career The. Me and one of my co founders Land, like, another guy also. We said we can automate that. No problem.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:04:46]:
I mean, the secret with automation is to get the humans out of the equation so that, you know, critical systems can run. And and so that was Land of the beginning of the story. We said we can definitely help you. Fast forward 10 years now, we do hundreds of thousands of events a month now.
Jeffrey Stern [00:04:58]:
Yeah. That's that's an incredible first foray into the world of of streaming. How is it that you go from that That initial encounter to, you know, actually getting a company off the ground, at what point do you realize, hey, there's something there's a business we can build here?
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:05:16]:
I I think a lot of businesses kinda start in that consulting arena where people are just, Lay. I'm tech for hire. What can I build for you? We knew The going in that building a product was something that made a lot more sense just from, you know, an enterprise value standpoint. But the beauty of this particular application was that it meant a lot to us personally. We were involved with other organizations in the community, our churches, you know, schools. I played a lot of college sports, and my relatives could never come watch me Lay. So they weren't able to see it. And so when you started to think about what the applications were, we pretty soon, just a matter of a month or two, realized that this application was much larger than just helping funeral homes stream.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:05:58]:
We even went to a, a funeral home convention, believe it or not, to see if this is something that people would buy. The was a
Jeffrey Stern [00:06:04]:
little for everything.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:06:07]:
Yeah. Until 2020. Right. There's a convention for everything until, until a pandemic hits. But that's such a neat neat thing to think about is, you know, the application of where there's a business need and your passions Lay, and our passions certainly lied in connecting people. Technology Land, helping these organizations that had really meaningful events to people in their lives, and all those 3 things mixed together just made for a perfect combination. Land we you know, we wanted to go for it. So put the consulting business to the side and focus on this full time.
Jeffrey Stern [00:06:36]:
So it's it's kind of hard enough to start a company, but I I always have a lot of respect Land admiration when you're trying to bridge this world between the digital and the physical worlds. I wanted to ask just at the onset, you know, there there's a hardware component, right, just off the bat in addition to software. So it's not as as easy As just, you know, putting together an application, for example. So how has it been building kind of a vertically integrated Land to end solution with with hardware at at the onset, how is it that you get that kind of building of of an actual thing, a physical thing, off the ground?
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:07:15]:
It's actually a little bit more complicated because there's more expenses required to kinda get it off the The. And you can't you can't just, start a company without having a little bit of money to build it. I mean, it's one thing to build something that has material costs, but it's quite another to have to spend a good bit of money to design custom hardware. We knew that, for this application to work well, that the problem was largely that people didn't have The technical the technical expertise in order to be able to stream reliably themselves, and having had background in building custom computers for, you know, applications mission critical applications in the automation world, made it pretty easy for us to say, hey. We know this is possible to do, but to be honest with you, the largest I think hurdle was just a financial one. Because our wives of the 3 co founders said that, hey, we can't let you guys just mortgage the home to to make this dream work, and we thought to ourselves, well, there's really no other way to do it than to just try to start asking people if they can help us fundraise to make it possible to to invest the amount of money needed to start to do some of the designs of what we what we knew was necessary to make this work. So we Stern winning some business plan competitions. So our success story really got sparked when we had, the folks at jump Stern, specifically a guy named George Buzzi at the time who as an entrepreneur in residence helped us, hey, tell the story of what it is that you're doing.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:08:35]:
And then we took it on the tour of business plan competitions which help us raise, $100,000 from the Great Lakes, Of Designing Enterprises. I think it's called Cleveland then we won a, a county award for another $125,000. These are all loans that you eventually have to pay off, but nobody even a bank would give us a loan.
Jeffrey Stern [00:08:55]:
Right.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:08:55]:
Right? So what that enabled us to do is although we couldn't quit the day job, at least we could invest in starting to build some hardware. And also, we patented the product immediately at the time, and, which ended up being a big part of our success stories just before you even get started with The business. You do what you can to to get The protection you can from an intellectual property perspective. So between patents and the hardware at the beginning, that was basically took all the money we had. And the stipulations with those awards is you couldn't pay your own salary anyway. So we kinda had to work underground for a Lay little bit of time to kinda get the the business, you know, going a little bit. Now, fortunately, we had an amazing relationship with our employer, and we told them kinda of, The, we have this business we're starting. We're passionate about it, and we don't know where it's gonna go.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:09:37]:
And, at the time, we were working of Rockwell Automation, and Rockwell Automation was incredibly helpful with us to support. I mean, we worked our day jobs. Don't get me wrong, but after hours after hours, when we decided to make the the leap, they were of great support to us Land encouraging us to to do it. So I have a great deal of admiration for Rockwell in helping them get our start. But, you know, looking back, 2013, I think is when we made the full time launch to do it on the heels of an investment from jump Stern, and that was kind of the the that when things really got going is when we could give our full focus onto it.
