#Revenue 5: Navigating the Funding Stage and Beyond: Real World Insights From a Tech CEO w/ Michael Litt

WEBVTT 1 00:00:06.240 --> 00:00:11.349 Seat investing is is really, really tricky, because there's very little traction or 2 00:00:11.390 --> 00:00:16.429 validation for an investor to make a decision against. Really, they are looking 3 00:00:16.469 --> 00:00:20.190 at somebody WHO's working on a problem and trying to validate is this the best 4 00:00:20.309 --> 00:00:23.140 person solved this problem? Is this problem going to be big enough? And 5 00:00:23.219 --> 00:00:27.219 that's what they're basing their investment on. And so set investing is really all 6 00:00:27.260 --> 00:00:33.500 about building momentum. Welcome to the revenue series on BB growth. I'm your 7 00:00:33.579 --> 00:00:39.450 host, John Grispin, founder and sales coach at early revenue. So let's 8 00:00:39.490 --> 00:00:44.929 get right into it. Today I am here with Michael Litt, CEO and 9 00:00:45.210 --> 00:00:53.359 Co founder of videard. He is instant youngs u sure year and he writes 10 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:58.520 for Fast Company on top of being and now a biker. Michael, welcome, 11 00:00:59.520 --> 00:01:02.399 very happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So the level 12 00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:07.310 set. Our guests are CEOS, revenue leaders and venture firms, and our 13 00:01:07.310 --> 00:01:11.469 purpose is to provide early stage tech founders and their stills leaders insights and best 14 00:01:11.549 --> 00:01:17.829 practices on too, top of books that are top of mind for mostly how 15 00:01:18.349 --> 00:01:22.540 the how to use really of growing early stage, jails and fundraising. So 16 00:01:23.180 --> 00:01:29.140 let's just get into it. I heard some really rate stories. I was 17 00:01:29.219 --> 00:01:33.170 talking to Tyler, your CMO I number, which Goo, and he was 18 00:01:33.250 --> 00:01:38.849 telling me a little bit about your background and the scrappy beginnings for the company. 19 00:01:38.930 --> 00:01:42.489 Want don't you first give us a little bit about your background? Yeah, 20 00:01:42.290 --> 00:01:46.650 great, great way to start. So yes, my name is Michael 21 00:01:46.689 --> 00:01:51.680 Lit and a Canadian, born and raised in the Waterloo region. BOTTLEO is 22 00:01:51.799 --> 00:01:56.200 known for a lot of interesting things, but probably the most memorable to date 23 00:01:56.640 --> 00:02:02.269 is the invention of the mobile Internet through what what became blackberry, and I'm 24 00:02:02.349 --> 00:02:07.989 sure that was maybe your first, first fully featured smartphone that you used for 25 00:02:07.069 --> 00:02:12.990 business. So really interesting place in the world. Obviously supported by the University 26 00:02:13.030 --> 00:02:20.259 Waterloo and my dad was one of the individuals that actually wired the as electrician, 27 00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:23.860 one of the first engineering buildings there, and so when when my brother 28 00:02:23.979 --> 00:02:27.300 and I were little, he would take us there and say eventually I really 29 00:02:27.340 --> 00:02:30.770 want you both to go to school here to become engineer. So fast forward 30 00:02:30.849 --> 00:02:35.610 many, many, many years. I got into video and the way I 31 00:02:35.689 --> 00:02:38.409 got into the video is my uncle John, who was my dad's uncle. 32 00:02:38.569 --> 00:02:42.490 Great Uncle John, gave me a vhs camp quarter and I brought that camp 33 00:02:42.530 --> 00:02:46.919 quarter, everywhere, every family event, I brought it to school events. 34 00:02:47.439 --> 00:02:53.800 I was always creating videos to explain projects we were working on through university with 35 00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:59.229 our Capstone Project Next, my job was to always explain everything, and so 36 00:02:59.270 --> 00:03:01.229 I don't always use video. This kind of goes on and on. The 37 00:03:01.270 --> 00:03:08.870 video became a very paramount aspect of my life and Devin came out to my 38 00:03:09.310 --> 00:03:13.699 cofounder, who I met at an ice cream meeting contest at the very beginning 39 00:03:13.699 --> 00:03:19.740 of Undergrad flew out to California to stay with me to drive back to Waterloo. 40 00:03:19.740 --> 00:03:24.020 I was out there on an internship and during that drive we started humming 41 00:03:24.139 --> 00:03:29.770 on ideas. We were in a very old Volkswagen jet diesel that had did 42 00:03:29.810 --> 00:03:32.169 in many accidents. Devin did not learn how to drive stick until the moment 43 00:03:32.210 --> 00:03:37.449 we left and once the once the scare and fear of that went away, 44 00:03:37.889 --> 00:03:40.919 we kind of started to get into things and the commonality we all saw was 45 00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:47.319 that businesses wanted to use video to communicate to customers, to prospects, to 46 00:03:47.479 --> 00:03:53.280 employees and they didn't have the skills to necessarily do so. And because we 47 00:03:53.520 --> 00:04:00.349 came from technical backgrounds, we figured we could take this complex set of business 48 00:04:00.389 --> 00:04:06.310 requirements and communication standards and some very technical aspects of software and hardware and what 49 00:04:06.430 --> 00:04:11.860 they did, and simplify them into these really kind of creative scripts and build 50 00:04:11.979 --> 00:04:15.379 these video stories for these companies as a service. And that's exactly what we 51 00:04:15.459 --> 00:04:18.699 started to do. We were in our final year of Undergrad we took the 52 00:04:18.779 --> 00:04:24.529 big leap into entrepreneurship in and started kind of selling these services to people that 53 00:04:24.649 --> 00:04:30.129 we work for and people that had contracted video production, specifically of the animated 54 00:04:30.129 --> 00:04:33.810 rieting. Fast forward about six months. We started seeing that the companies that 55 00:04:34.250 --> 00:04:39.319 needed video needed to put them on their website and wanted to understand who is 56 00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:42.240 watching them for how long. And so, being the fact that you're both 57 00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:46.759 engineers from a software related program, we started building that, that solution and 58 00:04:47.160 --> 00:04:51.319 we ended up applying to a program called by combinator. They liked us because 59 00:04:51.439 --> 00:04:56.389 we were a solution to a problem that we had to find by building a 60 00:04:56.509 --> 00:05:01.149 service offering and and the rest is really very short history now, but that's 61 00:05:01.189 --> 00:05:05.029 kind of the beginnings of the company and Long Story Short, we were both 62 00:05:05.029 --> 00:05:10.660 very passionate about a video for its ability to tell powerful stories. We started 63 00:05:10.740 --> 00:05:14.139 doing that and then we've been building software to help people do that ever since 64 00:05:14.740 --> 00:05:17.500 and it's been a very exciting journey. It's certainly sounds like it. I 65 00:05:17.579 --> 00:05:23.329 mean talking about thinking about and executed on an idea that you had and, 66 00:05:24.170 --> 00:05:29.449 Gosh, right placed right time. You mentioned the term powerful. I mean 67 00:05:30.170 --> 00:05:35.120 video is is where it's at right now. You've even said it's starts with 68 00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:41.040 everything starts with video. You tell a story, it generates a feeling, 69 00:05:41.279 --> 00:05:46.199 that creates an emotion in that creates an ability to have a conversation with somebody 70 00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:50.470 and that just plays across the entire spectrum of touch points when you're talking with 71 00:05:50.589 --> 00:05:57.149 prospects. Yes, absolutely, I mean it. It's you use all these, 72 00:05:57.470 --> 00:06:00.709 I think, statements made around video of pictures worth a thousand words. 