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Phenix is the go-to provider for real-time video streaming solutions and the only company that can stream synchronous real-time video to broadcast sized audiences.
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With millions of listeners a month, Building the Future has quickly become one of the fastest rising nationally syndicated programs. With a focus on interviewing startups, entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, and more, the show showcases individuals who are realizing their dreams and helping to make our world a better place through technology and innovation.
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Kevin Horek: Welcome back to the show today. We have Roy Rice back. He's the CEO at Phoenix real time solutions. Roy, welcome to the show.
Roy Reichbach: Thanks for having me, Kevin, appreciate the opportunity to speak to you.
Kevin Horek: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show. I think what you guys are doing at Phoenix real-time solutions is really innovative and cool, but maybe before we get into that, let's get to know you better and start off with where you grew up.
Roy Reichbach: Sure. I grew up in New York, the suburbs of New York city spent, I spent pretty much my entire life in New York. Just move actually recently to North Carolina. Oh, the weather's a lot nicer than it is in New York.
Kevin Horek: Sure, sure. Beautiful area too. I got to spend some time in North Carolina a few years ago around like Durham, but beautiful area. Not, not what I expected, but I was like, not that I thought it was going to be bad or anything, but it just, it was like way different than what I expected it to be, but in a good way. So that's cool. You went to university, what did you take and why?
Roy Reichbach: Sure. I, I studied at Fordham university in the Bronx, in New York, my undergraduate degrees in economics and had some, a desire to go into wall street, but also had a, a desire to become a lawyer and that predominated ultimately. I wound up going to Fordham law school at Lincoln center in Manhattan and graduated there and started practicing law in New York city.
Kevin Horek: Interesting. Was there a defining moment or something growing up that got you passionate about law?
Roy Reichbach: I loved Perry Mason when I was a kid.
Kevin Horek: Okay. Sure.
Roy Reichbach: I think those, those trial scenes and, and frankly, a lot of movies around, trial lawyers and things like that peak my interest. I also always liked to talk, like to be on my feet, felt very comfortable in that environment. So I thought those things matched. I also did a lot of theater when I was younger. I was very comfortable being on my feet, doing improv and things like that. So, those skill sets are useful as a trial lawyer, which is what I wound up doing. W one of the being a trial lawyer for a number of years, commercial litigation, one company sewing another and wound up ultimately going in-house for one of my larger clients, which was a software company called computer, which is based on long island and went in-house house to manage their litigation portfolio worldwide.
Kevin Horek: Wow. Cool.
Roy Reichbach: Okay. Let's keep going. Sorry. Yeah, sure. That was my first foray into the world of technology and really started to get a foothold and understand not only, what technology can do, but the business of technology. I spent about a half a dozen years doing that when the founder and chairman of computer associates bought the New York Islanders hockey club. They asked me and another fellow at CA to go run the team on the business side day to day. I tell everybody I was a sports fan long before I was a lawyer. It took me a millisecond to say, yes, I wound up as the general counsel of the New York Islanders and sat on the NHL board of governors for the club, which is sorta like the board of directors for the league. While I was doing that Charles Wong, who was that gentleman started doing a whole bunch of other things, investing in a bunch of different technologies, real estate, various other things.
Roy Reichbach: I was intimately involved in every one of those transactions, those deals and those businesses, and morphed more into a business person than a lawyer over time. Interestingly, one of the companies that he invested in was a startup technology company founded by his wife. The company was called new line and new line had built a platform for delivery of video, for sports, live sports in particular and build things like NHL game center, live pass, NFL game pass, ufc.tv, a whole bunch of others. I was their pro bono lawyer when they started because they couldn't afford one. The boss asked me to help them out. When the boss asked you to help his wife out, you help his wife out fair enough. I, I did their work and consulted with them on various things. In 2008, new line had the opportunity to become a public company by merging with a company traded on the Toronto stock exchange called junk TV.
Roy Reichbach: I don't know if you're, if you recall them from your time. At that point I was told new line was now going to move to become my day job and the island there, everything else I did would be part-time. I became the general counsel of new line, sat on a public company board and then ultimately became the CEO of new line and helped that company grow. We ultimately sold it and, go private transaction with a company called endeavor run by Ari Emanuel, Robin Manuel's brother might be familiar with. We sold that in 2018, at which point I retired and I was sitting on the sidelines and doing some consulting, watching a bit of TV and got a phone call asking if I had any interest in running another technology company. Right. There's a lot of technology comes a lot of video streaming companies. I asked them very important questions w with all of that out there, what's the hook for Phoenix.
