Interview mit Cloud-Pionier Chris Giordano, CEO von MiMedia

MiMedia Holdings Inc. (TSXV: MIM, OTCQB: MIMDF, FWB: KH3)

MiMedia Holdings Inc. bietet eine Cloud-Plattform der nächsten Generation für Konsumenten, die es ermöglicht, alle Arten von persönlichen Medien in der Cloud zu sichern, auf die jederzeit auf allen Geräten und auf allen Betriebssystemen nahtlos zugegriffen werden kann. Die Plattform des Unternehmens zeichnet sich durch ihre Rich-Media-Erfahrung, solide Organisationstools, private Sharing-Funktionen und Merkmale aus, die das Re-Engagement von Inhalten fördert. MiMedia arbeitet weltweit mit Smartphone-Herstellern und Telekommunikationsanbietern zusammen und bietet seinen Partnern wiederkehrende Ertragsströme, eine verbesserte Kundenbindung und Marktdifferenzierung. Die Plattform bedient Millionen von engagierten Nutzern auf der ganzen Welt.

Deutsches Transcript

Summary

Chris Giordano, a former Merrill Lynch analyst, discussed his journey from investment banking to founding MiMedia, a consumer cloud platform. MiMedia offers a next-generation platform for managing photos, videos, and other media, emphasizing security, organization, and user experience. The platform is pre-installed on smartphones, integrating seamlessly with Android devices. Giordano highlighted partnerships with major telcos and OEMs, including America Móvil and Orbi, aiming to deploy on 35 million devices. MiMedia's revenue model includes storage subscriptions and mobile advertising, with projections of $3-5 million in revenue by 2025.

Introduction and Background of Chris Giordano

• Chris Greer introduces himself, mentioning his background in DC, education at Bowdoin in Maine, and his start at Merrill Lynch in investment banking.
• He discusses his role in the telecom group at Merrill Lynch during the late 90s, a time of significant growth in the telecom industry.
• Chris highlights his interest in internet infrastructure and his role in covering companies in the cloud space, including web hosting, managed data networks, and content distribution networks.
• He shares his experience of becoming a resident expert in the cloud space at Merrill Lynch and his transition to equity research, where he launched coverage for 20 companies and wrote a 400-page industry book.

Transition to Media and Investment

• Chris describes his move from Merrill Lynch to Baker Capital, a private equity firm, where he focused on cloud investments.
• He details his role at Baker Capital, where he took cloud investments to billion-dollar exits and helped lead teams.
• Chris explains his decision to leave Baker Capital to start his own consumer cloud company, My Media, which developed an app to replace and expand the photo gallery on cell phones.
• He emphasizes the platform's ability to secure and organize content across devices and operating systems, making it device and operating system agnostic.

Differentiation and Market Potential

• Chris discusses the unique features of My Media, including its next-generation consumer cloud platform that secures and organizes photos, videos, music, documents, SMS, and contacts.
• He highlights the platform's focus on making content accessible on any device and its engaging, visual, and interactive media experience.
• Chris explains the importance of security and privacy, ensuring that content is encrypted and users have control over their data.
• He emphasizes the platform's ease of use, designed to appeal to non-tech-savvy consumers, and its ability to integrate with various devices and operating systems.

Integration with Smartphone Manufacturers and Telcos

Chapters

• 0:58 Introduction & CV by Chris Giordano
• 5:43 How it all started
• 13:05 First Steps & Industry Network
• 22:18 Revenue Model
• 27:03 Revenue Stream
• 29:48 Open Doors for MiMedia?
• 31:29 Focused Countries
• 34:05 Different Screentimes in other Cultures & Countries
• 36:09 Pre-installed on over 6 Million Devices
• 45:28 Competetors
• 47:51 Revenue Forecast
• 51:22 Fresh Capital
• 52:56 Shareholders Base & - Structure
• 55:26 Partnerchip with Shack
• 58:23 3 Reasons

Transcript

0:00

Hey, Chris, thank you for being on the show and taking the time today. Would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?

Chris Giordano: 0:58

Marcus, thank you. It's a it's a pleasure to be on the show and and hello to the audience. Nice to meet you. I hope to do so maybe one day in person. So my background, let's see. Grew up in DC, went to college at Bowdoin in Maine, and from from college, went to Merrill Lynch in investment banking, first as an analyst in the telecom group, which was in the late 90s, which was when the telecom industry was exploding. And this is post 1996 Telecom Act, which really opened up the market in the United States. And so it was a wonderful time to be part of that industry, and to be at Merrill Lynch, where we were number one in telecom banking in the world. And so it was very exciting, very busy. Did not sleep much, but learned an absolute ton. And this was really in the beginning days of the cloud, which was called something entirely different internet infrastructure. And so I took an interest in that because I was seeing everything that was happening in the e Commerce Industry. If you remember, this is the late 90s, right? So the two thousand.com craze, and a lot of these companies were powered by internet infrastructure. They was living on internet infrastructure and the servers, et cetera. And so I took an interest in that, and I was able to learn as much as I could about it, even interviewing the guys that were managing Merrill Lynch's data center, which, of course, was handling trillions and trillions of dollars a real time transaction. So these guys were on cutting, were the cutting edge. And so I realized that this was going to be actually the bigger industry that was not only going to power E commerce, but power so much more. And so you could argue that I was there when the cloud kind of became living and born. And so I started covering these companies that were doing things like web hosting, managed data networks, that were doing content distribution networks, the early days of wireless data application service providers, so the early days of the SAS business model really all very exciting. And I was able to differentiate myself within Merrill Lynch and become kind of a and this is with huge quotation marks, resident expert in this, in the in this, in this space, to the point where they plucked me out of bank banking at 24 years of age and put me in to launch coverage in equity research for Merrill. So I was the youngest assistant vice president Merrill worldwide. At that age, I was too young to be the number one analyst, but I was the number two. We launched on 20 companies. I wrote a 400 page industry book. Didn't think I could work more than banking, but I did in equity research, it was incredibly exciting just to be to take viewpoints on stocks and on industries and where their growth would be in a time where it was very difficult to really know just how big this would become. And so covered that space. When the.com collapse happened, a lot of the customers of my companies went away, and unfortunately, Merrill down downsized the team except for me, moved me over to cover media stocks, which was interesting because I actually broader than the cloud. Believed in the convergence of telecom, tech and media, and so that put me directly in the media category, where I was covering iconic management teams at places like Comcast or Cox or charter cable companies. And so after a year of carving those names, decided to leave Merrill to become an investor on my own right, joined a firm called Baker capital, which at the time was running a one and a half billion dollar private equity fund, I would say growth at. Equity was kind of our core competency, but I was their Cloud Guy. Took a couple cloud investments to billion dollar exits, worked on those teams and helped lead them. And so that was really my background. Grew up in the cloud when it first got basically originated, then became an investor in the cloud, then started my own consumer cloud company

