Alex Meshkin is a technology executive and serial entrepreneur having founded or led organizations in healthcare, digital media, sports, and global outsourcing services.

Meshkin is  Executive Chairman of huvi, a social commerce platform, enabling consumers to buy and sell digital movies. huvi works in partnership with major Hollywood studios to reduce piracy, monetize consumer to consumer transactions and enable a secondary market for digital goods.

More recently, Meshkin co-founded a health IT Company where a team of leading health care providers, technology entrepreneurs and product development ninjas are building a platform to improve collaboration and communications in healthcare.

In 1999, at the age of 19, Meshkin launched his first consumer internet start-up and experienced the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. In the years that followed, Meshkin became the CEO of Toyota Motorsports’ flagship NASCAR racing team, Bang! Racing. Toyota selected the young Meshkin from 83 NASCAR race team candidates; to lead Toyota’s factory supported NASCAR racing team. Toyota’s partnership with Meshkin created one of the most successful racing organizations in its first year of operations.

In 2004, Bang! Racing made NASCAR history – setting numerous milestones. As the principle owner of Bang! Racing, Meshkin became the youngest team owner in NASCAR history and the team became the most successful first year NASCAR race team – winning Toyota’s first two races in their inaugural season.

Bang Holdings, the parent company of Bang! Racing was also a success off the race track.  In its first year of operations, Bang generated over $15 million in revenues; partnered with Vertrue to form a joint venture; and with their strategic technology partner eBay created and operated a NASCAR consumer membership and affinity marketing club.

By the age of 23, Meshkin was one of NASCAR’s elite team owners and a recurring guest on Fox News Channel and CNBC Squawk Box; and featured in numerous publications, including Fortune, Sporting News, Racer, Associated Press and Sports Illustrated.

Bang! Racing sponsors included, Toyota Motor Sales, DuPont, Viacom (Showtime Networks), Line-X, Valvoline and Snap-On Tools. In 2005, the race team was acquired by Toyota Motorsports and Bill Davis Racing. The technology divisions were merged in 2006 into Cloverleaf Partners and the NASCAR membership club became FastTrack Savings operating as DealPass.com.

Prior to Bang! Racing, Meshkin founded and operated a global software development company with a focus on healthcare and pharmaceutical platforms with clients such as Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly.

Additionally, Meshkin served as Director of Product and Strategic Development of cyberCFO, a venture funded financial services firm and later as VP and GM at Cloverleaf Partners.  Meshkin started his digital media entrepreneurial career at the age of 19, when he founded and led the first online “points” based dynamic commerce/auction model.

To learn more about Alex Meshkin, please visit his blog at http://alexmeshkin.com and LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/meshkin. Check out his videos on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/alexmeshkin

What most fans don’t realize is an insider’s little known secret – nearly ALL NASCAR teams are financial failures. Even the most successful teams, such as Hendrick Motorsports or Penske Racing – are dreadful businesses – and would be unsustainable if not for their wealthy owners. Unlike nearly every other sport, where the most successful and popular teams are profitable and have long term shareholder value, the on-track success or even popularity of a NASCAR team has little impact on the financial results of the team. It is shocking to learn that the operating budget cannot even be met for a team that wins every single race, when the race winnings are barely 40% of the operating budget. How can teams survive – and even more so, how can this sport survive?

Some may argue an antiquated assessment – successful on-track performance will translate into more sponsorship dollars. However, in today environment the annual NASCAR team budget (each car) exceeds $20 million dollars.

With that being said, NASCAR has the potential to unlock opportunities to revive the financial outlook of the sport. But it must begin with reacquiring all the digital rights that have been irresponsibly divided and parsed between Turner Sports and Sprint. NASCAR needs to stop licensing and giving up rights for short term financial gains of the sanctioning body and recognize that the digital channel may be the last and best hope for teams to survive. This begins with a cohesive digital strategy that works across all broadcast partners – instead of isolating TNN (Turner) from Fox, ESPN, and NBC. If NASCAR.com is going to offer a live simulcast of races during TNN broadcasted races, which I support, NASCAR needs to find an acceptable business model to extend this platform to all broadcast partners. While this would be a good foundation, the real opportunity is to unlock real-time data from the on-board black boxes (telemetry) and team communications to a broader set of partners and participate with revenue sharing agreements to monetize these underutilized assets. (NASCAR Must Embrace New Media: Proposal Attached).

Digging deeper into the marketplace, one recognizes that the content available on Netflix Streaming is at best equivalent to Pay TV. For further clarification, 80% of DVDs, VOD or EST purchases occur in the first 120 days after the release to DVD – well before the Pay TV window or availability on Netflix Streaming. (Note: New Release DVDs are available for rent on Netflix 28-days after release).

