Sunil Rajaraman: Online Writing Resource

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>>Hi welcome to Dog and Pony. I'm Vince Thompson. Finding the best content is a universal challenge whether you're a user or whether you're a marketer or producer looking to invest in this content. Seeking to solve this problem is the company Scripped. They're taking a page out of the Google Docs playbook and today they're CEO is with us, Sunil Rajaraman. Tell us about Scripped.

>>Rajaraman: So Scripped is going to amass the largest pool of writing talent the world has ever seen. This is a content business and we're starting by getting users onto our site with free screen writing software and eventually writers will find value at services that will provide them and on the back end producers, as you mentioned in your introduction, will find content from our writers.

>>Vince Thompson: So if I'm a screen writer, Scripped will give me a web based software that I can use?

>>Rajaraman: That's correct. So right now other alternatives in the box software world such as Final Draft costs about $200 to purchase. We want to amass screen writing talent by offering the software for free and bringing writers onto the site. We think that everyone should write their screenplay but the software should be free.

>>Vince Thompson: What's the big idea here? What happens next?

>>Rajaraman: You eventually build up a base of a lot of content. So to date about 14 million words have been written on Scripped. From there you have people like producers of short series or advertisers who will eventually be looking for content and we have all the content.

>>Vince Thompson: So you're creating a marketplace essentially.

>>Rajaraman: More or less, yes.

>>Vince Thompson: Tell me about these interesting ways to monetize this.

>>Rajaraman: We want our writers to be safe. That's our top priority. So we've created a registration platform where they can basically submit their screenplay to our vault and protect their screenplay for several years. Coverage is another interesting monetization strategy so, people want feedback on their scripts. And people want to know if studios would give their script a go or no go. So we partnered with a company that provides this kind of feedback.

>>Vince Thompson: Wow. So you've got software, you've got coverage's, you've got one stop shopping for festivals, that's on the writers side. Tell me how you plan to monetize it with the producers and marketers.

>>Rajaraman: You give away the subscription for free and you allow people to see what kind of content is on our site. They can then make the decision whether it's good content or bad content, whether that's an advertiser or whoever else.

>>Vince Thompson: Shouldn't I be concerned that some maybe unscrupulous person may read my material and then slightly change it and go their own way?

>>Rajaraman: Absolutely, I mean, that's always a concern in the world of Hollywood or in the world of writing in general and there's several protections against this kind of thing. So first, of course, is our registration platform which allows writers to first and foremost protect themselves. Now we haven't yet released the public posting service because we want to be as careful as possible.

>>Vince Thompson: What's the road to profitability look like?

>>Rajaraman: We've recently announced a partnership with the Wright Brothers, the makers of the Movie Magic Screenwriter. What we have to offer them is basically an audience of young writers, young aspiring writers who basically don't touch on that professionals market that they are working with right now. What we'd like to do with them is create a software patch that will make the transition between offline and online very easy. If you're a Scripped user you need access to offline software, you have that. You're a professional writer and you want online software to streamline the submission process for things like coverage and for things like competition submission. We have those services. And if you upload for Movie Magic Screenwriter to Scripped and then the end destination is reached, it's a win for Movie Magic. It's a win for Scripped.

>>Vince Thompson: What about the future of your company? What worries you? Any concerns?

>>Rajaraman: We're growing at a rate of 30 to 40 per day without marketing. I'm afraid that that will stop someday. Eventually we're gonna have to pour dollars into marketing. You know, I don't know how much it will cost to acquire users in the future but how many writers are there out there? That's always been like the big question that we get. Are there really a million screenwriters in the world? Laughter Proving that and really quantifying that is a difficulty. I don't know what our ceiling is right now. So those are some concerns.

>>Vince Thompson: Well, it sounds like a very exciting future. CEO Rajaraman, thank you so much.

>>Rajaraman: Thanks for having me.

>>Vince Thompson: Pleasure to have you. He's the CEO of Scripped.com, S-c-r-i-p-p-e-d. As always if you have questions and comments, ideas for guests, please email us. You can do so at info@dogandpony.com. I'm Vince Thompson. Thanks for watching.

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