Podcast appearances and mentions of brendan schwartz

Thank you Brendan Schwartz, Wren C. de la O, bennie2544@gmail.com, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.* Latin America suffers because our Oligarchy fears Americans may critically think and wake up: The fear of neoliberals, our oligarchy, is the democratization of our economy. Why did Biden wait until he was leaving to remove Cuba from the terrorist list? Here's the big picture. [More]* Elizabeth Warren exposes Pete Hegseth: Generals must wait 10 years to work for contractors, not him: Senator Elizabeth Warren had a fundamental question for Pete Hegseth. Will he abide by the 10-year period he specified that generals should not work for defense contractors? [More]* Hey Elon and Vivek! Here's What a Real ‘Department of Government Efficiency' Would Do: A new report identifies what a DOGE “based on evidence, not ideology, would include—from slashing drug prices to ending privatized Medicare to reducing the wasteful Pentagon budget.” [More] To hear more, visit egberto.substack.com

Have you ever considered that society might trust individuals more than your brand? If you're not thinking about influencers and community advocates in your marketing, you might be missing a huge opportunity to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Today we're diving into the power of influencers, the unique challenges of B2B advocacy, and pushing past fear in business. Host Greg Kihlstrom welcomes Chris Savage, CEO and Co-Founder of Wistia. Today, we'll explore how trust, community, and courage are reshaping the way companies approach their audiences. About Chris Savage Chris Savage is the CEO and co-founder of Wistia, a leading video platform that enables business teams to harness the connective power of video. After graduating from Brown University with a degree in Art-Semiotics, Chris and his co-founder, Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan's living room in 2006. Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with over 120 employees and 500,000 customers. Resources Wistia website: https://www.wistia.com Wix Studio is the ultimate web platform for creative, fast-paced teams at agencies and enterprises—with smart design tools, flexible dev capabilities, full-stack business solutions, multi-site management, advanced AI and fully managed infrastructure. https://www.wix.com/studio Don't miss Medallia Experience 2025, March 24-26 in Las Vegas: Registration is now available: https://cvent.me/AmO1k0 Use code MEDEXP25 for $200 off registration Register now for HumanX 2025. This AI-focused event which brings some of the most forward-thinking minds in technology together. Register now with the code "HX25p_tab" for $250 off the regular price. Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Have you ever considered that society might trust individuals more than your brand? If you're not thinking about influencers and community advocates in your marketing, you might be missing a huge opportunity to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Today we're diving into the power of influencers, the unique challenges of B2B advocacy, and pushing past fear in business. Host Greg Kihlstrom welcomes Chris Savage, CEO and Co-Founder of Wistia. Today, we'll explore how trust, community, and courage are reshaping the way companies approach their audiences. About Chris Savage Chris Savage is the CEO and co-founder of Wistia, a leading video platform that enables business teams to harness the connective power of video. After graduating from Brown University with a degree in Art-Semiotics, Chris and his co-founder, Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan's living room in 2006. Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with over 120 employees and 500,000 customers. Resources Wistia website: https://www.wistia.com Wix Studio is the ultimate web platform for creative, fast-paced teams at agencies and enterprises—with smart design tools, flexible dev capabilities, full-stack business solutions, multi-site management, advanced AI and fully managed infrastructure. https://www.wix.com/studio Don't miss Medallia Experience 2025, March 24-26 in Las Vegas: Registration is now available: https://cvent.me/AmO1k0 Use code MEDEXP25 for $200 off registration Register now for HumanX 2025. This AI-focused event which brings some of the most forward-thinking minds in technology together. Register now with the code "HX25p_tab" for $250 off the regular price. Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company

Going from point solution to platform is no easy feat. On the latest episode of Talking Too Loud, Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz dive deep into the intricacies of transforming Wistia from a video hosting and analytics website into a comprehensive video platform. Tune in to hear the challenges, strategies, and triumphs they encountered along the way. Highlights include:The origin story of Wistia's initial vision and early days.The shift from video hosting to a comprehensive video platform.Overcoming operational challenges and pivoting company culture.Key milestones and the impact of rapid product launches.Marketing strategies for shifting public perception from point solution to platform.Links to Learn More:Follow Savage on LinkedInFollow Brendan on LinkedInFollow Sylvie on LinkedInSubscribe to Talking Too Loud on WistiaWatch on YouTubeFollow Talking Too Loud on InstagramFollow Talking Too Loud on TikTokLove what you heard? Leave us a review on Apple!Leave us a review on Spotify!

