theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI for CFOs & AI Leaders in Silicon Valley | Analisa Goodin, Catch+Release

Clips
More from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI for CFOs & AI Leaders in Silicon Valley

Analisa Goodin

Founder & CEO

Catch+Release

play_circle_outline Catch+Release mission to license internet content for brands and creators.

play_circle_outline Catch+Release automates licensing process for brands and creators.

play_circle_outline Catch+Release team remote with technologists, designers, experts, venture-backed

play_circle_outline The Future of Online Content Creation: AI Disruption, Licensing, and Brand Building in Growing Communities

Info
Transcript

Analisa Goodin, Catch+Release

Analisa Goodin

Founder & CEO Catch+Release

TheCUBE covers a special presentation in their Palo Alto Studios with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, alongside the NYSE Wired community. Analisa Goodin, founder and CEO of Catch+Release, explains their mission to license the internet by working with content platforms, creators, brands, and advertising agencies. Catch+Release automates the licensing process by identifying content owners, assessing intellectual property, setting prices, and obtaining licenses on behalf of brands. The platform utilizes AI to facilitate content discovery and licensing. Catch+Rele... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What does Catch+Release do in terms of managing content rights for brands, creators, and advertising agencies? add

What does Catch+Release do to automate the licensing process for brands and content creators? add

What is the current status of the team, their focus, location, and recent partnerships of the company? add

What updates can you provide on the momentum and growth of the creator content category and the developments in AI and automation within your company? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Analisa Goodin, Catch+Release

search

>> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's coverage here, a special presentation here in our Palo Alto Studios. My name is John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with theCUBE and the NYSE Wired community. We got our east coast and the New York Stock Exchange, Cube, and also theCUBE here bringing you all the action. Analisa Goodin here, founder and CEO of Catch+Release. I'm fascinated by this mission and content because it does have impact on content value. ties into this AI generation as well as the CFO, because money's involved. Licensing content, creator culture is booming, open-source content remixing. TikTok ban coming up, maybe. Analisa, great to see you.

Analisa Goodin

>> Good to see you too, John.

>> So much to talk about. First, explain Catch+Release and your mission and how you got here, because this is really at the nexus of what I call digital rights in the modern era, as everything's open source and collaborative.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. Rights and licensing are a huge unspoken issue in the underbelly of this entire booming industry. So it's an exciting place to be. Catch+Release, our mission is to license the internet. So we work directly with content platforms. We work directly with creators. We work directly with brands and advertising agencies to manage the rights of content that they want to use in a public way. So someone producing an ad that wants to use a TikTok video that they found in that ad uses Catch+Release's platform and technology to obtain the rights to use that content.

>> So in this case, brands, TikTok creators can make money. So you're basically creating a platform for that. Does that sound like-

Analisa Goodin

>> Yes. Yeah.

>> If I'm a creator, I like you.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yes. Well, yeah. Also, if you're a brand, you like us too because we're protecting you from the legal risk and ramifications. I mean brands are getting sued all the time for accidentally using something that they didn't have the rights to. It happens all the time.

>> Give me an example, because I think that's a huge point.

Analisa Goodin

>> Sure. I mean sure. A lot of this stuff is public, but Chipotle was sued for $2 billion because they used a woman's image in a store that they didn't have proper permission for. Larger brands have higher exposure and, therefore, usually people will come out of the woodwork and say, Hey, you're using my stuff without permission. But we get this all the time. I get creators calling me all the time saying, "Hey, I just discovered that a piece of content that I posted to Instagram is being used in some advertisement that I didn't give permission for. What do I do?" So it's really that I don't think that large brands are actively trying to steal people's content. I think it's just really hard to scalably do the right thing. It's too easy to make mistakes. So that's why it's a technology solution to automate and scalably offer rights management to brands and creators.

>> That's a perfect topic for a CFO AI-focused, because this is one of those things that impacts obviously money, chief leagues in the admin area, legal, finance. But there's no mechanism. It's like, oh, the internet's free. I just grab it and click and cut and paste. Some creative, puts it in an ad. Next thing you know, billion-dollar lawsuit, that's the workflow. So there's no real checks and balances or guardrails. Is that your-

Analisa Goodin

>> Until now, yeah.

>> So explain the product and how people deploy with you and how do they engage on the solution?

