Kyle
The Netherlands apparently has a much bigger startup scene than we had first imagined. On Friday we brought you an interview with the Dutch startup “ShowDates” today we’re talking with the founder of MeeChannel.
MeeChannel is a new aggregator that brings all of your photos,videos, rss feeds and other online content into one simple, easy to navigate dashboard. Once you have all of your “channels” in one place you can share your favorite content from any channel, be it vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa or any one of hundreds of other sources that you subscribe to, and share them with your friends.
MeeChannel is currently in Beta and still entirely in Dutch, however the user interface makes it such that you may have no problem navigating it even in a foreign language. Pieter Havermans, MeeChannel’s founder and managing director is looking forward to expanding the service globally, after the initial beta version is released to the public and they start building scale.
They’ve actually done a really great job with the ux on the site. The concept has been done before but as with a lot of startups it’s now all about the execution.
We got a chance to talk to Havermans, check out our interview below:
What is MeeChannel?
MeeChannel is a thorough aggregator of media. It enables users to create and subscribe to differentchannels in which all their (otherwise) disparate media can go. These can include not only digital photos and online videos but also RSS feeds, (streaming) music, music videos, live videos, internet radio stations and television shows. We currently support the following channel types and services:
• Photo channels (MeeChannel uploads, Flickr, Picasa)
• Music channels (MeeChannel uploads, Spotify playlists, Deezer playlists)
• Video channels (Youtube, Vimeo)
• Live video channels (UStream.tv)
• RSS channels (Text RSS feeds)
• Music video channels (VEVO via Youtube, Muzu.tv)
• Radio channels (Internet streams)
• Television channels (Dutch Uitzendinggemist.nl)
The idea is to have everything arranged into clearly identifiable channels that can be accessed from a centralized dashboard / network. And I suppose I don’t have to tell you that these channels can be shared with all your friends, and that you can begin following any of your friends’ very own channels. This is a social application in the truest sense of the word.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
I am the founder and managing director of MeeChannel.com which is financially funded by a private angel investor. I am a graduated industrial designer from the Technical University of Delft The Netherlands in 2004. After that I followed an ICT consultancy traineeship for a few years, merged into the field of product management within the Consumer Electronics market and finally ended up starting this new online media venture. Regarding the development we currently work with 2 fulltime freelance engineers which are based in the US. They are responsible for the integration of new features and content within our online platform. On top of that we are currently working hard on the development of our first iPad app release which is due to be released around August this summer.
Where are you based?
The MeeChannel office is based in Lekkerkerk which is about 20km away from Rotterdam in The Netherlands.
What is the startup culture/scene like where you’re based?
MeeChannel is located in a building which is shared by several other startups, not necessarily all dot coms. Because of these different activities and disciplines we really help each other looking at problems and solutions from different angles. Regarding the hart of online startups Amsterdam is where the Dutch action is which is only about an one hour drive from our office. Most Dutch online ventures start their headquarters in Amsterdam, which is an uprising capital city for dot com ventures and app development.
What does MeeChannel solve?
The amount of digital media is growing exponentially around us:
– Personal digital media collection keeps growing by the use of digital capturing devices like cameras and phones.
– Public online content is exploding: online photos (Flickr, Picasa), online videos (youtube, vimeo, ustream), online music (spotify, grooveshark, deezer), online webradio stations, RSS feeds.
– Shared content: People are sharing their media more and more with friends and relatives as well with the available dedicated services and social media like Facebook and Twitter.
– Premium content is going online: Television shows are watched more and more online and VoD market will be taking off in the upcoming years.
Because of all this growth of content, it is getting more and more difficult to keep track of all the content you like, between all the ‘noise’. On top of that all this content is being spread over different places and services. And this is where MeeChannel.com comes in. With MeeChannels users can create a personal network of channels, containing only their favorite multimedia coming from different sources. Furthermore compared to all the platforms with an ‘app store’, MeeChannel is agregating on a content level, while everybody else is aggregating on an application level.
Who is your target user?
Our first target users are the somewhat tech-savy early-adopters who are already using multiple online services for all their media sharing and consumption needs.
What is one dilemma you are facing or have faced as a startup?
Our biggest dilemma and challenge we are facing right now is getting (press) attention. First of all it takes a lot of time to get into contact with the right influential press people and bloggers. Secondly it is also quite a challenge to convince them of writing a publication about your startup. Most of the time they have full agenda’s and they rather write about the bigger players and news items in the market then about a somewhat unknown startup like us.
Are there plans to bring MeeChannel to the United States?
Crossing the ocean is definitely something which is on our roadmap, but our first target is to reach a certain critical mass of users right here in The Netherlands and other European countries. The integration of localized content per country within our service plays an important role for entering any foreign market. Of course MeeChannel as a service is already valuable for a lot of people around the World because of the available ‘worldwide channels’ and the possibility for users to create their own ‘local’ channels. But on top of this MeeChannel also wants to create added value by integrating localized content as well. This will also be the case once we start planning the official introduction of MeeChannel into the United States.
What’s next for MeeChannel?
MeeChannel will focus on three things in the upcoming period: Adding new functionalities, integrating more content and make MeeChannel available on different platforms and devices. Regarding content we will introduce channels for Facebook photos and videos and we are exploring the possibilities for supporting premium VoD movie channels as well.
On top of that we will release our first iPad app this summer. This app will enable our users to login to their personal channel network and not only watch these channels on their iPad but also stream them to any DLNA rendering device within the same network like @TV’s and several network media players. After that we will focus on a release for iPhone and Android later this year.
Linkage:
Check out Meechannel here at their website
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