5 Questions with MovieLaLa’s Founder & CEO, Dana Loberg -- My Exclusive Q&A

Continuing my new series of exclusive Q&As with people and companies that you should know in the wonderful world of digital media, meet Dana Loberg, Founder & CEO of MovieLaLa, a company based in the Bay Area (but very much steeped in the milieu of the studios in LA).  Dana is a powerhouse -- talented, creative (more on that below), driven, tireless, tenacious, and passionate about her company and the overall market opportunity -- all qualities I love in a start-up CEO.  Movie studios of all stripes should listen to what her company can do for them.  And, consumers will value the end results.  That’s why -- despite the fact that she is a Yale-ee -- we here at Manatt Digital Media Ventures (and several media and digital media luminaries) invested in MovieLaLa.  Can’t reveal those other investors yet, but you will be impressed when Dana does.  With that intro, here we go:

(1)   What is the reason your company exists (and what problem(s) are you looking to solve)?

MovieLaLa wants to deliver a new fresh experience for movie fans looking to find movies to see and friends to see them with. Up until now, what’s been missing is that critical social layer around movies and movie-going, allowing people to discover movies through friends and have a more personalized, curated experience online.

More importantly, studios looking to market their movies can have direct access to people who are interested in receiving their content. Not only are there better ways to communicate with their audience, MovieLala’s analytics allows studios to optimize their marketing dollars well before a movie opens theatrically – giving studios access to powerful data that helps them reach the right audience in more effective ways than more traditional methods in place today.

(2) How are you different from your competitors?

There are several players in this space: Flixster, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, etc movie sites. From a user experience perspective, they’re all pretty similar. Many of them have spent more time building out their advertising models than innovating their front-end design. These websites rely heavily on the same business model: banner ads and advertising. When we launch in the New Year, we hope that people will see our iPad app and say “Wow. This is something I’ve never seen before.”

MovieLaLa has some new technologies and tools for marketing and changing awareness to definite interest among movie fans. Plus, we have a strong data play that is unique from our competitors.

There’s also a huge opportunity in the iPad and mobile space when it comes to the movie-going experience that we are focused to capitalize on. By launching on iPad and mobile,  we can invent new ways to make the movie going experience easy and fun.

(3) Why will you succeed (and what is your single most important ingredient for success)?

We will succeed because of our team: our backgrounds, experience and passion for this space and global view of business. For MovieLaLa, our single most important ingredient has been the relationships we’ve built with the studios since day 1.

(4) What makes you unique (and what do you enjoy most outside of building your business)?

I’m part tech, part entertainment -- half I Robot, half Jennifer Lawrence. I’m a native to LA- raised in the entertainment capital of the world, Westwood Village. I’m currently living in the heart of Silicon Valley, with a few years experience in startup tech in the Bay Area. Now with MovieLaLa, I’m bridging the divided gap between the two forces: tech and entertainment.

Oh, and I paint on the side in my spare time. Medium: charcoal/pastel on newspaper and book. (http://danaloberg.com)

(5) What digital media trend is most interesting to you (and what is the least)?

Real time data and analytics are interesting to me. The “Data Scientist” title is a dream of mine ;) Least interesting to me is YouTube, personally. I’d rather not give specifics as they’re reading my sentences….