For the last 6 years I have been sacrificing to grow Viddler to point it is at today: profitable, 25+ employees and growing.

It’s been a journey that has included: sleepless nights, building brand awareness, promoting other brands, organizing server growth, pitching, [...]]]> Have been thinking long and hard how I share this.

For the last 6 years I have been sacrificing to grow Viddler to point it is at today: profitable, 25+ employees and growing.

It’s been a journey that has included: sleepless nights, building brand awareness, promoting other brands, organizing server growth, pitching, organizing capture of viral videos, attracting customers, thuggie promotion, mockups galore, product management.. you name it.. all with 3 months of capital invested at a time out of Bethlehem, PA .

Two weeks ago, the board notified that my services were no longer required. Will still be a highly invested board member (update: resigned week or two after for personal reasons) but my role operationally as CEO/President is no longer. It put’s me in an interesting position as this wasn’t exactly voluntary. And a slew of questions have been keeping me up…

How much should I share on my removal?
It’s clear to me, I should probably keep my mouth shut. Am still a very large shareholder and it doesn’t do anyone any good to share my perceptions publicly with how/why this happened. This is hard for me as I am generally a very transparent person. I want to share the lessons I have learned from this. After the fate of Viddler is decided, I will probably be more public on lessons learned/etc.

What do I focus on next?
It’s very clear my primary passion still is in online video. All paths are pulling me in this direction, and will maintain an open mind with new opportunities here.

Where?
As much as I can try to justify it being in Bethlehem, PA doesn’t continue to make much sense. Am being pulled strongly a in direction of Silicon Valley. Will also be exploring opportunities out of NYC, Seattle, Philly, Chicago, Boston, Austin, and Denver. UPDATE: And as Jim reminded me can’t forget Reno!

—

Viddler was a long journey. Am excited for something new.

As Billy Disney (ex-viddler videographer) recently shared with me, “Time to get back to what you do best”

Going from a sprint and then switching into marathon mode mid race has had it’s challenges and changes in mindset.. Here’s some of it..

2006. Fresh out of Lehigh, 22 years [...]]]> I write about this, as I reflect on the challenge of personal time vs. startup time as Viddler turns into a 5 year+ activity.

Going from a sprint and then switching into marathon mode mid race has had it’s challenges and changes in mindset.. Here’s some of it..

2006. Fresh out of Lehigh, 22 years old, pushing on Viddler as a startup in the first year, it was 100% Viddler and everything else is including family and friends went on hold. I even stopped drinking a sip of alcohol for a year straight during this period. We raise minimal funds. With less than a $100k budget we launch Viddler.

2007. Second year, still 100%, yet I might have returned phone calls to parents back home in California and went out every month or so. Investors like growth but only commit to 3 months of runway at a time. Very stressful, but push hard and more committed then ever. I remember going to sleep at 2am and waking up at 8am during this time.

2008. Third year, like shingles falling from a space shuttle, it starts to wear down. Still very committed to Viddler in Bethlehem, PA but it’s hard to maintain a nice balance with family in California and no significant salary to take many trips back home to see them.  The 6 hour sleep schedule begins to take it’s tole as I drink 3 coffee’s and 2 Monster drinks per day… I have heart flutters. I see a doctor who tells me to sleep more and take less caffeine. Also during this period, I am starting to realize I have aged faster then any other point in my life.

2009. Fourth year, the hardest. It seems like a second ago I was in college and had many friends in arms reach. That all seems distant. Viddler needs the more focus then ever to get cashflow positive, yet family life needs attention too. True tension at it’s highest. I think many times to when I tore my ACL/MCL/PCL and came back for fourth year against doctors recommendation to play football. I can do this. Still not profitable. Investors are pushing for profitability and it’s been 3 years, of building 3 months at a time. It’s starting to take it’s tole.

2010. Fifth year, break profitability. It’s a relief. No longer beholden to the next round of investors. Still no expendable income for personal activities and employees around me deserve salary bumps more then I do due to shared sacrifice over last 4 years. I tell myself “if this becomes a big exit I can spend much more time with family/friends then ever before later in life”. Sleep schedule is nice though. I start to wake up when I want to and leave work when I feel I need to. I start running 5 miles a day, and get in control of my health.

2011. TBD

I don’t write this to vent at all. I feel very fortunate in so many ways to be where I am at today…..