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. So Catch+Release has automated the licensing process. So a brand, who we call a storyteller, is the buy side of our marketplace, finds a piece of content on the internet, and puts that URL or that image or video into our platform. What our platform does is it identifies who posted it, what other intellectual property exists within that image or video, because the people who have rights in an image or video aren't just the people who posted or own the image. It's also the faces that appear. In some cases, those faces are of children whose parents need to consent. It can be very ... The checks and balances there are super, super important. It can get really technical. Then once we've identified who the creator is, we understand the intellectual property bands, we work with the brand and the creator to set a price, and then Catch+Release obtains the license since we sub-license it to the brand with full indemnification.

>> Yeah. I mean you bring up so many things people might not think about. "Oh, my kids are in the video or picture. They're not old enough." I mean it's legal. So you have legal and historical. How much is the collision between old school, new school legal theory? I mean you go back to licensing ... Which I love that line, by the way. I think that's a phenomenal tagline. Very simple.

Analisa Goodin

>> Well, the reason I started the company was actually I came from the creative side. So I worked inside of advertising agencies and marketing teams at brands, finding images and videos on the internet for them to use in their productions. I started from a creative lens really finding great content that they wanted to use, and realized after the fact that licensing was this hugely important bottleneck to the whole process, that if we couldn't obtain the rights and we couldn't be thorough in getting those rights, making the payments, having record of the payments, paperwork on file with signatures, high-res masters, the whole thing, then really we had to start all over from the beginning each time. And so, I became really fascinated by that problem of, well, what if we build the licensing tech to make this super scalable? What would that then do to the creative industry? It would really open it up. It would blossom. It would allow people to use lots of things and it would allow creators of all types to participate in a new economy. So that's what I was really driven to do. One of the things that I realized was a perfect case for technology was that the copyright process really was a pattern. It always was the same. You always had to go through the same exact steps to obtain-

>> Great for task. Put an agent on that.

Analisa Goodin

>> Exactly. And so, to your point about copyright law, that's been a pretty steady state dictum for the last 70 years.

>> It's also ... I mean, first of all, that's a really great mission, so thank you for doing that. I remember the early days of Creative Commons and so many little nuances. I mean we've had cases on our publication where in the Creative Commons directories, people put in copyright because they know Creative Commons, you have to link back. So they're getting notified of the violation. They let it sit, and then they sue you. That's our little use case.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah.

>> But there's also inefficiencies. So companies, as a result of not having your platform, I've heard stories where I'm a banana company or Dole or whatever, Chiquita bananas, I might have 2,000 photos of a banana because I can't license the one. Then you have so much assets. So you have ... Now you've built a problem because you don't even want to go to the market and license. So you have photography.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah.

>> I mean it's like ... What are some of the inefficiencies that companies then just say, "Screw this. I'm not going to work on this. I'm just going to do my own thing." They got a database.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. Well, I think custom production is one major area that if a brand wants to make an ad, their two options really are either shoot it from scratch with ... I'm looking around here at a whole cast and crew and it looks a little bit like this, or to leverage stock libraries like Shutterstock or Getty or Adobe.

>> Oh, my eyes are on that one.

Analisa Goodin

>> It's tough because there's not an authentic solution as much in stock as there is with the internet. The internet represents culture. It's where five billion people are shooting and documenting their daily life on really high-quality cameras in their pocket now. That looks a lot different than it did when I first got started, but that's where we are now.

>> So on the creative side, I want to get your thoughts on this, because one of the things ... We're free content, so we're open source. If somebody uses our content, we just maybe get licensed, maybe we make some money on that. But we can talk about that offline.

Analisa Goodin

>> We'll talk about that offline.

>> But remixing is huge. And so, we believe that the open source software business is a tell sign to where media is going. You have contribution and then there's derivative works, there's remixing. But then there could be a business model, a dual core kind of thing. Do you look at things like that at all in the media? Because we're seeing the input it's creating. Legal can be friction or an accelerant.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yes, yes, definitely.

>> So what's your vision on that?

Analisa Goodin

>> Well, so I think for our technology, we want to be the fastest way to identify a content owner in an intellectual property. Let's call it intellectual property. The internet represents the largest massive intellectual property the world's ever seen. That's refreshing at a rate that's ... It's done a lap already on itself since we first sat down to start this conversation. So that needs to be ... It was really about scaling the identification of who owns the copyright and building the marketplace layer that can transact on that copyright between a buyer and a seller.

>> You do what, the marketplace, two-sided marketplace on this?

Analisa Goodin

>> That's right. So brands come to us with content that they want to use. We verify the owners and the creators. We manage the entire transaction, and then we sell it back to the buyer.

>> What's the motion for a creator? Take me through the day in the life. I'm a creator. I'm growing. I got a zillion subscribers now and I'm getting ... It got turned into a hobby, turns into a business. Now I'm a Twitch streamer. I don't know, it could be anybody.