73 00:06:00.829 --> 00:06:04.620 How many words the video worth? I've said before videos the next best thing 74 00:06:04.660 --> 00:06:09.540 to being there in person. I think, simply put, communicating with videos 75 00:06:09.620 --> 00:06:14.500 more efficient, it's more expressive and therefore it's more effective than text and in 76 00:06:14.699 --> 00:06:17.019 a remote first world in which we currently live, in a lot of cases, 77 00:06:17.649 --> 00:06:23.850 video is the only solution to creating these empathetic and person to person experiences 78 00:06:24.009 --> 00:06:27.930 that were so used to. So it's been an awesome journey, but it 79 00:06:28.009 --> 00:06:30.769 feels like it's just begun and we announced just last week we've had two point 80 00:06:30.769 --> 00:06:34.560 eight million users start using the product since March first, and so it's just 81 00:06:34.680 --> 00:06:42.160 been this incredible, incredible time, despite very difficult time for so many people, 82 00:06:42.279 --> 00:06:47.189 and it's amazing to be able to support so many organizations in their and 83 00:06:47.269 --> 00:06:54.149 their journey to communicating with customers. Right now. It's really a great time 84 00:06:55.029 --> 00:06:59.790 to be where you're at. You've done some great work in terms of fundraising 85 00:07:00.310 --> 00:07:06.139 with some really supportive and large huge friend names in terms of those investors. 86 00:07:06.740 --> 00:07:11.060 I want to give us a little bit of overview about your fundraising efforts. 87 00:07:11.660 --> 00:07:15.649 Yeah, for sure. So why combinator was our our kind of first institutional 88 00:07:15.730 --> 00:07:20.850 investor. Their program has changed a lot over the years, but why see, 89 00:07:21.410 --> 00:07:25.490 you know, in my mind, gives you a handle on the first 90 00:07:25.529 --> 00:07:30.240 rung of the ladder, which is Silicon Valley, and I think Silicon Valley 91 00:07:30.279 --> 00:07:32.759 has a very tall ladder. It's infinitely tall, but there's no wrong. 92 00:07:32.839 --> 00:07:35.920 Is the bottom of that ladder and a program like why I see validates you 93 00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:41.360 as a person working on a real problem to give you access to some of 94 00:07:41.399 --> 00:07:45.750 these early investors and so, no matter what stage of fundraising you're at. 95 00:07:45.949 --> 00:07:47.910 The most important thing I have learned, and I tell entpreneurs is all the 96 00:07:47.990 --> 00:07:51.829 time, is you. Every time you meet it possible investor, you are 97 00:07:51.870 --> 00:07:56.910 plotting a point on a performance time graph. So let's say why access is 98 00:07:56.990 --> 00:08:01.259 performance x access. This time, that first point always starts at the origin. 99 00:08:01.660 --> 00:08:05.740 Well, why see does is it plots points for you along that trajectory 100 00:08:07.339 --> 00:08:11.100 and so that when investors first meet you, it's clear you've you've built some 101 00:08:11.220 --> 00:08:15.490 performance along the period of time that you were in Y. See, outside 102 00:08:15.529 --> 00:08:18.009 of why? I see, though, you're on your very own and when 103 00:08:18.009 --> 00:08:20.889 you first meet an investor you can't expect them to write a check because they're 104 00:08:20.889 --> 00:08:24.649 just starting to get to know your business and who you are. And so, 105 00:08:24.810 --> 00:08:28.120 to that point, I've been fundraising from the minute we launched. We 106 00:08:28.199 --> 00:08:31.240 launched the Jaar, I've been meeting with investors, I've been updating them and 107 00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:35.120 educating them on what we're doing on the basis of continuously planning these points. 108 00:08:35.159 --> 00:08:39.519 And so why see, kicked off our seat round of financing. I talked 109 00:08:39.519 --> 00:08:43.789 to a hundred and five different angel investors. Post Demo Day, when I 110 00:08:43.909 --> 00:08:46.669 raising from eleven of them, just over one point six five million dollars. 111 00:08:48.389 --> 00:08:50.429 And interestingly enough, I talked about that drive down and I did across the 112 00:08:50.509 --> 00:08:54.710 country. We did it again and it was a year after the first time 113 00:08:54.710 --> 00:08:56.379 we did that drive, but this time we had over a million dollars in 114 00:08:56.419 --> 00:09:00.340 our bank account trying to figure out what we were going to build, but 115 00:09:00.460 --> 00:09:03.740 it was to build the thing that we had come up with on that previous 116 00:09:03.779 --> 00:09:07.340 drive. So every great journey starts with the road trip, of my opinion. 117 00:09:07.980 --> 00:09:13.730 Then our series a was led just over a year and a bit later 118 00:09:13.409 --> 00:09:18.690 with a pension fund here in Canada called Omers, and interesting enough, Omers 119 00:09:18.850 --> 00:09:24.639 was holds both of my parents pensions. They started a venture fund and they 120 00:09:24.720 --> 00:09:26.759 decided to invest in our series a on the basis that we had some good, 121 00:09:26.840 --> 00:09:31.000 good customer traction. We were coming back from my combinator to Canada and 122 00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:35.639 they really wanted to have access to a Waterloo base deal. But again, 123 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:41.110 I had been talking to them about fundraising for probably a year and a half 124 00:09:41.190 --> 00:09:46.029 before that happened and they had a shot at doing our seat round of financing 125 00:09:46.070 --> 00:09:48.269 and we're interested in it. Didn't take that shot, but came back to 126 00:09:48.350 --> 00:09:52.269 the table on the series a. So less number two, don't burn any 127 00:09:52.269 --> 00:09:56.940 bridges in your fundraising process. And then came along Bessemer. A bit of 128 00:09:56.980 --> 00:10:01.580 a competitive process, couple vendors of the table, but I really wanted best 129 00:10:01.620 --> 00:10:05.659 Mer to invest in the company because Byron Deeer is in a lot of ways 130 00:10:05.779 --> 00:10:11.250 in my mind, the godfather of of cloud and Sass and specifically of IPOs. 131 00:10:11.330 --> 00:10:15.610 In that arena, I think he sat alongside of more than fifteen now 132 00:10:16.169 --> 00:10:20.250 and was one of the early investors in a company called Eloqua, which we 133 00:10:20.409 --> 00:10:24.360 looked up to as kind of one of the, you know, first marking 134 00:10:24.399 --> 00:10:30.120 automation platforms that that grew to really meaningful scale and sold to sold Oracle and 135 00:10:30.279 --> 00:10:33.559 we shared a lot of customers with them. And what Byron gave us was 136 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:39.230 a really scalable perspective, access to Toi look in valley thinking, access to 137 00:10:39.509 --> 00:10:43.950 talent, access to a great portfolio of founders that we were able to tap 138 00:10:43.070 --> 00:10:48.870 into and and that continues to yield success. And then finally battery battery came 139 00:10:48.950 --> 00:10:54.700 in on our serious that was late two thousand and sixteen and basically, you 140 00:10:54.779 --> 00:10:58.100 know, wanted to give us enough money to see this thing through to large 141 00:10:58.220 --> 00:11:01.740 scale, again a competitive process. The important thing to note, though, 142 00:11:01.379 --> 00:11:05.889 with over seventy million rays, the only the only investor deck I ever made 143 00:11:07.690 --> 00:11:11.090 was the one for y see demo day and that was a two minute pitch. 