GLTYR - a New App for C2C, C2B, B2C, B2B Multi-Media Communication

Part of an Entrepreneur Q&A Series [see other Q&As here: Whisk]

UPDATE on 3/9/14: Added some responses from Sudhakar to user questions in the comments section.

I was recently catching up with my good friend - the multi-talented Subra Sudhakar - a tech industry veteran, CEO of the startup School Cues and an accomplished Indian classical musician who has played with leading Indian musicians over the years. As it turned out, I discovered he had just co-founded another startup - called GLTYR. Having heard from him about it, I checked it out myself and was impressed because I think this product will be a catalyst for more advanced personalized video/audio/text communication in the coming years. Here is a Q&A I did with Sudhakar about his new product/company (with minor edits for grammar/clarity).

Yotta Point: What is GLTYR?

Sudhakar: GLTYR (pronounced “Glitter”) is a mobile app that helps create and present your message to make an emotional connection with your audience. Your message comes alive with a picture, audio and video and up to 900 characters of text. What makes this app even more exciting is that a GLTYR message can be created and sent out in as little as three to five minutes (depending on the length of your message) - entirely through the app.

Yotta Point: How did you come up with the idea for GLTYR?

Sudhakar: The genesis for GLTYR came from a combination of five technology and behavioral trends –

1. The average human attention span is two minutes or less in absorbing and retaining information.
2. Content will ultimately end up being created and consumed on a mobile device, rendering the desktop obsolete in several scenarios or applications
3. The world is going mobile so quickly that there is a greater probability that a coffee shop owner in a remote village in Mongolia will use a smart phone and not a computer to create and send out quick messages / digital fliers that would drive his brand across the globe in less than a few minutes.
4. There are several fields where the concurrent confluence of audio-video-visual-text integrated with human creativity is required to make a strong emotional connection with the audience. These fields or areas include commercials, dating profiles, resumes, food, performing arts, marketing fliers, greetings, invitations, business cards, elevator pitches, value propositions etc.
5. The cost of producing audio-video-visual commercials is prohibitively expensive for the average consumer or a small business. The cost of purchasing, filling out and sending greeting cards is also getting more expensive. Plus, these cards are unemotional, with a limited shelf life on the refrigerator door. We would like to make it ridiculously affordable for people to create messages / commercials / cards / resumes on the fly which integrates picture, audio, video and text and push it out in less than a few minutes to thousands of people.

Yotta Point: Why should anyone consider using GLTYR? Aren’t there other apps out there which have similar capabilities?

Sudhakar: There are no other apps to create audio-video rich content as easily as GLTYR does inside of one app. Current methods involve using multiple apps to produce the content and then combining them together using standard html programming tools to make it presentable. The uniqueness of GLTYR is also that there is no [PC] web interface to create content. It’s entirely mobile. However, the content created on a mobile device can be consumed on the browser which is opposite to what is happening today, where the content (long form text, audio and video) is primarily created on the desktop / PC and pushed to the various consumption mediums including the mobile devices. Most of the existing apps are either Mobile-to-Mobile or Mobile-to-Desktop/Mobile with limited integration of picture/audio/video/text. Most importantly, a GLTYR can be updated real time from anywhere and also deleted anytime which will erase it from the mass media.

Yotta Point: There is definitely some value there. But what will a typical end user find valuable with GLTYR that would make them want to switch from any existing social media platform to you?

Sudhakar: GLTYR is not a social media platform. This app is for content creation - just like Tumblr. Users can assemble and deliver content using a single app - that does it all. It’s [also] a open loop system, unlike most social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn etc.

Yotta Point: What do you mean by "open loop system"?

Sudhakar: Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp messages can only be sent to network members. That’s closed loop. [With] GLTYR, you can send to your social network, and you can also send to people outside your network though text and email. That’s open loop.

Yotta Point: Are you looking for funding?

Sudhakar: We are currently self-funded and are comfortable where we are. We have started receiving calls from investors. We will entertain a conversation only if the investor goals are fully aligned with our mission of building and growing a sustainable business instead of looking for a quick return. We have a patent pending on our platform.

Yotta Point: Who do you consider your current and potential competitors? (whether or not they have the same capabilities as you do today)

Sudhakar: Mobile audios and videos is a growing market. It’s the future. We have established players in Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter (Vine), Google (YouTube) and a host of other players in this market. All of them are doing a fantastic job - and we expect this field to grow quickly in the coming years. The current trends are to use multiple applications or platforms like video recorder apps, audio recording apps, website creation app, etc. We would expect companies like Yahoo - with Tumblr, Google - with Blogger, About.me and similar platforms to come up with ways to create rich GLTYR like content in the not too distant future.

