Building Credibility Through Strategic Partnerships

Join host Brian Wiles as he interviews Jed Corenthal, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Phenix Real-Time Solutions. From his early days as a musician at Sony's Columbia Records to leading marketing at the NFL and launching successful tech startups, Jed shares valuable insights on identifying emerging trends, building business credibility through key partnerships, and bridging the gap between marketing and sales. Learn how real-time streaming technology is transforming audience engagement and why even a few seconds of latency can make or break user experience in today's multi-screen world.

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On today's episode of Curve Ahead, I am joined by Jed Kornthal, the Chief Marketing and Business Development officer of Phoenix Real Time Solutions, a streaming technology company, solving one of the biggest challenges in live video latency. Jed's career has spanned from Columbia Records to the NFL to launching and selling a startup in the Metaverse space. So yeah, he's seen a lot. In this episode we talk about why real time streaming is critical industries like live sports auctions and sports betting, and how Phoenix is leading the way. We also discussed how the company became the first to enable server side ads inserted in real time video, opening up huge monetization opportunities. Whether you're in tech media or just curious about how the future of streaming will actually work, this episode shows you what's coming next. Let's dive in. Jed, welcome to the podcast. Do you mind introducing yourself? Not at all. Good to meet you, Brian. My name is Jed Kornthal. I am currently the Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Phoenix Real Time Solutions. Phoenix is a back end streaming video technology solution. We work with content holder, content rights holders, broadcasters on alleviating many of the issues plaguing the streaming industry like latency or delay the drift between the screens, meaning people are watching it at different times. So it's pretty exciting. Space streaming has grown quite a bit over the past few years, so we feel we're pretty well positioned. Tell me about your background that led you to Phoenix. I know that you've worked with a lot of huge organizations. Can you kind of tell that career progression that led you to where you are now? It's been a bit of a wacky journey, but yes, I've had kind of a split or sort of two phases to my career. I would call more on the corporate side where I worked in music industry for a long time at Sony, specifically Columbia Records. I'm a musician by trade, so that's kind of how I got into that a little bit. So I worked there for about 11 years and then from there I worked, I went to the NFL where I ran integrated marketing for just about four years. And then I kind of left the corporate side to move into the entrepreneurial world where I started a couple of companies, excuse me, sold one. And I've always kind of been a little ahead of some of the trends, kind of been able to identify certain trends ahead of the market. I was in mobile marketing quite a bit early. You know, the. The what is referred today as Metaverse is really just virtual worlds. But my company that I had started and sold A company called Mimo. We were heavily involved in that space for a number of years and I've been in the OTT streaming space for about 10 years now. And with Phoenix we do a lot of work in the sports betting space which is kind of a relatively newer vertical as well because of the, of sports betting in states around the country. So yeah, I've kind of taken this split, this two sided monster that I have become. Tell me about the progression from being like a musician, finding yourself working at Columbia Records to now. You know, I think you said you're the chief marketing officer. So like how does that like happen for someone like yourself? I've always been a sales and marketing person wherever, you know, whatever company I've been at, whether it be the larger companies like Sony and the NFL or smaller one startups, I've always kind of ran the sales and marketing sides of the business or businesses. So that's not new to me. You know, I've been doing this for a long time so I have a lot of contacts in the industry. So initially with Phoenix I was brought on mostly to do more of the sales and business development because were a new startup and marketing wasn't quite as important yet as we started to get a little bit more firmly established were a market hat a little bit more often. But yeah, that's always been my career. My career experience has been, you know, generating revenue, generating leads from marketing using various distribution channels from a marketing perspective, both direct to consumer and trade. So, so yeah, I would say my experience has kind of led me to this role if you will. So I have like similar background things. Similar things in my background. Right. I actually I worked with the, not four but with, as a service provider with the NFL for almost two years. I helped them change out their MMS and SMS provider which was a big undertaking. They had another provider and then we did the migration but they wanted it done before the Super Bowl. So like were ac. We were lucky enough to actually be able to test at the Pro Bowl. So like we got done like a week early. Right. But like you know that's not the best thing. Right. Like this is your biggest event of the year. I would not suggest that you make any major changes to your marketing distribution right before that happens. Yeah, that's pretty, it's pretty gutsy. Yeah. When I was there they, I, I wouldn't say risk takers to the, you