Earlier in the week I posted Part 1 of an interview with Omnisio co-founder and Y combinator veteran Ryan Junee. In that interview we focused on his Y combinator experience. In Part 2 we focus more on his video startup, Omnisio.
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Is Omnisio still just you, Julian and Simon or do you have more people working on the site – if so, how many?
It’s still just the three of us. It takes a lot less these days to build a web-based business, in terms of people, cash and resources. Although we do all work pretty hard 
How long did it take to get Omnisio up and running?
We began discussing the idea in early 2007, and began working on it full time in October. We launched publicly in March (although we had a private beta program before then). So about 5 months to get it up and running. We strongly believe that it’s best to get something simple out there as quickly as possible, and then iterate as fast as possible based on feedback from users.
What is Omnisio’s mission?
In a nutshell we are trying to drastically improve the experience of online video. What we see with online video today is the experience of TV translated to the web. This is typical when a new medium is created – early TV shows were very similar to radio shows of the time. Now that people are comfortable seeing video on the web, it will start to break free from the constraints imposed by the old medium, and make use of the unique features of the new medium. The web is more interactive, more measurable, and knows who your friends are – so we are exploring this new frontier by rapidly creating a set of rich video applications and seeing what people do with them.
How many people are using Omnisio? What’s the growth rate like?
We haven’t published our numbers, but our daily unique visitors to the site are in the thousands (with many more people viewing our videos embedded on other sites), and we are happy with our traffic and rate of growth given we have only been public for 3 months.
(NB: Compete.com puts their total May visitors at 28,459 with impressive growth over the past few months)
Do you currently have any revenue? If not, what are your thoughts on how you’ll be able to turn Omnisio into a profitable business?
No we are still very much in an exploratory phase and have not yet begun monetizing. We have several ideas for monetizing based around better quality video advertising, as well as licensing of the platform to third parties.
Actually, on that point, how concerned are people in the Valley about revenues and profitability? I mean no doubt it’s important, but are you being pressured to monetise or are investors more interested in you gaining market share and worrying about the business model when it appears?
Speaking about the consumer web space, with which I am most familiar, I would say that people here are much more concerned with growth than monetization in the early stages. It is important to have some idea of how to turn your users into profits, but it is MUCH harder to build a massively popular site and gain users, than it is to figure out a way to make money from those users. Most savvy investors will not pressure a company to monetize its product in the early days, as they know this can jeopardize growth. Google is a canonical example of a company that had no clear monetization strategy in the beginning and is now one of the world’s largest businesses. However, there are certainly dangers with focusing solely on growth – many would argue that Facebook is over-valued because, while it has massive traction, there is still no clear path to monetization to justify its valuation.
How often do you catch up with other Aussie tech entrepreneurs?
I periodically run into other Aussie entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, but the community is quite fragmented at the moment. I’m on the San Francisco committee of a group called Advance (www.advance.org), which aims to connect Australian professionals who are living overseas, and one of my goals is to help connect aspiring Aussie entrepreneurs who are just getting started out here, with those who are more experienced. I’d recommend any Aussies living in the San Francisco bay area join Advance (it’s free), and also don’t hesitate to contact me personally so we can grab a beer.
Do you think Aussies abroad should band together and promote our Australianness or is it better to forget all that patriotic stuff to concentrate on success and let that be the promoter of what Aussies can do?
Australian culture is unique, and its always good to hang out with other Aussies so we don’t forget that. However, Silicon Valley is incredibly multicultural and I think that’s more important than promoting any one nationality. The people who move to Silicon Valley are generally self-selected and very motivated to succeed, and I’m always excited to see entrepreneurs building fantastic companies no matter where they are from. That said, it would be good to have some more success stories of Aussies who have moved over here and started companies, to help encourage more potential Aussie entrepreneurs back home to take a chance and follow their passion.
What are your thoughts on being an entrepreneur?
I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur unless you absolutely cannot imagine doing anything else. I think I agree with this. Starting a company is a LOT of work. It’s an emotional roller coaster, and as much as you hear people tell you this, it’s hard to understand how difficult it can be until you are actually doing it yourself. Most entrepreneurs I know have such a deep passion for starting companies that even when times are tough, they still could not imagine doing anything else. Paul Graham of Y Combinator has said that persistence and determination are more important than intelligence or experience for a startup founder (http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html)
Do you have any advice for people who want to start their own startup?
Yes- just do it (thanks Nike :). It’s easy to get caught up in ‘analysis paralysis’ - wondering if your idea is really going to be the next big thing, whether people will care about it. But there is no better first step than just building something and releasing it. Let your users tell you what they want, and let that guide the product’s evolution (keep in mind that my advice is biased towards consumer web startups)
There is no need for a comprehensive business plan – as long as you can describe your idea to someone clearly and succinctly enough to get them excited about it, you should just get started. And drop me an email – I love hearing about new startups.
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A big thanks to Ryan for taking the time to answer all those questions and for being so open. Make sure you go check out Omnisio when you get a chance. They’re definitely a team of Aussies in the US to keep an eye on.
Time to introduce another of our TechNation Australia writers - Lee Goodman.