Reach – Matt Kaine
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About the Episode
Are you trying to become a licensing partner for some major brands? Well today’s guest tell us why that is an amateur move and why the key to success is actually being a technology partner. Also, listen to the part of the show where he talks about how to innovate by adding technology to things from the past.
Alexander Zudin is the CEO of Digital Publishing Division of Paragon Software.
Show Notes
Being a Licensing Partner versus Being a Technology Partner
Paragon does many apps for publishers and they have been doing this as a product which makes them more or less an internal division of those companies. But for the past years, they have converted most of their licensing deals into deals where they developed the product which are then branded by publishers and sold by publishers. They now became technology partners which promoted more consistent and long-term relationships. If you license something, the publisher is interested to get the cash from you today and is not really concerned about what happens the years after that, whereas if you become their technology partner, they will really be focused in maximizing the cash flow, revenue and savings so you approach the business with a completely different level of cooperation and strategy.
Licensing is more for the beginners in the industry because why would you license something if you can sell directly? But being a technology partner, you have to be better than the competition, develop the best technology and provide the best margins.
Digitizing the Past by Innovation
Paragon has developed a dictionary technology from years back and when it comes to digital publishing, Alexander shares that the key aspect is to really understand how to innovate technology properly to do a digital product correctly. He gave an example of a best-selling spelling dictionary which had established themselves for more than a hundred years in Germany and had sold millions of copies in print who was looking to do the same in digital. They could not just use the same content and sell people a digital book so they needed to come up with something new. The biggest innovation that Paragon was able to bring in was to incorporate not just the spelling of the word, but all the different forms of the word. In print, they were not able to publish this because it will take about 200 books to incorporate these pages in but in digital, it was now possible to do this.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to build a mobile app?
Don’t expect things to happen fast. If you want something big, you have to understand that it might take time.
Show Mentions
– Fav app: Google Maps: (iTunes | Google Play)