Jeffrey Stern [00:10:09]:
Yeah. That's incredible to have that support. On the business model front, how did you think about it in in the early days? Was it we're gonna take over the funeral industry by Stern or, You know, solving kinda your own problems from, you know, wishing family could have attended some of those sporting events that you were participating in, what what was the The of thinking around how to how to bring something like this to market.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:10:31]:
Well, our mindset was automation. We knew that there's a lot of applications where it pays to have a lot of professionals come and do all the videography and shooting and make it a real TV production. But The shame is is most organizations that have events, they can't possibly have a business model that works for that. And we knew that with automation, you could achieve that level of scale where, hey, I can have lots of, events every week The everything turns on and off by itself and it just works. So we focused on the markets that had high degree of repeatability of events, plus a high demand for viewership, and the 2 markets that of jumped out right at the onset was sports Land the services that you have at churches for weddings and funerals or any faith, synagogues Land we have a lot of interesting clients that are of all faiths which which is exciting to us to see that we're serving people all over the world now. But to answer your question, it was, a little early for the church space. They weren't quite there yet, but the sports space was definitely there. In fact, college sports is kinda where we've made made our 1st entree, you know, entree into the scene.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:11:32]:
Because you've got lots of parents that have sent their kids Land they're paying expensive tuition checks. The Lay least they can expect us to be able to watch their kids play sports. And, so college sports is kinda where we first got our our, I think, initial penetration. And and I was really lucky to have recruited an awesome sales guy. His name is Mike Donlin from Presto Sports at the time, and he kinda helped us get into a bunch of colleges early on. But after that, then fast forwarding, you know, a little bit of time, then the other industries started to to show some interest too. But in the beginning, it was really really fascinating because we were in the impression that we only had like a 1 or 2 year window before this whole market was gonna explode. And here we are 8 years later Land it happened The, you know, with COVID last hear what? We we almost wanna be just a little too early, I suppose.
Jeffrey Stern [00:12:15]:
Well, what what is it like, You know, witnessing your core market 10 x overnight, The that a market that you know is maturing over time, but watching it mature overnight instead.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:12:28]:
Well, you The the first thing that comes to mind is celebration because, oh my goodness, it's happening. But that wasn't it at all. You know what it was? It was like The great sense of responsibility because the whole, you know, millions and millions of people are depending on you to be there when you need it. And as is the case with many businesses, ours is at its greatest greatest exposure when there's the greatest amount of of on it because that's when you're getting the load of the most load. And so when you go when you go basically overnight, I mean, I think over the course of 3 or 4 weeks, we were 20 times higher than where we were, you know, in the onset. So every week, we had an opportunity to try to in that work week, try to do everything we could to be ready to brace for the next work week. So it was a little bit more of a scramble both on the support side and technology side to make sure that you could have the product working from the engineering standpoint. But also getting product out to customers and taking orders became a struggle too.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:13:21]:
I mean, we were at the point where we couldn't hire, you know, really fast enough Land, the executive team had to end up taking all the support calls in order for the all of the support team just to start hiring people so that we can build capacity. So demand for the product to occur too, but usage in both demand at the same time, it was it was pretty wild.
Jeffrey Stern [00:13:39]:
How do you think about the longevity of of that, you know, breakneck explosion in in the market and amplification of it is what is live streaming from from your perspective look like post pandemic?
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:13:51]:
This is what excites me about this shift. I mean, sure, it's cool that the business progressed and we got a lot of customers, but the the most significant change is the society has now accepted this as common practice. Meaning, before 2020, we would have to advocate, you know, basically beg and plead people to respect the needs of remote viewers who couldn't be at these events. There's a lot of people that wish they could be at important events, but can't be The, so we were always advocating for their needs. And most people are like, I'm mostly concerned about just what's happening on-site with the participants that are here. We're like, no, but you have an audience that's just as big as this The would want to tune in if they could remote. We don't have to worry about that anymore because not everybody knows what it's like to be remote because everybody's been remote. Right? So that's the easiest thing is it's now understood The the need for this is just so obvious.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:14:41]:
Which in hindsight, you know it's like, oh, well, wouldn't it have been great for some of those investors we talked to over the course of the last 10 years to to to take a shot on us? But, you know, nobody would. I I mean, we didn't really take our 1st institutional investment until just this end of last year.
Jeffrey Stern [00:14:57]:
And and what what is the The risk aversion there from the perspective of of investors that what was what was it that they did not think would happen? That obviously has transpired now, but at the time.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:15:09]:
Well, they were threatened by, Facebook and YouTube getting in the market with a consumer based product that was focused on a free option. Like, why would anybody ever pay for streaming if there's a free option? And I mean, we're in the industry, so we know very very closely The brands care a whole heck of a lot about how they look and how they're perceived, and quality and reliability matter, and flexibility and privacy and all these different things that you wouldn't know until you got into it The, oh, meteorites is an issue. If I have a song playing at halftime from my football game and it gets picked up, the robots turn it off of Facebook and the The dead for a day or two. Right? I mean, when you're streaming The BoxCast, we understand fair use and these other things. So there's a whole host of issues if you're a brand in your organization, you wanna stream something that BoxCast solves for very alienly. Not to mention the fact that if you wanna maximize your exposure, you can't only have your video into Facebook. So starting with something like BoxCast gives you that reach into all the platforms as a whole at the same time on your terms with the best quality and reliability you'd hope for.
