All right.
Today we're going to talk about Michael and then we're gonna talk
about Eric.
Okay.
Mike was on last year and his team reached out again and were like, we
should do an update podcast.
So Mike is from vid yard, right?
Yes.
And like so.
Give us some updates.
What's going on with the company now?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Maybe maybe like a re summary again on what re summary of what we do.
So our mission is to help organizations succeed with video,
which is pretty broad.
And companies use our platform and our tools to both create content
and share content.
It's all video based.
And so what we have is
one of the easiest ways of creating a screen recording or webcam
recording and then sending that to your audience via email or
embedding that on a webpage.
we also have a suite of tools.
They allow you to upload video, automatically transcribe that
video, so it's more available via search.
you can put videos behind SSO hubs for internal communication.
we can personalize video for mass email campaigns, you name it.
With video.
We do it.
There you have it.
Well, also, I mean, the other day a guy sent me, sent me a vidyard
video.
Yes.
I asked him a question.
He just made a video for me, and then he's like, I felt more
connected to the guy.
Right?
Yeah.
And that tool is actually free, correct?
Yes.
What is it called?
That tool is called vidyard.
Just Vidyard.
It was go video.
People kept coming up to me at conferences being like, I love
sending vidyards.
And so we realized they kind of like the Kleenex of tissue paper.
So we just call the Vidyard.
Better for SEO, better for brand alignment all around.
But the big, the big change now is that all of our products are
available for free.
So we realized that there was a huge market of people that were
just trying to upload and share video.
The status quo vendors in that space were really Vimeo and
YouTube, and there wasn't really a platform that was not only super
easy, but built for business and had a subset of features that
allowed you to scale as your needs for video
got more complex.
We had that complexity.
Being generally an enterprise first business, but we realized if we
were able to rearchitect the product and put a lot of the
simplicity that was around that Chrome extension in the core
platform, we could offer that thing for free.
And we had a feeling that there was some pent up demand.
So we launched that as September 24th.
We've had over 2000 signups a day since then, and it's completely
transformed our go to market model and the type of people we're
working with, which is super exciting.
I remember we're at SaaStock Dublin right now, but when I was at
SaaStock, Hong Kong, the HubSpot APAC guy was like, when they
switched from, when they switched to freemium, what happened was.
99% of the company opposed it, right?
Yeah.
So how did you, I mean, again, I guess you get the final say, but
like organ rejection.
Yeah.
That's what happened there.
Yeah.
So funny you mentioned HubSpot.
Part of the reason why we did this is HubSpot OEM'd vidyard into its
product lines.
So when marketing hub, sales hub and service hub, there's video
functionality that's powered by us.
And in the years since we launched that 25,000 organizations have
signed up, uploaded over a quarter million videos.
And so we had this, prior experience through a partner.
That these free users were upselling and we're doing so in a
very frictionless way.
And so we use that momentum to put that into our core business.
And so we were able to drive that change inside the company simply
because we were already doing it through a partner and we had the
Chrome extension available for free that we were running a sales motion
against as well.
That said, ensuring that the product is being built to match the
requirements of a free user base and an enterprise user base is not
an inconsequential shift to make.
Huge.
Yeah.
Traditionally, our engineering team and our product team was very much
designed to, work on the code base and prioritize the, the code base
and the quality of the code and the efficiency of the code and a lot of
the microservices that sat beneath our features, we made a big
transition that said, now you're.
I'm going to be aligned to the customer funnel.
So we have a free team that has a PM, a designer, and a bunch of
engineers.
We have a pro team, same structure, a business team and an enterprise
team.
And they share the core architecture, which is in these
vertical guilds, but horizontally, they focus on the features and
functionality that those users specifically need.
So a good example of this, as an enterprise needs a bunch of
security.
They need SSO.
They need to be ADA compliant.
They need to be accessible, our transcriptions or closed
captionings.
We're the only.
Accessible video platform today.
That's because of the enterprise needs.
A small business or an individual user doesn't necessarily need that,
right?
So we have to bifurcate that product approach and ensure that
the features are built to acquire users at both ends of the spectrum.
And so you said you're getting 2000 new signups per day right now, or
yet?
Before?
