Television is one of the biggest markets in entertainment, but it is at the early stages of a huge shift online. While most people still watch TV through cable and via traditional linear programming, increasingly TV will be delivered over the Internet and with the user in charge of their own programming. The big TV networks are already making moves to prepare for this shift, of course, with efforts like Hulu.Just as interesting to watch is how new startups will design for the changing usage patterns of TV consumers. Clicker is one such company. Co-founded by ex-Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone, Clicker aims to be the TV Guide of Internet TV. I spoke with Lanzone to find out how the idea came about and to hear his thoughts on how Internet TV is evolving.
How Clicker Was Conceived
RWW: How did you come up with the idea for Clicker and what was the inspiration for it?
"The goal is to build the ultimate programming guide for the next generation of TV, which is about navigation and discovery."
Jim Lanzone: Every Monday, Dave Goldberg [at the time an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark] and I would go to Starbucks on Sand Hill Road and brainstorm together. He pointed out to me that in the 70s, TV Guide was worth more than the big three networks combined. We agreed that television was going to be online and when that happened, finding what to watch or figuring out what you want to watch was a lot more like a search and navigation problem than a schedule grid - you know, a calendar - which was what TV Guide has been over the last 50 years.
So we just started brainstorming [on that] for about a month. And then, I got very, very serious about it. Bill Gurley at Benchmark and I then started talking more seriously about it. Dave was not ready to jump in at that point, maybe that early. And so the more I talked about it with them, the more serious I got about wanting to start a company around it. I was looking at all kinds of other things to do, other public companies to go to or take over somebody else's start-up. This [Clicker] was definitely the riskiest, but it was the one that I felt the most passionate about. Also I loved the idea of being able to get some of the members of my old product and technology teams back together to tackle a new problem.
(Read Write Web)
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