In this segment of the My First Million podcast, Sam Parr and a guest evaluate a startup called Taiv, which aims to monetize the commercial breaks on bar and restaurant TVs by displaying localized menu upsell ads. They compare Taiv’s concept to Chive TV/Atmosphere, which uses similar hardware to run entertainment content with embedded ads, and to Firefly’s Uber billboard model. The discussion covers Taiv’s two‑phase revenue strategy: an initial focus on in‑venue upsell promotions, followed by a planned shift to selling ad inventory at a $25 CPM. They scrutinize the company’s pricing—$4,200 per location per year plus a $1,500 hardware installation fee—and argue that these costs create significant adoption friction. The hosts also highlight the difficulty of selling a sales‑heavy solution to bars and restaurants, the uncertainty of fill rates for CPM ads, and the potential for the business to generate tens of millions in annual revenue if executed well. Finally, they caution that while the venture could be a lucrative owner‑operated business, it poses risks for investors, especially if the cap table is mismanaged.
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Okay, we'll do one more. We're almost out of time. So I'll do this company. I don't know how you say it. Taiv. It's T-A-I-V. Taiv. Weird name. Don't know why they chose that name, but whatever. So what these guys are doing is they— you know how every bar or restaurant has TVs and they're playing sports usually, or whatever it is? So what they're saying is, hey, the commercial break, that's a lost opportunity, right? So what they do is they hijack the commercial break on that TV and they just upsell stuff from your menu. So, you know, you're watching the game, when the commercial happens, it'll show the wings that they have on the menu and be like, $9 for these wings right now, you want it? It's a commercial just locally for your bar or restaurant. I love this idea because I think there's a lot of restaurants out there who are in this scenario. They have lots of bars, lots of restaurants that have TVs. I think there's a decent market for it. I like the idea of helping them make money. It's a very simple solution, but the thing is most of these restaurants and bars haven't done anything yet. So like, this is a, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit still available. This is one that I like. It's like sort of an ad block for those TVs, What I think might be challenging for them is selling into bars and restaurants. I think that's gonna be a slow and painful process for them.
All right, I have a little background information on this. You know Chive TV?
No, what's that?
Okay, you know thechive.com?
Yep.
Okay, thechive.com, the founders, Leo, I know Leo and John. Leo's one of my investors and someone I look up to. He started The Chive, and he, uh, now they have Chive TV. And the way it started was they would get like a lot of funny videos, like America's Funniest Home Videos, looks like dads getting hit in the nuts by their kids swinging a piñata baseball bat, like just silly stuff. And in all of Texas, what they did was they would give these bar owners these little dongles, like these like Fire Sticks, like an Amazon Fire Stick, and they uploaded all this programming, and they just like constantly filling the pipes. And so if you go to the bar You see just like America's Funniest Home Videos in the background and Chive would put their ads in the, in the mix and they made millions of dollars doing it. And so much so that they eventually spun it off into a different company and they call it Atmosphere TV and they've just raised $10 million to launch it. And Leo was like, this is going to be a multi-billion dollar business. And, uh, interesting. So I have now the verdict's still out if that's going to happen, But Chive TV was huge for the Chive atmosphere. He says it's going to be the greatest thing ever, and he said that what they need to do is just go out and hire the same thing that I described earlier. Hire a ton of salespeople. He goes, yeah, we're just going to hire a ton of salespeople and we're going to do this. And then another bit of background is you and I talked to the folks at Firefly. I won't put words in your mouth, but I have no problem in saying I thought that was a horribly dumb, stupid idea. And this idea is a little bit similar, but I think way better, right?
Yeah, more, more defensible for sure. Firefly is the company that puts a little ad, little billboard thing on top of an Uber, so an Uber driver can make a little more money. That's cool. But this is, this is a little bit different. This is more what I'll call, um, it's not dependent on the ad market, which I like. You're internally advertising stuff in the restaurant or the bar to get people to have a little higher check size.
Yeah, but that's not what they're saying. In their deck, they say at first they're doing what you're describing, right? And they go, they said all of our 1-year contracts are insanely profitable, but our next phase is to sell ad time at $25 per CPM.
Interesting. Okay. All right. So maybe the in-restaurant upsell is not as good as I thought, and that's why they're like already planning to go out of that.
And I think that's a good market, but in their numbers, what they're assuming, they're saying they're gonna have a $25 CPM that's gonna make us way more money and create this new $32 billion market. And the math is that we have X amount of impressions and we're gonna put $25 CPM ads on there. Now here's the problem, which is their fill rate is not gonna be 100%. And it's not even gonna be close to 100%.
Yeah, so that sounds a little ridiculous. Here's the other thing I don't like. So they charge $4,200 per location per year. That's really expensive for a restaurant or bar. They also charge a one-time $1,500 hardware installation. And so I just think that they've added a lot of friction to the adoption of this. I think already it was going to be hard to get people to adopt. That's a high price point and a high one-time installation fee that they're asking people to do. So I think that's That seems tough for me.
That said, I think that this, this could be a business that makes tens of— $20, $30, $40, $50 million a year in sales. This is a great company to own, not a great company to invest, um, not a great company if they raise all this money. That's my opinion.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So I like this. They just have— someone smart once told me, he said the only thing that you can't screw up in business is your cap table. And so when I look at, when I look at a lot of these companies, I think that could be good. So, so long as they don't screw up their cap table. Right.
Uh, yeah, that is one way to, uh, die for the wrong reasons.