Jeffrey Stern [00:16:09]:
Yeah. I think that's a a good area to to dive a little deeper on because when I think about live streaming, I think, you know, the things that come to mind from the consumer familiar live streaming is Twitch, Facebook, live, YouTube. But, you know, I I get the sense it's not exactly the core focus of what you guys are doing at BoxCast. And so I I'd love to get, You know, how you think about those more consumer facing live streaming things that I think would come to mind when people hear the words live streaming And relative to to what you're doing at BoxCast.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:16:43]:
Yeah. You know, our niche is probably more along the lines of events that are happening that people can't be at is what we try to help showcase out. So it's not necessarily just a webinar type application that's gonna have lots of two way interaction. It's it's kind of a broadcast of of 1 to many. And when you think about what a brand cares most about, it's just not aligned with what a lot of the free options offer, I mean, the free options are predisposed to do things that are in the best interest of their business, which is to connect people and get your viewers onto other people's content because what's the next shiny, most exciting thing they can throw in front of people's faces? You you know, you have an opportunity to actually lose viewership, I think Facebook and, some of The, other platforms are great for attracting attention. But I don't think that if I'm a brand, I want all of my content to to only be on those platforms necessarily because then you lose the ability to influence the viewers. The key is like where where is the action happening? And a lot of our customers love the idea of the action happening at their website or in their TV app. It's not that it can't also happen to Facebook, it's just that they might want it to be at YouTube at the same time, or these other platforms at the same time, or maybe they wanna make money on it, or maybe they wanna run their own ads because you're not really supposed to run your own ads in a feed it's in Facebook, it's against their policies.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:18:00]:
So I mean, there's just a whole host of things that you just once you get into it, you realize, man, the free one's just not gonna work in. BoxCast gives you unlimited streaming for $99 a month. So there's really no the hurdle's so low to enter it for the improved quality that people kinda they're happy to jump in.
Jeffrey Stern [00:18:15]:
Yeah. And Land what does what does BoxCast look like today? What's the what's the lay of the Land, if if you will?
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:18:22]:
In terms of customers or in terms of of of employees, products, what's kinda
Jeffrey Stern [00:18:28]:
Yeah. The the suite of offerings, the distribution that you have now, What the company kinda looks like here in Cleveland.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:18:35]:
So we've got about 80 people now. Most of the people are here in Northeast Ohio. I think it's like 65 ish or here in Northeast Ohio. We've done a a couple of acquisitions that have brought us some customers that are in different parts of the country. But for the most part, we're here Land kind of the the the suite of of products is ranging from our own hardware devices which are a simple to use little box that you plug your video and audio into and just basically teleport that video audio into the The, so we can stream it to the The. Or a high end professional box, it's several $1,000 that a TV station could use, or even your phone. So we have an Ios app that can acquire the video and audio. It's best in class video streaming quality.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:19:17]:
I I mean, it's amazing, 10 80 p, 60 HEVC. These are all technical terms, but these are the kinds of, quality that's they're rivaling broadcast quality right from your phone that's in your pocket. So, we'll be able to leverage, you know, the great technology people have that's that they already own. It really is all about whatever you have to get the video into us, we'll get that video wherever you want to, however you want it to happen. And if you wanna broaden your reach or you wanna charge more money or you want to, add some overlay graphics or you wanna make it so it's closed captions so so The hearing impaired can listen, we kinda add all The little touches on there that make it perfect for these organizations that that really wanted to do right by their organization to put their best face forward.
Jeffrey Stern [00:19:56]:
And in in terms of the markets that you started in and where you are now have Is it is it been a depth of exploration Northeast it been more of a breadth of exploration?
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:20:07]:
It's been more breadth of exploration just because the concept of video streaming applies to so many different applications. Sure, we got The start in sports and churches, but now we're seeing a lot of municipalities. You wouldn't believe the breath. I mean, today, we had literally the British army sign up. Like the UK army signed up for box gas today. And we had earlier in the pandemic, we had the Sri Lanka tourism board sign up who's now giving virtual safari tours, and the Australian parrot society. And there's all these just amazing applications that you would never suspect people would ever do, The now we get to be a part of, their story too. So it's neat to be in this industry.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:20:46]:
It's a lot like what I imagined it would be if you were in the news industry because there's so many different kinds of things you could never anticipate being news that kinda show up, well, we have all kinds of customers we never could have anticipated coming.
