It took considerable legwork to market the cost-effectiveness, flexibility and utility of leveraging one software-as-a-service platform for multiple projects without the accompanying development costs or headaches. At that point, many companies were trying to build platforms like Media Factory on their own, or were being sold one-off platforms by large advertising or marketing agencies to use in each of their UGC marketing campaigns - at nearly 10 times the monthly cost of using Media Factory. The other major challenge involved saving clients from themselves or their marketing agencies. This proved to be another major competitive advantage. We also integrated flexible pricing structures into our model, allowing clients to use specific Media Factory modules and scale up as needed. It was only when we established significant sales in our home market that we began expanding across Canada and the U.S.

So, we chose to avoid a head-to-head rivalry by initially staying out of their territory altogether and setting up a beach head in Toronto to focus on major GTA-based brands and media companies who might have a need for Media Factory. Could you survive and make it to the peak? In theory, yes - in reality, not a chance. Experience taught us that the odds of a small, unfunded Canadian tech startup challenging U.S.-based behemoths and winning is virtually nil - basically, the same odds of surviving a climb up Mt. The second lesson was that we didn’t delude ourselves into thinking we could crush those larger competitors. The move paid off and our early Canadian clients were impressed that a small, local shop - with whom they could have face-to-face contact if necessary - managed to produce a product that could rival those of much larger U.S. This helped provide a much-needed competitive edge. Specifically, we ensured that our platform offered widespread functionality and included application programming interfaces to allow third-party developers to build apps for Media Factory to suit their individual needs. We carefully analyzed the features our competitors were offering and tried to serve a niche that they couldn’t.

market and their platforms were less flexible than Media Factory, which would soon become Filemobile’s main software-as-a-service product suite. KickApps and Pluck were the main players, but both focused on the U.S. At the time, user-generated content was relatively new and the platforms to capture, moderate and publish it - say, to a major brand or media outlet’s website - were few. Article contentįirst, like the online fantasy sports business, we chose to operate in a specific market niche. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

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