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Ezra Fishman, VP of Growth at Wistia. About EzraEzra started his career as an engineer developing devices to help treat diabetes and obesity at GI DynamicsHe later had a short stint as an Operations Manager at an investment firm that was dedicated to funding health tech startupsAfter completing his MBA, Ezra joined a video tech startup called Wistia as their Director of Marketing and after 4 years he transitioned to leading Business IntelligenceToday Ezra is VP of Growth at Wistia where he's now spent over 12 years, seeing the company grow from a handful of customers to over 375,000 and becoming one of the top vPaaS tools on the planetSummary: Ezra is a strategic and technical visionary at Wistia. He combines an audience-first content strategy with a data-informed approach to drive sustainable growth. He emphasizes the importance of genuine relationships over transactions and advocates for leveraging data to inform decisions while valuing human intuition. His journey from initiating a central data warehouse to implementing tools like Census, Fivetran, and dbt showcases how a single source of truth can enhance operational efficiency. Ezra's experience, from fostering a data-informed culture to embracing a scrappy startup mentality with a focus on high-impact ideas and rigorous A/B testing, reflects a commitment to strategic evolution and the balance between data and creativity. His insights offer invaluable lessons on growing and engaging with audiences in meaningful ways, advocating for a blend of strategy, intuition, and data-informed decisions in marketing.From Wistia's First Customer to Early Team MemberImagine this: Ezra, initially just a fan from the sidelines, watching Wistia, a fledgling startup by his buddies Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz, trying to carve its niche in the world of video. This journey from an intrigued observer to Wistia's first customer, and eventually, a pivotal team member, is nothing short of a cinematic twist.Back in the day, while Ezra was navigating the complexities of medical devices, Chris and Brendan were brainstorming Wistia's next big thing. The plot thickens when Ezra, amidst casual banter in their Boston living room, pitches a game-changing idea sparked by his own professional hurdles. Picture this: medical procedures generating heaps of video data, with the only sharing option being the archaic method of mailing DVDs worldwide. Enter Ezra's lightbulb moment—why not transform Wistia into a haven for secure, efficient video collaboration?Fast forward to Wistia marking its foray into uncharted territories. This wasn't just about ditching DVDs for digital; it was about reimagining how professionals could leverage video for learning and collaboration.The narrative takes a delightful turn when, over a lunch filled with reminiscing and future-gazing, Chris and Brendan propose a novel idea to Ezra. With a shared laugh over their collective naiveté in marketing and business management, they decide to join forces. This was the moment of serendipity, the kind that you'd find in tales of old, where the hero embarks on an unforeseen quest.Wistia's storyline evolves with a bold strategic pivot, transitioning from a focus on internal video sharing to mastering the art of video marketing. This wasn't merely a shift in services; it was a leap towards redefining Wistia's essence. The introduction of video embeds and performance tracking was akin to discovering a new continent in the realm of video marketing. This pivot was the catalyst for an explosive growth, attracting a myriad of users and establishing Wistia as a beacon in the marketing universe.Ezra's saga with Wistia illustrates a kaleidoscope of lessons: the beauty of perspective, the strength found in adaptability, and the magic of seizing hidden opportunities. It's a testament to how internal insights can dramatically alter a company's course, steering it towards realms of untapped potential and success.Key Takeaway: Ezra's journey with Wistia showcases the power of leveraging personal experiences to spot unique opportunities in the professional sphere. His story teaches us the importance of staying open to unexpected career paths and the transformative potential of internal insights. For any professional, Ezra's narrative is a reminder to embrace adaptability and look beyond conventional boundaries, because sometimes, the next big shift in your career or business strategy could emerge from your own unique challenges and observations.Ezra's Audience-First Philosophy Beyond Funnel VisionEzra's reflections on Wistia's early content strategy are a testament to the power of foresight and the courage to challenge the status quo. In an era dominated by the lead capture mantra, the idea of prioritizing audience engagement over immediate conversions was nothing short of revolutionary. Ezra's insights into this paradigm shift reveal not just a tactical change, but a philosophical evolution in marketing.At the heart of this transformation was a simple observation: content that educates, engages, and entertains fosters a community of brand advocates. Ezra noticed early on that content about video production on a budget or maximizing video effectiveness wasn't just filling up space on Wistia's blog; it was actively drawing people into a conversation with the brand. This wasn't engagement that could be easily quantified by the number of leads generated, but its impact was undeniable. Website visits and signups surged post-publication, showcasing the tangible benefits of nurturing an audience.This observation led to a critical realization: gating content might boost lead numbers temporarily, but it dampens genuine engagement. The stark contrast between open access and restricted content provided clear evidence that the key to sustained growth was fostering an environment where quality trumped quantity. This approach required a commitment to producing stellar content that people didn't just stumble upon but sought out and shared.Ezra's philosophy underscores a critical marketing truth: building an audience is about cultivating relationships, not just capturing data points. This mindset shift from a focus on quantity to a dedication to quality was, at the time, a bold stance that set Wistia apart. It wasn't about bombarding people with sales pitches but about drawing them into a meaningful dialogue with the brand.This audience-first approach is not just about creating fans; it's about building a community that grows organically, powered by the quality of interaction and content. The lesson here is clear: when marketers prioritize genuine engagement over short-term metrics, they lay the foundation for lasting growth and brand loyalty.Key Takeaway: Ezra's strategic pivot to an audience-first approach at Wistia highlights the lasting value of building genuine relationships over transactional interactions. In today's content-saturated world, the brands that stand out are those that treat their audience not as leads to be captured but as a community to be cultivated. This philosophy doesn't just elevate a brand's marketing game; it transforms customers into advocates, ensuring sustainable growth and a competitive edge.Data-Informed Instead of Data-DrivenEzra's path through the diverse landscapes of marketing, business intelligence (BI), and growth at Wistia is a narrative about the confluence of data and human insight. His tenure, marked by wearing multiple hats across different roles, underscores a singular truth: the realms of marketing, BI, and growth, despite their distinctions, share a common core centered around attracting and engaging people, converting them, and leveraging data for informed decision-making.Ezra, self-...

If you're young and looking to start a business with a friend, here's the pathway to do it successfully. Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz were friends at Brown University when they began dreaming about working together. After quitting their jobs, they created Wistia, a complete video marketing platform that helps teams create, host, and measure the impact of their videos — all in one place. Now, almost two decades into their business, Chris and Brendan still love working together and are just getting started.  Listen to Nathan chat with Chris and Brendan about: Why their college years formed their co-founding partnership The ingredients of starting a business with friends Profitability versus growth The trap of short-term focus  Why they bought out their investors Getting your team focused on the business details  The state of video marketing  And much more co-founder advice… Who do you want to see next on the podcast? Comment and let us know! And don't forget to leave us a 5-star review if you loved this episode. Wait, there's more… If you enjoy the Foundr podcast, check out our free trainings. Get exclusive, actionable advice from some of the world's best entrepreneurs.  Speak with our friendly course experts to get clarity on the next steps for your idea, business or career. You will get tailored insights from results achieved by our proven practitioners as well as thousands of students. Book a call now...  For more Foundr content, follow us on your favorite platform:  Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Magazine

The change: cutting expenses. Wistia was on track to lose $3 million per year when the founders bought out their investors with borrowed money. Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz told me that meant the Wistia team had to be maniacal about cutting costs. But why couldn’t they do it before? And cutting expenses isn’t enough to grow a business? What else did they do? Catch the interview and see. Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz are cofounder of Wistia, the video marketing platform for businesses. Sponsored byLemon.io – Why squander time and money on developers who aren't perfect for your startup? Let Lemon match you with engineers that can transform your vision into reality — diabolically fast. Go to Lemon.io/mixergy for a 15% discount on your first 4 weeks with one of their devs. More interviews -> https://mixergy.com/moreint Rate this interview -> https://mixergy.com/rateint

