Interview with Alan Levy, President/CEO of CINCHCAST
Interviewer: Larry Adler,
Principal The Troyanos Group
Adler: I’m here with Alan Levy the President and CEO of Cinchcast a new service product that is disrupting the worlds of event marketing, communication and conferencing in a host of different ways. How are you today Alan? Levy: Great Larry, thanks for having me. Adler: So let’s start with the basics, what is Cinchcast? Levy: Cinchcast is a cloud based webcasting, marketing and conferencing solution for the enterprise. It brings an array of capabilities throughout a business enterprise including but not limited to marketing solutions, learning, training and corporate communications. It’s a tool that helps people communicate better both inside and outside the organization. Adler: How did you come up with the name – Cinchcast? Levy: Well, communications and these types of tools can generally be very complicated and we wanted to create a solution that was very easy, in other words, that was a cinch. Tying the word cinch, with cast, because people know what a broadcast is, what a webcast is, made sense to me so hence Cinchcast. Adler: What did you see that others didn’t that led you to the creation of this? Levy: I’ve been in the telecommunications industry for almost 20 years, and for the last 6 years or so we’ve been involved in social media and just understanding the web and understanding what people do, and one of the areas I saw that had not yet been innovated was this area of conference calling particularly for large conference calls or events where there can perhaps be people numbering from 50 to 5000, no innovation in this space. I realized that there’s poor service, little or no customization and high price. It’s almost monopolistic in its tendency so we said this is an area we want to focus on. Adler: So that of course is one of the things that make Cinchcast exciting. You are filling a need that wasn’t properly fulfilled. What about it makes it unique? Levy: One of the things that make it unique is the ease of use and the simplicity of it. The way the large event or conference calling industry works is very complicated from the onset of the event and throughout. Listening in often times lacks sound clarity and the ability to record and playback the event is often times difficult for the end user. With traditional solutions there are many steps that companies need to take. Organizations have to email or speak to an account manager at a webcast or conference provider with their respective needs. Then for the event itself you need an operator which can be costly and cumbersome and at the end of the event it can be difficult to even find the file for future use or its availability may take lengthy periods of time. Further, if someone wanted to listen to it because they couldn’t make the event they would have to dial a phone number and listen in and the same clarity and quality issues remain. Not to mention that if visual aids were used, they would be non-existent in a phone playback. Adler: Is it correct to say that your system is also interactive; it goes both ways as opposed to most systems today that are one way? Levy: That’s the key, because everything is built around the phone network. Phones facilitate communication, that’s what you use a phone for, to talk to people, and that’s how our system is built. It’s the phone integrated with the stream. So if you have a deck or a presentation and you want to have a guest or someone moderate that event, it’s fine, it could be done and presenters, moderators and participants can all be in different locations. But the real power of the platform is the ability for people to interact with it. To pose a question, “how do you do this, and why is that product that way and how can I learn more,” that’s the beauty of the platform. Adler: Let’s talk a little about the robustness of the system. What are its applications? Levy: There are many applications, as I alluded to earlier; marketing is a very big area. Adler: That’s great let’s talk about that a little bit. Levy: Companies today are using the Cinchcast application for lead generation efforts. They want to host an event, they want to have an event and have slides to talk about a new product feature. They’re going to invite people to participate in the event. With our solution it’s very easy, it can be put on their own website it doesn’t have to be a WebEx page, they can leverage our technology in their own environment, it can be done for lead generation, Q&A, it can be panel discussions about a new drug or a new application that’s coming out. So marketing is definitely very important. The other thing that our platform ties into very well is social media. For example, if you want to do that event and broadcast it live on LinkedIn or on your Facebook page or let people know via twitter, we’ve built in all the social hooks into our platform to make it very easy to facilitate dialogue. Adler: That would lead me into the question about the ability to create content. We all know everyone is looking for content to fill their various spaces and needs. Can you talk about that a little bit? Levy: Content creation is an enormous area today because companies are creating digital beachheads in public places where people aggregate, whether it’s on their blog or Facebook page. People aggregate there and you have to provide content to keep them there. What’s interesting for them? Our tool is so easy. Why? Because you just need to pick up the phone and everyone has a phone. So, whether I’m participating as a listener, or whether I’m participating as a moderator or host of an event, it’s creating content that is relevant and it’s easy to produce. That’s really what makes this valuable; the ease of production makes the ability to create more content which is vital to keeping people interested and your brand relevant. Adler: Beyond content it would seem to me that there’s a whole world of training and learning that this service can also offer, can you talk about that? Levy: It works really well in e-learning and e-training because it’s not a one way dialogue. Learning requires people participating with one another, questions being posed and responded to. Our tool allows that to happen all in a virtual and remote manner. The other thing our platform does as we talk about it on the conferencing side is we built into the platform the ability to moderate events, to screen questions and we built all these solutions into the tool itself so you don’t need to rely on third party operators. You can use these tools yourself for training and learning inside your own organization. Adler: It seems very appropriate to me that this interview is for Game Changers because it sounds to me that Cinchcast is a game changer in its own right. It seems as though it’s faster, less expensive and easier than many of the services that are currently out there, and I would even say I don’t know if there are any services like this out there? Would you care to comment on that? Levy: I can’t add any more to that, you said it perfectly. Adler: Is there a way for our readers to be able to experience this? Are there any live demos or things they can do where they can experience how this works on their own? Levy: Sure, you can visit Cinchcast.com, there’s a lot of information there. We’ll be happy to create a demo account for anyone interested. It’s so easy, like riding a bike, once you get on it you’ll never forget how, and you’ll see it has applications that work throughout organizations. Cinchcast.com is how you check it out. Adler: So how long has the company been around now? Levy: We’ve been around for 6 years; we host 30,000 events a month with this technology. We’ve patented this technology which is very exciting as well. The ability to integrate the phone and the web is something that we’ve been focused on for many years. It’s becoming very apparent that more and more people are becoming content creators and self publishers today, and that’s one of the reasons why this works so well. Adler: Thanks very much Alan and best of luck from one Game Changer to another. Alan Levy is President and CEO of Cinchcast. No stranger to voice-based communications, Alan has founded multiple telecommunications companies. Alan was President and COO of Destia Communications, helping build Destia into a global telecom enterprise with operations in 10 countries and more than $350 million in annual revenue. Destia’s May 1999 IPO was shortly followed in December 1999 by the sale of the company to Viatel in a transaction valued in excess of $1billion. Prior to joining Destia, Alan, a CPA, held the CFO, Managing Director of Europe and EVP Legal and Finance positions at Viatel. Cinchcast is headquartered at 475 Park Ave South, New York, NY 10016, phone: (646) 478- 0800