Roy Reichbach: I was told Phoenix can deliver a real-time video stream, some half second latency, completely synchronized to broadcast scale audiences. Frankly, based upon my experience in the streaming space, I found that a bit hard to believe. I tell everyone that it was good. It was a phone call because the person on the other end, who sits on the board of Phoenix, didn't see my eyes roll in the back of my head when he told me what Phoenix to do. I was intrigued because I clearly saw an opportunity if someone could do those things for huge changes in the video streaming ecosystem. I did some research, I'm not a technologist, as you can tell from my background, I have more of a business legal background than anything else. Yeah. I hope that I learn things relatively quickly and can translate them to others, but writing code would not be my thing.
Roy Reichbach: I used what I say is I put my lawyer's hat back on. I use circumstantial evidence to assess what I was seeing. When I met Phoenix has found their Stefan bureau. I was thoroughly impressed, the most thoughtful reasoned engineer that I had come across, understood what he had done to build the platform that is the Phoenix platform and believe that he could do what he said he could do. As importantly as that, a couple of other things that were really relevant to my thinking one was our chief product officer bill, where Sean had come from a decade of Akamai and spent a bunch of time there. The CTO's office, one of the projects he had been working on, there was a desire to move to a real-time streaming platform and, Akamai and most others have failed relatively miserably at trying to do that. Bill joining Phoenix after kicking the tires on Phoenix's tech stack gave me a good deal of comfort that were able to do what we said were doing.
Roy Reichbach: The other thing was just, as I was joining, were adding a new board member, Darren fare, who had been the chief technology officer at NBC universal and had also been the CEO at a convener and had real tech jobs. My belief was that Darren would not join Phoenix is board and get out over his skis if he didn't believe in the tech. Right. Well, putting all those things together. Seeing that, we had some use cases, some customers in certain verticals that were already using the technology and very happy with it. All of those things led me to believe that in fact, this was a platform that had a huge potential from a commercial perspective. In terms of changing the landscape video streaming,
Kevin Horek: No. Okay. Interesting. Walk us through what exactly is Phoenix and how does it work without getting too technical?
Roy Reichbach: Sure. You're asking the right person. Phoenix has built a platform for the delivery of live video in some half second latency at scale and completely synchronized. The underpinnings of the platform are web RTC. If you're familiar with video streaming, most video streaming today is utilizing HLS or dash. In a very simple way to explain what those formats do or those protocols do is they require you to chunk video. In essence, take small chunks of video, maybe three seconds, two seconds, four seconds. The CDN will collect or content delivery network like an Akamai or a level three or a limelight or others will collect those chunks from the source. They will hold them until they have enough of those chunks to be comfortable, that they can stream in a consistent fashion, such that if they lose contact with the source for a period of time, they'll still be able to stream without interruption.
Roy Reichbach: And that starts you with what's. What we all talk about is latency by holding, let's say three or four chunks of video at two or three seconds, a piece you're starting from a period of latency of eight to 12 seconds,
Kevin Horek: Right?
Roy Reichbach: Once they get that, there's a lot of workflow that's that's involved. That adds incremental latency all the way through from that ingest of the video all the way through play on your device. What we see in most instances is latency from the field of play of anywhere from 30 to 50 seconds. Wow. Most streaming providers, what Stefan beer and our engineering team took upon itself to do was to start with a different protocol. That's web RTC RTC stands for real time communication. It's built by Google, a couple of the bets. That's the fun. The team made when they started out to build a Phoenix platform, was that they could rearchitect web RTC to allow it to scale. Web RTC is built for speed, not for scaling. It's what we use for things like video chat on zoom or Google hangout or Microsoft teams. We see it all the time.
Roy Reichbach: It's, it's very functional in terms of allowing one-to-one or two to two or three to three type communication. We see each other in real time, we interact with each other in real time. And, and that works really well where you see it fall off is when you start to try to deliver those video streams, both synchronized and at scale, and by scaling, web RTC is historically not known to be able to scale into the tens of thousands. That eliminates its use case for most broadcast type use cases. What's the fond bet on was that he and the team could rearchitect meaning rewrite a whole host of the web RTC code to allow it to scale, to create an enterprise solution, if you will. The other bet that he made was that web RTC would become an adopted protocol, such that it would be available and recognized by every browser that would be pre populated in the ecosystem.