Brendan Schwartz is the Co-Founder and CTO of Wistia, software that makes it easy to find, engage, and grow your audience with video. Victoria talks to Brendan about the latest updates on the platform, interesting problems he found that Wistia was able to remove and help his team get to speed and velocity, and the personal value that drives his decision-making. Wista (https://wistia.com/) Follow Wistia on Twitter (https://twitter.com/wistia) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/wistia/). Follow Brendan Schwartz on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanschwartz/), Twitter (https://twitter.com/brendan), or visit his website (https://brendanschwartz.com/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Brendan Schwartz, Co-Founder and CTO of Wistia, software that makes it easy to find, engage, and grow your audience with video. Brendan, thank you for joining us. BRENDAN: Thanks so much for having me. VICTORIA: And I believe this will be your third time, at least, on the Giant Robots Podcast, right? BRENDAN: Yes, I think this is my third appearance. Thank you for having me back. VICTORIA: Yes. BRENDAN: Is there anything I receive? What is it when you host SNL in a [crosstalk 00:39]. VICTORIA: You get a jacket. BRENDAN: A jacket, yeah. VICTORIA: Yeah, we should. BRENDAN: [laughs] VICTORIA: We should do a Giant Robots jacket or something from returned guests. I love it. So it's been great to follow along your journey here. So, for those who don't know, like, what is Wistia? And I'll say, just a precursor, that thoughtbot is a client of Wistia. So we use it ourselves. But why don't you just give us a little bit about what is the product and what makes it different? BRENDAN: Sure. And thank you so much for being a customer all these years. You kind of hit it at the top, but we help businesses of all sizes thrive with video. And so we serve mostly marketers. To dive a little bit into the history of the business, we'll be around seven...is that right? 17 years. It sounds like a long time when I say it out loud, [laughs] 17 years this June. And, for most of our history, we were, I'd say, a video-hosting platform for marketers. So if you want to put video on your website, track who's watching it, how they're watching it, and integrate that data with your other marketing systems, that was our focus and what we did. And over, I'd say, the past two years, we've brought in that focus to help businesses with all aspects of their video marketing from creating video...We recently introduced a live video product for webinars and for live events last fall. We just launched last week, which I'm very excited about native video recording in the Wistia platform. So you can record your webcam and your screen. And there's also a very simple video editor in the platform, which has been really powerful for folks to make small adjustments to content or to atomize content, take out highlights or sections of things, and to be able to publish them to their audiences. VICTORIA: Thank you for providing that context. And I'm curious if there were any, like, environmental or market forces that pushed you in that direction with the latest updates on the platform. BRENDAN: So, like I mentioned, we...in a large part, our success came (We're a relatively small team.) it came from being focused. And so for, you know, that decade or more, there were a lot of things that we had heard from the market or from customers. Like, live video was an obvious one we had been asked for a really long time. When will Wistia do live? When will Wistia do live? And, you know, our approach to that is we want to be really good and excellent at the things that we do and be focused. And I think that has served us well over the time that we've existed. And some of that came out of; I'd say, the really early days of the company where...it's funny, [laughs] we've always built Wistia, you know, sometimes we say in the shadow of YouTube, so YouTube and seeing YouTube. My co-founder was the first person who showed me YouTube in 2005, I think it was, and that was part of the inspiration to start Wistia. We are both really into video. And we saw that and having video be more accessible on the web, we knew was something that was going to change the world. There was a question...this sounds kind of dated nowadays to say, but there was a question if you were starting a business, you know, let's say, in 2006 or 2007 or '8, right? What are you going to do when Google enters your space? [laughs] It was a funny one for us to answer because we said...well, I forgot when YouTube was bought by Google. It was maybe in 2006 or something like that. Like, Google is already in our space, and it's free. So that was always an interesting challenge. And the way that we were successful there [laughs]...obviously, YouTube is at a much larger scale [laughs] and level of success than Wistia is. But to the extent we have a business at all against a very well-known and free competitor from those early days, it was being really focused on our customers and keeping the product footprint fairly small. Our business changed a lot during the pandemic. There were some obvious things, right? Video was used a lot more. So existing customers had a lot more usage. We saw an influx of customers, people who maybe were late to adopt video in their organization, and then that became a much obvious way that people could reach their audiences and grow. So that was something of a tailwind for us. And then it also forced us to kind of take a step back and look at the market in general with clear eyes. It was a funny moment, I think, for me and my co-founder because in the years leading up to that, you know, it had been like 12,13 years of doing Wistia, and it felt like we had solved a lot of problems in the product. We were still building new things, but they were for the most mature part of our audience or the most advanced marketers, which was pretty fun. But it felt like a lot of the problems had been solved. We were always, like, is the product done? Is the product complete? And when we took a step back and looked at the market, what we had found was that we had kind of just, like, got ourselves into this, you know, more mature corner of the market. But in a large part, because of COVID, so many businesses, existing and new businesses, were very new to video and were using video in new ways. And people who had been using video, their solutions to do that were super fragmented. You'd have one product that is providing...[laughs] You might have a different product you're using for internal meetings, video meetings, and that's different than a live event product, that's different than a webinar product, that's different than where you might publish your videos or host your videos, which is different than how you'd, like, analyze your performance. And as video became more important to organizations, that fragmentation of the solutions was something that was super painful. And we had heard from a lot of people who were Wistia customers and people who were not...having this as an all-in-one platform was something that they really desired, which I was also kind of, you know, we were, like, cynical about a little bit, right? Because if [laughs] you're in the world of product, it's like you can ask, you know, if you had a magic wand, what would you want? And someone says, "Oh, I want it all in one. And if you could just do everything for me, that would be so great." You know, it's hard to say, is that what people really want? And what gave us more confidence at that was, correct, is when we started digging into some of the details and hearing about existing workflows that existed that marketers have to deal with, including ourselves. We do a lot of content marketing. A lot of the really interesting things you could do in a product that is all in one it opens up new opportunities. And you could just imagine...you've hosted a webinar before. Almost always, it's the best practice that you host a webinar; after you're finished, you probably have a good marketing asset there. You should publish it to your website. You usually need to do some light editing. Maybe you're going to take off the Q&A before you publish it. And you put it on your website. And then, a while later, you're like, was this effective? Did it work? And then you have to, you know, probably have a spreadsheet somewhere. You have to go into the tool used to host the webinar to figure out who was watching it and [laughs] who registered. Did they attend? And then where's the data for how it performed on your website? How many people watched it? Did you get subscribers if you were, you know, had an email gate on that content? It's cumbersome, and it's a mess. And then, you know, the most motivated people who are well-resourced have the time to do that and analyze the performance. But then a lot of marketers who are on smaller teams they just don't have time to do that, which means a lot of content gets under-utilized or under-marketed. So a lot of evidence and motivation to change what we were doing and expand the product footprint. So that had us make a big investment in our product design and engineering teams, and we almost...we doubled them in about 18 months. And then that kind of set us on this journey that we started maybe two years ago to greatly expand what we're doing. VICTORIA: Well, that's great. So just to play that back, staying close and focused on your customers almost had you to a point of being stable with your product until COVID happened. And you have this increased demand for video that opened it up to almost have Wistia be like a startup again and create a whole new feature branch, right? BRENDAN: Yeah, that's exactly right. And that was really fun and motivating. I mean, we...that early-stage energy and not having all the answers to things where stuff is a little bit, you know, less-researched, and it's faster paced is something that I really like. That was a big shift for the company. So there was some, I don't know, I think we had some self-doubt a little bit if I'm honest, of, you know, when you've been so focused for so long. Like, can we do this? Like, will we be able to create something really good with this expanded footprint, and what resources that take? And is it going to take shifting the culture and mindset of the team, like, in ourselves? But, I don't know, that's kind of why I started the [laughs] business in the first, like, the adventure and not knowing what's next is very appealing. So that's been the fun part of it. VICTORIA: And how did you go about shifting that mindset? Or even what was the moment where you realized that you needed to go after this shift? And