AktienTalk: 5:24

And that would be MiMedia?

Chris Giordano: 5:26

It is called MiMedia, yes.

AktienTalk: 5:29

MiMedia has developed an app that replaces and expands the photo gallery on your cell phone. How did it all start? Were you so dissatisfied with the solutions available until then?

Chris Giordano: 5:43

Thank you. Marcus, so I'm going to call it something different than a photo gallery app. This is actually much, much bigger than a single app. This is actually a platform of seven apps on all operating systems and addressing all devices. And so what I call is a next generation consumer cloud platform that, and I know that's a little wordy, but that basically takes the content you care most about, your photos, videos, music, documents, SMS, contacts. We make that secure, multiple copies, encrypted in the cloud all over the world. We make it device and operating system agnostic. So again, you can, you can access your your precious, precious content, because these are the photos and videos of our children, right on any device, on any operating system. We don't believe that a single operating system like Apple can keep you trapped on their device, on their ecosystem, you should be able to get it and wherever you want, God forbid, change from an apple to a Samsung or vice versa, and your entire content library should follow you, because it belongs to you and it is the most priceless thing that we have on our devices. And then finally, we make it a very enjoyable, visual, engaging media experience. So we call it our most complete end to end solution for your digital life. And there was just nothing like it there. I'm going to highlight on other differentiators and later on, I'm sure. But there was really just nothing like it that the cloud was born out of the enterprise. That's where it started in places like the Merrill Lynch data center, and then it made its transition to the consumer, really when iPhone came to the world, because iPhone made no offense to my friends in Canada, mobile web an actual enjoyable experience, much better than what BlackBerry was doing. And so a lot of the earlier solutions that consumers had, and I would argue, actually, they're still pretty far behind, or pretty utilitarian or basic, you know, because it was born out of the enterprise, they were really just work file orient oriented, or just really digital boxes or digital file cabinets, if you were, they weren't engaging. You know, consumer experiences that, you know what, which is what consumers like. They like something interactive, visual, dynamic, focused on media. And so that's exactly what we have built, is that we focus a lot on that, and we feel like we differentiate. Of course, you have to make it secure. So we do that. Everything's encrypted on the back end, over transmission, etc. It's all that's all very important, to keep it as safe as possible. And we don't go through we don't go through your stuff, like the Facebook's of the world or the Googles of the world. As consumers now are understanding very much privacy is very important, but we make the whole thing easy to use, because, again, the consumer is generally speaking, not tech savvy. So we have to, I think they've heard of the cloud, and I'm going to make the argument today that the cloud is very early in its life cycle. Now, a lot of people have heard the name cloud, yes, but they don't really know what it does. They don't not sure if you're even using it or paying for it. But I would say the vast majority of the world are not using cloud solutions right now. And so there's a lot more growth there, a lot more understanding. But so therefore, it's really important to make all of this very simple to use as it relates to the kind of direct market that we're focusing on. So it's very easy to upload and manage your personal media library, almost like a personal meeting up for you. Again, it goes on on any device or operating system. Very easy to access this content on any device, very easy to share this content. And because we have seven apps integrated into one platform, we have iOS, Android for smartphone, iOS Android for tablet, Windows and Mac for PC. You can get us on any web browsers, and you can get us on Android television. We seamlessly integrate all of that into one platform so you can access it from any device. Each app has its own, you know, look, feel, UI, UX, optimize for that form factor. So that makes it really easy. Used the organization, which I would argue is a key pain point. You know, most other solutions, like a Dropbox, for example, you're just throwing everything into a box. There's no rhyme or reasonable information there. We focus a lot on organization, because I think consumers understand that pain. They understand that, hey, we take photos and videos every day. We change devices every year, where, every two years, our content all over the place, different photo platforms, from from the earlier days to now, etcetera. So be able to organize that into one hub, and be able to take copies also, as well from these other places that we put content, like Facebook, etcetera, sucking content there. So you have it all in one place. And then tools to allow the consumer to curate or organize their in their own way. We do some of the organization first for the consumer, but you and I can have a series of contents, you know, elements or whatever else. Let's say we're decorating a room, right? Well, you're going to decorate differently than mine, than me, right? And so we give a lot of tools to organize very easily, in their own in the consumer's own way, and they like that. We also, and most importantly, make it very engaging, as I mentioned, that's what consumers like. If you think about Pinterest, Pinterest is really bookmarking, but they've made it engaging and easy to use, and then now they're worth a lot of money, so we focus a lot on that, much more than anyone else out there, private sharing. I mentioned privacy being very important. We allow you to, as a consumer, share privately with your family and your friends, and also in a in with taking advantage of certain features that create these very unique, very intimate, very personal storytelling environments, almost like storybooks within the platform that families love to invite into, and they control all of that. Again, it's at it's in their control. It's not dictated by somebody else or some other tech titan, if you will. And then finally, and very importantly as well, we have a lot of features and a lot of patents, by the way, that drive that are behind this proprietary technology platform that we built for $50,000,000. 5 zero over the course of six years. So finally, the last differentiator, I'd say, is a lot of features that drive rediscovery or the resurfacing of memories so that you can relive these things. That's why we take photos and videos of all these moments. We want to be able to be able to see them down the road, if you're throwing it into a digital box, you're going to lose them forever, especially if there's no organization. So I saw as an opportunity for us to differentiate, to really build a cloud platform for the consumer, and that's exactly what we've done, and we have just an amazing roadmap to extend our what we believe is our competitive lead in the market.

