The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
Overtime, the American startup of the day, shows what a media needs to look like to today.
The theme is sports in this case, but overall it should be entertainment. The existing ones lean too heavily toward politics and economics, and this must have been inherited from the times when it was necessary to read such news, i.e. make effort. This laid a filter on the consumer. Now you can watch media – this is convenient for everybody, and this means that you can create content with lighter topics.
The format is social media accounts. Overtime doesn’t have a website as such, its own mobile app didn’t rocket. Instead, they have 50 million subscribers in TikTok, YouTube and others altogether.
Overtime doesn’t purchase any content. 7000 fans voluntarily film pretty-looking clips of matches and get pennies for it. The startup doesn’t pay anything to any leagues or broadcasters. On the other side of the spectrum, there are fully-fledged original TV shows. Nothing in between.
The revenue comes from regular ads and souvenirs. Overtime launched sports leagues of its own, but the plan is to earn something serious from them no sooner than 2025, by which time it either flies or dies. And the sponsors bring USD 50M a year already.
It needs much investment, the competition in social media is wild, in some – ‘only un-subscriptions can be organic.’ Overtune has already spent over USD 100M, 2 bucks for every new subscriber.
It brought in another 100M in its latest round, the company’s value reached a round half a billion.
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