Analisa Goodin

>> It really could be anybody. Actually Catch+Release licenses content from people who may not even think of themselves as creators all the time, but who happen to capture just the perfect shot of their family with their kids taking their first steps, and Pampers wants to use that in an ad. They weren't necessarily waking up this morning thinking they'd license a piece of content, but they in fact are. So we work with creators who identify as creators and are trying to make a living doing that, as well as the long tail of the creator population, which is really everyone with a smartphone these days. But the way that it works is once a brand has indicated interest, Catch+Release will guide them through the transaction. We've built software for them to go through the motions of releasing their copyright, identifying models, doing all the talent releases, payments, all that, and then we invite them to join our creator community after that. So creators often will ask, "Hey, how can I do this again?" or, "Can you protect me from someone using my work without my permission?" We've given them some really beautiful tools to just connect their social accounts to Catch+Release and we become the layer, the licensing layer, for them.

>> I definitely want to get in some of the products side, so I have a couple more questions. On AI, the big thing is I want to do derivative works or do an image. So I get a base copyright image I license, but then I want to pump it through some diffusion. Boom, I got this great cool thing. Does that qualify? Is there derivative works? Is it extension? Is it net new? Who owns that one? I mean-

Analisa Goodin

>> Well, this is a hot topic in the licensing industry right now, and there's a lot ... But we're waiting on the courts to come back and tell us. But where are they going to go? There's not a lot of precedent for it. So you really-

>> I would just say, yeah, the same license terms. I mean ... Because it is derivative works, isn't it?

Analisa Goodin

>> I think it is, definitely. I think even starting with a licensed image is a big step for the AI industry, because of course we know that a lot of these companies have scaled without getting consent to use training data. So that's a big area of opportunity for us.

>> Talk about the platform. Where does AI shine in? What's the technology? Are you guys vetting through? Is it help on the selection? If I'm a brand, I want to go fast, .

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah, totally. So Catch+Release is really about discovery and licensing. That's the catch is about how do you find what you're looking for? Because the internet ultimately is a really big place. When a brand is trying to tell a story or make an ad or do something, they want what's most relevant to them in that moment. So AI helps us tremendously with search. We're not only searching based on aesthetic quality, we're also searching based on license ability. So we use tech to assess and determine whether or not a piece of content on the open internet can be licensed using a number of probability factors, like how long ago was it posted? Who posted it? How engaged are they on that platform? How many intellectual property risks exist in that shot? What's the timeframe we think we can get a license by? For what price? So tech helps us predict all of that so that we can give that experience to the buyer.

>> So the buyer is in charge on the selection. What if I don't know what it's worth? So it sounds like you come in, you do the assessment. This is a quality piece. Then someone had created through it to the bucket or uploaded it. They don't have to set the price, do they, or-

Analisa Goodin

>> Well, no. We set the price based on the usage. So the stock imagery industry has really set the precedent for pricing rights for imagery and video. And so we take into consideration what the buyer wants to do with the piece of content. Do they intend to use it for six months? Do they want exclusivity? Do they want to put it on TV? Is it just going to be in a social post? These are all considerations that help us give them a price.

>> TV goes up and reach.

Analisa Goodin

>> Goes up, all media.

>> It's all numbers-based. It's a numbers game, right?

Analisa Goodin

>> Correct, correct. Then we have relationships with many of the top brands in the world that use our system on a regular basis. And so, they get some .

>> So take me through the creative process. I find that fascinating because that's really going to be a nice democratization. I've always been very critical of the creator culture because the CPM ad rates were really on volume, and sometimes you have a really epic thing that could be worth something with not a lot of volume. A very targeted piece in a lot of these YouTubers and creators, and I think they could make more money.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. Well, we believe there's latent demand for licensing that unlocking the internet as a source of supply will address. So creators can make money somewhat passively on Catch+Release. They can go about building their business as a creator and make money on the B-roll, essentially, that is the internet. The internet is basically-

>> We've got tons of B-roll, guys. For guys who are listening there, we've got tons of events we've been to.

Analisa Goodin

>> It essentially is, right?

>> Yeah.

Analisa Goodin

>> I mean that's one way to think about it is the internet is the B-roll of our lives. And so, there's a huge amount of efficiency making that available to people and a lot of opportunity for creators to make money without having to do a ton of work, a ton of extra work.

>> What are some of the categories for creators that are hot right now that people are watching? Is it YouTube, Twitch, photography, written word? Is it all of the above? Are you multimodal, all formats?