know, in a big way. But I will say over the years they've they've become a little bit more managed and how they look at new opportunities and new technologies and have become more adept at integrating new technologies and I think it's helped them serve them quite well. I would agree. When I was working with the team they seemed pretty progressive with what they wanted to do, the vision for the actual league and how they wanted to integrate new tools and technologies into the league to draw a younger audience. I think that's one of their things right now is to try to create a bridge between a more legacy audience to more of this Gen Z, gen alpha and continue to target them to build lifetime fans outside of their parents fandom, I'd go as far as. To say is, you know, all the sports properties these days are trying to get a little younger and trying to figure out, you know, how they can attract a younger audience knowing that attention spans are falling by the wayside. It's interesting. You know, for us we get, certain times when we have a meeting, we get asked the question, well, why is real time streaming so important? You know, what's the big diff? What's the big deal if I'm you know, seconds delayed or 20 seconds delayed? And you know, maybe 10 years ago when watching television was a predominantly a lean back experience, maybe it wasn't, you know, wasn't as essential. But today if you look at all the research, it shows that something like 90% of the people that watch sports are engaged on two, if not three screens simultaneously. So the user experience is changed. So if you and I are watching a game and we're also texting or we're checking our fantasy stats or whatnot, you know, we're hearing about things from our friends before we see them or we see updates from push notifications before we see them. So it's become a lot more to be on the same playing field. And then when, if you know, if you introduce betting into it, well then now you're talking about a financial implication. So we believe that the real time nature of watching streaming content has become a lot more important and critical and we're starting to see that from more broadcasters, more of the sports properties, understanding that reducing latency is becoming a bigger priority for them. I would say that I'm a little bit of anomaly in the fact that I'm a Formula one fan. So a lot of things happen outside of us hours. So obviously I'm recording all the sessions and I'm watching them, but like I'm watching them on my own time, like Last weekend, right. Last weekend they were in China. And so it was broadcasting like late in my night, but I wasn't going to stand up or stay up to watch that, so I just recorded it and watched it in the morning. So I would say that's a little bit different. Totally. Definitely less of an issue if you're, you know, with any sort of recorded content or video on demand or anything along those lines. You're right. The latency issue becomes much less critical. It's, you know, which is why we deal primarily in life. It's either live music, live sports, you know, anything. Live. Live auctions. We do a lot of work in the auction space. So, yeah, anything that has to happen, you know, right here, right now, where time is of the essence. Yeah. And would, I would agree that latency needs to be minimized when you're talking about anything, especially when there's a financial implication. If you're talking about, I'm bidding on a, you know, 356 Porsche, right. If my bid is delayed and I miss my window, now I'm behind and I don't know where I am in the bid scheme. No, you're 100% right. In fact, we actually work with a client called Cox Automotive or Manheim Automotive, which is part of Cox Enterprises. Excuse me. And they are the largest auto auction company, I think, in the world. They do something like half a billion dollars of revenue. And just what you're saying, they have lanes in these different centers and cars will come up and people will be there in person, but people will also be, you know, on their mobile device and wanting to bid for that car. And to your point, if I'm in person and you're on the mobile and you're five seconds behind me or 10 seconds behind me, you're going to lose out. And that's not good. Yeah, I mean, because that has a major implication at the dealership level because they rely on these cars to be able to restock their inventory. Right. They, they identify certain makes, models, mileage that does really well in their demographics. So they're looking for those types of cars. And if they don't have the opportunity to bid on the lane or if their bid is delayed or what have you. Right. They miss their window, they're missing out on that vehicle that could, you know, generate thousands of dollars in profit in the long run for them. You're 100% right. In fact, interestingly, we had worked with a client in Australia that did house auctions same Idea. So you would, you know, like a house would go on the market, a hundred people would walk up to it and look at it and maybe bid on it. But people would also do that virtually. So we worked with them on delivering the same user experience as if you were there in person virtually. It's pretty interesting. So what else is Phoenix working on other than closing the latency? Like, why is the streaming OTT important for Phoenix and how do you see that growth in the future? Say, like over the next five years? Sure. You know, one of the things that we. Excuse me, pardon me. We had a number of conversations with some of the big broadcasters and a lot of them said to us that, you know, having real time is great, but how do I make money? So, you know, their business model is advertising. So we took it upon ourselves