AktienTalk: 12:49

I can well imagine that the first steps were not particularly easy. How did you manage to arouse such interest with my media amongst smartphone manufacturers and providers, as it's now the case. Did you already have contacts within the industry?

Chris Giordano: 13:05

I certainly had contacts from my previous life that I described earlier. You know, look, we, we wanted to build a different platform. We and so we wanted to differentiate this way. We wanted to be media focused. We wanted to be very engaging. And we actually took a trip. I took a trip to India, which is just a fascinating market, of course, for so many different reasons. And I visited some of the leading smartphone manufacturers. I will also call them OEMs in this podcast, but OEMs, at the time, the leading OEMs in the world, which were leading the number two smartphone market in the world, that quickly jumped the United States to be second to China, given the amount of people there, et cetera. And India continues to just grow at such a rapid rate, while we were able to talk to these guys and realize that, because they make the phones, we had a unique ability or opportunity to integrate our system, which, again, is a consumer cloud platform, but we could integrate it As the default or native media gallery on an Android smartphone. We can't do this on iOS, because iOS has far too much control over their operating system. They don't allow it, but Android does, and so we were able to figure this out, that this capability was possible, and therefore be the first, for the first time ever, and still today, the only platform out there that replaces the stock gallery on an Android phone with a dynamic consumer cloud platform that which, by itself, is a far superior media gallery that's out there in the world, but then also brings in. Really important value proposition of the cloud, which is, of course, access to your data across all devices, keeping your data safe and secure, keeping your data private. So this was a revelation, and I'm always thankful, and think of often that first trip to India that allowed me to realize that, hey, this, this, this type of integration, was possible to bring this important value proposition quicker and more integrated to the consumer, which made it just far easier for them to use it. And so that was a revelation. But then we started talking to a number of telcos and a number of OEMs, and we target both smartphone manufacturers and also telcos or carriers. You mentioned it, so let's, let's talk about that a little bit. These are huge and huge industries, right? Of course, that are global, right? That service hundreds of millions of consumers all over the world and then have largely missed the consumer cloud platform, the consumer cloud market, rather, excuse me, opportunity, because at their core, they're either network people in the in the with regards to telcos or their device people, hardware people with regards to OEMs. So we partner with telecom carriers, telcos, as well as smartphone manufacturers are also called OEMs, because they largely missed the consumer cloud market opportunity, which, by the way, is worth 10s of billions of dollars, if not hundreds, and growing rapidly all over the world. And they've missed it because they're they're not good at software. They're typically either network people or hardware people, and so it's harder to adapt that way. They don't really have much of a digital revenue strategy, and they're also facing key challenges in their market. They're struggling with in market competition, for sure, they're struggling with competition with Google and Apple and so they are struggling there that you know if you are, if it's difficult for you to differentiate within your market, which I think for these, for these players, there it is, because if you think about a telco, they they have, for the most part now, all of them have their countries covered from a network perspective, and so or OEM, like most of these smartphones, have the same number of megapixels and a camera front and back, etc, right? So it's all for them to differentiate. And as a result, then customer churn is an issue, pricing is an issue. So margins are an issue, right? So these are very challenging, very real issues that these guys face, and also they they really don't have a much of a role in the digital life of the consumer. You don't really think about your telco other other than when your call drops or you get your bill and the pricing is too high. So that's a negative association. But the biggest affront, if you will, or the biggest challenge, is that they have acquired these massively strategic and valuable assets. Spend a lot of money doing so. They buy the phones that they sell to the consumers. They've acquired the consumers through a number of marketing strategies, right? That cost a lot of money, and they've built these networks to service their consumers, tearing up the streets, you know, within Germany and all over the world, to service these customers. And they're not monetizing, in our opinion, those strategic and valuable assets enough. And in fact, Google, Apple, Facebook, the tech titans of the world are riding on top of this for free and taking full advantage with their consumer cloud offerings to make billions and billions of dollars, both in direct, direct revenue as well as indirect revenue and servicing their broader business models, like, for example, advertising right with Google or Facebook, these guys are going through all your stuff to know where you take pictures of, what you take pictures, where you take pictures, what you take pictures of, to send you more ads. But iCloud is also going to make $12 billion for Apple next year, which is going to be the third largest revenue segment for Apple. So these are very strategic, direct contributors to their broader business models. And these players, these tech guidance are not going to share a single dollar with the OEMs or the telcos, not a single dollar or share any of that data as well. And so we determined that, hey, we're we have this consumer cloud platform that we built again over six years, 16 issue patents, so a lot of proprietary technology here, not saying it's impossible to build, but we take years and 10s of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions, to build what we have, and we would be far ahead when you when you finally got out there. So there's no real new entrance in our market. So we built this platform, and we said, look, let's go to these OEMs. Let's go to these telcos, and let's help them with their challenges their consumers need. The value proposition of the cloud. So let's bring them this platform. Let's give it to them for free, with no upfront cost, and then we will bring a revenue stream with it that will give them huge upside, hundreds of millions of dollars, based on the existing assets that they already own, that they're just going to we were going to help them extract more value from those assets while giving your consumers a really important value proposition, which is the cloud. So we actually figured out how to monetize a piece of smartphone real estate that's never been monetized before. We're the first ones to integrate as a default gallery, but we're the first ones to monetize that piece of real estate, and moreover, we actually share that revenue with our partners. So for the first time ever, think about it, these partners can monetize the photos and videos that are taken by their consumer on the devices they provide to their consumers and sent over the networks that they've built to provide their services. And this has never been done before. So I think that you know, the point of contention, if there is really any point of contention, is more that this, this has never been done before, right? So there's a newness to all of it. Telcos are typically not known to innovate, so we're very excited, because actually the sales cycle is very quick here. These guys are desperate for new streams of revenue. In particular, we bring them multiple streams of revenue that are very high margin and recurring, which they typically don't have an OEM will make a single digit margin on a new phone that they built, which is incredible, incredibly low. Spend so much time and effort doing building these incredible phones, a telco will also have such high churn and also low margins. So they're struggling. They're looking for new revenue streams, and they know they can't do this. And if they've done it, they build something in the like of the file cabinet that users don't like to use. And so they see this opportunity to get huge upside with really no upfront cost or effort for them. And we enable all of that.