how did you start lobbying everyone around you to get on board? BRENDAN: A lot of those customer interviews and market interviews, we worked with an outside firm. We worked with Boston Consulting Group, who was a really great partner. We have obviously worked with folks outside. We hadn't worked with somebody; I'd say, at that scale in terms of kind of, like, tie-in with our company strategy today. But that was really helpful to have a partner, especially to push us. We got to something different than we had been doing, I mean, not dramatically so. But it was expanding what we were doing. So that was really helpful. It helped...that put some structure around it to what we had, and the whole company knew this was happening and was along for the ride. So I'd say the communication and getting to a clear strategy was something we did pretty well, and telling that story internally. I'd say where we didn't do as well [laughs] and were maybe late to make some decisions is how the culture would need to change to support that strategy. Again, like I said, we've doubled the product design and engineering teams. That is now feeling in a pretty good spot, but that was a lot of growth for us. And was, I'd say, pretty messy along the way. So the beginning, I'd say, was clear, and I think communicated well. And then I feel like in the middle it was, I don't know, a big mess where we got maybe a year in, and we're like, wow, we have this new strategy, but we really haven't executed much on it. Some of these things we're building are taking a lot longer than we thought. Our velocity doesn't feel great. Like, maybe we didn't plan some of this stuff out. Like, we've hired a lot of people, but, like, are they productive yet? And so, yeah, I think we were in a pretty [laughs] tough spot maybe last summer. We were a year into this strategic shift, but it didn't feel like we were really moving against it as much as we had hoped. VICTORIA: It makes sense that it would take some time to change strategic direction and then get to that high-velocity point that you would expect. Were there other blockers that you found you were able to remove to get the team back up to that high velocity on delivering features for clients? BRENDAN: [laughs] Well, it's funny that you say that. I wish; I mean, that is pretty obvious, I think, and obvious in retrospect. But, for some reason, when you're in this, or when we were in this, you're impatient, and you want it faster. And I think probably [laughs] having some clear expectations would have made the ride a little smoother along the way for this. I feel like I have to remind myself of this pretty frequently. I mean, Wistia is not big. We're 180 people or so but certainly bigger than...I can think back to various other sizes. Doing that strategic shift it takes time for leadership, let's say, or me to shift my mindset about some of those things. And then once you've changed your mind, you kind of... it's easy, or at least for me, to discount the time it took and all the information it took to lead to that, which needs to cascade through an organization. And so that's where some of that impatience...or just the piece you said about, yeah, it makes sense that this would take time. I was like -- VICTORIA: [laughs] [inaudible 11:56] BRENDAN: [laughter] You're like, once you've got it, you're like, wow, this is so exciting. Let's go. Let's go. And everybody is like, what are you talking about? VICTORIA: Yeah. My background has been in, like, Federal IT consulting. So you're used to kind of the pace of things being a little slower. And I think people forget that as an organization gets to any amount of size, that kind of bureaucracy tends to creep in. And, like you're saying, the information just needs to cascade down throughout everybody. I think my original question was, were there any blockers or interesting problems you found that you were able to remove and help your team get to that speed or velocity you really wanted? BRENDAN: Yeah, there were a lot. I think most of them and most of the hardest ones to move centered around cultural change, and they weren't necessarily so clear at the onset. And so, you know, one thing that kind of partway into the strategy change that became clear is, and you had said it, it's like going from, you know, basically thinking of ourselves as being in a late stage or more mature market to being in an early-stage environment. And the type of culture that, you know, succeeds in those worlds is different. One thing that we've learned along the way at Wistia that we have employed and I think been successful with is this concept that when you update your strategy as a company, you should be thoughtful and, like, make conscious updates to your culture and values. And so much is that...so you're saying culture is the way that you work. You want that to be in support of strategy. And I remember when I first heard this concept, and we were earlier into our journey. I was like, what is this, like, corporate nonsense? Culture is just this, like, intangible, you know, it's this sum of how everyone works. And it's, like, this beautiful symphony of values. [laughs] It was a more kind of, like, idealistic [laughs] view of it or more organic view of it, which I think is reasonable. But you can also be intentional about your culture. So when we wrestled with that the first time...this was many years ago when we updated. I forgot even what the strategic changes at the time. But we updated our values, and we set about making a conscious cultural change. So when we changed the strategy this time, we did the same thing. I'd say we were a little bit late doing it, like, getting to it. But we did do it. And so some of that was there were certain things...so, for instance, being so focused. We had a really lean team. And we were optimizing for things like predictability of outcomes and needing to be correct. So, for instance, if you're only going to make...let's just, like, say, on the product side. Like, if you're only going to be able to ship or do, you know, a few big improvements to the product per year, like, you're well served to kind of go slowly and make sure those have a reasonable chance of success. This was, like, the culture and the mode that we were in. That doesn't really work very well when you're in an early-stage environment where things are pretty unpredictable and things are moving really quickly. So that was an example of something that we kind of identified, and we're like, we're going to need to change this. So it was this shift from teams feeling the need to be correct and really well-researched about something to moving towards; I'd say, you need to talk to a lot of customers to build customer intuition in order to make decisions faster. But that shouldn't be the case that; for every product decision you need to make, you have to talk to 5 or 10 customers to validate that. You should be able to build an intuition to be able to make those decisions faster, and we should be more tolerant of failure. And so, we should work in a more incremental style. I mean, some of this is, like, super familiar to anybody [laughs] listening to this, right? It's like a more agile style. So work more incrementally, like, work incrementally towards great as opposed to, you know, this big thing that's going to be super polished and correct from the jump. VICTORIA: I think that's really interesting. And it's not necessarily wrong to be so thorough in your changes when you're in that steady state, and you, like, know what clients you have, and you have a pretty well-defined product. But it's interesting that it took quite a bit of effort, it sounds like, to shift back into a flow state where you're incrementally doing changes very frequently to get that new product and find those new customers that you're targeting. BRENDAN: And it continues to be. We've made a lot of progress on this. And maybe it's helpful...I don't know if it's helpful to folks listening to dive into some of the details of how we went about making those changes. It's still really difficult, right? There's a lot of things in tension. So I'd say in our previous mode, one thing we were pretty good about is when something was released, it was well-tested. It was high quality. It was, like, well-communicated. Throughout the org, people knew what was coming. Obviously, there were hiccups with that, but, like, that's the side of the spectrum that we were on there. And then in this mode where we're building faster and more incrementally, we have a lot of internal tension in terms of quality, like, is this good enough? Is this first version good enough? Are we going to make a bad first impression? And so, obviously, you do this for a...it's a set of trade-offs, right? There's no free lunch, but that is still very much we're trying to find the right balance. VICTORIA: Right. So, like, in your role as CTO, how do you make people feel comfortable failing [laughs] [inaudible 17:06] describing. BRENDAN: Some of this cultural change, I think, it's been interesting to go through because some of the properties of how we had been working are, you know, things that are part of the way I like to work. Like, it makes me uncomfortable to release something that you know the flaws in it. And that's an old kind of startup advice that I think is generally right. Like, if you release something and it doesn't make you a little bit uncomfortable, you have waited too long. [laughs] Advice is very easy and abstract. It's hard to apply. Like, there's a huge spectrum there of, like, how uncomfortable [laughs] you want to be. But I will say that that's been something that's been, yeah, hard to reconcile with. And I guess that the piece that I'm able to do in my role is, like, remind folks where we're headed, right? So the first version can be a bit rough. What matters is what happens after that. So, if we're quick to listen to customers, to fix those things, to correct that, and people can see that momentum, I think that matters for a lot. And I think that's, like, something...I've been telling that story repeatedly. Internally, I've had other leaders, and that's what we've really been leaning on is, like, we've adjusted how we're delivering customer value. And that we're going to push things out that might be a little bit more raw, but where we ultimately are going to get them to and get them to quickly is something that we're really proud of. So that has helped. And then, I'd say we still haven't figured out, which is, again, like, in these smaller increments, things can be a failure, and that's okay as long as we learn something and correct and move forward. And one thing that's been a little bit tricky to recognize, too, is there's some places where you have some experiment, and you're not actually sure if there's a market or if there's a need for a feature. So you might do something, and it really doesn't land well. And then you learn something about the market or the customer base and say, okay, that isn't what people needed. But, in a lot of places that we're building product, like, let's say, take live video, for example. [laughs] When we launch a live video product, it may be a failure. Like, the first version may not be completely right or may be a failure. But the customer need for [laughs] a live video for a webinar exists, right? So that's not the type of failure that you go, oh, I guess there's not [laughs] a market there. Or, it's like, you go back and say, okay, how do we need to improve this to make it work? I don't think we have the right language internally around that. You know, there are certain areas where it's like a failure, and then it's like, okay, we've learned not to do that again. And there's other areas where it's like, we're going to keep...