Well, before we were at non really, I mean, we had the, the Chrome
extension obviously.
which was probably doing.
50 to 80% of that on a monthly basis if I projected forwards.
the number I quoted you is just the new video ad free product, which is
the hosted solution plus a lot of the creation tools.
and, and that product itself was never available for free.
So we went from zero to 2000 new signups a day, which gives us a
huge funnel now of having conversations with people that have
familiarity with what they're doing with us, right?
Instead of us calling them and saying, Hey, have you heard of
Vidyard?
No.
Here's what we are to you.
Can you share a range of what percent of those generally convert?
Yeah, so activation is North of 30%.
for us, an activation,, is what we call a monthly active user.
And an Mau is, is someone who signed up for the product, uploaded
or created at least one video and has at least one view.
So we're pretty, strict with our Mau principles.
A lot of companies would say anybody would ever end up as an
Mau.
we know that, again, our mission is to help people be successful with
video.
If they're not actually using the product and they're not actually
getting people to view the videos that they're producing, then it's
obviously not, not effective.
And then from that point down, a conversion to paid, is actually
from a free audiences is a, I believe, between five and 10%.
So that's about right.
And the week, which is actually pretty.
Pretty reasonable, right?
Like we expected a way less signups and less activations because we
haven't really even focused on juicing the funnel in terms of
traffic.
This is purely organic.
We're not doing anything paid, and we haven't even started tweaking
the product to ensure better activation.
We're going to introduce Clippy.
Remember Clippy?
We're bringing it back.
We're bringing Clippy back.
Wow.
I'm just kidding.
The team would hate me saying that, but I think we should.
Yeah.
Tool tips via Clippy.
I love it.
Yeah.
So what's interesting, I mean, my other podcast cohost Neil.
He bought Uber suggest an Ubersuggest on Google trends now
because it's free has overtaken the two primary SEO tools, SEMRush, and
aHRefS, because it's free.
Right?
So that's like the new trend, the new hotness.
Yeah.
Well, I think it's like, it's really simple, right?
Salesforce said, Hey.
This whole on premise thing sucks.
We're going to now charge a subscription, which means you're
going to have to get value out of this product to keep paying for it.
Right?
Right.
I think the big transition we see in the industry is MarTech.
For example, when we launched, there was 150 companies.
Now there's 7,000 we all say the same thing to the CMO.
So in a commoditized market like that, the product that offers the
most value in a frictionless and very, very quick.
High velocity way is the one that's ultimately gonna win, right?
Because Brian Halligan back to HubSpot at inbound, asked an
audience, how many of you.
have made a software purchasing decision in the past year, and it
was all CMOs, VP sales, nobody's hand went up because what's
happening is people are using these products for free, getting value
out of it, solving the thing they need to solve for, and then
realizing there's extra functionality if they pay than
asking for permission to buy that product or was internally, it's
much easier to sell.
So we're making this shift from software as a service to results as
a service.
Right?
You're actually buying results.
You're not just buying software.
And that makes companies like me so much more accountable to actually
making people successful with the product.
So that's this big transition to free.
I think Slack was the first one that did it really, really well and
achieved, you know, near infinite scale compared to there.
Their peers and competitors in the market, and we decided that we
needed to shift our business model in the same way.
Yeah.
If we wanted to survive the next five, 10, 15 years.
Yeah.
I mean, my co founder and I, we talked, we talk about, everyone
talks about MRR, but it's like mr V, it's monthly recurring value.
How do you continue to do that?
Right.
And that's what you got.
That's what you're talking about actually recurring value.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
How does that.
How does an organization measure that effectively?
So metrics, right?
The way you measure Mau is perfect.
It's not just anybody that logs in.
Like for us, it's a number of tests that you run, right?
Are you running at least one test per week?
Yeah.
That's what we're looking at.
And you can measure at an amplitude free, right?
Yeah.
Well, you know, I think at some point in this whole conversation of
building a saas company, right?
Everybody gets into the unit economics, but the unit economics
are, are the results.
If a customer actually getting value out of your product.
And so few CEOs talk about the way people actually use the product and
the value they get out of it, and I find that kind of bizarre.
Here's our AOR, here's our MRR.