To be honest, have been inspired by Zappos audiobook lately and the amount of self awareness and transparency Tony Hsieh provides. I write this to provide insight into what life has been like last 5 years so others may get a glimpse into the shifts in mindset as a startup scrappishly matures.

It’s also been a privileged to work with such a great team that’s focused at delivering the best video technology.

The latest hire, Billy Disney, is first full-time hire outside [...]]]> For the last few years, it has been a privilege to work with folks leveraging viddler technology such as Gary Vaynerchuk.

It’s also been a privileged to work with such a great team that’s focused at delivering the best video technology.

The latest hire, Billy Disney, is first full-time hire outside that development/support workflow, and with the Viddler Spotlight series, has begun highlighting the love affair and “privelegedness” we have with our customers:

And with this amazingness, Billy humbly bakes himself as folks to be privileged to work with.

We do put much of this stuff on the blog and on Twitter but she was referring to the more traditional marketing techniques: Sponsoring events, parties, [...]]]> In a recent strategic conversation someone recently said “wow, you guys should be marketing this more” when referring to # of customers, big accounts and profitability.

We do put much of this stuff on the blog and on Twitter but she was referring to the more traditional marketing techniques: Sponsoring events, parties, keynote speaking, press releases, email newsletters, etc.

This brought me to defend staying low key. Allow me to share reasons….

Benefits of Staying Low Key:
- Competition doesn’t pay attention (we have features implemented better then our competitors and they still haven’t caught up)
- You wouldn’t believe the amount of people buying into video hosting that don’t attend big shindig conferences or give two cents about press releases.
- Save time and money. What matters and what sells is usually how good your product is and how fast you are innovating. Also if your not spending a wild amount on marketing you can offer your customers with a more affordable product.
- Other companies do operate like this and succeed. For instance, has anyone seen Getclicky? Two guys building one of the best analytics toolset in the business. They are low key, no mainstream marketing strategy, and after investigating have a outrageous # of customers.

This isn’t to say we aren’t looking to improve our marketing strategy. Just a slight argument for staying under the radar.

And I will keep the company name I work for out of this, cause I know I have google alerts setup on our competition. #stayinglowkey

The focus was around Control, Customization and Branding viddler offers as a video hosting service. What do you think, did those points come across?

First off must say I have a ton of respect for the Veoh team, Dmitry, and the product itself. It was always incredible seeing the pure amount of technology come out from [...]]]> Yesterday, Dmitry Shapiro, founder of Veoh, put together an incredibly respectful post going over the in’s and outs of Veoh going bankrupt.

First off must say I have a ton of respect for the Veoh team, Dmitry, and the product itself. It was always incredible seeing the pure amount of technology come out from the Veoh team.

Also, being a co-founder of a video site myself, I can’t imagine how painful it must have been getting stuck in court instead of working on the product and going bankrupt because of that. Not sure I would have handled it as gracefully as Dmitry did.

Allow me to take a step into memory lane…

It is 3 years ago and the race of the video destination. Veoh, Revver, vMix, vSocial and the 800 pound gurilla… All of us competing with features, community and spending a ton of money to do so.

What I want to share is how Viddler has lucked out into building built a sustainable business where others have failed:

1. 1/50th Raised in Funding – in total Viddler has raised less then $2M in funds. Not on purpose either.. We really just couldn’t raise more funds then this. Whether it be bad location, crowded space, or me being first time entrepreneur, this is tiny round compared to the sites we were competing with. What it forced us to do is stay small, control our budget, and get profitable based on lower overhead. Today, Viddler is 16 people. Everyone on board are rockstars at what they do and we are hiring at a slow and steady pace keeping the quality high.
2. Market Maturity – video marketing adoption, personal branding, viewers watching video.. all of this has increased to where we are at a point where our product makes sense, and even worth paying for.
3. Bandwidth Costs Affordable - three years ago, the price per GB of bandwidth we were paying was 50x what we are paying for now. If we were paying what we did 3 years ago we wouldn’t have a sustainable business today.
4. Video Advertising with No Ad Sales Team - three years ago you needed to sell directly to advertisers to have a chance at selling preroll/overlay inventory. Now with the many different ad networks and standardization with VAST compliant networks it’s all about optimization. The $250k/year + commission VP of Ad Sales is no longer needed.
5. English Focus – We haven’t had an international “non-english” presence at all. If it’s questionable, we can’t interpret it,  and overseas it’s not allowed on Viddler. This keeps costs down. Veoh was hosting alot of Anime. That content is expensive to delivery.
6. Bethlehem, PA – An hour from Philadelphia and two hours from NYC, we might as well be based in the middle of nowhere. This has helped us focus on the product (instead of the local scene), stay under the radar with competition, and hire extremely talented people (no competition in Bethlehem) at significantly more affordable rates then California, Boston, or NYC.