AktienTalk: 22:07

In the end, it's all about making money for all sides, right?

Chris Giordano: 22:10

Yes. Marcus, for sure.

AktienTalk: 22:11

What does the revenue model look like for MiMedia and for smartphone manufacturers as well? For example, our providers?

Chris Giordano: 22:18

So in the end, what we say to these guys is we say, hey, we bring you this platform that will give you immediate market differentiation. You're going to go from having nothing in this market to what we think is best in class number one, it is a very sticky product. So we're going to bring a sticky product to you that will lower your customer churn, or set another way increase your retention of your customer, which for telco, which has such huge churn that's huge money saved, huge marketing dollars saved, huge revenue saved, right? So I mentioned these other two benefits that are very strategic, but yes, in the end, it's about making money and what, Renaissance, What? What? What, really, you know, resonates, if you will, with these partners is this revenue platform that we bring so we we bring it, we manage it, we will collaborate with our partners on the entire revenue strategy, primarily the two revenue streams that we bring our storage subscriptions. And that is the the partner will offer a certain amount of gigs, or space, storage space for free. Normally it's about five gigs. I'm just going to you know that can that can that can, again, differ based on partner or region, and then after the the free gigs are used, and I'm sure you're familiar with this, you have to upgrade to pay for more space. Consumers are doing that right, because this is your most priceless content. This stuff used to be giving away unlimited for free, but Google used to have that. For example, they saw what Apple was doing in making and they said, no, no, we're going to take away the unlimited for free now and charge and consumers are paying for this, right? Because this is our most priceless content. I mean, if you're paying for Netflix and you're paying for Spotify or Disney plus, or, you know, Paramount, or whatever it is, right? How could you not pay a couple dollars a month to maintain your most priceless photos and videos? This is where we spend half of our day on a smartphone every day addressing this type of content that we provide the superior solution for and protect. But again, if you drop your phone in a toilet, right? You don't care about the glass or the battery. You care about your photos, your videos, your content, and so we provide a superior solution for, I would say, 100% of what consumers care about on that phone. So storage subscription is very important. There's a lag to it, right? Because the user has to use up the content to then upgrade to pay, and then the other stream is mobile advertising. As you noted, we show a few ads a day. We make it as non intrusive as possible, because we don't want to pollute the media experience. We don't want to be you know, we never show an ad right next to a photo of one of our consumers, or you have to watch. A 15 second ad to just look at your video or photos. We never do that. We choose our we're very conscious of this because we we spend so much time focused on UI and UX, we don't want to damage that experience. We want the consumers to enjoy it, and they do enjoy we have unbelievable engagement and likability metrics from our consumers today. So mobile, advertising, storage, subscription, these are two very proven, very scalable, very attractive business models. If you think about Instagram, they're bigger than Facebook now, right? Facebook bought them for $1,000,000,000.30 dollar a user at the time. They had no revenue strategy, and now they're big, and they're showing 15 ads on average to the consumer every day. We're talking about an incredible business model here, showing two to four ads in a 24 hour period, spaced out, we have full control over what ads. We're very careful about the type of ads, etc. So No, no, you know crazy. You know, terrible type of genre of ads, if you will. We're very we're careful about that, and we get paid for from from the advertisers to publish their ads in our platform. And we remit a portion of that revenue to our our partners. On the mobile ad side, on the right, on the storage description side, we can run that either from our billing system, which is a global system, or we can integrate into the into our partners billing system. And so if the user is paying our partner for storage description, the partner will then remit dollars to us, or vice versa, depending on which billing system is deployed. But I want, I will. I want to mention this revenue can be turned on day one. Okay, so this is not like we have to wait. We can turn on revenue day one and begin to generate revenue from our users.

AktienTalk: 26:57

Can you give us some more information about the revenue stream through advertisement?