That's, yeah, yeah.
Again, I think.
Back to your point on this organizational shift and some of
the challenges we had, it was really just lining the whole
company up, not with Vidyard but with the customer of Vidyard.
And to that point, we actually shifted our stakeholder list and
said the customer's number one and everything we do has to be for the
benefit of the customer.
I mean, we come from Y Combinator where the mentality is build
something people want.
Yeah.
But as a company grows, sometimes it gets far away from that, right?
And an internal politics and dynamics and all that type of stuff
gets office a from what the customer really needs.
And so we went back to basics, looked at what the customer needed.
There's this awesome opportunity for us to own this market for a
free, easy video hosting tool that's built for business that has
creation layer on top of it.
And that's the new vidyard.
Love it.
And so.
YC, going back to that, how involved are you with YC right now?
so as a Canadian or as someone who left YC and came back to Canada, I
spent a lot of time with YC companies that are Canadian.
Yeah.
and in fact, we have a small fund called garage capital, about 40
million under management.
that is specifically designed to invest in Canadian technology
businesses, B2B, SAS, and companies that could impact a billion
people's lives.
And so on that basis, why see companies leaving Canada?
Going to IC is actually a funnel for us because we talked to them
all.
Oh, got it.
so that's kinda the extent of our involvement.
If I was to start people, people ask me this all the time.
If you were to leave, get fired.
Cell or whatever, vid yard, and you know, it's no longer a part of your
life.
Would you go back to YC to start number two?
And the answer is absolutely.
Yes, it's got Alma program.
Cool.
Great.
and because you have, now, you have so many more users, what are some
stats, video stats you can share with people that you think are
remarkable?
Yeah, for sure.
So we do a, an annual report called the video and business industry
report.
we have seen that companies are producing on average, three X more
video content than they were last year, which is two X the year
before.
So the amount of content that businesses are producing, is
actually amplifying and accelerating.
So the market's getting there.
I think the reason for that is the next generation buyer and seller is
used to video being a part of that process.
You know, consumer brands have been doing it for a long time, and the
same person that buys sneakers also buy software today, right?
So video is a really great medium.
for activating that next generation called the millennials, call them
generation Zs.
call them the alpha generation, whatever, whatever it might be.
Right?
next one is shorter content performs better than longer
content.
You know, that might seem like a no shit statement to people, but
attention spans are really, really small.
That's like reverse of the formula on YouTube.
Yeah.
But yeah, it makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So I think YouTube works when you have a subscribed base and you're
doing daily vlogs and that type of thing.
People want rich content formats.
Right.
I think of like Owen Olson's blog.
I mean, he's one of the original vloggers and kind of a pre YouTube
format.
I think length works for him, but for a business.
You know, when someone is on your website researching your product,
they want as much information as quickly as possible.
And that's why the, that's why the freemium works, right?
Because they're going to watch a video.
Realized, yes, this solves the problem I have.
I'm going to start using the product and people want to do that
in as little time as possible, right?
They don't want to put their hand up and get on a, call it a sales
rep, a week and a half from that point, run an RFP, go ask for
budget, all these things that they need to put a video on a landing
page or in an email campaign.
I want to go do that right now.
Yeah.
Right.
So quick and short are our ideal.
Now, as someone goes down the funnel.
Let's say you're a traditional enterprise business, you know,
let's say your ACV is a hundred to $200,000 and we have, we absolutely
have companies in, in that, in that structure, longer content works
because someone is engaged with your brand, just like the vlog, and
they want to learn as much as possible.
So as someone goes down the purchasing funnel, it's almost like
an inflected funnel.
Yup.
Funnel goes like this, but the content length goes like this.
Right?
so this just some of the commonalities we see, no surprise
gifts as thumbnails are some of the best performing thumbnails.
people are drawn to that, that kind of activity, that motion.
The play button tends to be one of the most compelling call to actions
on a website that we see.
and, and another one is that video is now being used.
To drive engagement down the purchasing funnel or flywheel.
So when a video is over, don't just let that video fate to black, give
that person or that viewer options with respect to what they can go do
next on your website or where they can learn more, or how they can
potentially talk to someone or how they can connect with your chat
bot.