Again, all the respect to Dmitry. Wish him the best in his next venture, and hope this conveys how we are still around, and going to be around for the long haul.

A few Viddlers have asked me why this can’t be free for everyone, as Youtube does.

This is a good question, giving away everything for free is [...]]]> As you may have read on the viddler blog, or watched via Andrews amazing demo video, Viddler analytics has been launched for Business Service customers.

A few Viddlers have asked me why this can’t be free for everyone, as Youtube does.

This is a good question, giving away everything for free is a very expensive business decision to pursue. We are focused on profitability and are certainly turning a little 37signal’ish.

To give you a little sniffy sniff.. check out what analytics looks like for me:

via MIT takes the wrappers off autonomous, robotic helicopter with intelligent navigation.

Viddler has the man, the myth, the legend – The Todd.

I just gotta burst out and say that intelligent Sys Admins are invaluable in a small startup looking to stay [...]]]> Signal vs. Noise posted an interview by Mark Imbriaco, their super intelligent sys admin: Who would win in a fight between Erlang and Rails?

Viddler has the man, the myth, the legend – The Todd.

I just gotta burst out and say that intelligent Sys Admins are invaluable in a small startup looking to stay efficient.

Exclusive/secret underground footage of Todd working on his computer, matrix style:

Update – forgot to mention the JAMES.. rockstar lefty that comes in as a closer for Todd.

My desire to share information and promote tight nits companies is completely selfish. I want other companies to adopt this philosophy, therefor making marketplace more competitive, therefor delivering higher quality products and companies to work with, therefor making my job easier.

We have had our share of bad relationships that I can look back on and all center around the lack of how “tight nit” that organization is.

The goal of this post isn’t to point out bad instances though, but rather highlight amazing relationships.

Stealing a bit of Gary Vaynerchuks thunder, would say these companies are “crushing it”, with regards to how tight nit they are

Tubemogul

These guys have built an amazing analytics company and someone we work with extensively to power our analytics toolsets. They started out of Cal Berkley and have many incredibly smart people working for them. At around 20+ employees they have been able to rapidly build out the best analytics platform in the online video business.

When working with them, if we have a problem an API here or there, they will work overnight to get us the answer or fix by morning. One evening in particular, we had a problem with our flash player and analytic tracker, with everyone out for the day, and not his responsibility, Jason Lopatecki, Chief Strategy Officer, pulled out flash editor, and put together a fix for us. Who has C level officers that know how to code flash?

Incredibly smart and passionate people that are not afraid to wear multiple hats.

Edgecast

The Content Delivery Network (CDN) business is very competitive right now, and get dozens of vendor emails weekly about new CDN price breaks. Having worked with these guys for over a year now, they listen and deliver. This is extremely important as many larger CDN businesses think they have it figured out, and aren’t invested in innovating and listening to there customer.

We have many business service customers we work with. Each of these customers needs to be tracked individually for bandwidth usage. Edgecast listened to this need and not only delivered reporting functions for us with a UI layer but delivered an API with 20+ functions a few weeks after.

And when someone on the Viddler team may call in because we are having a problem with some reporting tool, or inquiring about new services, the level1 support engineer could be the core architect for all we know because of how well versed he is with the status of features and problems within the company. Transparent organization or talented hire? I would assume all organizations have high level of transparency, just that they find passionate and intelligent people.

To get started over there the man to talk to over there is Duane Sulo.

Google

Due to size of Google don’t want to post anything too confidential here. What I will say is that there account reps and support staff are all on point. When working with individual units of Google, they feel like small startups themselves, proving that you can still be tight nit in one of the largest companies in the world.

Woopra

Just started using this product on this blog. But the fact the CEO, John Pozadzides,  is talking transparently about business model with his users, just rocks and leads by example on how passionate his company is about his users.

In summary it appears that there are a few key factors in running a tight nit organization:

1. Smart/Passionate People
2. Ability to Listen and Deliver
3. Employees not afraid to wear multiple hats.

Please think of these when building a company or working with other companies as it’ll help foster more tight nit companies.

Also, just a small disclaimer, there are a more companies I want to list, but in order for Viddler to attempt to be a tight company, am going to have to cut this off here.