Yotta Point: How do you see GLTYR eventually becoming a profitable company?

Sudhakar: We are considering several paths to monetization – an ad supported model will not be our primary focus. We believe there are several creative avenues to monetize a platform like GLTYR. GLTYR is a utility app with no gimmicks or games. We are solving a serious problem for an audience that deserves to be heard or seen. We are all about creating an intimate connection with the audience in two minutes or less. We are focused on business sustainability and going mobile first. 

Yotta Point: Can you tell me a bit about yourself and the team behind GLTYR – in terms of your professional background?

Sudhakar: My background is primarily in Enterprise Software (ex-Microsoft/I2/Applied Materials). GLTYR is my third company. The first one was in the K-12 education space (School Cues) - an integrated web-email-text-mobile enterprise communication and engagement platform for small schools to connect with parents. That’s still in business and being used in schools across the US and Canada. The second one was a real time social polling engine through pictures (Relfr). We have not done much with it since launching it in summer. We like to take on difficult social problems that people don’t want to touch, either because there is no investor interest or its too difficult to get a quick return on. I got my Ph.D. from USC and my undergrad from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. My CTO for all three companies including GLTYR is Ram Iyer - the smartest technologist one can find. He has a great track record of building enterprise and consumer products in education, financial services, and music industry on mobile and desktop platforms.

Yotta Point: Looking ahead a year from now, what are 5 things you would like to see customers using GLYTR for?

Sudhakar: Since GLTYR is intended to trigger an emotional response from the viewer, the five markets where we would love to see GLTYR used for are:

1. [Greeting] Card industry (Mobile greeting cards with audio and video capabilities) [example]
2. Job resume market [example]
3. Small business commercials [example]
4. Artists and Dating profiles [artist example, dating profile example]
5. Foodies, bloggers and writers [example]
6. Healthcare and doctor’s offices [example]

We are also building an enterprise version of GLTYR as we are receiving considerable interest from companies from their sales prospecting and recruiting departments.

GLTYR would also be a good tool to use for things that will probably require copyright issues. A 30 sec video or audio uploaded on YouTube can be downloaded almost instantly by any user. But for GLTYR, there is no download capability. This is really important in today’s working world where items with intellectual property require protection and cannot be easily downloaded.

Yotta Point: Thank you for taking the time - this has the makings of a great product. I'll be watching this one closely! Good luck!

Comments

[TR]

I sent Sudhakar some questions from people trying the app (who shared their feedback with me). The questions and Sudhakar's responses are below.

Q: Can contacts be added in the app - e.g., by manual addition or having the app pull contacts from the smartphone contacts list?

Sudhakar: We are moving to a direct email send from your phone client (coming in April) which means that when you click on send, one of the options would be to send as [an] email from your client. This would help you pull up your contacts from your phone’s list.

Q: Can you create groups right in the app - so that if someone wanted to email the link to a group - rather than manually add multiple people individually to each message - that would make it easy?

Sudhakar: [When the capability is rolled out] the user can access their contacts from their client email to send out the GLTYR link. GLTYR does not create groups within.

Q: Can someone directly click a button in the app to share the message on Facebook/Twitter?

Sudhakar: Yes, [we] have incorporated this feature in the next release this week to the app store, and should be approved by Apple in about 2 weeks.

Q: Some people edit photos and videos before they get posted online. Will this tool enable any editing of photos/videos before posting?

Sudhakar: Not in Phase 1. We have photo editing in Phase 3 - [but] our product is for the masses and >80% of the [customer base would not be] edit[ing] photos on the fly using an app.

Q: Instead of a video, can someone just upload a photo and add audio? Example, people might take a picture on a trip and want to add some comments on it, rather than upload a video.

Sudhakar: Yes, any combination of Photo + audio + video + summary is possible.

Q: If someone wants to NOT share a message with person X (assume person X was wrongly sent a link to the message by someone else), what can be done? Can the link to the message be changed? If the link can’t be changed, can the video/content be moved to another message with a new link easily and the old link/message deleted?

Sudhakar: You control who you send it to.. it just works like an email. [On the second part of the question] the answer is “not” at this point. We try to keep it as simple as possible and allow the users to dictate what they really need and what’s nice to have. We don’t have anything at this time that would generate a new link without deleting the profile. We do not track who can view/login etc.

Q: Can the text part of the message include URLs (embedded or in text form)?

Sudhakar: Yes, coming in [the] April release

Q: Can you embed the content/video in a blog post (like you can with YouTube) or in an email (everything will show up in the body of the email like an html page with text/pictures/video today) - instead of having to send people a link to a separate URL for them to click?

Sudhakar: We did this once and our users did not like it… it’s because of rendering issues on different browsers and devices. We will address this again in summer.