Chris Giordano: 27:03

I'm able to give you whatever you need, my friend. So we are, you know, we get paid by advertisers. You can consider us, in some respects, a publishing network, okay, because we are integrated here, deeply into the phone, as we mentioned, and for the first time ever, actually, advertisers are brought into this very strategic piece of the phone, right? So that's a very unique and disruptive element. Advertisers typically pay a certain cost per 1000 impressions or shown ads. So that's called CPM cost per mele and the Latin for 1000. Okay, no. CPMs will vary by country or by region based on you know, whether you're talking about a tier one network like the US, for example, or Germany, or a tier two or three network like Mexico, for example. So these CPMs for the same ad type. So this can be a full screen ad. Let's say the same ad type, the CPM, can be anywhere from $2 to$6 US in Mexico, but in the United States, that same ad unit can be anywhere from $10 to$1,000 plus, it depends on the level of targeting, the demographic information, the location of the ads, the uniqueness of the user engagement, the type of ads themselves. There are a lot of variables there, but we believe we offer a very unique piece of real estate for advertisers to reach people, and we will be able to command very high CPMs, both on the programmatic side as well as both directly with brands like, let's say, Coca Cola, Pepsi or Red Bull, what have you, where we would partner and give them kind of more exclusive targeting and demographic.

AktienTalk: 28:54

So would it be fair to say that you bring the revenue to the telco or the OEM manufacturer?

Chris Giordano: 29:02

As it relates to our platform, where it lives on a smartphone, right? We run that whole revenue strategy for them. They don't have to do anything. We it's on day one. And again, we can deploy it very quickly anywhere in the world in a matter of weeks. We don't charge anything up front for this. We run the back end for them. They pay for the storage used on an as used basis. They also pay for the customer acquisition, their customer, of course, but we run the whole solution for them front and back end, of course. In the front end, that's the software, and we maintain that, we upgrade that with our product roadmap continuously.

AktienTalk: 29:44

So the doors are wide open for you.

Chris Giordano: 29:48

Well, it's, it's a hell of a value proposition. Let's put it that way. And I think there's something that is will work in any market scenario. Again, it's, it's, it's. Attracting major dollars. I don't care how big the telco smartphone maker is, and we have some very big partners, by the way, some of the biggest in the world, in fact. But when you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in 80 plus percent margin revenue, that's recurring, right? Most of it just 80% fall to the bottom line for any any size player that's meaningful and based on their consumer basis, with very conservative assumptions, I'm talking two to four ads in a 24 hour period. I'm talking 1% conversion of free storage users to paid storage users. We can generate hundreds of millions of dollars of this type of high margin recurring revenue for so for anyone, that is meaningful, and the fact that we bring it to them in such a turnkey way, you can be able to do this on day one. It's very exciting, which is why, you know, I think our current period, our current stage, if you will, but we're about to enter a an explosive growth period. It's an excellent time for your investor community and that enjoy to be part of it, because we are now deploying with our partners and be and will very soon generate this type of revenue.

AktienTalk: 31:19

So you mentioned, MiMedia is already represented with its app in various countries. What are they? And why have you focused on these countries?

Chris Giordano: 31:29

Yes, thank you for asking. So listen, I'm from the US, right? I love my country. I love I've been able to travel my life 35 countries, and I hope I can travel three times that but, and I've also been, by the way, to your lovely country in Germany, and spent a lot of time traveling throughout that country. And I love it. I wish I can go back soon. So I mean, when I say I hope to meet some of your investors in person, but we are focused on several countries. You know, given I don't know my life, I have a much more of a broader view, if you will, on rest of world, you know, more, more than the United States and Canada, where we're public, as well as in Frankfurt, of course, recently. So so you know, the rest of world is just more exciting for us than focusing on the US, hugely populous. Of course, some of these regions excellent, growing internet and smartphone penetration, the the telcos and the OEMs over there are a lot more entrepreneur in their thinking. Um, so we target specifically LATAM, Latin America, uh, India, um, Southeast Asia, Africa, amazing market. They're growing very fast. Reminds me of India five years ago, and then also Mena, so the Middle East area. So, so we are focusing on those target markets. Again, not saying no to potential US or European or Canada partners, but we want to be first movers in these in these markets, which the regions that I mentioned, will represent the next billion new smartphones in the world to come. And so we want to be there we are today through our partners. And again, our partners will either focus on regions, or they'll be global. We are operating in Mexico, in Japan, in the United States, in Australia, in Puerto Rico, in Central America, in Colombia, etc. So we are making inroads in these markets that we're focused on, and some of them offer, you know, tier one advertising or tier three, but nevertheless, even tier three hugely, huge upside from a revenue perspective.

AktienTalk: 33:49

At a previous discussion, you mentioned different usage behaviours by people in different countries, for example on the Philippines, and you presented me some numbers and statistics, and these were very surprising.

Chris Giordano: 34:05

Well, you know, it is interesting. I think there's a, you know, a sub kind of element to this, of just the, almost like a sociology, sociological experiment, if you will, right? Just how people are using phones. How much photos and videos do they take? How much do they want to upload and protect, etc? How much do they share with their friends and family? Yeah. And so I think it was, we were talking a little bit more about India than the Philippines, yeah. So, you know, look, lot of these guys take trains to go to work, and so they're they're just consuming a ton of content on these train rides. Also, they're also just amazing sharers of content. This is how they relate. They want to stay in touch. They have huge families, of course. Is there, typically than ours. I think generally speaking, in my thesis, or my bet will be, you know, people will use, create content, use the cloud, I think in similar ways, at the end of the day, we're all human in the end of the day, we like taking videos of our children and sharing those with our family and friends. So, you know, I think that there will be some markets that that that use the internet more, right? We see that in Korea is like 90% daily usage of of of the internet in Korea. But so there'll be some outliers, if you will. But I think generally speaking, particularly as users or consumers rather, upgrade to smartphones in some of these regions that upgrade to ur when that becomes more available to them, which is happening very quickly. I think they're going to probably be very similar to some some tier one more developed countries.