Jeffrey Stern [00:20:56]:
Yeah. No. That that is that is very Cool to hear. I I was curious what, you know, like the most interesting things you've seen organizations stream using BoxCast, but
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:21:06]:
this story, oh, there's lots let me just give you let me just give you I'll give you one of my favorites Land then one of the strangest ones. My favorite is we have a Snowy Pines Labrador dog breeders, which you can imagine what dog, breeders how busy they are these days. But when puppies are too small to go home to to their new owners, they need to stay to nurse with their mother. They do a video stream every day of all the puppies playing together, and every puppy gets a little different colored collar so that people the new the new parents who can't wait to have that puppy come home to them can watch The play with their siblings until they're old enough to go home. That's that's my personal favorite, what That's The thing. Horrible. The most interesting one was a skeptics conference in Mexico City where they revealed an alien body that they, showed to everybody.
Jeffrey Stern [00:21:45]:
From from outer space.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:21:47]:
Yeah. Well, reportedly. It's a place in outer space. I I don't have any, I don't have any commentary on the legitimacy of that.
Jeffrey Stern [00:21:57]:
That's awesome. And it makes sense, the the breadth of exploration. But one of the things I was I was curious about was in the early Lay, I I think we've all become accustomed to throwing around the suffix of tech on multiple industries. You know, you have Fintech and health tech and ag tech and ed tech as technology just ingrains its way into every walk of our life. But I don't know that I've had the exposure to the world of what religious tech was like and and selling into, you know, religious institutions and and organizations, Especially considering just the the scale of that market, you know, just taking EdTech, you know, for every 3 schools in The town, you know, there's gonna be 3 3 churches, you know, per school Land
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:22:42]:
Yeah. You're right. I mean, for every college, there's 10 high schools. For every high school, there's 10 churches. I don't think people realize just how many churches or synagogues or temples there are in in America. It's it's incredible. All over the world too, but America is really dense. And The that opportunity is huge.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:22:59]:
And we scratch the surface of it, but we haven't really gone deep from a specialty in that vertical outside of just tailoring that suit that solution well from a video standpoint for them.
Jeffrey Stern [00:23:09]:
Yeah. It's really interesting though to to think about
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:23:12]:
that market, the faith market's awesome because, well, you'd assume that they would pay their bills because they're very ethical people, you would hope, right, by their own by their own teachings. But Right. Right. They're very they're typically a very stable customer base, and their venues don't change. A lot of our customers go from place to place, but when their venue is kind of in the same area all the time, it makes it so it's really easy to support them as customers.
Jeffrey Stern [00:23:34]:
So you mentioned that, you know, both in the Earlier days, and I I imagine also now with the with the series a that that you closed just at the end of last year, I believe for for 20,000,000 that, you know, capital is an important part of getting this business business off the ground. And there have been some some acquisitions Along the way as well. And so I I I wanted to start just at a at a higher level with Land exploration of how you've thought about the capital strategy and, you know, when to to build versus when to buy Land how you're thinking about, you know, deploying this capital that that you've just brought in.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:24:12]:
Well, well, it's always a difficult decision. Certainly, we I'm The aggressive CEO. That's, I guess, why I'm in with the position I'm in. So in my mind, I've always wanted to when we can justify it, do what we can to grow the business faster. And, had I been more successful to maybe raise capital Lay little bit sooner, I probably would've taken the opportunity to do it because I saw the opportunity was out there to get. And I still see an opportunity that's out there. So there's opportunities to grow through acquisitions. That's where some of the money has already gone.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:24:39]:
I mean, we announced the acquisition StreamMonkey not that long ago. But at the heart of BoxCast is really wanting to build a great product that everybody wants to wants to use and enjoys using, we've got an incredible incredible NPS score for our product. I think we're in the seventies which is kinda world class, if customers when they when they use it, they love of, and that means it's good of true. That means it's good for retention, but it also means then you can talk with them and spend time with them and continue to delight them. And hopefully, they'll share it with other people so that you can grow more. And I think that's part of why we had good success during the COVID, you you know, pandemic was because people that had a good experience with us, you know, we're happy to tell others to use it. So I think the biggest driver for growth for us is definitely the product. We believe in this concept of product led growth which you've probably seen talked about or people haven't seen it, they should check Cleveland do a little Google searching on product led growth.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:25:28]:
But we really feel that that's where the The should be, and there's an opportunity for both buy and build there for sure. We're excited as to, where the world takes video because it's just beginning. I mean, this is a huge market. It's an it's a massive media shift. And, when you asked about which you know, you're asking, you were saying Fintech, Adtech. I mean, I think this is media tech, because I think media is kinda going through a massive transformation now. We just wanna be a part of that. I think if we build the right products and make our choices well with that and continue to recruit great technology, you know, people here in Cleveland or close by that, you know, we will be able to satisfy and take advantage and grab our little foothold of what's out there for the in the future.