[laughs] not we're going to keep failing. I mean, there are goals to succeed, right? But we're going to keep improving this until we get it to work because we know there is a market here, and there is a customer need. VICTORIA: Making a culture where it's acceptable to run experiments [chuckles] and as long as you're learning from the failures. And honestly, it sounds like you all are very connected to your customer. Like, you're talking to them regularly. You're testing out features with them and getting that feedback. And that sounds like that's really what you want to focus on and want your whole team to focus on. BRENDAN: Yes, yeah, exactly. Mid-Roll Ad: As life moves online, bricks-and-mortar businesses are having to adapt to survive. With over 18 years of experience building reliable web products and services, thoughtbot is the technology partner you can trust. We provide the technical expertise to enable your business to adapt and thrive in a changing environment. We start by understanding what's important to your customers to help you transition to intuitive digital services your customers will trust. We take the time to understand what makes your business great and work fast yet thoroughly to build, test, and validate ideas, helping you discover new customers. Take your business online with design‑driven digital acceleration. Find out more at tbot.io/acceleration or click the link in the show notes for this episode. VICTORIA: You mentioned a little bit about your values. So, what would you say is, like, your most important personal value that drives your decision-making at Wistia? BRENDAN: So, like I mentioned, we've changed our values over time when we've changed strategy. And we think of our values as a decision-making framework, not as a set of things that we value. For instance, if you go on our website on wistia.com, I think about/values, about/company. It's somewhere. And you can see our values. It's not a list of everything that Wistia values or even the things that we value the most. For example, Wistia has, like, creativity is something that I value a lot that is very built into Wistia's culture that we value a lot, but it's not a listed value. It used to be at one point, and then we found that as a decision-making tool, it wasn't very helpful. [laughs] If you're faced with a decision, and you say, okay, one of the values is creativity, how do I make this more creative, right? VICTORIA: [laughs] BRENDAN: That's not usually the question you want to ask. So we have, over the years, shifted towards the values are a decision-making framework. And I'd say the one value that has stood the test of time in there is simplicity, which is not unique to Wistia, but it's something that I care a lot about personally. It's served us well as a business. It's almost always harder to get to a simple solution or answer than it is to get to a complex one. It takes a lot of failure. Sometimes there isn't a simple solution, but I think it's always worth the pursuit of trying to find one. And that's served us well in keeping a focused and easy-to-use product. I think that's fairly self-evident [laughs] why that matters to customers. And it's something that I think it's hard to do as you grow, and add, and get bigger. And it's an important feature of the product. And it's an important feature of, I don't know, companies' internal policies or the employee experience. The simpler something is, it's easier to understand. I think the more someone who works inside your company can wrap their arms around more of that context or, you know, more of the product, more of the all the ins and outs of how it is to work there, the better informed they'll be, the better faster they'll be able to make decisions, and the better work they'll be able to do. So, yeah, simplicity, minimalism, those are things I think that have served us well over the years. VICTORIA: Oh, I appreciate that. I could see how that could apply to how you're writing your code, or how you're designing a feature, or even your pricing structure. BRENDAN: Yeah, and I don't think...we definitely don't always get it right. So, you know, all of this is aspirational, but I think it's the right thing to aspire to. VICTORIA: Right. Oh, I'm familiar. [laughter] It's like that, I mean, the Marie Kondo, like, keeping it simple and organized. It's definitely aspirational [laughter] in my personal life as well. But that makes sense. Okay, I have a fun one for you. What is your favorite viral video style that you think people should do more of on Wistia? [laughs] BRENDAN: Oh, whoa. That's a hot-button one. [laughs] I think we have long said...this, like, feels like it takes me back to when we first started Wistia. The term viral and viral video was a new thing for the internet, I guess because video on the internet was still fairly new. I've always been on the side of this, like, hardworking video. And most of our customers are B2B businesses, so these are, like, marketing teams at B2B companies. I'm sure a lot of people who are listening to this have seen some very cringeworthy, you know, attempts at a viral video made by various corporations. Those usually don't land well. There are some people out there maybe that can crack this and make something that is viral through some art and science, but most everybody else cannot. VICTORIA: [laughs] BRENDAN: It's like, not something that can be kind of, like, bottled and captured. So we've always been on the side of, like, be authentic, be yourself, make these harder-working videos. But -- VICTORIA: I think that's generally good advice for businesses that was, like, maybe don't try to just do viral trends...[laughs] Like, make your own authentic content. But you personally now, like, yeah, if you were going to do whatever the latest TikTok trend is, which one would you pick? BRENDAN: You know, okay, maybe here's one. So we have always been, as I described it, on the side of, like, do not do this. It is, like, almost always going to be cringe-worthy. But do you remember...I don't know what year this is from, the Harlem Shake. It was mostly kind of a business trend, right? You'd play this track, the Harlem Shake, and have, like, when the beat dropped, it would go from normal office to everyone dancing in a costume. VICTORIA: Oh, that's fun. BRENDAN: So it was, like, a fun trend. But it was...we were and still are, I'd say, fairly, like, anti-trend. I don't know what, you know, like, contrarian when it comes to marketing trends or things like that. But then, when this happened, we were like, this will be really funny. We should set a calendar reminder to do this, like, ten years in the future. Actually, the last onsite that we had; unfortunately, it was the last day. Our head of production [laughs] who, like, we kind of had this, like, running joke of he randomly saw a news article. I think that it was the 10-year anniversary of the Harlem Shake [laughs] or whatever. He's like, oh, this would be...this is the perfect time to do this, now that it's so, so, so out of vogue. But, you know, people, like, maybe have fond memories of it. And now this is so out of fashion. I think it could be funny to do it. [laughs] VICTORIA: Yeah, right. You don't want to do it just because it's the trend. But if it fits your personality and your business, then I think it would make sense. BRENDAN: Yeah. VICTORIA: I've heard that there might be a Wes Anderson style. [laughs] And I wanted to do a Wes Anderson goes to RailsConf video, but I'm actually meeting this -- BRENDAN: Did you do it? VICTORIA: I didn't do it. I'm not actually good enough. I think tomorrow I'm meeting with the Wistia customer success team. [laughs] I'm going to ask them to help me. BRENDAN: Oh yes, we'll help you. VICTORIA: Yes. BRENDAN: I do like...that trend is nice. That feels like a; I don't know, like, less aggressive. I've seen a lot of those, and they don't feel, I don't know, cringeworthy to me because maybe it's a nice shell in which to put some personality and content, as opposed to -- VICTORIA: Just being goofy or whatever, yeah. [laughs] BRENDAN: Yeah, I don't know exactly how to describe it. But I think that one works better. Yeah, someone at Wistia did that the other day in the office, and people enjoyed it a lot. That was more for, like, internal consumption. But those ones are nice. VICTORIA: Yeah. Well, I like the idea of bringing some of these editing tools to marketing teams where they can maybe not create viral videos all the time but do a lot of very highly editing and having it all in one place as well. Like you mentioned, I do run webinars, [laughs] and I'm familiar with the bouncing around between different tools to get everything to work. And there's even sometimes, like, security issues with different types of video-hosting tools. So I think there's a lot to offer for a marketing team who may not have as many resources to do the individual pieces. BRENDAN: Yeah, that's a story we've heard, yeah, from a lot of customers. And we have a lot of video resources internally because we're a video company, and we invest a lot in that. But even so, yeah, if you talk to folks on our marketing team, they'd say it's hard to get those resources, especially if you have something small that you want to do. I think it's always better if the person who has the need can easily do the thing themselves, right? More and better work gets done that way versus if it's, like, this chain of having to, like, ask other people because then you're like, should I really ask? It's like, do I want to, you know, spend social capital or budget on this thing? Will it work, will it not? But you can be, I