144 00:11:11.090 --> 00:11:13.610 I have yet to make a deck, have yet to go through a 145 00:11:13.730 --> 00:11:18.279 full process. Everything we've done so far has been talking to investors, getting 146 00:11:18.279 --> 00:11:22.080 them excited, never needing their money, but eventually one of them comes out 147 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:24.840 of the woodwork with an offer that makes sense for us. We've decided to 148 00:11:24.960 --> 00:11:28.240 move ahead. You know, one of the things you mentioned that I don't 149 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:31.159 want to just brush over. You said, you know, we went through 150 00:11:31.159 --> 00:11:35.549 a hundred and five v season before the found the handful, right. So 151 00:11:35.710 --> 00:11:41.990 that's that's important note, because you're going to hear a lot of no response 152 00:11:41.029 --> 00:11:45.990 or no thank you or just non returns. Right. You just gotta stick 153 00:11:46.149 --> 00:11:48.620 with it. is part of that underlying message. If you did in fact 154 00:11:48.659 --> 00:11:52.179 talk to that many, that's a good number. Yeah, Oh, yeah, 155 00:11:52.299 --> 00:11:58.259 like I think seat investing. So now I'm a partner in a small 156 00:11:58.299 --> 00:12:03.009 fund with that about eighty five deals. Seat investing is is really, really 157 00:12:03.129 --> 00:12:07.330 tricky because there's very little traction or validation for an investor to make a decision 158 00:12:07.330 --> 00:12:13.129 against. Really they are looking at somebody WHO's working on a problem and trying 159 00:12:13.169 --> 00:12:16.720 to validate is this the best person solved this problem? Is this problem going 160 00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:18.240 to be big enough? And that's what they're basing their investment on. And 161 00:12:18.360 --> 00:12:26.559 so seat investing is really all about building momentum and already having a deal together 162 00:12:26.440 --> 00:12:31.470 prior to announcing a formal fundraise. When I say I talked to a hundred 163 00:12:31.470 --> 00:12:33.429 and five separate angels, that that was how many were, it was in 164 00:12:33.509 --> 00:12:39.190 my tracker. But that tracker was started well before we were actually doing a 165 00:12:39.789 --> 00:12:43.740 sophisticated fund raise. And what happened was during why, see, someone I've 166 00:12:43.740 --> 00:12:46.940 been talking to for a long time said, hey, I like what you're 167 00:12:46.980 --> 00:12:50.980 doing, I see your trajectory, I've watched you plot these points on the 168 00:12:50.139 --> 00:12:54.659 formance time graph. I would like to invest and, by the way, 169 00:12:54.539 --> 00:12:58.690 investing for me to make it interesting, I've got to do at least two 170 00:12:58.690 --> 00:13:01.889 hundred thousand dollars, and I thought only fit. We're on. And so 171 00:13:01.570 --> 00:13:05.370 we had that money. We had the why combinator money, one of the 172 00:13:05.409 --> 00:13:09.049 why comminator partners decided to invest. He wrote us a check on the streaming 173 00:13:09.250 --> 00:13:11.289 of this car after a why? I see dinner one night. And so 174 00:13:11.529 --> 00:13:15.200 when we got to demo day we already had about a third of the round 175 00:13:15.200 --> 00:13:20.039 rays, but I had already probably talked to se five and eighty eight, 176 00:13:20.279 --> 00:13:22.799 five hundred and ninety of those disvestors on that list. Once we had the 177 00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:26.470 momentum, it was hey, are you know the story? Are you in 178 00:13:26.590 --> 00:13:30.230 or are you in? But you have to build that momentum. And I 179 00:13:30.309 --> 00:13:33.909 see deals done all the time. Company looks great, they can't build momentum 180 00:13:33.990 --> 00:13:37.470 and up not raising. Company looks okay, they build momentum, they get 181 00:13:37.509 --> 00:13:41.620 the right people at the table, it starts to feel like a scarce commodity. 182 00:13:43.100 --> 00:13:46.580 FOMO drives early stage investors like like nothing, you would believe. Then 183 00:13:46.700 --> 00:13:50.820 other analogy that works really well, as they're like buffalo right. First one 184 00:13:50.100 --> 00:13:54.899 runs off the cliff and they all follow through, sometimes to their death. 185 00:13:54.059 --> 00:13:58.169 But you have to build that momentum in your rays and and that was a 186 00:13:58.210 --> 00:14:01.809 key learning especially on the seed end of the finest thing. And it changes 187 00:14:01.009 --> 00:14:05.889 over the over the the I think, duration of your fundraise. I'd say 188 00:14:05.889 --> 00:14:09.970 your seed round is, you know, a hundred percent smoking mirrors momentum. 189 00:14:09.320 --> 00:14:13.320 You know how you kind of position it and and and how you track performance. 190 00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:18.759 And early stage traction series a is like twenty percent. How are you 191 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:22.919 doing? Eighty percent. What's The big vision and traction and momentum, and 192 00:14:22.080 --> 00:14:26.389 in the series be flips that. It's like eighty percent metrics, performance, 193 00:14:26.750 --> 00:14:30.470 where you at, and then that twenty percent is the big vision stuff, 194 00:14:30.509 --> 00:14:33.309 and that's been my learning. I think that holds true to this day and 195 00:14:33.350 --> 00:14:35.789 I've seen it play out in a lot of different companies. Well, so 196 00:14:35.870 --> 00:14:39.340 you mentioned traction. So in those early days when you were pitching this, 197 00:14:39.500 --> 00:14:45.139 what was the help us understand the target market? And when do you think, 198 00:14:45.379 --> 00:14:50.419 during that journey going from seed to a, did you figure out product 199 00:14:50.460 --> 00:14:56.570 market fit? Yeah, great questions. So early stage we had done some 200 00:14:56.730 --> 00:15:00.450 really interesting stuff. So you talked about the hockey things. We built a 201 00:15:00.610 --> 00:15:05.490 crawler that we called nostradamus for obvious reasons. In a moment and not stre 202 00:15:05.490 --> 00:15:09.440 Damas, crawled the web for websites that had a video embedded on the home 203 00:15:09.480 --> 00:15:15.519 page. And when not Damas sound a website with the video better on the 204 00:15:15.559 --> 00:15:18.360 home page, nostradamis found it into a column and a database and then crawl 205 00:15:18.440 --> 00:15:20.710 the rest of the site map and said, okay, how many other videos 206 00:15:20.710 --> 00:15:24.389 are here, and then looked at crunch based and linkedin data and a bunch 207 00:15:24.389 --> 00:15:28.549 of other sources instead of rank these companies by scale. And so nostredamus ran 208 00:15:28.629 --> 00:15:33.710 for about a week in the corner of our office in Los Gatos and came 209 00:15:33.789 --> 00:15:37.740 up with about eighty five thousand businesses that we could prospect to. And so 210 00:15:37.059 --> 00:15:41.379 what I started to do then was we were we hadn't launched the software yet, 211 00:15:41.419 --> 00:15:43.899 but I started to outreach to those companies and I would do about a 212 00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:46.980 hundred a day. I grabbed the companies, put them in a spreadsheet, 213 00:15:48.019 --> 00:15:52.409 I'd send them to somebody we found on Oldsk who would get the contact information 214 00:15:52.570 --> 00:15:56.009 of all the key individuals while I slapt deliver them to me in the morning 215 00:15:56.330 --> 00:15:58.450 and then I would go through and have those conversations in my hit rate was 216 00:15:58.529 --> 00:16:03.490 probably one to two percent at most during that time. But what happened was, 217 00:16:03.690 --> 00:16:07.120 over the span of six months, I developed a list at about one 218 00:16:07.519 --> 00:16:12.240 hundred organizations that were interested in the yard and what we were doing and using 219 00:16:12.279 --> 00:16:17.279 us as a video hosting solution so that when we launched the week before Demo 220 00:16:17.320 --> 00:16:22.590 Day, I was then able to email one hundred of these organizations and I 221 00:16:22.789 --> 00:16:26.470 spread them out and got them to sign up for what at the time was 222 00:16:26.509 --> 00:16:32.350 a very cost effective product to manage their own branding, track analytics on viewers. 223 00:16:32.710 --> 00:16:36.539 And so what it looked like the yard had approaching Demo Day was this 224 00:16:37.220 --> 00:16:41.620 ramping group of customers, but of course I had already produced this list and 225 00:16:41.740 --> 00:16:45.179 it was now giving them access to what they wanted over a period of time 226 00:16:45.259 --> 00:16:48.809 to really show off this hockey stick. And that's the momentum, that's the 227 00:16:48.889 --> 00:16:52.649 excitement which which continued. And we had a target of growing are are by 228 00:16:52.769 --> 00:16:57.769 ten percent per week and we were achieving that result through this very kind of 229 00:16:57.970 --> 00:17:02.600 scrappy go to market model, and that is, I think, what what 230 00:17:02.879 --> 00:17:07.559 really excited to the seed stage investors. Your second question was about the series 231 00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:10.720 a and product market fit right, unless you had something else about that. 232 00:17:10.839 --> 00:17:14.720 So you know I was going to say. So, with growing ten percent 233 00:17:14.880 --> 00:17:17.710 per week, what size organizations for these? We'se guys, meeting guys, 234 00:17:17.710 --> 00:17:22.670 small guys, that are it was anybody who's showing interest in using our product, 235 00:17:22.710 --> 00:17:26.430 and what we found early on was obviously small companies move much more quickly 236 00:17:26.549 --> 00:17:30.380 and are willing to try new things. But big companies have people in them 237 00:17:30.259 --> 00:17:34.019 that are willing to go and spend a couple hundred bucks on software and and 238 00:17:34.460 --> 00:17:38.660 try to solve their problem right and finding those people can be difficult, but 239 00:17:38.900 --> 00:17:42.019 obviously they're exciting because then you can put, you know, the logo for 240 00:17:42.099 --> 00:17:45.769 sales force on your website, for instance, if you do find them, 241 00:17:45.170 --> 00:17:51.329 and over time you can grow those accounts into large, enterprise wide establishments, 242 00:17:51.329 --> 00:17:53.089 as long as you have the patients and energy to see it true. And 243 00:17:53.170 --> 00:17:57.759 so we inevitably got sucked into kind of the mid market and enterprise because of 244 00:17:57.839 --> 00:18:02.599 some of the successes and because of what Nostredam has showed us. We're willing 245 00:18:02.599 --> 00:18:06.960 and able buyers and back then only big companies really had the budgets to spend 246 00:18:07.400 --> 00:18:10.880 on video to the capacity where they needed a solution like ours to determine it 247 00:18:10.920 --> 00:18:15.029 success. Product Market Fit, you know, I think is a good one. 248 00:18:15.109 --> 00:18:18.990 I feel like we still don't have it and you know, you talked 249 00:18:18.990 --> 00:18:22.829 to a lot of CEOS and leaders who believe it's a moving target and there's 250 00:18:22.910 --> 00:18:27.700 there's various times when it when you maybe you get it better than you have 251 00:18:27.980 --> 00:18:33.539 previously and you know that the livers exponential growth, but growth is often also 252 00:18:33.579 --> 00:18:37.819 a step function for a lot of organizations and and I think that the market 253 00:18:37.980 --> 00:18:42.809 move so fast that if you stay still you quickly lose product market fit. 254 00:18:44.049 --> 00:18:48.410 So in my mind the markets always moving like this and your product has to 255 00:18:48.490 --> 00:18:52.769 be just behind that curve. You're probably too far inheat of it. You 256 00:18:52.849 --> 00:18:55.759 obviously don't have fit too far behind it. You don't a fit. It's 257 00:18:55.839 --> 00:18:57.480 got to be just in step with that market and as soon as you stand 258 00:18:57.519 --> 00:19:00.839 still, obviously the market moves on and you lose that product market fit. 259 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:04.240 So I don't think we've ever had it, but I think think we've been 260 00:19:04.319 --> 00:19:08.759 close to it at times and and that's ultimately what has allowed us to be 261 00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:14.950 successful in raising money via the validation of our customers. Also heard that you 262 00:19:15.109 --> 00:19:18.069 are considering, because you have kind of found this home inside of the mid 263 00:19:18.109 --> 00:19:23.859 market enterprise space, that you're now also starting to figure out that that not 264 00:19:25.019 --> 00:19:32.740 necessarily lower and but that product led growth approach where it's higher transaction are higher 265 00:19:32.740 --> 00:19:36.980 number of transactions, perhaps lower in terms of ACC ACV. Yeah, it's 266 00:19:36.980 --> 00:19:38.609 a great it's a great, great thought because, you know, I just 267 00:19:38.730 --> 00:19:45.490 talked about this, this moving product market fit and motion and the market changing 268 00:19:45.890 --> 00:19:49.009 and what we've seen in the period of time since we've been running vidyard. 269 00:19:49.970 --> 00:19:56.920 It's just really interesting phenomenon whereby even the way enterprises by software has changed. 