Analisa Goodin

>> All formats, for sure. We really think about intellectual property. So multimedia. Intellectual property is in data, it's in images, videos, music, writing, art. We focus primarily right now on photography and video because there's just such a huge opportunity there. But, yes, we're multimodal.

>> It's interesting. I'm watching some of the ... I won't say any names. Within LA, there's a lot of action around shrinking the studio model down where you can have a lot of license, because a lot of over-the-top programming on video. We're watching that very closely with theCUBE, because you can be very disruptive if you're a creator to replicate product through partnerships and things. Do you see that coming as well? I mean because it's really ... I mean we're at this wave where, hey, a big old monolithic media company could do something a certain way, and then for short, scrappy, smart, big audience numbers collected together could do something.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think we're seeing a huge amount of disruption to traditional advertising media right now. I think, to us, the opportunity is in the assets. It's in leveraging the assets and making those available. It's actually creating liquidity for the internet, because it's a supply chain without a liquidity mechanism. If you can't license it, there's no liquidity. So where that gets pointed to in the next few years is going to be really interesting .

>> Analisa, you know what I love about Catch+Release? First of all, I love the whole creator mission, because I think that's going to be something that we're passionate about. Of course, the brand side, that's where the money is. But when you're getting at this, the AI value, when we do all these Kubernetes with all the techies in all these big events, there's two things that come out. We're either producing AI and you get all the engineers and you're actually making the AI algorithms, but if you have data and workflows, that's valuable. That's intellectual property, whether you're a creator or an enterprise. That's what you're doing. It sounds like you're going into folks who have workflow creator, a brand, they have workflow, and then optimizing the assets on both sides.

Analisa Goodin

>> That's right. That's exactly right. We're helping creators ... Well, listen, at the end of the day, we believe creators are already doing all the work they need to do. They're buying the right camera equipment. They're documenting their life. They're sharing what's important to them. They're capturing their authentic experiences. I don't want them to have to worry about managing their assets in a marketplace. I don't want them to have to worry about ... They should set their pricing preferences, but they shouldn't have to worry about pricing on a per asset basis or in an exact licensing scenario. They shouldn't have to worry about making their content discoverable to brands. This is what we do for the creators. We basically build the tooling so that all they have to worry about is continuing to create great content and post to the internet.

>> Give us an update on where you guys are at, the team, the focus, location. Are you guys ... LA, here, remote, everywhere.

Analisa Goodin

>> We are remote, yeah. The team is ... It's mainly technologists, designers, licensing experts, creatives. We are venture-backed. Accel led our last round, our series A. We just launched a major partnership with TikTok. There are others that we'll be announcing in coming quarters. We're really on a mission to license the internet and build the licensing layer for the web to make sure this is happening at scale. As the internet grows, so does its licensing capability.

>> What was the idea? What was the origination? Because you have a legal background, right?

Analisa Goodin

>> I have by accident.

>> That's okay. We don't judge you.

Analisa Goodin

>> By accident I do. I started on the creative side. I was an expert photography and video researcher and visual researcher. I was great at finding content that my clients wanted to use. Then licensing became a necessity to learn, because it did nothing for my customers if I couldn't help them out with price.

>> It was the mundane task you had to do as a fatal flaw that didn't happen.

Analisa Goodin

>> That's exactly right. That's where I became really fascinated with the process of licensing and infatuated, I would say, with the opportunity to build something to make that easy, because it was just too hard.

>> Then obviously getting a series A with Accel. They want to see scale, they want to see trajectory. Give us some updates on momentum, what you guys got going on. details.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. Sure. I'm super excited. Creator content is our largest growing category, so going out into the internet and finding content that's never been licensed before and making that licensable in a predictable timeframe for our customers. It's our fastest growing segment. So we're seeing 400% growth there year over year, which is super exciting. We have so much coming on the product with regards to AI and generative AI and automation and workflows. We're really ramping up the creator communities, so creators that have joined Catch+Release, that's grown about 600% year over year. There's a lot of value propositions there for creators. So really excited to continue to do that.

>> Yeah. Do you see any changes ... We're in the B2B area, so we get a good feel for what the influencer market is on the consumer side. But there's a lot of discussion around what is an influencer in the B2B sector? Are you doing any B2B activity?

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. When you say B2B, do you mean like-

>> Just the business, like enterprise, influencers. We're not selling consumer products, like media.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yes, correct. Yeah. I mean imagery gets used in every single industry. Imagery, video gets used everywhere. So some of our clients are B2B, some of them are B2C, some of them are D2C. We work with a number of different customers on that.

>> So when did you close the last round of funding?