AktienTalk: 35:58

What is important, in my opinion, is that the app is already pre installed on many, many devices in several countries. Can you give us some more details on that?

Chris Giordano: 36:09

I think this is pretty interesting and important. Yeah, so thank you. Yeah, no, agreed. It's a It's, I think it's a very interesting part of our story. I also say, by the way, it's to the earlier question, it's rare for a US company, if you will, that was born in the US to be focused so much on rest of world and travel to all different parts of the world for this so but this is definitely another element of our story here that I think is very unique And and somewhat disruptive. You know, being pre installed, that means actually integrated into the core code of the phone. So when a user buys a an Android phone of one of our partners, be it a telco or a smartphone maker, they take the phone out of the box. One of the first things they do right is they take a photo or video. They hear so much about this fancy camera, they want to see how it works, and that photo and video goes straight to our app, as the native gallery lives local there, and also goes straight to our cloud as we embed the cloud as part of all this. And so being being pre installed, it's not a hope and dream that a user will find us on the on the App Store, and then download us for free and then sign up and then use it and pay. We're already there and we're deeply embedded. A user will go straight to just using the app. And so that that built an engagement is really important, because we we take that built in engagement in addition to having such a fun and highly engaging app as design, where users are using the app, you know, when we did this in India, pre covid, we launched on 6 million phones with the number one OEM there, at The time, an Indian company.

AktienTalk: 38:01

6 million?

Chris Giordano: 38:02

yeah, 6 million phones, and it was an incredible case study. Obviously, the numbers are huge to say 6 million is a case study, but in India, when you talk about a billion people, but the less we proved out how engaging this thing was, how reliable it was how much users loved using it. Our likability metrics for phenomenal users were in the app 10 times a day, over 10 minutes a day. Social media type of engagement metrics. And so I think we get that some by being the native gallery. But also users really love using my media. And so our days were very we're the highest in the industry on Google Play Store, etc. People might think that it would be more lucrative for the company to concentrate on the big markets, like in the US, but you explained to me that this is not necessarily the case. Well, let me clarify a little bit. It would be highly lucrative if we want a large telco, for the example, in the United States, us is the is a tier one market. It's not the best market in the world for what we're doing, right? It's not so much that we don't want to be there. We don't love, you know, in this case, my home country, right? It's just that there's a bigger world out there, and we want to be first movers in those markets, and we have found that the telcos and the OEMs in those markets are a lot more faster to to execute, faster to move on this opportunity that they've never seen before. In the US telcos are just super slow. You know, takes a long time for them to come to these decisions, etc. So we want to be out there and win very large partners, and I'll talk a little bit later, some of them actually twice the size of even the larger players in the United States. So these are not small, small wins, but. And so let's, let's go prove it there, and then come back to the US and show them the evidence and show of this working show them how much users love this, how much money we're making for our partners, etc. And I think you're going to have a much quicker sales cycle. So I want to be the global, the largest independent global consumer cloud platform in the world, which, to me, is a multi billion dollar company that will with incredible margins and cash flow generation capability. And I think we can get there. And I think the US market, Canada, Europe, will be on top of all of it. Can you name some partners of my media, or maybe you can give us a number on how many cell phones the app is currently installed. So I mentioned the 6 million in India that was pre covid, obviously, covid kind of we went through, like the rest of the world. Of course. We went through a dormant period, if you will. We emerged from the covid. Thank thankfully. A lot of grit and and struggle with my team, but very proud of them to be able to emerge out of covid. And we've signed partnerships with a number of players, OEMs and telcos all over the world, and we're contracted, contracted so signed, to deploy our platform on, at the moment, 35 million devices that we've announced, and that's with players like America mobile, which is the number one telco in Latin America, 300 million subscribers, twice the size of Verizon. They have two brands, Telcel, which is the brand in Mexico, the number one telco in Mexico, that's their flagship country. Carlos Slim is the owner of America Mobile. I'm sure you've heard his name, one of the richest guys in the world. And then outside of Mexico, the brand is called clado, C, l, a, r, O. So we're very excited about what we're doing with American mobile and where this can go. That partnership alone can make this a multi billion dollar company. But we also have partnerships with orbic, which is a global smartphone manufacturer that deploys smartphones in the US, but then also in Australia, Japan, Germany, Latin America, they're looking into we have a New, recently announced partnership with shock, another fantastic OEM that's also deploying in the United States as well as they're looking into other markets as well. Quality. One is a large smartphone distributor that has their own brand of or OEM that makes smartphones called PCD. Alta is another partner that has a the largest consortium of MVNOs, which is stands for mobile virtual network operators. I don't know if you guys have them in Germany. You probably do, but you probably have heard of boost mobile or wind in Canada, for example, or mint in the United States, these are players telcos that are they don't own the network. They didn't build the network, for example. They lease the network bigger players like Verizon or Deutsche Telekom, for example. But then they offer really interesting marketing packages, if you will, for consumers. So in Mexico, Alton is the largest consortium of nbnos, and so we have a partnership with them. That's a very it's a very strong growing market. In Mexico, the nbnl market, it's, it's really growing very quickly. Reminds me of the US in the late 90s when I when I started? So yeah, so we are now deploying with these partners and embarking on the 35 million devices signed to deploy over the next 24 months, and we think that's going to make us a lot of money and as well as our partners. What could be the next country on my media's list? Let's say like that, or even continents you're looking to focus on? Yeah, well, we've had tremendous success so far in Latin America, obviously signing the number one telco there, but a number of other players that are focused on that, that region as well. So we're doing very well on that Tim. We want to be the number one consumer cloud in that market, which, by itself, again, I think, is a multi billion dollar company, because it's just a huge market, 600 million potential subscribers there. We're. Already addressing with our partners, more than half of that, but you'll see us push into Africa and Southeast Asia and Mena, I think, this year and next. And so we're excited about those regions and being having successful entries into those into those markets.