270 00:19:56.559 --> 00:20:00.000 I was at an event with Brian Halligan, the CEO of spot, and 271 00:20:00.079 --> 00:20:04.119 he asked everybody to raise their arm and it was a bunch of executives in 272 00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:08.390 the room and raise your hand if you've been involved in a software purchasing decision 273 00:20:08.430 --> 00:20:14.029 in the last five years, and just about everybody's hands went up. And 274 00:20:14.150 --> 00:20:17.470 then it was raise your hand if you've been involved in a software purchasing decision 275 00:20:17.509 --> 00:20:19.829 in the past sixteen to twenty four months, and nobody's hand went up. 276 00:20:21.539 --> 00:20:26.099 And what I think is changed in business is the biggest risk of execution for 277 00:20:26.220 --> 00:20:33.259 an organization is time, and nobody really has the ability to go spend three, 278 00:20:33.579 --> 00:20:37.170 four, five, six seven weeks on a discovery process and our FP 279 00:20:37.329 --> 00:20:42.009 The buy a solution, because there's so much out there essentially available for free, 280 00:20:42.809 --> 00:20:48.009 and so our traditional top down model of finding an account that had video 281 00:20:48.089 --> 00:20:52.119 and calling into them and building this process was still effective, but we saw 282 00:20:52.519 --> 00:20:59.400 a vision for the future where we could unlock a whole new category of buyer 283 00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:04.269 and user in all sizes of organizations if we had a free product that was 284 00:21:04.470 --> 00:21:08.549 reading available now for our core business, which was video hosting, analytics, 285 00:21:08.630 --> 00:21:12.789 integrations, infrastruct and CETERA. The free product there is Youtube, and when 286 00:21:12.829 --> 00:21:18.309 people outgrow youtube they grow into something like the yard and that's our motion. 287 00:21:18.099 --> 00:21:22.339 But what we found on this other end of the spectrum was this is whole 288 00:21:22.380 --> 00:21:25.460 group of people that want to be able to easily do the screen recording, 289 00:21:25.500 --> 00:21:29.980 a webcam recording, send that video to someone and get a notification when they 290 00:21:30.019 --> 00:21:33.730 watch it. Still our core bread and butter a video hosting and serving and 291 00:21:33.930 --> 00:21:37.769 providing that level of analytics, but now has this element of creation on front 292 00:21:37.809 --> 00:21:41.329 of it and looking at our margins and our business models, we realize we 293 00:21:41.369 --> 00:21:45.769 can offer that for free and acquire millions and millions of users on that product 294 00:21:45.529 --> 00:21:51.359 and in doing so, capture users and large organizations that become part of this 295 00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:56.000 bigger purchasing process. And the reason why executives are no longer involved in software 296 00:21:56.039 --> 00:21:59.599 purchasing, as I mentioned, beings calls, because they look to their teams 297 00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:03.670 to essentially approve the purchase that the team want to make. Team wants to 298 00:22:03.710 --> 00:22:08.509 make and if if prospecting with video or supporting customers with video is a goal 299 00:22:08.630 --> 00:22:15.269 the company has, or improving customer and that promoter scores, reducing the amount 300 00:22:15.269 --> 00:22:19.339 of time it requires to close the deal, engaging more prospects and conversations, 301 00:22:19.380 --> 00:22:25.339 if those are the goals and organization has, video can solve all those things. 302 00:22:25.779 --> 00:22:29.380 But if the barrier to entry was pay for us, nobody was going 303 00:22:29.420 --> 00:22:32.009 to try it. Because this is very entry using video. So it's hey, 304 00:22:32.089 --> 00:22:33.569 use it for free and if you get value out of it, here's 305 00:22:33.569 --> 00:22:37.769 a bunch of features that you can pay for that potentially extended off. However, 306 00:22:37.009 --> 00:22:41.769 we don't care if you never buy, because we want you to be 307 00:22:41.809 --> 00:22:45.079 successful communicating with videos. That's really where the product led motion came from and 308 00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:51.359 inevitably it's allowed us to work with smaller organizations. And you know, it 309 00:22:51.480 --> 00:22:56.799 took us the better part of six years to get to a thousand customers and 310 00:22:56.240 --> 00:23:00.349 our last thousand customers arrived and in less than a month, and so that 311 00:23:00.549 --> 00:23:04.630 that type of momentum is really what this product led growth. My motion can 312 00:23:04.910 --> 00:23:11.470 can can really yield if unlocked appropriately, but it took us seven, eight 313 00:23:11.549 --> 00:23:15.460 years in this market to really kind of figure out what the product needed to 314 00:23:15.500 --> 00:23:19.220 look like. They're so you are the epitome of a thunder that can sell 315 00:23:21.099 --> 00:23:25.500 for sure. When was it time to take the keys and hand it over 316 00:23:25.660 --> 00:23:30.650 to your first VP of sales? Wah, that's a great question. Yeah, 317 00:23:30.730 --> 00:23:36.250 so first B are first account executive for sales. I caught that. 318 00:23:36.490 --> 00:23:40.170 I did catch that. Yeah, yeah, so, so, yeah, 319 00:23:40.170 --> 00:23:44.880 what happened was I was doing out on prospecting and running the sale cycle and 320 00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:48.440 it got to a point where I was not I did not have enough time 321 00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:52.519 to do prospecting and handle the sale cycle. And obviously the sales cycles very 322 00:23:52.559 --> 00:23:56.710 important because that's where the dollars come from, but the pipeline is also important 323 00:23:56.710 --> 00:24:00.869 because that's your future to always come from. So we hired an individual who 324 00:24:00.950 --> 00:24:04.069 had just been through IBM sales training program and had decided to ride a bicycle 325 00:24:04.109 --> 00:24:08.309 across the country to join me as soon as he came back from running his 326 00:24:08.349 --> 00:24:14.099 bicycle across the country to do outdoun prospecting and film my calendar, and inevitably 327 00:24:15.019 --> 00:24:19.819 he became our first bdr and then we hired another one and when I got 328 00:24:19.980 --> 00:24:23.970 so busy, this individuals name was Ian, became our first account executive, 329 00:24:25.049 --> 00:24:29.089 and so then I was selling alongside of somebody with some sales experience. We 330 00:24:29.170 --> 00:24:32.170 had three btrs at that point. Then we moved one of those drs in 331 00:24:32.210 --> 00:24:34.329 new an account executive, and all of a sudden, over time we had 332 00:24:34.410 --> 00:24:40.400 three account executives, myself included, and five bdrs building pipeline for us and 333 00:24:40.519 --> 00:24:44.000 it started to become a process that needed to be managed, and so I 334 00:24:44.440 --> 00:24:48.240 reserve myself for the bigger deals and when I need to do support. But 335 00:24:48.359 --> 00:24:53.150 then essentially became a sales manager and focused on activity, accountability and and those 336 00:24:53.190 --> 00:24:56.349 types of frameworks to make sure that we were doing the things were choir to 337 00:24:56.470 --> 00:25:00.630 generate the pipeline to close the business. At some point, though, I 338 00:25:00.509 --> 00:25:04.670 ran out of skill. Right, I think a founder has the special thing, 339 00:25:04.710 --> 00:25:10.180 which is passion, and that passion can get you really far, but 340 00:25:10.299 --> 00:25:14.099 at some point you start to make mistakes and that you don't know what you 341 00:25:14.140 --> 00:25:18.579 don't know. On the realization of that is a