Jeffrey Stern [00:26:07]:
What is what is product led growth mean to you? And with that, you know, how do you think about Differentiation and and competition, yeah, especially in in the aftermath of the last year, I feel like maybe the most obvious second order effect of the whole pandemic was As every single one of us spent our lives now, basically, streaming on on some platform or another, How you think about pursuing a product led growth strategy in a space where I imagine there's increasing competition.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:26:35]:
Oh, there's gonna be a lot of competition, which is another reason why it was necessary Northeast to put a little bit of a juice behind what we're doing because we know the competition is gonna be stiffer. Product Lay growth is really this idea that product itself is the best driver for growth. You know, there's lots of sales led efforts where you're spending a lot of money on sales or marketing efforts. You know, when we think about when we think about BoxCast, we think of this The that marketing certainly tells the story, but it's they're telling the story about the product itself, and the sales is necessary to help make sure it all works. But you're kind of leading with the investments on the product side to have the product people wanna buy, and have a product that has, a little bit of virality to it too. There's no reason why at BoxCast we can't take advantage of the fact that we have hundreds of millions of people that are watching our videos. Right, there's an opportunity there that I don't think we've taken advantage of of others have that, you know, we're gonna catch up on. We don't see a lot of our comp direct competitors that were, you know, exactly directly against doing necessarily a lot of as much product Lay growth is what we think we wanna do.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:27:39]:
We're seeing other players that are close by, they're doing a really good job of that we're watching very, very closely. So, the secrets out on this as being a great way to more efficiently grow your business. Whereas traditionally it's, hey, throw a bunch of money at hiring a whole edition, you know, 50 50 salespeople and take, you know, take over Land conquest with brute force, it's not as efficient as you can do it from a capital efficiency standpoint. It's also not as good for the The. Our salespeople love the fact that we don't have to hire more salespeople. But you know, with what we already have, we're making better and better things for them to sell that they could be more successful individually. I love the idea of doing it that way.
Jeffrey Stern [00:28:14]:
I wanna pull on that thread of Some of the opportunity you see for the future with with really the the eyeballs that you have, you know, through BoxCast. Stern mean, I think there's a a few, I imagine, many interesting, you know, potential opportunities for you there. How do you think about it? You know, the the ideas that come to mind for me, Like, first off the bat was, is there some kind of content aggregation play for BoxCast similar to, you know, how Netflix has has, you know, come to market? But I'd love to to get your take on just how you're thinking about that.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:28:47]:
You know what? It's interesting you say that because we've kinda reached that point of critical mass. We probably could do something like that. Right, I mean, I think right now, BoxCast is streamed in the tens of thousands where our embed code shows up on, you know, in the tens of thousands of different sites where people can watch that content Land that's where you then have however many hundreds of thousands of people that are watching that content. So there is a massive opportunity for Northeast, and why wouldn't we potentially have it on our site, I think we could. I think we could. When we first started this, our value proposition was different, Jeffrey. What we were trying to do is say, Lay, unlike Facebook or YouTube who is going to steal all your content, and they get all the benefit from the advertisements, everything else. How about you have a product that's ad free? So we'll be a professional block you pay for, and so that your brand isn't distracted or diluted by other people's brands because you've basically given away your content.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:29:37]:
You know, you've given away your ability to keep that focus for your customer on your brand. But the truth is, at the same time, what's also there is that some of these people just want more exposure. So if we have The potential for having a site maybe where we could aggregate The content for customers who wanted it to be there, I think it's a really good idea, you know, that we've we started to kick around. But you can't start there. Right? Because you don't have critical mass at the beginning. You kinda have to build something that people love, they're willing to pay for, in order for the The to be able to take care of the critical you know, take advantage of the critical mass once you've got it. So I think we're kind of at the tipping point where we're starting to have enough, right, enough critical mass to do it.
Jeffrey Stern [00:30:13]:
And how do you think about that higher level vision for BoxCast Stern? Like, what what is the impact that that you would like to have, looking forward.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:30:22]:
One of the neat things about our purpose in wanting to make people part of the experience is it really doesn't have an end line necessarily it has an end line with each individual person, you're making part of the experience. But there are so many things that we are excited about investing in and building to make it possible for people to have not just, more accessibility to count that they wanna see, but even a better glimpse of it or better reliability, better quality, better ease of use. That's kind of what we focused on from the beginning is ease of use. We took something that was really complicated, and it was really hard to do, but we made very, very simple for it to be both simple and reliable, and that's kind of, an important thing that we'll wanna continue to do. But there's so many opportunities for us to continue to reach more people with better better thing, you know, better better product features or unlocking certain areas that, you know, didn't exist before. And I can't go into too much detail on it because we haven't built it yet, and can't announce it all yet. But, you know, we're excited about the future and what it holds because, you know, it's only it's not gonna be less video with The. Even as people return back to their lives, everything's gonna be hybrid.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:31:25]:
Right? Just like they talk about work being, hey, I used to go into the office every day, then I stayed at home every day. Well, there's The the future, there's gonna be a place where there's gonna be need to be both, cause you can't have it exclusively one way or the other. And we know that permanent supply certainly to video where people are gonna wanna be at events in person, but they will still expect to be at events remotely, and what can we do to make it so that every broadcaster can be more like a television studio in terms of quality, while still keeping it as easy as possible.