Roy Reichbach: The reason for that is, as if you have to download, additional plugins for any type of applications these days, it's the death knell for that application, you have to be able to connect directly to a browser without any involvement by the user whatsoever. Stefan was, it was a good wage, or if you will, number one, web RTC now as an adopted protocol, it is the standard for real-time streaming. It's, it's just a handshake now with every browser. The other piece was the bet on his own abilities, the team's abilities to allow what we've done to take place, namely the rearchitecting web RTC. If you look at Phoenix is platform on a left to right continuum on the left. It looks like web RTC. When it just starts out on the right, when it connects to your browser, it looks like web RTC. Therefore it's just a handshake to be able to play out on your device.
Roy Reichbach: However, the entire middle portion of that platform, if you will, is a rearchitected web RTC. It's the Phoenix technology, it's 2 million plus lines of code that had been written to allow Phoenix, the Phoenix platform, if you will, to scale, to be synchronized, to do all of the other things that are necessary to deliver a, a real video experience that one would expect today based upon what's out there in the marketplace.
Kevin Horek: Interesting. Okay. Obviously what you've just outlined is super important with sports. Like nobody wants to see the winning goal 30 seconds later than somebody at the real stadium, right? Because it can cause a bunch of not only just like it's not as enjoyable, there's a bunch of kind of bedding and a bunch of other kind of issues that can come along with that. Do you want to talk about something?
Roy Reichbach: Sure. I mean, sports is one of the go-to conversation points for real time streaming. So, you touched on it in the first instance, which is the spoiler effect and that spoiler effect is worse today than it's ever been in that there were more ways in which we receive information than we've historically, it's kind of funny talked to a lot of folks in Europe when they're watching their football, right. Or our soccer and, people in different buildings or different hallways are getting the results at different times. They talk about it all the time. That way, my experience generally is around frankly, is around hockey. I, I remain a big Islanders fan and my fourth child, my daughter who's at UCLA is the biggest hockey fan in our household. She, and I still watch games, not physically together, but at the same time, what we think is the same time.
Roy Reichbach: Unfortunately I have to watch myself because I will be watching on cable while she's streaming and I'm seeing it in 10 or 12 seconds of latency, and she's seeing it in 45 seconds of latency. I sometimes spoil the event for her. I will, I'll type in something like Barcel exclamation point exclamation point, and she'll write back to me, did he score? So, the, it does ruin the experience and the truth is sports is a shared experience. Having people be able to interact and engage around sports content is so important. I think I believe that ultimately we'll get to the point where all sports delivery is going to be in real time. It's going to take, years and years for that to occur because, there's so much money have been spent on broadcast infrastructure and, dealing with the eight to 10 seconds of latency that you get from broadcast.
Roy Reichbach: It's not going to be easy to change that, but we're going to start peeling away piece by piece in different use cases where ultimately the consumer is going to demand a real-time video experience. Then, once you get out of just a pure play sports video issue is when streaming of sports, you get into things like sports gambling, and right now for most sports gambling, and it's still relatively early stage in the U S in particular, no one watches the video and bets on what they're watching, because that video is latent, right? It's delayed, right? What they're betting on is data, which is coming in essentially in real time, we have the ability to power those things together and to create an experience where the end user, the gambler is able to bet on every plane NFL game, because they're seeing the data and the video simultaneously.
Roy Reichbach: And, they're able to see Patrick, my homes, in the huddle and make a decision right then and there as to whether or not the Kansas city chiefs are going to get a first down on the next play, will that play end in a touchdown will end in a turnover. If it's a turnover, it will be an intersection or a fumble. There's so many permutations and combinations. I think not just from a pure betting perspective, but also from what we call gamification or some, fantasy type engagement, the ability to drive a real time solution is the next generation of that interactivity. If you think about it. I use being in New York, right? I use the Yankees as an example, if you're watching the Yankees on the S on the yes network, and the Yankees are losing 10 to two, and the seventh inning odds are, you're likely to turn the game off, right?