think, faster and also experiment more when you have those tools available to you. VICTORIA: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Because I don't know if it's worth [laughs] me spending my team's time to make this Wes Anderson video, but I want to do it for fun. So we'll see if I can do it at RubyKaigi next week. BRENDAN: You should. That's great. That's, like, the perfect example of it because I feel like, yeah, well, maybe not. You might be sheepish to be like, yeah, I'm going to spend, like, ten grand with this, like, contractor to make this Wes Anderson...and to be like, what do you...what? What are you doing? VICTORIA: [laughs] That makes sense. BRENDAN: But if you do it, I think, you know, it's very likely it'll be really well-received, and you'll learn something about your audience. And then that could, like, blossom into, you know, a whole bunch of other things. I feel like that's been the case for us in our content marketing. We've long said, and this is, like, much more commonplace now, but one of the advantages of having a video producer in-house, like, is exactly that you now are employing someone full-time. And so you've, you know, like, maybe knocked off, like, the major pieces of content that a business would make with video, some of the obvious things. But then it's exactly what you're talking about that, oh, we could take a risk, and we could try this. And that's where you learn and figure out new things and things that are different than your competitors might be doing or more creative approaches. VICTORIA: Oh, That's great. You know, something I like to ask everybody who comes on the show, and it will be super interesting since you've been on a few times before, but if you could go back in time to your younger self when you first started Wistia, what advice would you give yourself? BRENDAN: Patient...One funny thing of when we started Wistia, we had really unrealistic expectations. I don't think that's [laughs] unique when starting a business when you're young. But yeah, I was 22 or 23, as was my co-founder, Chris. And we really honestly thought—this is, like, this is cringeworthy to say—that we would either be really successful and, in six months, build this great business and sell it to Facebook or now Meta, right? But that was, like, a hot company at the time. So we'd be wildly successful and sell to Facebook in six months, or we would fail in obscurity. That was, like, our honest-to-goodness business plan, which is so naive. [laughs] And here we are, you know, 17 years later and having a wonderful time. So I guess I would say, I mean, it's the most cliché advice, and you're young, and you never listen to stuff like this, but it's, like, enjoy the journey. [laughter] Things haven't always been easy. And there are, you know, hard challenges and, like, times filled with self-doubt. But even in those moments, if you have support from people around you, if you can learn to enjoy the growth and the journey, that is what keeps you motivated to do something for a long period of time. And usually, you know, people who stay focused on something for a long period of time you figure it out and can be successful. This sounds like the most generic advice as I say this out loud. VICTORIA: [laughs] BRENDAN: It really is. Enjoy the journey. [laughs] VICTORIA: Enjoy the journey. But I think that's common. And even actually talking with Chad a few weeks ago and interviewing him about thoughtbot, is his younger self would tell him to have more fun [laughs] during the whole process and really enjoy it. And I think it's also interesting that you had either the most optimistic and the most [laughs] pessimistic as options and, like, nothing in between [laughter] that you expected would happen. Which is funny because I have people ask me, like, is there still money in building apps and building new products? And it's like, yeah, like, it feels like there's these big people in the space, and they're doing everything you could think of possible. But there's still niche market that you can pursue [laughs], right? And there is still the ways that you can differentiate yourself as a product. BRENDAN: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. What advice would you give to your younger self? VICTORIA: Oh, me? I think, you know, probably something similar. Like, I feel like all of the times in my life where I've been, like, what am I going to do next and been really stressed out about it, within, like, three to six months, I found a new job, or I found something better where life improved a hundred-fold. [laughter]. So I think that's something even now I like to keep in mind is, like, if things turned down badly, like; usually, things turn around in a few months after that, [laughs] and a lot of times for the better. And that's, you know, true with, like, moving to California across the country from DC a few years ago. And yeah, a few other points like that. I think the other part I think about is who I might have invested more time in and who I would have invested less time in. And like what you were saying, like, having the support of people around you, and finding the people who really have your back and support you, and, for people who don't, maybe letting go a little sooner. [laughs] BRENDAN: Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah, I feel like both of those things are things I should probably remind myself of more frequently. [laughs] VICTORIA: Right? And have more fun, which means...there's another quote I heard that's, like, when people travel back in time, they're worried about changing a small thing that will affect the future. But people don't think that they can make small changes now that will affect their future big time. BRENDAN: Oh, that's a good one. I haven't heard that. But that's a good one. VICTORIA: Well, super cool. Just to kind of really summarize or go back to some things we mentioned already about video, just how important do you think video really is to marketing in the current landscape for businesses? BRENDAN: I mean, [laughs] I'm a very biased party, but I think it is becoming increasingly more important. I think it is the default way a lot of people want to consume information. This is a whole other tip that we didn't talk about with what's happening in the world of generative AI. And I'm sure a lot of people listening to this have voice cloning and how good those things have been getting. I think it's going to make the value of authentic connections in video much more important in the short and medium term. And there's some challenging questions about how do you tell what's real in an environment where we've gone past the uncanny valley in terms of generating, you know, an avatar of me or you with the perfect voice clone? But I think people are going to rely a lot on video to break through. VICTORIA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's going to be just more video world [laughs] as it goes. What does success look like for Wistia six months from now and even five years from now, the longer term? BRENDAN: I think for six months from now, so there's a lot of new areas of the product that we've added. And, in the next six months, we should be able to make pretty substantial progress to have those parts of the product have really solid adoption and repeated usage by customers. I think that's what success looks like, which we're seeing it now for our editors, probably the farthest along, that it has really good adoption among the customer base, and repeat usage, which I think is, like, a really good sign of success for a product. Live is still really early for us. You don't get a lot of shots if something goes wrong with a live event. [laughs] You know, I'd be pretty quick to look for another platform. And that's a pretty mature market where there are a lot of really strong competition. I think if we can get to a place in six months where we've got, you know, a few hundred customers using that every week or every month, we'd feel like we're on a path towards success. And the five-year version, I don't know, we recently started making three-year goals for the company a few years ago that have been pretty helpful to have as an anchoring. We have not made a five-year goal. But the thing I'm very excited about right now and what we're doing is, again, like, live is a small example. The market for live itself is much bigger than the market that traditionally Wistia has been in, and just in terms of video hosting, which itself has always grown a lot over the years. And it's itself a big market, as is video recording and creating video. So we have entered into a bunch of new markets that are all really quite large. And it's pretty humbling to be in a spot where I feel like we have a really solid base with a lot of in-depth knowledge of marketing and our customer to be able to build a really excellent product for that set. We're playing in a much bigger market than I ever thought we would. VICTORIA: It's like, success already achieved. [laughter] BRENDAN: Well, I don't know. It doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel that way. But -- [laughs] VICTORIA: Maybe next time you come on the podcast, you'll have another success story to share with us. [laughs] BRENDAN: I hope so. Yeah, I feel like that's always the case, right? It's like, yeah, there are moments where we're certainly very proud of what we've been able to achieve. But most of my time is spent [laughs] in the headspace of, you know, why are we so slow? Why is the product not good enough? Why are we, you know, like, all the stuff that's going wrong, right? Which drives you to be better and is exciting. VICTORIA: Right. That makes sense. Well, hopefully, this helps remind you all the good stuff that you all have done so far, too. BRENDAN: [laughs] VICTORIA: I'm really excited to hear about just how your values drive your decisions and then how that goes to the rest of the team and how closely you're listening to your customers, too, on the product. I think those are all just really great cultural examples and ways to build great products. So, thank you for sharing your story with me. And you can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for this episode at giantrobots.fm. And if you have questions or comments, you can email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on Twitter at @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. ANNOUNCER: This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot, your expert strategy, design, development, and product management partner. We bring digital products from idea to success and teach you how because we care. Learn more at thoughtbot.com. Special Guest: Brendan Schwartz.

