Vator Box

5

Vator Box on video game exchanges, UGC video (Goozex, Magnify)

Innovation series by Bambi Francisco Roizen
May 19, 2008 | Comments (1)
Short URL: http://vator.tv/n/237


Scott Banister, known for selling his startup IronPort to Cisco Systems for $830 million last year, and being an early investor in some hot companies - PayPal, Facebook, Powerset, just to name a few - was our guest host this week. He joined me and Vator regular Ezra Roizen to discuss Goozex, a video game trading community with a clever video pitch, as well as Magnify, a company that powers user-generated-video for 30,000-plus sites. Bottom line, Scott, Ezra and I all agreed that Magnify has potential to be a significant business as UGC video becomes a requisite feature for all publishers. For Goozex, Scott and Ezra have some great advice.

 

Comment

Mark Nebesky
Mark Nebesky, on May 22, 2008

Hi Bambi,

I just saw the video you posted with feedback on Goozex. I really thought it was great feedback from you, Scott and Ezra. Some of the comments made are in line with what we've seen with other investors. In particular, the Peerflix comparison does come up.

I just wanted to give some quick responses to some of the points made in the video.

Goozex Points:
Goozex points are a virtual currency designed to give members the maximum amount of value when they trade games. It is our solution to a very large problem in the video game secondary market -- there exists a large imbalance between trade-in and re-sale values. Point purchases are actually a large portion of our current revenue stream.

Target Market/Demographic:
People are sometimes surprised to hear who our target market is and who really drives the gaming industry. Goozex really caters to the 18-34 male gamer. The average age of a video gamer is 33 years old (believe it or not). Moreover, half of the US population plays video games (i.e. 150 million people in the US alone).

This target market makes up the majority of our members. In fact, we are building an advertising sales model to really dig deep into this coveted demographic. For example, we can offer an advertiser the opportunity to promote their product/service to someone who plays only Madden NFL games. We can replicate this message targeting for a large number of demographic combinations.

The Peerflix Comparison:
For sure there is a natural comparison between Goozex and Peerflix. However, we feel that our product set, customer base and market environment really shows apples and oranges. Video games are simply expensive and trading in games has been common practice for many years now. There exists market acceptance for this trading concept with video games. Our points structure allows us to really pinpoint the market value of a game (unlike Peerflix's more broad valuations of DVDs). And at the end of the day, we offer a viable solution to a problem that has existed in the video game secondary market for years. Around this we are building a strong community (something Peerflix did not do) and we are starting to monetize the strength of our community.

Thanks again for your feature, feedback and commentary. We actually enjoyed the show very much! Please let me know if you would like to discuss further and if you have any questions.

Best regards,

Mark Nebesky

p.s. I think the concept of Vator.tv is fantastic. There are a lot of well
known tech startup blogs -- but you really set the bar with video content. It really is the evolution of the web and you're innovating ahead of the pack!


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