Right.
These are all.
tactics and techniques that again, are shortening the sales cycle and
the information cycle.
If you have someone leaning in and watching a video, you know, that's
the opportunity to keep spending time with them and give them more
information and let them go deeper and deeper on that process so they
can just search, feed yards, data, video, and they should be able to
find it, see the video in business report.
and if you want to start using the product, video.com/free.
Okay, cool.
And two more questions from my side.
yes, actually maybe three more.
What.
What numbers can you reveal around the business today?
Cause I think we talked about it last year, but just so people have
like a 12 month update.
Yeah.
so on the free product landscape, and the kind of creation tools.
what we've done is we've integrated, so that tool is
integrated in the Chrome store in Gmail.
It's outlook, it's SalesLoft, it's outreach, it's Mixmax, it's
HubSpot.
list goes on and on and on.
That product is approaching a million users now, which is really,
really exciting.
And that's, you know, a million people that are exposed to our
brand and using video to communicate, which helps us adhere
to our mission.
In terms of paying customers, , or paying enterprises.
we're putting in 2000, which is a, a great number.
We serve about 50 million video streams a day.
I don't know what that would look like in terms of an update from the
last last.
We'll have to dig it up or you have to dig it up.
And
yeah, we're on our, on our path.
300 employees.
Nice.
Congrats.
Yeah.
All right.
So employee count's never like a good, a good metric.
Oh, yeah.
More with less, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
well, what is one new tool you've added in the last year?
So it could be like an aura ring or it could be like an app that's at a
lot of value for you in my life.
yeah, I think.
The most impactful thing in my life, personally has been zero.
I don't know if you're familiar with it.
It's a fasting app.
A throne.
Kevin Rose.
I don't know.
I think it's possibly, yeah, yeah, yes.
Yeah, and what I've found is it's helping with my sleep and I'm
stable, leave 15 pounds less than I would have been last year at this
point.
I don't know if you can tell.
It all came out of my butt.
that's why we were squatting when you came in.
and I have, it's given me a lot more energy and better sleeps and
it stabilized my moods so that the highs and lows of startup life,
which come hard and fast as you know, are just generally more
neutralized and disciplined too.
And it's hard to hold out that long.
It is, especially when you travel.
But it's also helped me when I travel.
Yeah.
Shift my eating schedule so that I shift my circadian rhythm.
So the day before I came to Ireland, which is a five hour time
difference for me.
Eight for you.
Yeah.
I started eating on that schedule or fasting on that schedule and jet
lag has been not apparent.
Last question.
Yeah.
What is one book you've read in the last year that's made a big and
fast to give a pig a pancake?
What?
Yes.
Huh.
Yeah.
so it's a, it's a, it's a tale of a pig.
Uh huh.
who really wants a pancake.
But when you give the pig a pancake, it wants maple syrup.
Are you serious?
And then when it wants maple syrup, it needs a plate because the
pancakes messy and then it needs a plate.
It needs a table.
Then he's utensils and he's a table and utensils.
It needs a house and then it needs a bath.
And it's a story about when you give things and potentially create
the sense of entitlement.
There's always an ask for more.
And it's a, it's a, it's a reflection that was recommended to
me by a gentleman named Tony Rotoni who leads a.
You know, $5 billion business unit at Salesforce.
Yeah.
About, encroaching entitlement in sales organizations and
organizations in general as you offer more perks and benefits to
being a part of the team.
and of course at the very end, the pig kind of like forgets about the
pancake, which is to me, an analogy for the customer and what happens
to organizations as they scale.
So, it's a, it's a really in depth read.
It's about 10 pages with one sentence per page.
so you'll get through it in a, in a.
A two minute long sitting, but, it's a very interesting story.
Awesome.
I'll add that to the notes.
All right, how do people find you online?
Cause we are done.
Yeah.
Michael Litt on Twitter.
Michael on Instagram, on LinkedIn.
Michael Litt at vidyard.com.
yes.
Two T's not the one T, which is very Vogue, as I understand from
all the, the gen Zs.
Yup.
but yeah.
Alright, Mike, thanks so much for doing this.
Thanks Eric.
Cheers, man.