Analisa Goodin

>> Last year. We'll be going out for our next round probably somewhere in 2025, on the back of some really incredible partnerships and some strategic opportunities. So we'll-

>> So TikTok.

Analisa Goodin

>> TikTok is one.

>> Brands.

Analisa Goodin

>> Brands we're working with, I mean we work with all of the major advertisers, P&G, all the holding companies. So publicists-

>> Agencies too, or just direct to brands?

Analisa Goodin

>> Both, actually. We support the whole ecosystem. So advertising agencies play a really critical role in licensing content and making scalable creative solutions for their brands. So we work with them just as much as we work with the brands.

>> Is there a nugget of content that works best in your experience now that you're in the entrepreneurial role, but given your research background, say that dog hunts, that one doesn't? Is there-

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah, I would say emotional believability trumps pretty much everything else right now. So authenticity is super important.

>> Originality.

Analisa Goodin

>> Originality. If a consumer can smell that it's fake-

>> Fake. Oh God.

Analisa Goodin

>> They can smell it from a mile away. They're becoming very sensitive to those nuances. So using content that's authentic and emotionally believable is hugely performant for agencies and brands.

>> Yeah. I mean it seems to me we're moving into an era of relationships, and the transactional nature of internet's moving is passe. Everyone clicks on links. I have my affiliate link. It's like I think people are gravitating towards more connection.

Analisa Goodin

>> I think that's right. I actually think that while we're all dazzled by the output of generative AI and the incredible things it's been able to do with generating imagery and video, I would say it's actually created even more opportunity for authenticity now that people really are craving. I think as we see AI increase, I think we're going to put a premium on authenticity and human-created content.

>> Yeah, I mean AI is a great way to create vanilla content if you want vanilla, plain vanilla. But if you want originality and spice, you want to have ... Original content's the new goal.

Analisa Goodin

>> That's right. I think where AI will disrupt the industry first is in vanilla content providers. Where content is vanilla, generative AI will be able to replace that. I love that analogy, by the way.

>> Yeah, it's just boring and-

Analisa Goodin

>> I also really like vanilla ice cream.

>> I do, too.

Analisa Goodin

>> It's got such a bad rep.

>> Yeah, French vanilla's my favorite, actually. I like vanilla news. I mean, hey, news happened. What's it mean? News is a great example in our business. News is just vanilla. It's like it's out there, but then people want the progressions. What's next? The next prompt is ... What does it mean?

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah.

>> Are my friends looking at it? conversation? Should I pay attention to it?

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. Is it memorable? Is it something that ... Is it intersecting with me in my day in a way that is adding value? Yeah.

>> I mean progression digitally is interesting. Internet is open to all kinds of new ways to understand.

Analisa Goodin

>> I love the idea that even in an era where AI is going to be doing so much for us, that at the end of the day, human creators are bringing the real value. I love that and I want to protect that. That's why licensing is so important.

>> John Mack, an entrepreneur who's got a non-profit, has a question. He asks people postcards for the future. He's like, how do we preserve humanity in a digital age? It's a provocative question. People have different answers.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. Well, I think the way people are documenting their life and sharing the documentation of their life is one step toward that. We're seeing incredible moments and memories and contents and stories captured and shared by creators. The other thing is how to behave as a software company interfacing with the general public, because that's what we do on a regular basis. Our software is reaching out to creators who we've never spoken with before, we don't have a relationship with, and who we're expecting to trust that we have their best interest in mind to navigate a transaction that they maybe have never done before. Many people have never licensed anything before, so this is the first time for them doing it. And so, how we interface with them is really important. Building trust with them is really important, how we-

>> First impression.

Analisa Goodin

>> Yeah. The language that we use when our system generates responses for them. There's a lot that we think about in terms of the humanity of the experience.

>> Well, I'm super excited. Thanks for coming. I feel I just got a good mentoring session. Thank you very much.

Analisa Goodin

>> Thank you, John. It's great .

>> We have a lot of content we might want to license, figure out ... We're probably not good enough, but we'll see, for brands.

Analisa Goodin

>> I'm sure. You never know.

>> Thank you for coming on. I appreciate you.

Analisa Goodin

>> Thank you.

>> All right. theCUBE and the NYSE community bringing in all the action. Licensing is huge. Licensing the internet is a big, bold vision, but again AI will accelerate and disrupt all industries. So music, photography, video, media, all kinds of aspects. The new creators are the new brands. You're seeing a lot more action. Of course, theCUBE, we're doing our part with theCUBE, NYSE Wired community. Thanks for watching.