Episode 214: Bob Mason & Andy Feinberg - Co-Founders & Managing Partners, Argon Ventures

Summary: Early to market… it can sometimes mean the kiss of death for a company. However, if you get it the timing right, it’s a competitive advantage and an opportunity to build a massive company. In this episode, we’ve got a great story about a company that was in this exact scenario, yet they executed, scaled and remain a pillar tech company in the industry. The company I’m talking about is Brightcove and in today’s interview we discuss the company’s full lifecycle journey. Brightcove was founded by Bob and serial entrepreneur, Jeremy Allaire. They were early pioneers in the world of online video back in 2004. Andy also joined the company early on as an executive and eventually served as its CEO. Thus, in this interview, we are able to get into all the weeds from the early days of the company to its IPO. And as a bonus,Bob provided a really cool video that shares the very first prototype of Brightcove's concept back in 2004. So, how much did they get right for online video? It’s pretty cool to see how a lot of their concepts still hold true close to 20 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxaOpsSoHp8 Bob and Andy are now running Argon Ventures, a pre-seed venture fund, which is leading investments in Intelligent Industry Solutions. In this episode of our podcast, we also cover lots of other great topics like: * Their background stories, including some great details from Bob’s time at ATG and Andy’s experience at Lycos. * How Bob got into investing and his experience with Project 11 and as a mentor at Techstars. * All the details on Argon Ventures and the types of companies and investments they are targeting. * What it’s like being a CEO of a publicly traded company. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.