Jeffrey Stern [00:31:53]:
It's exciting to think about the the avenues for for expansion for you guys there. On a more tactical front, just something Through my own personal experience, I have learned is, quite difficult is is going through these acquisitions. I know you mentioned StreamMonkey Land and you had Acquisition of of Sunday streams prior. But the thing that I I haven't been able to just from the outside figure out how it exactly works is, 1st off, you know, one of the hardest things is always just the the cultural component of those acquisitions Land and from the people side, how you you work to to work through those acquisitions. But I'm also really curious on the technology side, you know, having different hardware platforms, different software platforms, How how you're thinking about either, you know, letting the companies and and looking forward to potentially other acquisitions operate independently or is there a Land desire to Land of integrate that from the hardware and software side as well?
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:32:54]:
So you started with culture. Let's start there because in my Land, your best chance of success in the culture side is making sure that there's compatibility before you Stern. Because I think I've seen stats where it's like 9 out of 10 mergers, like, don't produce The old sold so people had hoped that they would produce. In our case, we've been, I think, very successful 3 out of 3 times now, which, is a pretty good track record. And I have to give credit to the team more than more than me because I'm not doing, you know, hardly any of the work. I'm just kind of a little bit on further ahead on on some folks on how we think about it. But From a culture standpoint, there's making sure you make the right pick of the partner. And then secondly, there's just a sincere amount of intentionality about how you can make it work.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:33:40]:
You have to be very clear as to expectations of what you're expecting of folks before you even do the deal, so that once they get on the other side they'll see your follow through. There's to be a lot of thoughtfulness put in into just like any good manager would, understanding where people's passions lie in order to kinda draw up the right positions for them. Land, we're really fortunate that we were able to bring in a people operations director not that long ago. I think about a year ago now. I brought in Claire Of. She had somehow experience with 24 different acquisitions before she came to us. We're not even a big company, but she was involved in 24 other deals. So we're aided with her having a chance to see part of that experience to make it a little bit easier for us because every time we do another acquisition, there's more people involved because usually it's a bigger deal every time.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:34:25]:
That that was the other piece of it. It's just the intentionality of trying to make sure the people that are coming in feel like they're a part of the new company, feel like they're in positions where they're gonna be successful. It's a lot of work. You can't you just can't bypass it or assume it. On the technology side, I don't know how companies really expect to give the benefit out of it if they don't fully integrate with each The, so in our mindset, that's really the only option is for us to fully integrate. We sometimes can do it faster at times than other times. But, in my mind, if you're gonna do a relationship or a partnership, it's like a marriage. You kinda have to just go all in and just assume that you're the 2 have become 1.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:34:59]:
It does take time, and it is distracting. And, you know, not every not every move is the perfect move. But once you get through that normal that normalization period of people getting used to each other, you'd be surprised that when you've got a welcoming bunch that want other people to be a part of it, that are kind of enjoying the ride, that positivity can breed positivity which has worked in our in our favor The last 3 times.
Jeffrey Stern [00:35:21]:
Yeah. That's that's great to hear. So I I know you're, you know, currently at this, this office over here in in Ohio City by the The bridge bite. I know in The earlier days, there was a a period of time where you were operating out of Burke Lakefront Airport, Which I imagine not everyone is aware, but I I'd love to hear what what that was like, how that came to to to be Land any, Fun reflections you have back in in the days of Burke.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:35:54]:
Well, that was our real office. Before that, we were in the basement of in my in The basement of, behind my house at the Saint Mills Convent in West Park, kind of working on the manufacturing all by myself, and my wife would come in at 4 in the morning and say, Lay, you have to go to bed. It's too late. You have to go to work, you know, in 3 hours or whatever. The early days of startups are tough. Burke was awesome. We really enjoyed getting there. I don't know how we found out about it.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:36:16]:
I think maybe, one of, one of the people that we knew at the time, his name was Ken, you know, we were kinda shopping around for different places as we knew we needed Lay a place to go, I don't know if he suggested, or we were driving by it, but we went in to The see what was available. Oh, I know what it was. It was Land. So So, I'm pretty close friends with John Stall over at Lean Dog. Nobody knows this. I don't know if people know this. John and I went to the same high school in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, blackout high school. And so we kinda had gone back.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:36:42]:
I went I actually graduated with his brother. And I said, John, do you have any space? He's like, man, I don't have any space. But you know who does is the airport, because we were just in the airport be for use. So that's how I got in. I just remembered that's how I got in there. The airport was a ton of fun. It was a neat place to have an office for the first time. Parking was awesome.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:36:58]:
You could kinda just of park right there. It was Jeffrey. But, oh, there's so many good stories, from from Burke.