Roy Reichbach: You find other things to do. However, if you have the ability to bet on every pitch in that game and decide whether Aaron judge is going to hit a home run on the next pitch, and you've got a, a game of vacation product that you're working on, right? You could have it where you're gambling, but you could also have it on the yes network where they have their own app, which allows you to have a certain number of points that start every game, week or season, and you play against everyone else. That's a yes network subscriber, where at the end of either that game, that week, that month, that season you win a prize based upon your position, in the standings, there's a ton of stuff in a lot of engagement that could be around that real-time opportunity because in the seventh inning, when the Yankees are down 10 to, there are still things for you to do that are engaging.
Roy Reichbach: You can give you an opportunity to interact with that content. Truthfully for the regional sports networks, the RSNs, they could provide a lot of prizes that cost them essentially nothing, right? Things like for lower level victories, things like, two tickets to a game, or, two hotdogs and a soda, or it could get up to where they win a month or a season long contest where they get assigned to Aaron judge Jersey, a trip with the Chicago Cubs on the Cubs plane to, on the road for a game or two, but things where they can incentivize and engage their fans at a much higher level.
Kevin Horek: Sure. Who your super fans are, and like you just pointed out, you can reward them, like if you're number one, or maybe you pick the top three or whatever, get to go on like a private plane with the team, like how many people would love that people would pay probably a lot of money to do that.
Roy Reichbach: And they do. I, and I can tell you from my experience with the Islanders, we would raffle off a road trip with a team at an event each year. We would wind up, adding a second one, because it was so popular. The ability for your average fan who can't afford, to win that in an auction, I mean, those watches are for charity, so it's great. It's a good thing that clubs do those kinds of things. The average fan is excluded from that opportunity. This would now create, those real, what I would say, those real fans, right? The folks that watch every game that are invested in the team on a daily basis, give them the opportunity to win something, to engage at just a higher level. And, and I, I think, generates a ton of ROI down the road for the RSN or the club.
Kevin Horek: Well, and you could tell me if this comparison's kind of wrong, but it seems to me, it's almost like what the players club like a casino does in like Las Vegas, you have a card and they can see how much you're winning. Eventually they're starting to upgrade you with, maybe room or tickets to a show it's the same kind of concept. Correct.
Roy Reichbach: Absolutely. It's all affinity. Right. You get it, whether you use the right credit card at the same time, it's, you've traveled on the same airline more often. Yeah. I mean, every business is trying to mine data as best they possibly can. This is just another way of doing that.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. I guess it just makes it more fun for the users in.
Roy Reichbach: Absolutely. And, and it applies not just in the sports arena too. Right. It's what I like to think of the Phoenix platform is a, a platform that creates the opportunity for any content owner or rights holder to engage at a higher level with their fans or what their users.
Kevin Horek: Sure. That makes sense. Well, and just even looking at, because you guys have obviously worked with some huge brands, but like the Oscars you have here, you have an auction company. There's other people outside of sports using your technology. Do you maybe want to give us some of those other examples,
Roy Reichbach: Pure we have a number of auction clients. If you can imagine with live auctions, especially where people are on the auction house floor, right. When people are online, they're competing with folks that are standing or sitting, in the actual auction house, and you need to have an even playing field. You need to deliver a real-time stream. That's the, all the streams of everybody watching have to be completely synchronized, right? We power Manheim auto auctions, which is the largest wholesale auto auction business in the world. We actually power the second one as well called the DESA. We have a number of other types of auction clients of ours. It's also a really powerful platform for trivia games, things like that used to be HQ. That was not one of ours, but we power trivia contests across the world. We, we power it, entertainment, engagement, type Q and a opportunities for various customers.
Roy Reichbach: There are a myriad of other types of use cases for interactivity engagement where scaling synchronization and real time streaming are necessary.
Kevin Horek: Very cool. Okay. How does it work if I'm a company or an event or something that wants to leverage your technology? Can I license it or how does that work?
Roy Reichbach: Sure. Our primary mode of interacting with our clients is through what we call a platform as a service. Okay. You essentially connect us to your video source and we pretty much do the rest. We then take that video. We encode transcode, deliver it to the ultimate, to the app that is going to go to the end user. So, we are essentially an end to end streaming solution, and we operate that platform on your behalf so that you don't have to worry about it being up or down. It's up 24 7. To the extent you have a 24 7 service or on any other basis, if you have a service that's less than 24 7. We also though have more recently over the last year of change, developed a, a license model and an edge model, if you will, where we can utilize a customer's own network.
