Tim Wu from Slate has a good piece differentiating piracy of Hollywood blockbusters and Sundance indie films. His conclusion supports Caachi's position that piracy for indie filmmakers isn't really a concern and may at times be a welcome piece of marketing for some filmmakers. Tim says:

We haven't spent enough time looking for funding. Not because we're not interested or don't need to. Basically because we've been underwater and have barely enough time to come up for air. Now, we need to get started with the fundraising activities so that we can provide better services for our filmmakers and users.

We've started to get out more leaving our computers (yes, there's definitely some computer withdrawal issues) to meet and greet investors and other entrepreneurs. There's no place like San Francisco and Silicon Valley to do that (though arguably, LA may be a better place for a company like Caachi).

We were invited to present Caachi at the Silicon Valley Meetup back in March. That was an enjoyable experience and we want to thank the host Vincent Lauria who seems like a great transplanted New Yorker.

Just recently we were invited to present at VCtini, part of the Web 2.0 Expo, where select companies presented to both investors and other Web.2.0 Expo attendees in a cocktail reception environment. The event took place at an art gallery in South Park in San Francisco and it was pretty chaotic at times because multiple companies were presenting at the same time at different iMacs while everyone was drinking. Imagine what the room began to look like towards the end of the four hour presentation & drinking fest.

In a couple of weeks, we'll attend the Startup Camp, an unconference with other startups. You may be asking yourself what a Startup Camp has anything to do with indie films. Events like this help Caachi stay informed about new technologies to deliver the best possible experience for the indie film community.

We've also been selected to present at the Plug & Play Expo in San Jose, which will be basically for the investor, corporate venture arm and media audiences. We're looking forward to both, just need to figure out how to do those things while also attending the San Francisco International Film Festival and keeping Caachi moving forward. In the end though, things somehow end up falling into place and working out.

Back in March we were at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (can the title be any longer?) and had a great time meeting Asian and Asian American filmmakers from around the world. We saw some great films including Benson Lee's "Planet B-Boy". This festival is where Charles and I first ran into each other so in some ways its tangentially responsible for what Caachi is today and will become in the future. Props to the folks at CAAM for running a great festival as always.

So for the better part of the new year, we (specifically Charles) have been working on rolling out our own affiliate program.

Don't know what an affiliate program is? Well, it works like this: You have a website or blog and want to put a Caachi film advertisement on your site to earn cash. You copy some html code that we provide and paste it onto your webiste. Users who click on the ad then are sent to Caachi and can purchase a download. Each time a user clicks through and purchases a download, you get 20% of the sales revenue (i.e., 20% of the download fee).

We're offering the ads in thumbnail, film trailer or text versions. Its free to join. We pay our affiliates each month, just like filmmakers. To learn more, check out our affiliate program.

If you're a believer that independent film needs more exposure and deserves to be seen, tell your friends who have a website or blog about our affiliate program (come on, who doesn't have a blog these days?).

Filmmakers, we'd love to hear your thoughts on the affiliate program and what changes you'd like to see in it.

Wow, its already been nearly two months since we last posted. Sorry, I know that's no way to treat a blog and its readers. Rest assured, we haven't been sleeping on the job. We've been busy trying to roll out our affiliate program to help market films for our filmmakers, attending film festivals, shopping Caachi to investors to accelerate our growth, continually building relationships with filmmakers and distributors, and making improvements to the site. I'll go into detail on these topics in the ensuing posts.

Last night Charles and I attended a BAWIFT (Bay Area Women in Film & Television) panel. I was on the panel, along with Tiffany Shlain (of "The Tribe", "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" and the "Webby Awards" fame), and representatives from Atom Films and Jaman. It lasted about two hours but based on the engaged Q&A, it could have lasted another two. Some of discussion points I recall that may or may not be noteworthy (depending how Internet saavy you are as a filmmaker):