Jeffrey Stern [00:37:05]:
Yeah. I can't even imagine, honestly.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:37:08]:
Let me tell you a lot. So, I mean, whether it's having pizza with The Blue Angels, like, the fighter pilot guys, that Land of stuff was cool. The one that sticks out in my mind most vividly was when Johnny Manziel got drafted. That tells you the era when we were there. Johnny Malkin was reported to be landing in Cleveland. We went downstairs and found out from the, you know, from the from the dispatch people, like, what flight was coming with? I say, hey, I think this one might be him coming in from Texas or New York or wherever the maybe I think he's in New York for the draft or something. And, we were close with the ESPN Cleveland folks, you know, the big the, really big show, has, you know, their morning broadcast, which is, you know, a lot of people listen to. So we called him up and said, hey, listen.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:37:50]:
We think he's coming in on this plane, and we're gonna stream it. So we hopped up on the roof with cameras, and, I I think we ended up putting the video onto the ESPN Cleveland website. So we had, like, a live shot of the of of of the of the doors opening up and, like, 3 business people came out, it wasn't Johnny Manziel. You know? I think it was a different point between them. But, yeah, that that's that was a fun that was a fun story.
Jeffrey Stern [00:38:14]:
Yeah. Wow. That The must have been awesome. So I'll I'll keep it on on Cleveland for for a moment. You know, you mentioned Land of the the earlier support from investors here in Cleveland and growing the team here in Cleveland. But obviously, Land of expanding a little bit, over over time. We'd love to just get your perspective on how you've seen the the overall kind of ecosystem here change over The last few years.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:38:40]:
Yeah. I've got some, I guess, some major takeaways. I mean, when I think about the way it was, I can't understate how much I benefited from a number of individuals who are very successful professionals, you know, kind of executive level professionals throughout Cleveland that helped me along the way. I was not bashful to ask people for help, and I never had anybody say no to me. I don't know if that's the case everywhere. I I I get The suspicion that Cleveland's a little bit more open to that. And, although fundraising is super hard in Cleveland, I think it's that was the hardest part of our story was just getting fundraising for people to believe in what you were doing. Maybe it can be made up for the fact that I just had some incredible people that volunteered their time.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:39:19]:
You know, let me just highlight a few. I mean, Toby and Melanie Maloney our incredible entrepreneurial coaches here in the in the ecosystem, they live and breathe Entreprenuership, and they came alongside us. Land, yeah, they may The may have made an investment in us, but what was the most valuable was that they gave us The gave us years of their time to just come into the office every day and help us out, we couldn't pay for anybody else to help us, and we need desperately needed the help to get through some things. You you know, I can't understand how valuable folks like them were. I mean, we had a guy named Jeffrey Wheaton come in, and that name Jeffrey isn't just your first name, other people have it too. But Mhmm. Jeffrey Wheaton was the CFO at KeyBank, and they had just retired just on the heels of kind of the big bank regulation changes, and he said, hey, you know, The there something that I can do to help? And we leaned on him heavy to help us figure out how to do the books, financials, and He worked so closely with your buddy, Peter Spalding. I mean, if you ask Peter about Jeff, you know, he learned a ton from Jeff because Jeff was giving of his time.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:40:18]:
And so I'm thankful for, a lot of these people who once they get involved, they believe in what we're doing. And, you know, they certainly, you know, came with some contributions to help us financially, but that does that pales in comparison to just The, emotional support Land, practical support that they had as experts in their domains. Another guy, Mike Ventusco, was another guy who came to help us out, who's now a big bigwig SaaS CFO that had success at Overdrive. I think he was The financial guy overdrive, but, you know, he's still someone that I I talk to on a very regular basis that helps me out through all kinds of situations that come up. Steve Bartlett, former HR chief at Eaton Corporation, helping me navigate through all the the strange people situations you'd never knew even existed unless you were in a management position or a CEO Yeah. You know, CEO of a fast growing startup, it's crazy how wild the, the world has. So, I mean, the reflections for me come back to all The those folks that kinda came in that just volunteer their time to make us a success because they're probably the biggest reason why we're able to to make it last this long, to have our shot. That's another reflection.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:41:24]:
You know, I actually was just saying this to The friend of mine, Alex Hillary, is, you know, if you can just hang in long enough, you know, eventually, you know, success will find its way to you. You can just hang in line long enough because, you know, you can't always time the market on things, and you think you've got a product market fit Land you might but but you never know what, what what can happen once you've stayed in it long enough and you're the The either the last The standing or there to pick up when, when it hits.
Jeffrey Stern [00:41:47]:
Yeah. All of that resonates quite a lot. I think Stern about time as the enemy of startups in the earlier days when, Yeah. Just runway is is the primary constraint.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:41:59]:
Well, and that's another that's a whole another one too. I mean, at BoxCast, we were at the point where, we had to make some serious decisions as to how aggressively we thought we could take it, how conservative should we be. And without the funding that was coming from from institutional investors, we we couldn't probably have go as fast as we would have liked to have gone. But that's not all bad either because we learned a lot of financial discipline, and we broke through profitability couple of before we took funding. It gave us the chance for us to determine our own destiny. So in our case, we kinda just waited until the terms are right for us to be the ones to check to to determine the terms, because we weren't, you know but even the world understood that there was gonna be such a need for video streaming like there is today.