Roy Reichbach: We can deploy our software platform on that network to be operated by our customer, those for really very large scale Potential customers, where they have an infrastructure that they want to leverage, and they have the operational support necessary to be able to operate the technology and the platform on a 24 by seven basis.
Kevin Horek: Gotcha. Okay. So how does it work though? Okay. So you mentioned the browser device. Obviously it can go to my iPad. It can go to my phone, but is it branded like my company or is it branded like you guys? Or how does that work?
Roy Reichbach: No. So it's a white label service. If you are a, for example, if you are, meet them auctions, what their customers are seeing is the Meekum auction site. We're just essentially the technology and the plumbing powering that solution.
Kevin Horek: Okay. How does security play into all this? Because we all know that you can get pirated streams of a lot of these big events. Like how do you guys kind of prevent that?
Roy Reichbach: Sure. All of our, all of us dreams are encrypted. We use state-of-the-art encryption technology to ensure that all the streams are protected. We share keys and various other techniques to ensure that only authorized users are getting access both in terms of our customers access to and starting up of the streams, but also to the end users utilization of those streams.
Kevin Horek: Okay. There a hardware component that plays into this or that's up to the customer when you're doing some of these live sporting events?
Roy Reichbach: Sure. There, so there is a hardware component. There is some salt, it can be done with our encoder, which is a Phoenix encoder, which frankly is one that, we've commissioned, we don't build the hardware ourselves, but we optimize our delivery of video over those encoded devices. We also work with numerous other hardware manufacturers to be able to deliver utilizing other hardware and coders. It, there's no requirement that you use ours. We, we obviously Insure with ours that, our service is optimized. That's, there's an advantage there, but for customers that have existing encoder forms, we work with those to be able to deliver a real-time stream.
Kevin Horek: Okay. Does this stream, obviously, if I'm on wifi or whatever I'm plugged in at home fine, but how does it work on 5g or LTE?
Roy Reichbach: Our it's interesting, we're working frankly, with a couple of providers now who are in the 5g room to try and take advantage of more and more of that technology. One of our more recent customer wins, if you will, was a work that we've been doing with Verizon around 5g. Verizon worked with the NFL to build a super stadium multi-camera angle app in the NFL stadiums across the last two seasons, including the super bowl in each of the last two years. That app utilizes, or is powered by the Phoenix real time technology. It allows for 5g users in the stadium to watch on their app and on a Verizon NFL app, seven different camera angles of what's taking place on the field of play in real time and the user toggle between those angles. You can imagine if you're sitting in the end zone one end of the stadium, and there's a goal line, stand on the other end, it's very hard for you to see what's taking place on the field of play from the seat that you're in, but you could have your 5g phone, which obviously optimizes the thing it's real time technology.
Roy Reichbach: You can see from an overhead cam exactly what's taking place and not have to hear the roar of the crowd to be able to know that it was a touchdown or not. There's a lot of different ways in which, our technology plays in that, in that sphere. In addition, we're, we have, I guess I should've mentioned this before, we have an ABR technology adjustable bit rate technology around what we do. Our platform optimizes for the bit rate that the end user is able to sustain. So, and that's, that's a very, from a technical perspective, delivering in HLS or dash where those decisions are being made, not in real time,
Kevin Horek: Yeah.
Roy Reichbach: Is, is significantly easier than when you have to make those decisions in real time and ensure that the end user is still getting a complete uninterrupted stream. One of the things I always tell everyone is our technology is ridiculously complex and requires, some really amazing engineers to build and to maintain, but it allows us to do a number of different things around protection of our tech in particular, around the patent portfolio that we've built. One example is that ABR implementation that we've done, that we have a patent around, we also have a patent in the synchronization space. You can also think about how, if you got folks delivering video in 20 seconds of latency or 30 seconds of latency, trying to sync up those streams, shouldn't be a bit easier. However, the world is what it is. Not only is latency a big problem in the, in the regular world, but so is drift, right?