AktienTalk: 45:23

Are there any competitors in the market that you have to deal with right now?

Chris Giordano: 45:28

You know, we, we really don't see anybody. Nobody has, I think, the quality of platform that we do, and I want to make a point here. It's not about us being better than Google Photos or iCloud. We think we are, in many ways, they have other features as well, by the way, that we don't have. I want to stress that, but what I will say is, I think I'm very confident to say we're as good. Do you think we're better, but we're as good, that's not as important. And I say that, it might sound strange. It is because we're the only ones that actually share revenue with the telco or the OEM. So for them, they can be very confident that my media is providing a phenomenal offering and value proposition to consumers, which I'm going to say is as good as Google or iCloud, but I think in certain respects better. But from the partner's perspective, they've never been given this opportunity to generate this revenue and share in this revenue, to be able to have a sticky product, to lower their churn and obviously to differentiate their markets. So nobody, I have not seen anybody in any of these targets. We don't believe there's anybody that has a platform like ours, that has a distribution strategy like ours and a business model like ours. There is a player in the United States, called synchronous, which powers the Verizon cloud and Verizon, you know, doesn't talk about them in stores. I think Verizon represents a large portion of their of their market or their revenue. Look, they're a great company, but we don't, we don't really see them, but I'm gonna, I'll mention, I'll mention them as a name that's out there, but I will say, as it relates to new entrants, it's very difficult to get in this market at this point. It's, it's it's not easy to build what we've built. It takes a lot of time, the money, and so we feel good about our opportunity and the path ahead.

AktienTalk: 47:45

Chris, how does the revenue forecast looks like for this year?

Chris Giordano: 47:51

So, you know, I'd say the toughest thing about our business right now, it's the biggest risk, but it's also the biggest driver, is being able to project devices when they come online from our partners and so. And I start there because it's from these devices right where we take the embedded engagement, as we talked about before, and we turn that into massive revenue for our partners and for us. And so as these devices deploy, and I said 35 million contracted over 24 months, as they deploy and as they scale, it the revenue will scale in a non linear way. So for example, just on mobile advertising, at 5 million devices, we think we're making close to $1 a device. And just mobile ads, storage is on top of that. But at, you know, 10 million, that's north of $1 at 20 million, it's about 250 at 30 million, it's about four bucks a device. We're contracting 5 million. So it's a huge, you know, gross revenue potential here that we share with our partners. And again, these are based on single digit low single digit conversion on free to paid storage subscribers and market rates for CPMs for the mobile advertising side, actually assume India or Mexico CPMs, you know, in the dollar to$2 range, where we are actually deploying in tier one markets, where it's five to six times that. So we think we would be on low millions of devices here by the end of this year, but then scaling very rapidly to 30 million devices at the end of 25 which, by the way, again, we're contracted to deploy on 35 million. I do think our pipeline is so exciting. I can't mention it specifically, of course, but I think we're very close to actually doubling the size of contracted devices, which would dramatically. Basically increase the trajectory for us, because, again, it scales in a nonlinear way. So revenue, run rate for us is the most important metric, because our users, consumers in these regions typically hold their phone for more than two years on average, maybe in Germany, maybe United States, we're trained to buy new phones every year. I think that's happening less and less, because people realizing the iPhone really doesn't change from 14 to 15 and so why spend another 1000 plus dollars? But in these regions, especially, it's two to three years of time on average that a user holds onto their phones. So you can think of this almost like an annuity, as the embedded gallery over that period of time. So revenue run rate, I think, is very important here to think about so by the end of this year, depending on how many devices we're on. But let's assume low millions, because we're just deploying now, and this is going to ram dramatically in the second half of this year, as well as 25 I think 25 is going to be a huge year. I can foresee us being in, you know, somewhere in the three to 5 million revenue run rate, which would make us cash flow positive and in order to grow.

AktienTalk: 51:15

Is my media looking for fresh capital right now, on the market or on other ways.

Chris Giordano: 51:22

Well, we're always going to be opportunistic on that front. We're always, you know, you're asking a question to a CEO. So I think that and that's going to be based on growth. So I mentioned the trajectory potentially being doubled here with some new, very exciting partners, very large partners. So I think that if you know when that occurs, I think we might be opportunistic if that, if that's potentially possible, and so just to take advantage of that growth and go faster in these regions. Again, I mentioned the regions we want to extend to. But no, I think, look, this business model is very attractive. And even if we do half the number of devices that were contracted, you talk about $4 a device, 30 million devices, that's a billion dollar company. But if we do half, that is also, you know, a half a billion to a billion dollar company. And so as I mentioned, it's the biggest risk or the biggest driver. If their partners don't deliver the phones, we can make it happen, but when they do that is what's going to drive this model, both mobile advertising and storage subscription, and it's hugely cash generative, because we my media is really a software platform, and so the margins are 80 90% and it just falls to the bottom.

AktienTalk: 52:45

Another important point for sure is the shareholder structure. And I was really surprised to see some, yeah, really big names on your shareholders list.