that we had to figure out how to insert ads into our streams. And inserting ads when you have a 30 second delay or 60 second delay is very easy. But when you have a delay of 4 or 500 milliseconds, similar to what we have on this video chat, it's very difficult. It's a big challenge. And it took our engineering team, you know, a couple of years to figure it out. But we are now the only company in the real time streaming space that has enabled server side ad insertion in real time so we can show content and insert ads so companies can make money. And the other thing that we do, which is really interesting, that we're excited about, is something we call multiview, which gives fans the ability to watch a game from multiple different camera angles. So if you're watching, you know, the Indianapolis 500 as an example, or a Formula One race, even better example, where the track is kind of spread out and you don't really get a chance to see the whole track. Being able to watch on your phone or on your laptop or wherever, different angles of the track or different drivers, if you want to focus on that, is very exciting. And that's been a very interesting business for us. So talk about the ads into streaming. So what sort of ads are we talking? Are we just talking like a bottom banner ad? Are we talking something that' like actually. 10, 15 second video ads, regular ad like you'd see on your regular linear, you know, brought right in your living room? Absolutely. Same same idea. We basically now have all of the tools that a traditional OTT provider can use to mimic sort of the linear experience, only we do it in real time. And that's what's unique. Do you see that market in. How do you see it growing? Who do you see coming in as your competition since you've, it seems like you already have kind of this major foothold on being able to do things in real time, including advertising. Who's breaking into that space and competing against you? Yeah, there are a handful of other companies in the, in the sort of niche that we work in this sort of real time space. You know, Amazon has a product called Real Time IVS and there are a couple of others, but we have a number of features and functionality that don't, that they don't have ads. The other is scale. We're the only ones that have proven to be broadcast scalable. So we can stream not only in real time, but we can stream to hundreds of thousands or millions in fact, of simultaneous viewers, whereas the other providers are not able to do that, at least not yet. We're not blind to the fact that, you know, we'll be the only ones forever. I mean, Coke and Pepsi have lived together for 100 years. So welcome the competition. It's not a bad thing. But right now we're the only ones who can do, we can scale, the only ones who can insert ads. So we've got of a. I guess I'd call it a window of opportunity before everybody else picks up on that. Do you think that you're poised for acquisition because you're offering something that, say, Amazon hasn't yet gotten a hold of being able to do it yet? I certainly think that's a possibility, sure. I mean, we've had some conversations with certain companies that have had, you know, kind of an M and a, an interest in us. So, yeah, I think that is certainly down the line at some point. I mean, we, you know, while you can think about that, you can't really think about it. You just have to sort of run your business and you know, if you do it right, the chips fall where they may. But I do think that there is a unique possibility that will occur over the next, you know, 12 to 24 months. Tell me about your experience. I know that I'm going way off script. Tell me about your experience. Like you said that you had started a company that was acquired. Tell me about from your perspective. Sure. So a company was called Mimo and the idea of it was this was in 2009. At the time there was a great popularity of what were referred to as virtual worlds, where people would come in as avatars and create their avatar and then engage with other Avatars, other people in these virtual worlds. Places like Second Life and the Xbox Avatar Marketplace and Haba Hotel, there were many of them around the world where you could go in and create, you know, your Persona as an avatar and then shop or watch movies and basically do everything that you do in the real world, in a virtual world. And so the idea that I had was to create a branded merchandise company for those to dress their avatars and their virtual worlds in with entertainment brands. So just like you might wear, you know, you live in Denver, you mentioned you might wear a Denver Broncos jersey or an avalanche jersey if you're walking around the streets. The same idea held true for us in the virtual world. Your avatar could dress in a Denver Broncos jersey. So we cut a number of IP deals with sports entities and movie studios and, you know, Mattel and Marvel and, you know, all these companies that had all this very cool ip. And then on the flip side, we cut the deals on the distribution side with the virtual worlds with messenger services, so people can go in and buy these packages of entertainment, you know, branded, licensed goods for their avatars. And that was essentially the business model. And we raised money and we actually became, after four years, we were profitable and we sold the company, ended up selling the company to our two investors who had, we had developed a couple of patents for the business. And they had an idea of taking some of the patents and some of what we did in the business in a different direction. So we sold it to them. It was, it was a really interesting experience for me. It was very challenging. And it's a real, it's a 247 experience. I