Jeffrey Stern [00:42:39]:
Right. And I'm sure that affords you a A kind of leverage in in those terms that you would not have had otherwise.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:42:46]:
I'm gonna be on the entrepreneur side for all these. Right? And my perspective is the entrepreneurs are, always arguing for, you know, the value of their business being higher when they're talking to Stern, I just think that there's a little bit of a depressed perception of what the value of startups are in town. Now, investors around town are gonna say the exact opposite, I'm sure. But in our case, we were right. So it's maybe it's easy for me to say that.
Jeffrey Stern [00:43:08]:
Yeah. But the the other point that just resonates a lot is the approachability of of of mentors and and other entrepreneurs here and just The the willingness to to help, it it is it is, I think, not the norm, and it it's definitely something that that I appreciate it as well.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:43:25]:
You you know, that makes me think of the fact that at BoxCast, ours part of our success, I think, is the fact that our team has just stayed so intact. I mean, we've only ever in the history Stern the company, I think, had 6 people ever voluntarily leave, and 3 of them went to go start their own The own businesses, and another one went to because they moved out of town and they had success in their career, so it was hard for us. You know, we can't we can't keep Lay. But, you know, when I see the average matriculation rate being 10%, in my mind, it just blows my mind because I think ours has been 10% over the course of the whole past, you know, 10 years roughly. So there's a loyalty in Cleveland that that makes it so that you've got a a fighting shot at being successful. Maybe I just got really liked with some of the folks that we brought in. We just have some just a super talented group of folks that it's a lot of fun to work with every Lay. And that's, I I think, what what's made the last 10 years so great is just working with the likes of Peter Spaldings and Mike Griffiths and Sam Brenners and all these neat people that you wouldn't have, you know, had a chance to meet had you not had an opportunity to work together like this.
Jeffrey Stern [00:44:23]:
Yeah. That's pretty special. So to to kinda wind down here, still on the topic of Cleveland though, Land one of the things that we're doing here on on the podcast is is putting together a collage of not necessarily people's favorite things in Cleveland, but Things other people may not necessarily know about. So with that, I'll I'll ask you about your your favorite hidden gems in Cleveland.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:44:46]:
There's too many to pick from, but I'll give you I'll give you one. It's it's actually a hidden gem because I don't know who knows about it. But if you were to drive through the metro parks which is a massive gem in itself, underneath one of the bridges lies the most amazing place to skip stones. It's this real long flat stretch of water that that gives you a pretty good runway to go with. And, you know, that stretch of water that's flat's only not done by just, you know, the massive amount of perfectly shaped skipping stones that you could just go and I guess, skip all Lay.
Jeffrey Stern [00:45:16]:
There is an abundance of amazing skipping stones down in the metro park. I had noticed that as well.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:45:22]:
There are. And it's a lot I like to skip Stern, so you you don't have to work too hard to find it.
Jeffrey Stern [00:45:26]:
And you I feel like you are about to do another one there.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:45:29]:
Oh, another another hidden gem. Well, I don't know how hidden it is, but, but, I mean, grumpy's for breakfast is pretty awesome. So No
Jeffrey Stern [00:45:36]:
one no one has measured grumpy's yet.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:45:38]:
Nobody's brought that one up. That's a quick that's an awesome breakfast spot. Yeah. That's Or or you know what? Luca's Luca's got this appetizer. It's got this this new this noodle purse with goat cheese in it. It's incredible. So I'll give a shout out to Luca. They're just down the street from us at the viaduct.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:45:55]:
Our office is at West 25th in Detroit, but there's, Luca's right there at the end of the viaduct that overlooks Jacob's Of, it's they've got a great happy hour and dinner. If you've not taken your significant other there, it's a real nice place to go in town.
Jeffrey Stern [00:46:08]:
Yeah. It is it is quite nice over there. Well, Gordon, I I really appreciate you coming on and and sharing the story. I really enjoyed learning about it, everything you're doing, and it's very exciting to see The success you guys are are having here. So definitely rooting for you from the side.
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:46:24]:
Well, I love the Northeast, so keep it coming. Thanks for doing what you do, and I appreciate the honor of being here.
Jeffrey Stern [00:46:29]:
Awesome. Well, if people have anything that they want to follow-up with you about, where is the the best place for them to find you?
Gordon Daily (BoxCast) [00:46:35]:
Oh, they should shoot me an email, gordon@boxcast.com. Really easy.
Jeffrey Stern [00:46:39]:
That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email at lay of the land at upside dot f m, or find us on Twitter at pod Lay of the Land, at Stern, j e f e. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land. If you or someone you know would make a good guess for our show, please email us or find us on Twitter and let us know. And if you love our show, please leave a review on iTunes. That goes a long way in helping us spread the word and continue to help bring high quality guests to the show.