Chris Giordano: 52:56

Well, listen, we've, we've, we have a tremendous shareholder base before going public in Canada, our shareholders were primarily, you know, large family offices, which, which, you know, were bigger, in some cases, than the venture than venture capital firm, theses, I would say, high net worth individuals, I would say very strategic investors. And when I mean by strategic, these are C level, former and current C level executives in major telcos, media companies and telecom companies, partly from my network, partly from just growing the network through our existing investor base. When we went public in Canada, we were truly fortunate to find Canaccord Genuity, which is one of the leading investment banks in Canada, and we had very strong support there. And and we just have a spectacular stable of some of the most influential, very smart investors in Canada. We want to know the same thing in Germany. That's why we came to Frankfurt. So that's you know, why we're excited about doing this podcast with you. We love the German investor. We hear, we understand that they are long term focused. And I think this is a really a company that just has incredible upside. Remember, I used to be an equity future channels and an investment banker and a private company investor. So, you know, we're really excited about the time to come. So we wanted to come to Frankfurt, which I understand follows Canadian companies quite closely, is a nice tie there. And eventually we'll graduate and grow up and a little bit more and come to the US. Market from an investor perspective, a from a public change perspective, based on what you said and what my media stands for, your market capitalization is surprisingly low right now.

AktienTalk: 55:16

A couple of weeks ago, my media announced a new partnership with Shack. Why was that a really important milestone for the company?

Chris Giordano: 55:26

Yeah, so we're quite excited about our latest one. First on the comment about market capitalization being low, what I'd like to say there is, in most of the databases, like a Bloomberg, for example, the number of shares is incorrect because we have, we have multiple voting structures. So in fact, our basic share outstanding number is around 74 million on a fully diluted basis, it's around 100 million, just to be clear. So you, if you apply that, you're going to see a much bigger market capitalization than a bloomer will show, and it's a really clean structure. I mean, there's warrants tied to a convertible debenture that we did. That's it. There's no exploding warrants, no hidden things that you know in our share structure. We really tried to make it as clean as possible. Of course, there's options for management so that, that's the first point, and obviously right now, pre, pre deployment of these partners, and really having low amounts of revenue today, but scaling, but we'll be scaling very, very quickly. Yes, I do see the market capitalization increasing quite substantially. Type of profile with these types of partners that are involved in this type of revenue and cash flow upside. I do think this is a very valuable company. And quickly, and I hope to see that appreciation in Germany and Canada, these exchanges, um shock is interesting company because they they're actually focused on the US, mainly as an OEM, they're looking into other markets as well, but I think they are. They make a fantastic smartphone at a great price. And so it's, it's going after that type of tier of market in the US, but I mentioned it before, being a tier one advertising market, for example, deploying on a shock phone as the default gallery. That ad unit in the United States could be worth 10 to 15 bucks. In Mexico, it's worth two so, you know, we've signed up a great deal with them. It's 5 million phones over the course of a couple years. I think there's huge upside to that deal, because I think shock is really poised to grow quite nicely, but we're excited about that immediate impact that it will have for us. We should be deploying here in the in the near term, and see some growth in the second half of this year, and then going into a very strong 25 but again, there's a multiplier effect, if you will, to the business model based on the fact that they're based in United States.

AktienTalk: 58:08

Chris, at the end of the show, I always leave the last words to my guest and ask him for the three most important reasons why his company stands out. And of course, this is also the case today.

Chris Giordano: 58:23

Okay, only three, all right. Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you for all this time and this opportunity. Let me say that before I before I end. So I think the first has to be that this is a huge tam addressable market globally. And there is a very important market need that is felt by extremely large companies and industries like the telco, like the OEM globally, a market need that we solve uniquely in a disruptive way, and really benefits these large players, and there are hundreds of millions of consumer, consumer, user, user bases, and so that's number one, is that there's just an enormous addressable market, and we're solving key problems that today remain unsolved, and if solved, can really make a huge impact with our partners, and then obviously us from a valuation perspective, it's an incredible business model. I'll say that as point number two in that it scales very nicely. We had built a platform here that can be deployed anywhere in the world in a matter of weeks. Last year, at this time, probably cost us$100,000 to deploy a partner. Today, that number is 10,000 and it doesn't matter if it's 1 million devices or 50 million devices, same cost. So we made this very, very scalable. A lot of hard work, by the way. And I think you know, human IP, if you will, going into that, that process. But so it is an incredible business. Small, it scales in a dramatic way that can be deployed very quickly. And again, you know, I mentioned that we're offering all of this with no upfront costs to our to our partners to extract incredible value from their existing assets. So you know when this is successful, and I think we're going to prove this out in the very short term, which is why I urge or suggest to your investors that they become involved. This will scale very quickly, and I think will result in a really big valuation uptick. I think the last point I would say is that the fact that this has already been proven from a tech perspective, from a deployment perspective, from a reliability perspective, from an engagement perspective, from a user likeability perspective, very important. Now we're deploying the revenue platform, and now we're going to be doing it with 35 million devices contracted. So we have gone through the due diligence process of some very large companies that I mentioned earlier, and we have come out with flying colors on the other end. And now we're deploying this successfully. Our integrations have been flawless. We're waiting for our partners now to ship these devices to be bought by consumers, etc, and used. And so that's happening now. And so we're contracting on 35 million devices over the course of the next two months, two years that I think, um, can make this a billion dollar company. And even if we hit half of those projections, I think that's the case. And then I mentioned that our pipeline could potentially double that trajectory and valuation upside. So I think what you can expect from us going forward is a really nice stream of news of us deploying so our user base growing, our revenue and cash flow growing. And then on top of that, new partner signings and new markets, new regions of the world, and then building from there.

AktienTalk: 1:02:08

Chris, that was really, really interesting. And thanks a lot again for your time. And I really hope that you will be my guest on the show sometimes in the future again.

Chris Giordano: 1:02:22

Absolutely! The pleasure is mine. Would love to do this anytime you let me know. Alright, take care. Goodbye.