mean, you just, you never can let go. But it's very rewarding when you see some success. And, you know, I loved it. It was probably the most fun I had working in my life. It's freeing to be an entrepreneur. Right? Like, because it, you don't have anybody telling you exactly what you need to do. You have an idea, then you work on it and iterate it and try to deliver the best that you can towards what you had, like, written down on a napkin. Yeah. And it's free in that fact, but it's also super challenging because there's nobody else for you to like, really rely on when it comes to advice. Or is this the right, like, marketing channel for me? Am I going about gaining customers the right way? It's like all these other things that you're right and you kind of find yourself second guessing your early success. Like, you ride that Tidal wave. And then you're like, could I have done this better, or am I going about it the right way? Is this the right direction for us to scale? And that's kind of like. I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with that. No, you're right on the doubts. You're right on the market. You know, for the first six months or so, were struggling. You know, we really didn't have any great deals. It was, you know, were kind of burning through the money that we had raised, and were like, you know, if in the next six months or something, we don't, you know, this doesn't take off or at least pick up a little bit, it may not last. And, you know, we had a meeting with some folks at Hasbro. They had a new Transformers movie coming, and we must have just hit them at the right time, because they felt like what were doing was. Was something really cool for them and they wanted. So the deal we cut with them was to, you know, we took all of the Transformers IP and moved it into the Xbox Marketplace, and so people could use that ip. And it really kind of gave us, I would say, like, a legitimate launching pad. You know, it was a credible brand, cool ip, and people really took to it. So it kind of got us off and running, and it gave us the impetus to create more deals. We then went to Universal, and it started to become much more of a reality that, you know, what were doing was working. Are you saying that sometimes it just takes, like, one major good deal to really start that flywheel of getting more and more deals? It. For us, it did, because I think we needed the credibility. I think we needed, you know, it's, you know, the old story, the company you keep. And I think, you know, when. When were in the early meetings, it was, well, who are you working with? And the people were working with were very small, and, you know, they didn't really impress anybody. But once we cut the Hasbro deal and somebody said to us, well, who are you working with? We say, well, we're about to launch, you know, a whole Transformers line of Avatar market of Avatar merchandise with Hasbro. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, I get it. You know, that makes sense. And maybe we should talk kind of a thing. So the reaction. And I see that with Phoenix, too, you know, when one of our first deals was with Verizon, and, you know, the same kind of thing, it's who you're working with, and when you tell people you're working with Verizon, you know, there's instant credibility in your company. So, yeah, I think that. I think it works that way in a lot of entrepreneurial businesses. Find that keystone customer and then try to build a case study around it. Exactly. And let people know that what you're doing works and it's for real, and others are seeing that it's real. So on a similar topic to this, you said that you kind of split your time between the marketing and sales, and you're passionate about both. What advice would you give someone who is great at marketing but struggles a little bit at the sales side? Well, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, everything we do is sales in some manner, shape, or form. Because wherever you work, whoever you work for, something is getting sold. Whether it's a T shirt, a football, a game. Doctors are salespeople, you know, in kind of an offshoot way. So everything you're doing is. Is leading to a sale. If you're marketing Coca Cola, yes, you're trying to get more impressions for the product, but ultimately what you're trying to do is to get people to buy Coca Cola. So I think that you have to realize that even if you're marketing, you are selling. So, you know, it's. It's. Don't be intimidated by, oh, I'm not so great in sales. You know, you. You may be good in marketing. So you know what? You're probably pretty good in sales too. Yes, there's a certain. There's a certain sales acumen that, you know, people say you're born with, not made, but those are like, that's a very hardcore sales type of work. I still think that those in marketing are adept at sales without even realizing that they may because they're trying to get their product, whatever it is that they're working for, seen and heard by more people, and so it would ultimately be purchased. So I think that they know more about sales than they think they do. I think that's a great perspective. Right. Oftentimes I would say that I struggle at sales, but good at marketing. But there's a. There's so often where I'm. I'm getting yeses from people to, like, have conversations like this in a way that is me selling myself to a certain extent. It's just that sometimes, I guess it's maybe my conversion mechanism that I need to go and analyze again to make sure that I am reaching out to the right people, making sure that I'm having the right conversation, and then leading into having that right conversion conversation. Absolutely. I mean, look, you reached