powerful moment in every life, 342 00:25:18.700 --> 00:25:23.650 in realizing scale, and so one of our account executives that had joined 343 00:25:23.690 --> 00:25:27.930 in that process came from sales forts had a fifteen year career in sales, 344 00:25:29.569 --> 00:25:33.809 understood the process, had had visions to become the manager and did just that. 345 00:25:34.650 --> 00:25:40.079 And you know, I've hired in different executives to lead the team from 346 00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:44.880 a strategic perspective since that time of you know, not knowing what. I 347 00:25:44.920 --> 00:25:47.920 don't know, but that AE, who was our second day you ever hired 348 00:25:47.960 --> 00:25:51.710 that eventually became a sales manager, is now our VP of sales for the 349 00:25:51.910 --> 00:25:56.470 entire sales operation because he's grown with the company, he's learned our processes, 350 00:25:56.509 --> 00:26:00.630 he's learned the customer and anybody I brought an external really wanted to put their 351 00:26:02.390 --> 00:26:07.819 playbook onto our business without necessarily understanding our business. And this individual, his 352 00:26:07.859 --> 00:26:11.420 name is Dan, I think, got to see all these other leaders make 353 00:26:11.500 --> 00:26:15.660 these mistakes over time and then retrofit what they were trying to do from a 354 00:26:15.700 --> 00:26:19.930 scalable perspective to our model and ultimately be very successful with it. So it 355 00:26:21.049 --> 00:26:22.089 was a long road to get to where we are now, but are very 356 00:26:22.130 --> 00:26:26.890 happy with the result. How many? So those people know the whole sales 357 00:26:26.009 --> 00:26:33.400 organization. So I'm assuming not including CSCX or anything post sale, including bdrs, 358 00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:38.599 constcrege, managers, etc. Is just over sixty five, I believe. 359 00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:44.039 As a global team. Yea. Yeah, so we have a team 360 00:26:44.079 --> 00:26:49.309 in Vancouver, in Waterloo and Boston and in Dublin. So what metrics are 361 00:26:49.390 --> 00:26:56.430 you using to to monitor selling and cus? Are there any particular metrics that 362 00:26:56.829 --> 00:27:04.099 you and the VP of sales consider critical or elemental to how you're measuring performance? 363 00:27:04.140 --> 00:27:10.380 Yeah, so there's obviously, you know, the the very straightforward ones, 364 00:27:10.420 --> 00:27:15.420 right, like pipeline available for a closing within a certain period, are 365 00:27:15.420 --> 00:27:19.089 are but in my mind those are largely legging indicators. There's so many other 366 00:27:19.250 --> 00:27:25.890 factors to consider in your sales and go to market motion. One thing that 367 00:27:26.009 --> 00:27:30.960 we look at really, really closely as essentially velocity from M Qi to s 368 00:27:30.039 --> 00:27:37.559 Qo and then also velocity from sales qualified opportunity as quo to closed one, 369 00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:45.430 because our mission as an organization is to remove the friction and reduce the amount 370 00:27:45.430 --> 00:27:49.630 of time that a customer has to get to value, and those are the 371 00:27:49.829 --> 00:27:55.309 two hall marks of that process us, those of the Kpis that the finest 372 00:27:55.390 --> 00:27:59.420 actually being able to do those things and on our strategy map remove friction and 373 00:27:59.500 --> 00:28:03.700 reduced on the value are clearly called out, and so products has work to 374 00:28:03.740 --> 00:28:07.500 do. That actually feeds into the success of the sales team, as indicated 375 00:28:07.619 --> 00:28:14.009 by sales velocity, and and that is through the onboarding of users in an 376 00:28:14.009 --> 00:28:18.490 account that might be trialing the free product marketing as it gets to product messaging, 377 00:28:18.930 --> 00:28:22.849 pricing and proper fit has a role to play there as well. And 378 00:28:23.009 --> 00:28:27.279 of course, the count executives and how fast they're moving things through the funnel 379 00:28:27.640 --> 00:28:32.880 and disqualifying opportunities is really important. We went through a phase really on where 380 00:28:32.920 --> 00:28:37.640 a's would hoard opportunities because they wanted every kick at the can possible. But 381 00:28:37.720 --> 00:28:41.549 then of course they're wasting time with stuff that should be dead and should be 382 00:28:41.670 --> 00:28:45.109 out of their out of their realm. And so the amount of debt ops 383 00:28:45.150 --> 00:28:49.549 or opst a a is holding, the rate at which they're they're creating debt 384 00:28:49.589 --> 00:28:53.950 ops and moving accounts out of their name and back into the the the broad 385 00:28:55.029 --> 00:28:57.539 pool of accounts matters, and I could go on and on and on about 386 00:28:57.539 --> 00:29:02.180 the nuances of what we measure and why it's important, but the reality is 387 00:29:02.299 --> 00:29:06.259 at some point it becomes it becomes really important what I would say, though, 388 00:29:06.339 --> 00:29:08.380 is outside of the Dr Team, you know, we're not we're not 389 00:29:08.539 --> 00:29:14.569 measuring activities or doing accountability or outbout contacts or volume of emails or calls, 390 00:29:14.650 --> 00:29:18.410 Et Cetera during the day. I think that that type of kind of big 391 00:29:18.490 --> 00:29:22.490 brother approach to managing sales teams is the thing in the past, especially because 392 00:29:22.490 --> 00:29:26.559 I think each sales rep brings our own unique process to managing deals and building 393 00:29:26.599 --> 00:29:30.079 relationships and in the end of the day, if they're not being productive, 394 00:29:30.119 --> 00:29:33.799 they're not going to show results and and the disconnect between those two things is 395 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:41.910 too far removed. So today a little bit different than six months ago. 396 00:29:42.190 --> 00:29:49.029 What impact or effect has this had on new business and the renewal business? 397 00:29:49.750 --> 00:29:55.859 A great question. So here sitting in my garage at the cottage, as 398 00:29:55.859 --> 00:30:00.779 I described, when this first happened, this is my wife and I immediately 399 00:30:00.819 --> 00:30:03.579 say, you know what, let's let's go up to the cottage and hunker 400 00:30:03.700 --> 00:30:06.940 down and and figure it out because we're not going to be at the office. 401 00:30:06.940 --> 00:30:10.890 We may as a light slater selves and we had just come back from 402 00:30:11.490 --> 00:30:15.809 Winter Holiday and Oh my God that this thing hit us fast. I mean 403 00:30:15.890 --> 00:30:19.930 everybody's going to have their own corona story, but we were watching it from 404 00:30:19.930 --> 00:30:25.599 the beach where we were in, in Belize actually, and communicating with our 405 00:30:25.680 --> 00:30:30.519 teams. My wife also a founder of an operation, and so we have 406 00:30:30.599 --> 00:30:33.799 a lot of shared experience. Got Back on the money by the Thursday. 