What's got Brendan talking too loud? He recently started working out again for the first time in a long time, and he's been taking Spanish lessons. He's been taking classes for 2 hours every week, and his soon-to-be four-year-old son can speak Spanish fluently. Links to learn more about Brendan:Brendan's LinkedInBrendan's TwitterFollow us: twitter.com/wistiaSubscribe: wistia.com/series/talking-too-loudLove what you heard? Leave us a review!We want to hear from you! Write in and let us know what you think about the show, who you'd want us to interview on future episodes, and any feedback you have for our team.

Explore the good, the bad, and the downright dangerous as Wistia's Chris Savage talks about the three mistakes he and co-founder Brendan Schwartz learned from whilst building Wisita. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/business-of-software/message

From basement renovations to cryptocurrencies, Brendan, Chris, and Sylvie dive into a whole bunch of topics.Links to learn more about Brendan:Brendan's LinkedInFollow us: twitter.com/wistiaSubscribe: wistia.com/series/talking-too-loudLove what you heard? Leave us a review!We want to hear from you! Write in and let us know what you think about the show, who you'd want us to interview on future episodes, and any feedback you have for our team.

We live in a day and age where visual content captivates audiences attention for a large portion of their day. Technology has created accessibility like never before for viewers to consume content waiting for them. You can multitask by working and having your favorite podcast or film streaming on your phone, computer, smart TV, tablet or other devices. The days of a select few channels to choose from is unthinkable in a world of endless possibilities like we have today. So how do we peak viewers' interests? How can we become better marketers, storytellers, find our niche audience and create binge-worthy content?  Viewing habits differ from person to person. Some watch educational, others may like documentaries, maybe you like comedy or thrillers — Whatever you gravitate to — Someone is creating it for you right now. Being a content creator today - has never been better. The range of tools, instructional videos, creative and technological teams helping empower us all by giving us the answers we need to simplify the formulas can all be found in one place — Wistia.  Chris Savage and his business partner Brendan Schwartz created Wistia, a video hosting platform that empowers everyone to achieve better marketing, with all the tools needed to help them get better results and a greater reach for their videos and podcasts. Setorii knew Chris was the perfect leader and game changer to feature on this episode because his company has helped brands of all sizes. His company Wistia creates educational content and marketing software to help enable small and medium-sized businesses to leverage their video content to generate brand connection, loyalty and connection. Marketers can also create their own channel on their websites and on Wistia while also using a suite of tools to convert video viewers into subscribers and brand advocates. Wistia believes creating affinity has greater impact than awareness and in order to build brand affinity businesses should create binge-worthy, long-form content that adds value to viewers' lives. Cannot wait for you to join me on this episode of Leaders & GameChangers.  Chris shares a lot of wisdom and advice in this interview. We speak about entrepreneurial tips for success, how to find the right investor for your company, NFT's, how to make great business and leadership choices, resources that helped him along the way and how to make all customers and brands feel special. A quote from the interview Chris shared, “Authenticity is what wins and we want real connection with human beings and it's become even more true because of the pandemic”.

Topics covered in this episode What is the Wistia Way? Learning to install processes but go with the flow The simple benefits of being genuine How to make your strengths stronger The dynamic of Wistia CEO Chris Savage and CTO Brendan Schwartz Taking a "values-first" approach to product. This episode is produced by Dan Callahan, Benjamin Hillman, and Patrick Campbell. Additional support by Robert Byrne and Allissa Chan.This is a ProfitWell Recur production—the first media network dedicated entirely to the SaaS and subscription space. 

Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz are the cofounders of Wistia – what we call “the cooler, business version of YouTube” + most recently DIY video tools and podcast hosting.In this episode, Brendan and Chris share their insights on building a disruptor company from the ground up, finding their niche, the nerves that everyone experiences with video, and the importance of keeping things simple. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjsavage/ + https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanschwartz/Website: https://wistia.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/brendan?lang=en + https://twitter.com/csavage?lang=enMentioned in this episode: Soapbox by Wistia: https://auth.wistia.com/session/new?app=soapboxSquare: https://squareup.com/us/en/campaign/free-reader-1?device=c&gclid=CjwKCAjwruSHBhAtEiwA_qCpppW7fhLIDz7Xg4v5ENPB4N80jf9dk2Zla2om-TiRQk9TbN-YJfEdhRoC0KwQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&kw=square+pay&kwid=p64800231635&matchtype=p&pcrid=531458821091&pdv=c&pkw=square+pay&pmt=p&pub=GOOGLE

Many enlightened businesses work hard to make their brands and relationships with their customers stronger and more human, and that's exactly what Wistia does. For those who think that's obvious, well, there are many businesses out there that do the exact opposite. Either intentionally or unintentionally). The CTO and co-founder of this interesting startup joins us to share his leadership learning and the importance of building that human face of the business one video at a time. With the bonus of making the process super easy and effective. The key takeaways from the podcast are: • Creating the right funding model for your startup can have a positive impact on the way you run and do business • Learning from Brendan's reflections of leading through tough decisions (tapping into the wisdom of the organization) • Leading with remote teams and making sure they become autonomous and effective development machines ◦ Especially getting the decision making and set of power closer to the cross-functional teams doing the work Our Guest: Brendan Schwartz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanschwartz/ Website: http://wistia.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/wistia Intro and background music: Craig MacArthur - Power Shutoff (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x74iB_jtauw)

Chris Savage Chris Savage founded Wistia to help businesses understand how well their video content was performing. Early on they stumbled across content marketing, using their own how-to videos to grow their own business. When COVID-19 hit and customers started interacting with companies virtually, Wistia really took off. We talked about: how he founded and has grown Wistia as a video platform to help marketers understand how well their videos are working their focus at Wistia on educating their customers about how to create videos the differences between Wistia and YouTube and Vimeo and other video platforms how the global coronavirus pandemic has driven huge growth in video consumption in 2020 and the dynamics behind this trend how the virtualization of business with the pandemic has driven both entrepreneurship and new media consumption patterns some of the rules of thumb and best practices around video production how to use video viewing data to inform the evolution of your video content how structuring video content opens opportunities for serialization and similar opportunities how owned video assets are are replacing advertising and other paid media placements and the factors behind this trend an example of how much more effective a video campaign can be compared to, e.g., and outsourced e-book how brands like MailChimp use video to engage customers how engaging customers can reduce friction in a company's relationship with them how, regardless of the medium, the customer is in charge nowadays - and the ensuing importance of focusing on your customers needs and giving them the content they want Chris's bio Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a web-based software solution that helps marketers turn viewers into brand advocates to grow their businesses. After graduating from Brown University, Chris and his co-founder Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan’s living room in 2006. They founded the company with the goal of helping businesses effectively market their products or services more creatively through video. Recently, Savage and Schwartz turned down an offer to sell Wistia and took on $17.3M in debt instead, which allowed them to buy out their investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry. Now, more than 500,000 businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses, including HubSpot, MailChimp, Sephora, Starbucks, and Tiffany & Co. Follow Chris on social media Twitter LinkedIn Wistia's learning resource area Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/4ne6WTrWUn8 Podcast intro As we move deeper into the multimedia, omni-channel business communications world, video continues to rise as an important content medium. Add a global pandemic that makes face-to-face interactions more challenging and video becomes even more relevant. Chris Savage founded Wistia to help marketers get a better handle on how video engages their customers. In the process of democratizing video production and analytics, he stumbled into content marketing, further leveling the playing field for non-expert video producers. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 87 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Chris Savage. Chris is the CEO and the co-founder of Wistia, the video platform. Welcome Chris, tell the folks a little bit more about your background and what Wistia does. Chris: Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me, excited to be here. And so I started Wistia a year out of college, which was 14 years ago, and basically we built it into a platform for marketers to help them present, market, understand how their video is performing. And that means analytics to measure things, customization, branding control, all that stuff.