out to me. You sold me. That's sales, right? I mean, and in its most earnest form. So, as I said, I think you're probably better at it than you think you are. I mean, you're successful in this podcast. You get guests all the time, so clearly you're doing something right and people are responding to it. So don't sell yourself short, is the bottom line. Appreciate that advice. I will. I will ride it high through the weekend or into the weekend, I guess. What's. What's a question or advice that you would give to someone who's just starting their career either in marketing or sal And. Or. And. Or passionate about being an entrepreneur? What advice would you give them to be like, hey, look, you're. You're doing it right. You're on the right track. Right. Make sure that you're learning from these people. Ask questions. What advice would you give them? Yeah, I think you just hit upon a very important part is learning from people, finding a mentor, asking questions. I believe that information is power, and the more you can accumulate, the better off you are. Do your research on whatever industry that you're starting a business in. Learn your competition, learn what they're doing well, what they're not doing well. Learn their marketing. How are they marketing themselves? Who are they selling to? What's their audience? I think that the more you can understand about the industry that you're playing in, the more prepared you are about your own. Your own product or industry that you're trying to build. I think too many people talk too much and don't listen enough. And I think it's really important to talk to people and listen to what they have to say and understand what they're saying and, you know, take their advice, you know, and do with it. You know, obviously take it to some extent with a grain of salt, because you have to decipher it on your own, and you have to use it the way you're comfortable. But getting advice and opinions and information from others, from peers, from mentors, I think is really critical as you start to build a business, because you'll just be that much more prepared the fewer, the better. The what? The fewer surprises, the better. I started having conversations with other agency owners and then realized that what I was talking about could actually be turned into a podcast. So that's how I found my way into starting the podcast. It was just from reaching out to other people, trying to have them provide me some of the lessons learned so I didn't fall into their same like, same ruts or. So I didn't have to learn the lesson the hard way. And I was like, there's so many great stories and lessons learned that I'm having as part of these outreaches and the conversations that. Why shouldn't I turn this into something that's just bigger than me having a conversation with someone one one? Yeah. I mean, couldn't agree more. I mean, you know, you saw what's out there. You saw an opportunity. You had confidence in yourself and your skills, and you felt confident that you could do it. And clearly you're right. So I think you have to have confidence in yourself. You have to believe in yourself that you can do it, and you have to be persistent and give it. You've got to give it a real shot. And you may surprise yourself. You may surprise yourself. Yeah, it's the give it one more day mentality. Because some days you just wake up, you're like, I don't want to do this. But it's like, give it one more day and see what happens. And then give it one more day. And give it one more day. And just doing the reps really helps solidify you in what it is that you're doing and can grow into something really kind of spectacular. That's exactly right. There's a. There was a. I used to do this workout formula called P90X, and it was a series of. This is a while ago, a series of DVDs. The instructor, his big mantra was, just push play. Just push play. You're there. That's the hardest thing, is to just start. Just push play to your point, just get up in the morning and do it again. Just. Just get up, get out of bed and start another day. Because you just. You never know what's around the next corner. And that's. That's the exciting part of it. And enjoy the journey because it's. It's. It's crazy and challenging, but also very rewarding. It is. Well, Jed, this has been fantastic. So on each one of my podcasts, I give all of my guests 90 seconds to plug anything that they're passionate about. So for you, that could be Phoenix. That could be finding a mentor that could be anything. So without further ado, the next 90 seconds are yours. Well, I am very passionate about Phoenix. I've been here over eight years, and, you know, I think the thing that I want to try and get more people to understand in our space is that the technology exists to eliminate the problems that many of these companies face, you know, with delays in their streams and the buffering and the poor quality and you know, not watching at the same time all of those sort of technological challenges, you know, exist we've solved them. So you know it's educational from my standpoint and trying to get more and more people to realize that hey wait a second this I don't have to sit through, you know, a delay while I watch a game. So I'm very passionate about that. Our company's very passionate about that. And we want you know, we started our mantra, our founders mantra was to stream the opening ceremony of the Olympics to a billion people simultaneously. And that's what we want to do and we're really pretty close to being able to do that. So we want people, we want to work with people who have that same mindset to reach to the stars. So that's what I'm passionate about. Thank you again for your time today. My pleasure.