Michael Litt. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a leading video marketing platform called Vidyard. While he’s not bringing leading video-based technologies to market, he serves as general partner at Garage Capital, a seed stage fund focused on supercluster companies looking to expand their networks in the Silicon Valley. He also sits as Communitech’s board of directors, a KW-based organization designed to help companies start, grow and succeed.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – N/A
- What CEO do you follow? – Shannon Stubo
- Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – You need a big support network and focus your energy into building a business
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:41 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show
- 02:16 – Michael was in Episode 414 of The Top and back then, they only had 132 people on their team
- 02:30 – Vidyard now has around 250 employees
- 02:38 – Vidyard has 3 offices
- 02:44 – Vidyard has launch multiple products including a self-serve product called Viewedit
- 03:13 – Vidyard just had 100K users sign up after launching Viewedit, which is free
- 03:33 – It’s currently a chrome extension
- 04:22 – Michael shares how they spent their last amount that was raised
- 04:51 – Vidyard had their series C in January of 2017
- 05:30 – Michael believes that the CFO should be the “house of no”
- 06:00 – Everybody should be accountable for their finances and Vidyard uses Adaptive Insights for budgeting
- 06:43 – Vidyard has to be very careful with their lifeline and maintain their cash flow
- 07:23 – Michael’s goal as the CEO
- 08:39 – Vidyard’s RPU has grown over time
- 08:53 – Target for upsell is 30% of net new revenue
- 10:03 – Annual logo churn
- 10:13 – Net retention
- 10:42 – Over thousands customers are using Vidyard’s platform
- 10:57 – Viewedit is being used in tons of organizations
- 11:46 – Michael believes Vidyard will double, year over year
- 13:00 – Streaming cost for Vidyard
- 13:11 – Vidyard streams over 50M videos a day
- 13:15 – Vidyard subscribed on the Netflix model
- 14:41 – Weirdest strategy Michael employed to get new customers
- 15:08 – The strategy was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk
- 17:17 – Michael shares how they were able to get customers from companies in other countries
- 19:10 – New CMOs in a company are one of the best target customers, so Michael looks out for new CMOs announcements
- 19:54 – Payback period is usually 18 months
- 21:02 – Payback period reflects your company’s status
- 21:20 – CAC
- 21:35 – Michael is also looking into zero-cost marketing
- 22:09 – Michael won’t sell Vidyard to Salesforce, even with a $300M offer
- 22:55 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Use your funds conservatively and make everyone accountable for budgeting.
- How your company is doing reflects on your payback period.
- Make sure you have a big support network in place.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives