An Odd Platform — The Story of Odd Networks
I will start with how we got here. A couple of years ago a few friends that had been working in video game / video streaming for almost a decade had an idea. Customers were asking for some of the same tactics that were used in games since the newer systems came out to be used in the video streaming world. On top of that we saw that the future of content consumption was changing and it was moving to a more a la carte (my next piece will touch upon this) personalized world and a simple easy to use solution for all content creators was needed.
Odd Networks was created and since then we have been helping video content creators get to the Over the Top of OTT space using our proprietary platform.
A few things have evolved since we started this venture. Part of the revelation in recognizing the changes is probably from our naivete as entrepreneurs, and not resulting from the content / cable tv space. We saw that the OTT space was difficult (it still is). But, what we also saw was a space that was ripe for change as much of the existing players had come from a time before television-connected devices and mobile phones. In most instances, solutions included expensive custom built options that was looking to solve new problems with old solutions and business models.
We have a few themes I think make us different from the competition.
Not end to end
Odd Networks like most businesses have changed our approach, but one thing has remained true since day one. We do not wish to be an end-to-end solution. There are companies that cropped up during the first internet boom that have been figuring out problems like transcoding and streaming to websites, and to be honest they do a good job. There’s no reason for us to replicate what they have 20 years of experience doing.
Instead of trying to recreate the wheel, we found it easier to partner with existing platforms such as JW Platform, Ooyala, Livestream, and Vimeo, to name a few. The companies have for years sent video to different browsers and more recently mobile phones and tablets. We instead take the utilize this existing ecosystem and ingest the finished product into our platform allow the customer to now access more devices within the OTT space.
Integration Platform
To continue the previous theme, we took it even further. We built our entire platform to be an integration tool as opposed to a one-stop shop. Rather than solve other solutions, we created a platform that allows the content creators to build from the best that already exist. We launched properties that utilize multiple Online Video Platform or OVP’s, as well as existing subscription or ad networks.
Taking this approach allowed Odd Networks to move quickly and instead of attempting to solve all of the problems we can allow customers the ability to pick and choose the best of the best and launch a platform that has them all. The end to end solutions typically follow the same theme of previous systems; they can do it all, but most of it is not done very well.
Native Languages / SDKs
To explain what this means, because trust me, I, too, required a bit of a crash course on all of this at one point, I will elaborate. We built our product on top of SDK’s or software development kits. This has been a good decision for a few reasons. This means that the platform is always speaking to the SDKs and that some of the edits we make are server-side. So rather than have changes added directly to the client apps, most of ours happen behind the scenes. Long story short, we are not required to re-submit an app because we aren’t making changes to the app when we add features. Then, we took this one step even further.
On top of the SDKs we built “off the shelf apps” and enterprise apps on top of these SDKs; all in the native language of the platforms. This means the platforms (apple, roku, amazon, android) are happy, and there is less of a reason to think that an update will break our apps.
Open Source
So, frankly, this one had me scared when we first discussed it. I come from the world of Venture Capital and while I have known of and support Open Source software, I had not seen many companies that used this philosophy end up being successful. Interestingly enough, WordPress a company who we are in some ways modeled after, did use this approach.
Open Source software means that the code is not proprietary, and in a sense anyone can take our product and put it together themselves using our software repo’s and never pay us a dollar.
Well, we did it anyway, and I fully support it. We did not, I repeat did not, end up open sourcing everything. What we did open source was our SDK’s. This means that anyone can build a suite of apps on top of our SDK’s but if they want to use our CMS, or api’s then they have to pay. Someday my hope is that development shops everywhere will be pitching to content creators the need to launch their own independent app and have them license our back end while they build out the custom apps on our open sourced SDK’s.
Odd Connect
I am biased on this one as I basically used inception to get the team to name it this. There are multiple ways to monetize content on an app platform (http://info.oddnetworks.com/blog/ott-monetization) but the two most popular are AVOD (Advertising on Demand) and SVOD(Subscription Video on Demand). I prefer subscription, but I think both have their place in the current and distance future of video over the Internet.
I mentioned previously that we use integration partners to solve a lot of the issues. Yet, the platforms like Apple and Roku want their cut at some point. While for years applications have suggested the user go to their site and register before being able to log in, the end platforms have decided that if you have subscriptions, you need to at least offer the ability to purchase it through their store. To me this makes a ton of sense on their end. The technical term is IAP or In App Purchases.
What this does though is require an app to know if you have already subscribed. So if you’re like me and have an apple tv, xbox one, roku, amazon fire tv, and an iphone / ipad, you don’t want to purchase the same application twice. Think of it like this. Netflix is on basically any platform and I want to use my same log in for whichever device I am currently using. If they weren’t using each platform’s IAP, then I wouldn’t be able to do this and would theoretically be required to purchase Netflix anytime I wanted to use it on a new device.
So this is where Odd Connect finally fits. In order for these devices to communicate they need to be integrated into each of the platforms IAP services or their “stores”. But on top of that they need a central location that manages the users and credentials and can verify that a purchase was made in one of the locations. Odd Connect is an IAP unification platform that provides that ability allowing someone universal credentials and the ability to purchase once and then log in on any platform where the app their purchased presides.
Conclusion
Odd Networks has found ways to work with many throughout the video and OTT space. We have done this by finding those that do some things well and integrating with them instead of trying to replace them. This also allows us to work with customers of existing systems that have not gone out on the OTT space. So if you have been putting video on the web for a decade without changing anything that you have already done you can now go out on all connected TV devices in a matter of days.
While we have found some items where integrating works, it’s easier to build our own internal tools. We always allow the customer to choose which way they want to go (for a price of course).
To conclude, a group of guys who worked on AAA video games and streamed video before 2010, decided to take their odd approach to the video space. We have used a few themes that vary from the current world of delivering content to build a product that we hope is the future of TV.
If you want to see more of what we are up go to https://oddnetworks.com/