But even more revealing, the available content on Netflix Streaming may become increasingly more difficult to expand.  Back in 2008, Netflix signed an agreement with Starz to gain backdoor access to Disney and Sony Pictures’ movies during the Pay TV window.  However, the deal expires in 2011 and Disney has recently made a concerted effort to renegotiate its Starz deal to circumvent Netflix’s ability to renew its Starz license. With this being said, it appears difficult at best for Netflix to maintain the Starz relationship and its considerable portion of the content available for streaming. Conversely, if Netflix is successful in renewing its license with Starz my estimates would place the licensing cost at upwards of $300 million a per year or about $20 per user, which could drive up the monthly subscription price.

Many believe that the uncertainty surrounding its license with Starz was a driving force behind its deal with Epix. While much has been made by the media of the deal with Epix to provide Netflix the ability to stream movies from Lionsgate, Paramount (excluding DreamWorks) and MGM, the movies won’t be available until 90 days after the Pay TV window or approximately 1 year after the initial DVD release. While this is still a big win for Netflix, it has little negative effect on the VOD or EST marketplace. However, on the other hand, Netflix has a major impact on consumer behavior – by shifting more consumers away from physical discs – digital then becomes the primary method for consumers to watch movies. Unlike the music industry, where the most devoted music consumers can opt to subscribe to Spotify or Rhapsody to gain access to ALL music they want to consume, the movie industry is vastly different and is unable to support an all you can eatmodel for its premium content. Currently, consumers who want to digitally “rent” or to “own” a new release or recently released movie must choose an alternative to Netflix Streaming – which currently is only a la carteservices.

As Netflix has demonstrated, the Connected TV and Set-Top Box marketplace has transformed the digital entertainment landscape. I believe the result of this transformation will be demonstrated in the next few years with consumers gaining more choices in how they watch movies and will ultimately shift the power from cable and TV service providers into the hands of innovative services providing consumers with anytime, anywhere access to their favorite movies. The future for digital entertainment is bright – and I predict dramatic innovations for 2011.

Josh Kopelman pointed out some fascinating empirical evidence to support the need for massive innovation in the ecommerce marketplace.

• More than half of today’s top 15 most trafficked websites today did not exist back in 1999.  That is not a surprise, as Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia, Myspace, Blogger, Live.com and Twitter are all new — and are representative of the massive amount of innovation and disruption that has occurred in the last decade.
• Yet, of the top 15 most trafficked eCommerce websites today, just one of them did not exist back in 1999 (NewEgg – which launched in 2001).  Which means that over 90% of the top eCommerce websites are over 12 years old!  That is pretty remarkable to me — and reflects an amazing lack of external innovation (and disruption).

As Josh Kopelman further points out, the online shopping paradigm is finally changing.  In the past year, there has been an increasing amount of innovation, including, group buying, private shopping sites and alternative payment technologies.

As an entrepreneur and ecommerce innovator, I believe the best is ahead of us. The future of ecommerce a/k/a Commerce 2.0 is a future whereby the service itself will be able to generate traffic in much of the same ways that Twitter and Facebook have transformed social media.

At my company huvi, we are developing a next generation digital media marketplace that will transform how consumers buy, share and consume digital content.

According to Daly Planet, it’s rumored the title that launched in 1982 lost almost its entire staff on Monday. It is run by the American City Business Journals, which is based in Charlotte. ACBJ is owned by Advance Publications, which publishes magazines such as The Sporting News, Vanity Fair, and GQ.

One thing is clear, print media and NASCAR is a lethal combination in today’s economic times. Let’s just hope that management at NASCAR begins to listen to their fans and competitors and bring about the right change to invigorate the sport’s fan base and advertisers.

“We’re trying to do more with less. That’s the difficult part of this economy,” France said following his state-of-the-sport address to media at NASCAR’s Research and Development Center. Just back in December, NASCAR issued a statement stating that NASCAR heading into 2009 was “strong”.

This outlook is a rather quick reversal, but perhaps the gravity of the current economic climate and mass sponsor deflections is making an impact.

Doing more with less? Working with teams to develop new business models? I apologize, but in my humble opinion, it’s a little too late for a half-baked plan. But even worse and what is frustrating is NASCAR’s continued unwillingness to restructure the distribution of television revenues to rightly supplement teams’ operating budgets.

What NASCAR needs is a business model which more closely replicates Formula 1 or a franchise structure like every other major sport. As a fervent advocate for team rights, I have repeatedly voiced the need to develop a franchise model that would enable teams to weather macroeconomic difficulties; and subsequently, become less cyclical and more stable during recessions and economic turmoil. The time for leadership, sacrifice and decisive action on behalf of the France Family is NOW. But to the contrary, the Brian France plan is nothing more than reinforcing their past strategies of working with teams to help locate and secure sponsors. While his intentions may be honorable; they are nevertheless naïve when considering there is a global economic recession; and specifically, when the NASCAR industry is in a depression of historic proportions. At this moment, I don’t believe there is a single corporation that is considering spending $15-$30 million required to fund a primary sponsorship program for a NASCAR Sprint Cup team. So I am rather befuddled with Brian France’s simplistic strategy to save the sport, which unfortunately in its current form will contribute to the sport’s certain collapse.