If you know of a tight nit company, let me know what tight nit company you work with, would love to hear your story via comments, blog post, tweet, viddler, or email rob at viddler.

With it you can advertise with some of the AMAZING partners that I personally am privileged to work with including HotHardware, [...]]]> As you may know we relaunched our advertise directory to be completely transparent to help promote content partners that work with us as well as share with advertisers what we are about.

With it you can advertise with some of the AMAZING partners that I personally am privileged to work with including HotHardware, Engadget, Joystiq, Tweektown,  iJustine, Phillyd.tv, any many other FANTASTIC partners.

This is just the start. What I hope is that we can spur up small businesses with $500-1000 budgets to find value in this.

Would love your feedback on the guide.

Also to kickstart the program put together my first advertisement I have ever created.

If your interested in learning more about howto signup for this feature, please check out our partner and/or our business service program.
]]> Viddler just released a new feature primarily requested from video game partners partners like Joystiq, Sony Playstation,
Destructoid and VideoGaming247.com. Leave comments if you have suggestions.

If your interested in learning more about howto signup for this feature, please check out our partner and/or our business service program.
]]> http://robertsandie.com/2009/04/02/age-gate-feature-review/feed/ 0 http://robertsandie.com/2008/08/15/branding-at-new-media-expo/ http://robertsandie.com/2008/08/15/branding-at-new-media-expo/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:41:06 +0000 Rob http://www.robertsandie.com/?p=402 It’s halfway through the New Media Expo and as you know I am real excited for all the video at this event.

If you have noticed my videos, I have taken out the Viddler brand and customized the player to really emphasize our positioning on Viddler. If you haven’t seen branding, check [...]]]> It’s halfway through the New Media Expo and as you know I am real excited for all the video at this event.

If you have noticed my videos, I have taken out the Viddler brand and customized the player to really emphasize our positioning on Viddler. If you haven’t seen branding, check out this page with a few of the branded players.

With our “Brand Yourself” launch we have been switching the way we have been messaging ourselves to be a “Powered By Service” rather then a “Brand Claiming Service”. This is certainly a decentralizing our strategy but we really believe that supporting video podcasters is about taking away friction in this video space.

To point this out, Gary gave us mad props on this at his keynote (video still pending upload) but as Donna Papacosta points out, he was pretty adamant about it:

Our marketing on T-Shirt Distribution has the exact same messaging, check out some nice photo’s I found on Flickr of the shirts we printed out:

I love people using Viddler and cannot wait for all the rollouts we are going to push over the next month that are solving problems in this marketplace.

First of all, if you were even thinking about New Media Expo, you should be going.

If you haven’t introduced yourself yet and are going to New Media Expo, do it via Video. All you have to do is tag your video “newmediaexpo” or “newmediaexpo2008″ and it will go in general category of [...]]]>

First of all, if you were even thinking about New Media Expo, you should be going.

If you haven’t introduced yourself yet and are going to New Media Expo, do it via Video. All you have to do is tag your video “newmediaexpo” or “newmediaexpo2008″ and it will go in general category of NewMediaExpo Videos. If you want to do an introduction, tag it as “newmediaexpointroduction” for it to go in introduction section.

New Media Expo is going to be a big event for Viddler. We are happy to setup our “virtual booth” up at the video section of New Media Expo, to help promote our next launch of “Brand Yourself” at Viddler. More information will come soon but watch the video for a sneak peak! forced teens vids: anime rape videos. public nudity movies nudity in public. teen lesbians toying in the shower christian sex toys.

This morning, this magazine arrived, and was happy to find an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary makes an excellent point in Affiliate Summit Magazine, Feed Front. It’s about being Genuine. He calls it being a RAT (real, authentic, and transparent). Now, I wouldn’t be big on this [...]]]>  

This morning, this magazine arrived, and was happy to find an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary makes an excellent point in Affiliate Summit Magazine, Feed Front. It’s about being Genuine. He calls it being a RAT (real, authentic, and transparent). Now, I wouldn’t be big on this if I wasn’t caught up with all the spamming/real internet marketing occuring on Viddler. Check out Viddler Tag: Marketing, to see how big this has become on Viddler. It’s ugly. Cash gifting, lead generation, real estate marketing all seem to fit into this. Some of this has been brought on from TubeMogul, an amazing tool for podcasters to distribute high quality shows everywhere, but also a lead generators tricks of the trade.

