>>Steven Kydd: I want to tell you a story about three entrepreneurs, two industries,
and one big idea.
My partners, Joe and Larry and I set off to start a new media company just about one year
ago and we knew that company needed to be at the nexus of both media and technology.
And what we really wanted to focus on, that big idea, was content creation, and specifically
video for this new age of the media business that is driven by mobile, by global, and by
social factors that we've never witnessed before.
The media business has three components: Creation, but it also has distribution and monetization.
And the biggest media platforms in the world, like Google, Facebook, Apple, they aren't
focused on creation.
They're focused on distribution and monetization.
And at the same time, the traditional media companies who would create video are focused
on their core businesses of TV and movies.
So that left an amazing white space, a huge opportunity for someone to step in to create
video specifically for these platforms.
And what's great is the media business is being transformed before our eyes.
Never before have we seen these experiences of global, mobile, social.
And with connected TVs, this is all about to go to a very new and interesting place.
And so as good entrepreneurs, we sat around a table together in between white board sessions
and we would often share a meal.
And a strange thing happened along the way.
We started talking about the food around the table as much as this big idea.
And then we realized that the big idea was actually right in front of us.
It was food.
It's a universal language that connects us all.
And some of the best moments in our lives are sitting around a table sharing a meal
with people that we care about.
And, you know, I look back to growing up in Maine.
I grew up in a very small town where we grew our own vegetables.
My Uncle Dick is a lobsterman in Deer Isle Maine, and so we always knew where our food
came from.
And I took that same passion for food when I started my own family, and my British wife,
Sal, and our kids actually cook and it's become part of our family culture.
And so I had a passion for food, but so did my partners Joe and Larry.
And so we thought what a unique opportunity to actually be able to share our personal
passions and pair that with our life's work.
And that's when a year ago we started Tastemade, the world's first global food network built
for digital platforms.
And our mission is to connect the world through food.
And we thought the best way to connect the world through food was actually through media,
something that inspires us all.
And this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
You've heard about this disruption happening around the media business today from some
of the other speakers.
You know, 20 years ago, some of the most amazing brands were built in the early days of cable,
that met these new niche content demands from consumers.
Companies like Discovery Networks or Scripps Networks or ESPN and cable.
And we think that same opportunity exists today in digital.
But it's going to happen a very different way with entirely new types of talent from
every walk of life around the world.
Freed from time slots, not having to worry about what does the studio exec say about
their creativity.
They have complete creative freedom, and we believe these new storytellers are going to
lead to a much better place.
And what's interesting is how consumers are reacting.
50% of all of our audience on the Tastemade network is coming from mobile devices.
And then over two-thirds of it is coming from outside of the United States.
Again, mobile and social driving things like never before in the media business.
So we decided to build a studio in Santa Monica to invite all of these people to come and
create shows in our studio.
We built a 7,000 square foot sound stage and we offer it up to them for free.
Sounds like a crazy business model; right?
But what happens is you attract the best creators.
And what creativity we saw.
I'm going to show you something that we did with Japan week.
We invited the biggest cooking channels from Japan in our network and brought them to California.
And then we did something radical.
We brought their fans, and we said invite them.
And they came to our studio, and together they were able to, in person, come together
to connect, collaborate, and create high-quality programming.
And this looks just as good as anything that you find on TV, because of these massive advancements
that you see in digital cameras and new types of advancements that provides the ability
for all of these people to connect together.
And YouTube made all of that possible.
Now, we've been a partner with YouTube since we started the company a year ago, and I can
tell you creativity is flourishing like never before.
A new generation of storytellers have access to audiences.
They are completely free to tell their own stories.
A stay-at-home mom who is able to do a cooking show from her home and earn money to send
her kids to school.
People who are crazy about barbecue.
And of course the vegan impalio (phonetic) craze is also inspiring people.
So no matter what you're interested in and no matter what your passions are for food,
they're all here on YouTube.