Is it possible that the past success of NASCAR is blinding Brian France from seeing the light? Reflecting back to 60 years ago to the earlier days of NASCAR, Bill France Sr. (Brian France’s grandfather) executed a flawless business plan to convince the then stock car racers and event promoters to become part of his newly formed organization and sanctioning body (NASCAR), whereby he gained complete control over stock car racing. The foundation of NASCAR’s “business model” problems ironically stem from the grand success of Bill Sr. and his unilateral control of a racing empire, including control over the majority of racing venues (International Speedway Corp) and the stock car sanctioning body. Over the past half-century, teams competing in NASCAR relied almost exclusively on corporate sponsors to fund their operations – enabling the France Family to retain a majority of the sports revenues and amass a large network of racing venues, and establishing NASCAR Holdings, an incredibly profitable wholly owned private company.

Those times have dramatically changed and for too long, NASCAR teams have tolerated the exploitation and willingly bore the total burden to exclusively fund their operations through advertising and sponsorship. The rapid increases in costs of racing and teams’ operating expenses of the past 5 years, combined with the minimal increase in sponsorship value – have brought the teams’ very existence into question.

One must wonder, how long can the France Family continue their racing monopoly? Historically, race teams have avoided conflict with the France Family; and the only entities to challenge the France Family’s monopoly have been race track owners, such as Burton Smith and Speedway Motorsports. Even through the France Family has weathered many possible anti-trust challenges with settling most disputes outside the judicial system; I believe the current financial crisis and advertising recession is about to test the resolve of the France Family and their prehistoric business model.

In a stark contrast to the past decade, NASCAR is falsely promoting an image of growth and strength by stating that 15 new organizations have applied for licensing to compete in the Sprint Cup Series. What they fail to mention and what many novices are unaware – almost all of those “new” teams are merely opportunistic racers attempting to profit by a method called: “start and park”, which allows them to collect sizable race winnings (in comparison to their expenses) with a team and car specifically built to just run one or two laps, enabling them to collect profits – all without adding ANY value to the sport. What a sad day it is for the diehard NASCAR fan.

As many of you know, I was the founder of Bang Racing which was NASCAR’s most successful first year team in history. At the young age of 23, I built and operated this highly successful team and we made history finishing 2nd in our first race (Daytona) and winning our 13th race (Michigan International Speedway), which was the first win for Toyota in NASCAR history. While all this is now historical facts found in the archives of NASCAR history, what is typically not understood is that even as a very competitive team, our business model was fundamentally flawed because generating a profit was nearly impossible. Simply put; the cost of running a NASCAR team far exceeds its sponsorship/advertising revenue potential and without significant “business model” changes by the France Family, teams are doomed for failure.

NASCAR must be the only sport where the most profitable teams are the biggest losers’ and where finishing dead-last or not even attempting to win makes more money than being a top competitor. Something is dreadfully wrong when the most competitive teams with great on track performance cannot survive because the costs of running their teams far exceed their revenue potential. The problem is clear: without teams receiving a larger share of the sports’ multi-billion dollar television contracts – there will be no strategy that can make viable a long-term solution for the sport – that is the simple reality.

However, being the “optimist”, I hope Brian France and will realize quickly that his family has the unilateral ability to deliver the change in business model the teams and sport require to survive.

Nothing could be further from the truth and it pains me to see the sport I love destroyed by in-action and failure to comprehend the gravity of the economic times. The Big 3 automakers are on the cusp of bankruptcy, unless President Bush provides an immediate multi-billion dollar bridge loan from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Without the Big 3 – the NASCAR economy will rapidly contract and a large percentage of teams will be added to list of defunct organizations. And with that – NASCAR thinks the sport is “strong” – but in reality – teams are dissolving faster than Kyle Busch racked up victories in the beginning of 2009; and without competitive teams – NASCAR is heading for a death spiral.

Without sweeping changes to the fundamental way NASCAR operates – the long term future is bleak. In comparison to Formula 1, following the announcement of Honda to close their F1 Racing operations, the FIA, the sanctioning body of Formula 1 racing, immediately acted with the support of their constructors (teams) to implement meaningful cost cutting measures for the 2009 and 2010 seasons. Formula 1 Cost Reduction Plan

This type of leadership and decisive action may curb future team closures and ensure the viability of the sport. Contrasting the bold leadership of FIA and F1 to NASCAR’s failure to address their challenges is cause for great concern. NASCAR’s value proposition for automakers and corporate sponsors is decreasing rapidly and they must act not only to increase their value proposition; but act to immediately cut costs and increase teams’ participation in the television revenues.

