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:

1. Use your funds conservatively and make everyone accountable for budgeting.
2. How your company is doing reflects on your payback period.
3. 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