407 00:30:33.799 --> 00:30:37.390 We were fully remote and the next Tuesday we had a board meeting and at 408 00:30:37.509 --> 00:30:44.390 that board meeting we prepared a worst case scenario for the business. And you 409 00:30:44.470 --> 00:30:48.670 know, it was common knowledge at the time that businesses were were closing the 410 00:30:48.750 --> 00:30:52.140 the economy was going to be in a very dire state because of that, 411 00:30:52.299 --> 00:30:59.059 especially in the hospitality and associated industries. And so our worst case model was 412 00:30:59.299 --> 00:31:04.289 no new revenue for three quarters and losing sixty five percent of our customer base. 413 00:31:04.769 --> 00:31:10.450 And I remember sitting on the porch with my wife having a beer and 414 00:31:11.250 --> 00:31:12.769 saying, you know, we've been at this for the better part of ten 415 00:31:12.849 --> 00:31:18.960 years and we're presenting a plan to the board tomorrow that shows US losing sixty 416 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:22.119 five percent of that and nothing new, like going back to square one. 417 00:31:22.319 --> 00:31:26.440 But it is important to save the team and so and in the long term, 418 00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:30.079 viability of an operation is of the most important I mean that's that's the 419 00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:36.390 number one consideration of the CEO. So we had that meeting, but at 420 00:31:36.470 --> 00:31:40.750 that time there was already an indication our traffic was up. The free volume 421 00:31:40.829 --> 00:31:42.549 of users we saw is up. We just had no idea how those we're 422 00:31:42.549 --> 00:31:47.420 going to correlate the revenue, and so we started doing daily updates amongst the 423 00:31:47.460 --> 00:31:49.339 executive team to try to track what was happening in the customer base. But 424 00:31:49.460 --> 00:31:53.539 we were hearing and and turns out in a remote world, video communication is 425 00:31:53.980 --> 00:31:59.259 very, very important. And so none of all things, we didn't really 426 00:31:59.299 --> 00:32:02.730 see any any churn. We saw a few organizations that asked for deferral of 427 00:32:02.769 --> 00:32:09.890 payments. We offered a program to essentially the the fur renewal of products that 428 00:32:09.930 --> 00:32:15.529 we eventually pulled away because it wasn't necessary. And on the sales side will 429 00:32:15.529 --> 00:32:19.359 actually started to see deal psyche goals on the commercial end of the business go 430 00:32:19.480 --> 00:32:22.519 from about a hundred twenty days to bout fifty days. On the emerging side 431 00:32:22.519 --> 00:32:25.480 of business drop to less than a week. So merging is zero to two 432 00:32:25.480 --> 00:32:30.390 hundred ployees, commercials two hundred plus. And so all of a sudden we 433 00:32:30.509 --> 00:32:34.630 had all this concern, all this fear and at quickly changed to hey, 434 00:32:34.670 --> 00:32:36.710 wait a minute, for us, this isn't a head wind, where one 435 00:32:36.710 --> 00:32:38.750 of the lucky organizations that that has this as a tail when and so we 436 00:32:38.829 --> 00:32:45.700 had to completely turn the ship around and redirect the business as resources into capturing 437 00:32:45.779 --> 00:32:49.420 this opportunity, because we recognize we had a unique opportunity to help. And 438 00:32:49.579 --> 00:32:52.460 so since then, since March first of two thousand and twenty, we've had 439 00:32:52.500 --> 00:32:58.140 two point eight million new users sign up, which is an explosive amount of 440 00:32:58.180 --> 00:33:00.769 growth from where we would have been before, and it hasn't rescinded in any 441 00:33:00.769 --> 00:33:07.289 way whatsoever at this juncture, which has correlated directly downstream from a revenue perspective. 442 00:33:07.769 --> 00:33:10.650 And so it's just been a phenomenal time and again we know that we 443 00:33:10.730 --> 00:33:15.720 are very fortunate, but being able to help support companies communicate with their customers, 444 00:33:15.799 --> 00:33:21.359 communicate with their prospects and communicate with each other during this time is really 445 00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:23.519 why we do this. And so we had that, we had this vision 446 00:33:23.960 --> 00:33:30.190 and, in frankly, you know, and took a global pandemic, I 447 00:33:30.309 --> 00:33:34.589 think, to move people into this realm of video communication. And you're probably 448 00:33:34.630 --> 00:33:38.589 familiar with the Jeffrey Moore crossing the chasm model of early adopters to early majority 449 00:33:38.789 --> 00:33:44.579 to the laguards. I think what's happened is it's pushed the laggards into using 450 00:33:44.619 --> 00:33:49.140 digital commune Unication, things like slack, Microsoft teams, Zoom, the JAR, 451 00:33:49.220 --> 00:33:52.940 etc. Much sooner than they would have otherwise, probably ten years sooner 452 00:33:52.980 --> 00:33:58.650 than they would have otherwise, and so certain organizations have absolutely benefited. So 453 00:33:58.769 --> 00:34:02.369 your free volume was up in your big account opportunities the enterprise space, you 454 00:34:02.410 --> 00:34:07.250 went from a hundred and twenty days down to fifty. You said you wanted 455 00:34:07.289 --> 00:34:10.119 to capture that. You're one of the lucky ones. What strategy on the 456 00:34:10.159 --> 00:34:16.760 enterprise side did you begin to think through as you these organizations were deciding so 457 00:34:16.960 --> 00:34:22.159 much more rapidly? How were you executing on the enterprise side to take advantages 458 00:34:22.239 --> 00:34:25.070 and capture the opportunity? Yeah, so the big thing for us is when 459 00:34:25.110 --> 00:34:30.469 there's free users in enterprise accounts right, it's a it's very hard to work 460 00:34:30.550 --> 00:34:36.389 with an enterprise that doesn't have any brand affiliation or understand who you are. 461 00:34:36.789 --> 00:34:40.380 And these enterprises may have been pipeline, they may have been groups who had 462 00:34:40.460 --> 00:34:47.780 conversations with but at that moment they really realized the capability of video as their 463 00:34:47.820 --> 00:34:52.420 team was using it. So, for example, a salesperson that had been 464 00:34:52.420 --> 00:34:55.769 using vidjard successfully off the side of their desk may have been seen as a 465 00:34:55.889 --> 00:35:00.289 oneoff thing and a really cool story and Nice to have, but now that 466 00:35:00.530 --> 00:35:05.090 person was one of the only ones that was getting responses to customer outreach, 467 00:35:05.849 --> 00:35:08.800 and so we were able to take that person and turn them into a champion 468 00:35:08.920 --> 00:35:14.519 with their success inside of the rest of the organization at that Enterprise Company. 469 00:35:14.559 --> 00:35:17.000 And so even the tactics that we were using, that was the dream scenario 470 00:35:17.039 --> 00:35:22.190 we wanted our teams to be following as they were prospecting and developing deals. 