Roy Reichbach: The difference between what you and I are seeing at the same time to be able to do that in real time is even more difficult. That has allowed us to get the patent office, to issue us patents around that technology as well. Yeah. Everything we do I say is definitely more difficult when you think about doing ad decisioning, right? You have 30 seconds of latency is a piece of cake, right. Decisioning, when you have some half, second of latency is no piece of cake. We, we've, we're very fortunate in that, we've got some really brilliant minds who built this platform, understand it, and have built it in a way that allows for all of these features and functionalities to be able to be implemented without losing the core value of what we bring.
Kevin Horek: Right. Interesting. Yeah. No, that makes sense. I never thought about all the other issues that it causes by being live, because there's nothing more alive than sitting in the stands on my phone, watching what's happening right across the field from me. Right. And so it needs to be accurate. Yeah, if you're going to display anything like an ad or something, or a coupon, it needs to be at the right time, or it's just kind of annoying and people aren't going to use it.
Roy Reichbach: Exactly.
Kevin Horek: That's neat. Okay. I'm curious then where does the technology go from here? Because obviously everything's getting a lot faster. Our smartphones are ridiculously insane with the technology that's inside them these days, but where do you guys take the technology next? You guys move into other verticals, or where do you go from here?
Roy Reichbach: I think we're still at, if you want to call this a baseball game, we're still in the first inning. Yeah. I think that there are a huge number of other verticals that we can play in and that we will play in again around any kind of engagement interactivity. I, I even think of things like, which I believe is still years away for us is something like the metaphors. I'm not sure exactly Phoenix plays in the metaverse ultimately, but if you think about what everyone focuses on with respect to the metaverse, you need a real-time video component and it needs to be completely synchronized. If you're going to build a real metaverse, it's got to be at scale. The three prongs or the three legs of our stool are all essential for taking advantage of the metaverse, at least as, as I'm anticipating it and hearing how people are utilizing it.
Roy Reichbach: I think there's a remarkable number of opportunities for Phoenix's technology to be significant as we move into the next, five years.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. Cause well, you, I didn't think of the metaverse wasn't the first thing that came to my head, mine was like gaming, right? Because it's basically the same thing.
Roy Reichbach: Absolutely. Right. So gaming is a big piece. That's an area we're focusing on now, the casino games. Business is a very interesting space. There's, there's a lot of live dealer opportunities. If you think about that and you go onto a casino website and you're playing a live blackjack or baccarat or roulette with a live dealer. You want that to be synchronized and you want that to be in real time. The other piece is the scaling. There is a different kind of scaling you have in some instances where there can be a lot of people playing on a table because they can play behind or on a roulette table, you can have an unlimited number of people playing. The other piece of the scaling is the, rather than the vertical, it's the horizontal, right? It's how many tables you can stream simultaneously.
Kevin Horek: Right.
Roy Reichbach: From the stores. Right. I actually had the experience, frankly, of being out of the country and getting COVID just only a few weeks ago, playing on a live dealer site while I was convalescing in my hotel room and was amazed at the magnitude of games that are being, that are taking place simultaneously and the opportunities there for a company like Phoenix.
Kevin Horek: Right? No, that makes sense. I'm curious, is the technology there, or will it ever be there where like to use your casino example is I can be virtually playing at the same table in, I dunno, casino in Vegas, for example, where somebody is actually sitting physically at the table, but I'm, in another country playing out the exact same table. Okay.
Roy Reichbach: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, right. I think there's, there's clearly regulatory Issues that are beyond my Ken, to be honest with you, But the technology it's no different than six of us playing from remote locations. Right. One of those remote locations happens to be onsite it's onsite.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. Okay. It doesn't matter. Interesting. Okay. That actually makes it the technology, like obviously all the stuff we talked about with sports and life stuff is cool, but for people out there, like thinking of business ideas, to leverage the Phoenix technology for some other gaming metaverse, whatever they come up with, I think is accurate.
Roy Reichbach: There's plenty of other use cases, right? Medical profession has a whole host of different use cases where real time synchronized dreamy would be important. Education has that as well. We saw a lot of interest around remote learning as a result of the pandemic, but there's, there are a lot of use cases, remote proctoring of exams and things like that, where that has to be in real time. I will, I will tell you when I speak to prospects, clients and others, one of my standard lines is, I know what our technology is capable of, your business way better than I do. You're going to have, I may have two or three ideas on how you can use the Phoenix platform. You'll probably have 10 times as many ideas.
Kevin Horek: Intrigued.