And it's our job as entrepreneurs to build a platform and a community to bring all of
these people together and accelerate this creativity.
Now, let me tell you a little story about some of these people.
The Sorted food guys, they are the biggest cooking channel on YouTube in the U.K.
They are bigger on YouTube than Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay combined, and only one of
them knows how to cook.
[ Video playing ] >>> This is Ben, Jamie, Barry and Mike.
We are old school mates and, together, the faces of Sorted, an online cooking community
with one aim.
To get more of our generation into the kitchen.
In each episode one of us attempts to impress the group with a great tasting recipe, and
we talk food at the table.
[ Video ends ] >>Steven Kydd: All right.
So going from the U.K. to where all the coolest people in the world live now, Brazil.
This is I kill for dessert.
This is Danielle, she is a pastry chef, and her husband Paulo is a filmmaker, and together
they have one of the most popular cooking channels in Brazil.
And they had this radical idea of taking their show on the road, literally.
Danielle wanted to go to pastry school in Paris, so they picked up the show, they rented
an apartment on Airbnb with a killer kitchen, used that for their set, and they broadcast
their Portuguese language show from an apartment in Paris and partnering with Tastemade.
[ Video playing ] [ Video ends ]
>>Steven Kydd: Again, this was done by two people and the best part is VH1 just picked
up this show and it is now being broadcast on VH1 in Brazil.
Now, from Brazil let's go down under to Australia, one of the exciting new channels that just
started less than a year ago, coming directly from Bondi Beach in Sydney, Bondi Harvest.
[ Video playing ] >>> All right, guys, Bondi Harvest.
We're going to be in my backyard, in the sea, diving for the freshest, freshest produce.
We're going to go to our local Bondi Harvest market, and we're going to put together and
we're going to have party.
[ Video ends ] >>Steven Kydd: And then coming back to the
United States, a pair of -- a filmmaker, Daniel -- I'm sorry.
A filmmaker Mira and her friend Daniel, who is a chef, pulled together this new company
called the Perennial Plate, and they travel around the world telling amazing culinary
stories.
[ Video playing ] [ Video ends ]
>>Steven Kydd: So it's amazing, as you can see this new creative class, empowered by
YouTube, empowered by technology to reach audiences with really high-quality programming.
But as entrepreneurs, we weren't satisfied with just that.
We wanted to bring greater scale to this opportunity.
And so last month, we launched the Tastemade app that allows anyone around the world to
create their own show directly from their mobile phone in minutes.
That's right.
You shoot, edit, and upload directly from the phone.
[ Video playing ] >>> Covent Garden, it is the place to be.
>>> And our (indiscernible) person in the whole wide world, Jamie Oliver, has opened
up Union Jack's here, so we're going to check it out.
[ Video ends ] >>Steven Kydd: What you are seeing here was
all shot from the phone.
An entire one-minute show that anyone around the world can do.
It's fun, it's easy, it's fast, and it's all in HD.
[ Video playing ] >>> I have come from the lamb chops.
>>> And I have come for the banger pizza, which is sausage, English mustard, onion,
obviously (indiscernible), all the other ingredients upon which this fine country was built upon.
[ Video ends ] >>Steven Kydd: So if you think about Anthony
Bourdain's "No Reservations," imagine this, in multiple languages all around the world,
people who are passionate about food can now have their own show, completely empowered
by the age of YouTube.
[ Video playing ] >>> That was quintessentially British and
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
[ Video ends ] >>Steven Kydd: So this new generation of storytellers
that people were talking about earlier today are hungry for this new type of technology,
and we've seen amazing traction just in the last month.
We've had episodes come in from over 250 cities, across 35 countries and in 10 different languages
and last month we got our first episode uploaded from Mongolia.
So my partners and I, we're all food lovers.
And our mission at Tastemade is to connect the world through food.
And the great part is while some people love food, others love everything about connecting
with their audiences.
And so what we're excited about here at Tastemade is to individually form connections with people
around the world, around the universal language and something that connects us all, food.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]