Without describing my complete cost reduction plans, the key areas that MUST immediately be changed by NASCAR are the following:

• Length of the race weekends – two day shows instead of three days at the track
• Reduction of race team members allowed at the track
• Elimination of credentials and “hard card” for necessary race team personnel
• Limitation of number of sets of tires available for use per race weekend
• Elimination of track testing at non-sanctioned race tracks
• Limitations of wind tunnel testing for aerodynamic development

As always, I offer my opinion to strengthen the sport and help ensure its long term viability.

Looking to catch a NASCAR wreck? Here’s one: The racing association’s sponsors are pulling out, NASCAR CEO Brian France told a Reuters summit. France insists he’s talking to potential new sponsors, but wouldn’t name names.

NASCAR saw a $150 million gain in sponsorship revenue in 2008, a gain France says won’t be repeated. “The question is, are we going to back up,” he said.

Hypothetically, let us assume Smith’s statements are backed by an element of fact and that the France Family is looking to sell NASCAR. It is my opinion that a change in ownership from the France Family to Smith would not bring about the change needed to put NASCAR back on the track for growth. As discussed in my most recent blog entry, The Failing NASCAR Economy: A Time for Action! - NASCAR must act to bring forth changes to support its lifeblood – the race teams. A Smith regime would only continue the same old policies of providing the race tracks a disproportionate share of the television revenues as compared to the racing teams. These policies need to change – NASCAR Sprint Cup Teams must receive a greater portion of the television revenues earned by the sport – because without Teams there is no NASCAR. Yes, tracks are valuable, but as Formula 1 has proven, track owners and promoters are willing to host events without large subsidies from the governing body.

The best avenue to save our sport and put it back on track, allowing it to grow into the next decade, is for an entrepreneurial executive; who understands the sport, new media and the market trends to lead a leveraged buyout – partially funded by a team franchise model – where 43 Sprint Cup Teams would receive a minority ownership and participate in profit sharing to ensure the stability of the premiere NASCAR series – the Sprint Cup.

The impending fluctuations expected in the number of competitors in the second most watched sport in country – the Sprint Cup Series, is completely unacceptable. A new ownership structure must include policies and an agreement to secure the future of the Sprint Cup Series by enabling Team Owners to purchase Franchises and receive votes in the future of the sport that they have all built. This new structure would eliminate the sanctioning body from competing with teams for sponsors and create a more healthy sport to ensure its long term future.

2008 has been the year of “change” – Americans want “change”, NASCAR Fans want “change”, NASCAR Teams want “change”. If the France Family provides the opportunity for “change” in the leadership of NASCAR – let us all hope that it is the “right change” that comes to Daytona Beach.

My unique perspectives are a result of “one of kind” experiences which are vastly different than any other thought leader in the NASCAR industry: a web 1.0 entrepreneur, NASCAR Team Owner (Bang Racing), and today, an executive in the current social and digital media industry. While there are unlimited opportunities for NASCAR to leverage digital media technologies and corresponding social/digital business models; I have a specific proposal for NASCAR and specifically Paul Brooks, President of NASCAR Media Group.

I know from my personal experiences in working with Paul Brooks at NASCAR, he is one of the most forward thinking executives at NASCAR and I hope he embraces the following proposal. For those unfamiliar with NASCAR’s approach to partnerships and licensing; NASCAR has historically required substantial licensing fees to pursue any type of business relationship, which in all fairness has generated significant profits in the past decade. However, moving forward in the dynamic digital economy and facing the challenges to continue to grow their audience and fan base, NASCAR must now look to tap into emerging technologies and unlock entrepreneurial ingenuity to develop innovative business models to increase fan exposure and create new revenue sources.

The first initiative I believe NASCAR should pursue is to open up access to the racing data acquired through the on-board computer/black box. Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that NASCAR should allow live telemetry for the racing teams, but I am proposing an online database which could be accessed for technology entrepreneurs, game developers, media, and entrepreneurs and racing teams. By enabling open access to the racing data that could be parsed and leveraged, businesses and entrepreneurs could bring forth innovation to drive new revenue sources and digital media exposure for NASCAR and its teams.

Technically speaking – NASCAR needs to publish a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which could be available for commercial and non-commercial use that could create the opportunity to unlock the creativity of technology and digital media entrepreneurs and leverage the private equity markets to develop business models to reignite the excitement and consumer interest in NASCAR.

Even though my current business focus has little to do with NASCAR or motorsports, I strongly believe that NASCAR must embrace new media business models and techniques. Paul, if you are interested to speak regarding these ideas -you know how to reach me.

Best, Alex Meshkin.