At Viddler, we are a little conflicted with exactly what rules to put in place to prevent this and keep Viddler itself a “RAT”. Real Authentic Transparent.

Here is my metoday rant on this topic:

Would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!

And now for a genuine video from @clintus:

Great work Brandice!

squirting movies: free girls peeing video. forced sex videos: hardcore rape video. best rape video collection free real gang rape oral anal movies.

A young startup learned a lesson the hardway today:

Never colo with only one ISP.

Over an hour two hours, at 4pm PST today, Viddler was entirely down, all embeds, everything, due to power and network failing at entire Limelight Phoenix location. We are taking measure to replicate viddler architecture with other ISPs. [...]]]>

A young startup learned a lesson the hardway today:

Never colo with only one ISP.

Over an hour two hours, at 4pm PST today, Viddler was entirely down, all embeds, everything, due to power and network failing at entire Limelight Phoenix location. We are taking measure to replicate viddler architecture with other ISPs. So sorry Viddler people this is something that will be work to fix.

Moblogic rocks.
TubeMogul rocks.
The video space rocks.

Now I know why all the good ones are taken!

Night before a big presentation, Hugh worked with me for over a few hours on optimizing a presentation I had designed. At the end we discussed outcomes we wanted.

Of course, I [...]]]>


Investor Deck Error

Originally uploaded by sandieman

Night before a big presentation, Hugh worked with me for over a few hours on optimizing a presentation I had designed. At the end we discussed outcomes we wanted.

Of course, I accidently left them at the end of the slide deck when they went to go get printed. Not only did he give the advice but he caught it before we handed them out!

Viddler has many reasons why it exists today and one of the biggest reasons is Hugh Cullman, the most dedicated advisors/angels/coach a young entrepreneur could ask for.

Viddler is looking for a few good interns and instead of turning to Lehigh Career Services I have been going focusing my attention on good ole facebook.

Not only can I [...]]]>


Facebook Marketing Internship Advertisement

Originally uploaded by sandieman

Viddler is looking for a few good interns and instead of turning to Lehigh Career Services I have been going focusing my attention on good ole facebook.

Not only can I customize different advertisements to Lehigh University students, but I can focus on Age, Sex, Major, which all help me figure out which images and text I am going to advertise with like this one.

If you know someone that qualifies, email me at rsandie at viddler.

For those of you that know me on Twitter, you know that I can be a pretty big “encourager” of Viddler.

Tracking my competitors and leading people to Viddler is [...]]]>


Rockin’ the Viddler Shirt

Originally uploaded by Clintus McGintus

For those of you that know me on Twitter, you know that I can be a pretty big “encourager” of Viddler.

Tracking my competitors and leading people to Viddler is something I do during the day that goes inline with my day-to-day workflow.

Recently, a good friend of mind, Clintus, was someone I gave a tough time, when he suggested the other video sites. We had that feature so I had to point it out. In any case, online friends in the video space rock. With TubeMogul integration and others I am starting to think more about “naturally” fitting in as apposed to forced encouragement. With improvements of technology like our simple player and Developers API and business model like advertising, things should be driven by the users and “best fit”. This is something that we have strive towards here at viddler, and will continue to with conviction in the near future.

The SXSWVideos.com Street Team needs your help and all you need to do is help us choose a category that best mirrors the SXSW scene. We will be recording [...]]]>


SXSWVideos.com needs help with Category Selection

Originally uploaded by sandieman

The SXSWVideos.com Street Team needs your help and all you need to do is help us choose a category that best mirrors the SXSW scene. We will be recording Film, Interactive and Music. We can make these SXSW so much cooler, just all you gotta do is let us know in comments here what you think they should be. Help!

• Everything
• Interviews
• Panels
• MeToday
• Performances
• Demos
• Awards
• Films
• Parties

Nothing really public about this but if your clever enough to figure out how to hack this and us it, do it!

Simple Player
* Autoresizes player to appropriate dimensions
* No Instream Comments
* 40kb

James Mathias (viddler: jmathias) was featured today. It’s been a while since my last video as they usually take a bunch of time I need to be using supporting the site in other ways. This couldn’t have taken more then an hour thogh. If this doesn’t inspire me to put out [...]]]>

James Mathias (viddler: jmathias) was featured today. It’s been a while since my last video as they usually take a bunch of time I need to be using supporting the site in other ways. This couldn’t have taken more then an hour thogh. If this doesn’t inspire me to put out a new video soon, I don’t know what will!