Roy Reichbach: As, how what your business is. You can envision how to utilize this foundational technology to extend your interaction with your customers.
Kevin Horek: Yeah, that's fascinating. So the medical thing got me thinking. Could you potentially do like have a surgeon do surgery on the other side of the world because they're a specialist in something using the technology? Maybe not because there's all the legal issues around that probably, but from a technology perspective, you could probably do that correct.
Roy Reichbach: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there, I think there is there's use cases today where specialists are providing consultancy in a live operating setting. The, the ability though, to do this at a broader scale for, medical education and various other things I think is, is right as well.
Kevin Horek: Interesting. No, that's totally fascinating. I'm curious, is there any other use cases that we haven't covered yet just to get people thinking about how they could leverage the technology?
Roy Reichbach: I'm sure. I'm sure there are plenty of others. I want one, I would like to mention which we touched on a bit, but I think it's, it's important to understand how much of a differentiator Phoenix is from a scaling perspective. One of our biggest customers is stats perform, which you may know is a, it's a big data and content provider in the sports world and their racecourse media group, which owns and operates 70 racetracks across the UK and Ireland. We power the delivery of video from all of their tracks through stats, perform to bookmakers across the UK and Ireland. They have a, a festival that occurs every year in March. Matter of fact, I'll be there in a couple of weeks at Shelton. It is the largest attended horse racing festival in the UK. It's over four days, they have seven races a day last year, empowering that festival, every single race we delivered over a hundred thousand peak concurrent users with a couple of the races at half a million.
Roy Reichbach: Wow. That's scaling is unprecedented in the world of web RTC.
Kevin Horek: Sure.
Roy Reichbach: So, one of the things when I joined Phoenix was we hadn't done events that had scaled to that level before. I'd always heard the pushback, which is web RTC can't scale. Right. That's a difficult hurdle to overcome when everyone in the space understands how web RTC was built. Right. Therefore comes at you with the, the baseline understanding of your platform. Can't scale, not that Phoenix can't scale, but what Phoenix is built on, doesn't allow Phoenix to scale. So nobody can scale using PC. And, we've been able to now, break through that so that no one anymore says web RTC can't scale. What, what everyone says is, web RTC as intended to be implemented can't scale, Phoenix is web RTC can scale.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. Interesting. So, so what's the cost of this, like it's w or give us a range or is it per usage or how does, how do you guys charge for this?
Roy Reichbach: For our platform as a service, we pretty much have three pieces of our revenue streams. The first one is a relatively small upfront onboarding fee has, of, to the extent there's development hand-holding and whatnot that takes place, but we try to keep that as low as possible so that we don't create a barrier to entry to our platform. We generally have a, a platform or license fee and a, a scaling fee, which is a variable fee tied to the amount of hours of content that are published and how many are delivered.
Kevin Horek: Okay. Is there like a range for that? Like what's the onboarding, what's the rough range of the onboarding.
Roy Reichbach: Depends on, it depends on the cost of the size of the customer, the scale of the, of the business, that they have, the complexity of what they're trying to do. Some of the, some of the features and functionality that they want. And, but it's, the onboarding fee is definitely a non prohibitive one. While we are, what we do is in my opinion, something really special. We're a little, we're a bit more expensive than, a CDN who's delivering with HLS or dash, or, 30 seconds or 40 seconds of latency, but we're not, and, and our customers will tell you, but we're not cost prohibitive. We are a bit more expensive because what we do adds a ton of value.
Kevin Horek: Yeah. That makes sense. When you're doing something that they can't do.
Roy Reichbach: Correct.
Kevin Horek: Yeah, no, that's fair enough. But sadly, we're out of time. How about we close with mentioning where people can get more information about you guys in any other things you want to mention?
Roy Reichbach: Our website is Phoenix, R T s.com or Ts for real-time streaming. Phoenix is P H E N I X it's the European spelling of Phoenix. Don't confuse us with the city in Arizona. And, we're around 24, 7, 365. Look forward to anyone with an interest in delivering their content and engaging with their customer base in a much more interactive way.
Kevin Horek: Perfect Roy. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time of your day to be on the show, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and have a good rest of your day.
Roy Reichbach: Oh, thanks a lot, Kevin. Appreciate the time and the opportunity.
Kevin Horek: Thank you. Okay, bye.
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