Tech entrepreneur Ron Creevey is preparing to float his group of companies, of which Noise11 is now part, in a planned $80 million listing on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2017.
Creevey was still in his mid 20s when he sold his first company for over $100 million to carrier NTT and then floated his social media and e-commerce platform YuuZoo in Singapore in 2007.
For Ron Creevey, listing in Australia brings his business career back home. “Myself and a group of friends were part of setting up the first company ever on the internet,” he said. “That happened in Australia. We sold that for $149 million in cash to NTT, the world’s biggest carrier and that became the backbone of what NTT is today. I was involved with Luna Park (Sydney), that wasn’t successful. We looked at listing overseas but post Brexit there is a lot of confusion in the European market over what is going to happen over the next 12 months. We look at Australia now as a Tier One market to list on. Everyone is walking away from doing a new media listings here. To me it just makes sense from being part of the group that did the very first one ever. You can make money in Australia, you can run a successful business. Historically, Australia has generated some of the greatest media people of all time. It is encoded in our DNA”.
The listed company is a combination of media, music and technology. “We are starting with Noise11 as local content, and then will continue to acquire bloggers and continue to acquire and aggregate independent labels,” Creevey said. “We feel there is a market opportunity. For instance, for us to find a strong independent label in South Korea would make sense. Just as we become a larger platform under the Helipad label we become a massive promotional tool for all the labels to promote the music, promote the product, promote the merchandise. Both major and indie labels will be able to use the platform to reach a global audience”.
The group already internally has a massive distribution base to plug into. “We signed a deal with YuuZoo which is a company I founded in 2007 and has just announced it has acquired up to $150 million in Relativity Media, one of the biggest media companies in world,” Ron says. “On the back of where YuuZoo is heading with Relativity Media it gives me one of the biggest distribution networks on the planet. From that there, already I can turn on the countries that I need to promote Helipad in the regions we feel makes sense. I said years ago Twitter will not succeed and I think SnapChat has no future. Facebook does have a future. It has become a great community platform. We can integrate Helipad into Facebook, we can integrate it into Apple. A lot of these social networks today allow others to integrate in which allows their users to stay longer on site. If I can join Facebook and access other information I don’t have to join 101 other networks. You just want to be attached to your group of friends. Facebook allows you to access other information and not have to leave”.
The proposed Australian listing will give Australians the opportunity to be part of the tech revolution a lot like how American investors could be part of the Facebook float. “Australians are very risk adverse in investing in what they can’t see. It is very rare that they will invest in a company in London. Given that the level of clientele that we have, our clients are literally every media company in Australia. We’ve got Coldplay playing at The X Studio, Tove Lo was in there last week, Channel 7 is in there all the time. We have developed a strong international client base and a very strong domestic base. People here understand what a deal with Channel 7 means. We don’t have to educate them”.
The platform is aimed as a win for all facets of the music industry. “From an artist perspective it is all about monetising,” he said. “A lot of people questioned me about changing a model that has existed for eons. It is not about changing, it is about creating an environment. For artists it is ability to monetise everything they do, when they speak to people, chat, to sell merchandise. Artists make hay when the sun shines but when the sun is shining they are disconnected even more. This empowers them more and gives them the opportunity to generate multiple sources of income and it will supplement the heavy lifting. They don’t understand marketing budgets, they don’t understand the operational things going on in the background. They just want to know where their money is because they are artists. It gives them the ability to drive their destiny more. Using the tools we have will empower the artists to a whole new level and it might make some managers get off their arse”.
The Creevey float is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2017. “It will be highly likely mid March,” he said.
Disclosure Statement: The Noise Network, publisher of Noise11.com, was acquired by Ron Creevey’s Moment Media in October 2016 and is part of the 2017 float. The author, Paul Cashmere, is a member of the executive team of the new company.
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