471 00:35:22.710 --> 00:35:25.070 It became the way that they were now doing deals, in the way that 472 00:35:25.110 --> 00:35:29.550 they were surfacing opportunities. And because of the explosive growth of free, that 473 00:35:29.670 --> 00:35:31.789 account that might have had a handful of free users in it, now it's 474 00:35:31.829 --> 00:35:36.900 like it had a couple hundred and that couple hundred was growing by ten percent 475 00:35:37.019 --> 00:35:39.860 per day, and so we were able to capture that momentum and because we 476 00:35:40.019 --> 00:35:45.579 were instrumented to see that type of product growth, in product usage growth inside 477 00:35:45.579 --> 00:35:49.860 of an account, we were able to ultimately have these have these conversations and 478 00:35:50.809 --> 00:35:54.369 be much more productive with with the enterprise as a result. Well, it's 479 00:35:54.409 --> 00:35:58.329 great. So you leveraging all the tools in the toolbox. It sounds like 480 00:35:59.090 --> 00:36:01.489 trying to, but you know what is the big thing is the tools that 481 00:36:01.610 --> 00:36:07.199 we don't know we have access to or that we have an instrumented effectively or 482 00:36:07.199 --> 00:36:12.840 appropriately added. And today's business is all about leveraging data to make decisions and 483 00:36:13.480 --> 00:36:17.039 it is tough to make sure that the data is pipeline effectively, it's communicated 484 00:36:17.039 --> 00:36:22.030 effectively, it's surface in a way that it can be actioned and and I 485 00:36:22.150 --> 00:36:27.309 give Kudos to my team for really stepping up and and and embracing the this 486 00:36:27.510 --> 00:36:31.829 shift and and leveraging the technologies accordingly to make sure that ae knows on a 487 00:36:31.860 --> 00:36:37.579 sales force contact record that this account has axe users with this much activity, 488 00:36:38.099 --> 00:36:43.139 to help them prioritize the time they're spending and and without that would be a 489 00:36:43.139 --> 00:36:45.019 whole bunch of manual labor and it'd be really difficult. That's just one small 490 00:36:45.059 --> 00:36:50.250 example of the type of data week we surface to our our a's. This 491 00:36:50.409 --> 00:36:53.610 great. So you mentioned your team. So any changes to your style and 492 00:36:53.690 --> 00:36:59.329 how you're managing that team now that we are in this new world. It's 493 00:36:59.409 --> 00:37:04.440 massive. John. Like I I am a type of person who I'm an 494 00:37:04.440 --> 00:37:07.800 introvert, but I really do enjoy going to the the company and seeing people 495 00:37:07.960 --> 00:37:15.280 and walking the halls and grabbing a coffee and having interesting conversations about people's weekend. 496 00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:19.190 It's amazing how much you can get from those interactions that all of a 497 00:37:19.190 --> 00:37:22.030 sudden you lose. I went from probably seeing a hundred and fifty of our 498 00:37:22.070 --> 00:37:27.269 team on a weekly basis to seeing ten or fifteen, and so you can 499 00:37:27.309 --> 00:37:30.820 start to feel really disconnected from the organization. And so, you know, 500 00:37:30.900 --> 00:37:34.059 we rapped the amount of surveys we're doing. We ramp the amount of ask 501 00:37:34.139 --> 00:37:37.380 me anything anonymous AMAS we're doing. I was doing a monthly company update, 502 00:37:37.460 --> 00:37:40.820 be a video. Now I do a weekly one, which we've gotten really 503 00:37:40.860 --> 00:37:46.849 good feedback on. And you know, it's just meant more communication, more 504 00:37:46.969 --> 00:37:53.489 focused communication, and then random skips. We use this bought called donut be 505 00:37:53.610 --> 00:37:59.800 shy, which sits in slack and analyzes the social graph and and will randomly 506 00:37:59.880 --> 00:38:02.039 pair me up with someone in the company on a weekly basis whom I don't 507 00:38:02.039 --> 00:38:07.320 interact with regularly. So that that kind of stuff has been has been really 508 00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:10.480 unique. More a long ways from from going back to any person interactions, 509 00:38:10.519 --> 00:38:15.469 and so these things have been massively prioritize. We actually made an investment in 510 00:38:15.630 --> 00:38:17.869 our HR team at the beginning of us to make sure that we were staffed 511 00:38:17.909 --> 00:38:22.590 to do people chats as regularly as we wanted to do. We offer to 512 00:38:22.630 --> 00:38:27.030 step into people to retrofit their homes, to make the better office locations. 513 00:38:27.110 --> 00:38:30.099 The list goes list goes on and on and is obviously ongoing because we continue 514 00:38:30.139 --> 00:38:35.739 to learn so much about leading and communicating during this time. Great answer and 515 00:38:36.059 --> 00:38:39.980 and great end or conversation. Michael. This has been great to learn about 516 00:38:40.139 --> 00:38:44.530 your work at videared. Clearly one of your goals, I think, is 517 00:38:44.610 --> 00:38:51.010 to have organizations large and small, become a media company, which I think 518 00:38:51.130 --> 00:38:54.449 is great. I think that's a perfect picture for people to walk away with. 519 00:38:55.360 --> 00:39:00.400 What is the best way for those listening to connect with vigeyard if they'd 520 00:39:00.440 --> 00:39:05.000 like to have a conversation? Yeah, absolutely, I mean videocom there's there's 521 00:39:05.039 --> 00:39:07.400 chat bots, there's the phone number. You know, there's just there's plenty 522 00:39:07.440 --> 00:39:12.670 of forms, but I would say you know, for for what I understand 523 00:39:12.989 --> 00:39:17.429 of this audience. The best way to experience the videyard is appropriate for your 524 00:39:17.469 --> 00:39:23.940 businesses is literally to install the chrome extension and and play around with the tool. 525 00:39:24.460 --> 00:39:29.900 Send a video to your team, whether it's the screen recording or Webcam 526 00:39:30.019 --> 00:39:34.179 recording, just like this, send it to your prospects right. It's again 527 00:39:34.219 --> 00:39:37.809 a great way to communicate in an engaging and empathy that it can passionate way 528 00:39:37.849 --> 00:39:43.289 showing body language, and it's way more efficient than writing emails and I think 529 00:39:43.530 --> 00:39:47.010 with enough, enough effort, you'll learn to love it and and from there 530 00:39:47.809 --> 00:39:52.289 absolutely willing to chat at any time and given the systems in process we haven't 531 00:39:52.329 --> 00:39:57.239 placed, you might actually hear from whatever sid before too long. Awesome. 532 00:39:58.119 --> 00:40:00.719 Well, this has been great. Thanks again, and thank you for listening 533 00:40:00.760 --> 00:40:06.639 to this episode of the Revenue Series. As I mentioned earlier, I'm your 534 00:40:06.639 --> 00:40:09.630 host, John Grispan, founder and sales coach at early revenue. Please connect 535 00:40:09.670 --> 00:40:15.590 with me on Linkedin. I'm happy to answer any questions or provide recommendations. 536 00:40:15.070 --> 00:40:22.659 You can also email on John at early revenuecom. If you like this episode 537 00:40:22.820 --> 00:40:27.860 or have a question. Join the discussion on Instagram at B to be growth. 538 00:40:28.579 --> 00:40:31.820 Thank you for tuning in and subscribing to be to be growth until next 539 00:40:31.860 --> 00:40:38.010 time I am up. Are you an early stage tech founder that's frustrated by 540 00:40:38.050 --> 00:40:42.889 limited sales? Do you like the time to dedicate to a traditional sales training 541 00:40:42.889 --> 00:40:47.369 program? John Gristlin's earlier revenue sales program helps early stage founders accelerate sales in 542 00:40:47.409 --> 00:40:52.239 large accounts. He's built a playbook that transfers what he's learned as a founder 543 00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:55.320 and sales leader into a condensed, easy to implement program. If you're ready 544 00:40:55.360 --> 00:41:00.840 to increase your startup sales capacity, is it early Revenuecom to get started today? 545 -->