Chris Savage Chris Savage founded Wistia to help businesses understand how well their video content was performing. Early on they stumbled across content marketing, using their own how-to videos to grow their own business. When COVID-19 hit and customers started interacting with companies virtually, Wistia really took off. We talked about: how he founded and has grown Wistia as a video platform to help marketers understand how well their videos are working their focus at Wistia on educating their customers about how to create videos the differences between Wistia and YouTube and Vimeo and other video platforms how the global coronavirus pandemic has driven huge growth in video consumption in 2020 and the dynamics behind this trend how the virtualization of business with the pandemic has driven both entrepreneurship and new media consumption patterns some of the rules of thumb and best practices around video production how to use video viewing data to inform the evolution of your video content how structuring video content opens opportunities for serialization and similar opportunities how owned video assets are are replacing advertising and other paid media placements and the factors behind this trend an example of how much more effective a video campaign can be compared to, e.g., and outsourced e-book how brands like MailChimp use video to engage customers how engaging customers can reduce friction in a company's relationship with them how, regardless of the medium, the customer is in charge nowadays - and the ensuing importance of focusing on your customers needs and giving them the content they want Chris's bio Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a web-based software solution that helps marketers turn viewers into brand advocates to grow their businesses. After graduating from Brown University, Chris and his co-founder Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan's living room in 2006. They founded the company with the goal of helping businesses effectively market their products or services more creatively through video. Recently, Savage and Schwartz turned down an offer to sell Wistia and took on $17.3M in debt instead, which allowed them to buy out their investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry. Now, more than 500,000 businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses, including HubSpot, MailChimp, Sephora, Starbucks, and Tiffany & Co. Follow Chris on social media Twitter LinkedIn Wistia's learning resource area Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/4ne6WTrWUn8 Podcast intro transcript As we move deeper into the multimedia, omni-channel business communications world, video continues to rise as an important content medium. Add a global pandemic that makes face-to-face interactions more challenging and video becomes even more relevant. Chris Savage founded Wistia to help marketers get a better handle on how video engages their customers. In the process of democratizing video production and analytics, he stumbled into content marketing, further leveling the playing field for non-expert video producers. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 87 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Chris Savage. Chris is the CEO and the co-founder of Wistia, the video platform. Welcome Chris, tell the folks a little bit more about your background and what Wistia does. Chris: Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me, excited to be here. And so I started Wistia a year out of college, which was 14 years ago, and basically we built it into a platform for marketers to help them present, market, understand how their video is performing. And that means analytics to measure things, customization, branding control, all that stuff.

In this episode, Brendan Schwartz discusses his transition from being an Ivy Leaguer to the Co-Founder of a successful marketing software company. He details how he came to realize the value of creating educational content in addition to their helpful SaaS product and that marketers were his ideal clients. Tune in to learn how covid-19 impacted Wistia, some of Brendan’s concerns regarding scaling profitably and growing too fast, as well as his definition of Wistia’s company culture. Don’t forget to subscribe to Operation Agency Freedom podcast to stay up-to-date about the best ways to own your agency: https://dudeagency.io/category/podcast/  

Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a web-based software solution that helps marketers turn viewers into brand advocates to grow their businesses. After graduating from Brown University, Chris and his co-founder Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan’s living room in 2006. They founded the company with the goal of helping businesses effectively market their products or services more creatively through video. Recently, Savage and Schwartz turned down an offer to sell Wistia and took on $17.3M in debt instead, which allowed them to buy out their investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry. Now, more than 500,000 businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses, including HubSpot, MailChimp, Sephora, Starbucks, and Tiffany & Co.

Guest Chris Savage is the CEO and co-founder of Wistia, a video software company based in Cambridge, MA. Wistia is the software behind original video initiatives from brands across industries. Wistia also has its own slate of original video series, which includes Brandwagon, One, Ten, One Hundred, and Low Views High Impact. Savage and his co-founder, Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Schwartz’s living room in 2006. Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with more than 100 employees. Before Wistia, Savage helped produce an Emmy Award-winning feature-length documentary and was named a Top Young Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Art-Semiotics, and was a winner of the Weston Fine Arts award for excellence in filmmaking. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

WHAT MAKES YOU SCARED? WHAT MAKES A BABY SPEAK ON A PODCAST? IM DRUNK  

Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a video sharing and hosting company (and pioneers of the brand affinity movement). After graduating from Brown University with a degree in Art-Semiotics, Chris and his co-founder, Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan’s living room in 2006. Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with over 150 employees (including 1 labradoodle). Before Wistia, Chris helped produce an Emmy Award-winning feature-length documentary and was named a Top Young Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek. I've been following Wistia's journey for the past few years and I'm delighted to welcome Chris to the podcast.Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕What is Wistia?How did it start?How did Wistia originally position in the market?They were a private video sharing site and then pivoted to embeddable website videos. Then had to make the decision to fully focus on marketing videos.They then switched back to offering everything as people had lots of different use cases for Wistia, which was a mistake because then they struggled on where to focus and innovate. They had no differentiator.When did Wistia take it's first set of investment?Took a year to focus on private video sharing - huge companies. They noticed they were onto something big so took investment and hired 2 people. They then started loosing $30k a month, which felt horrible!Stayed at 4 people for another 3 years.The greatest mistake they could make was not thinking long-term.Their last funding round was in 2010, what have they done for the past decade to grow?As they got more profitable they took more risksInvested in content marketing and company cultureThey got to £10m in revenue with a few million in profitPeople were saying 'if you're profitable then you're probably not growing fast enough'Thought they were missing out on growthWent from being profitable to running at a loss, hiring people, running ad campaignsOutside the business it seemed like they were doing great but internally they were creating a ton of complexity and a situation was bad.Lost the ability risks because of itForced everything to be short termCompounding affect of losing $300k a monthAt the point where you were haemorrhaging money, going further and further into the red, what were you thinking? What was next?This was the point where 3 life changing offers where on the table. Their intention was never to sell Wistia, but it got to the point where they were considering it.But they felt that if they sell, they would be failing.Then they started thinking about what they would do if they sold.Start a new companyIdea of the brand, the people, the problems they'd want to solve"If we want to build another company, we'd build another Wistia back to the £10m days and we wouldn't have screwed it up by putting the throttle down so hard"How has Wistia been since raising the debt? Is it back to being a happy company?As soon as the debt was raised, there was about 6 months of turmoil with staff leaving etc, then they built back up to profitability, really quickly.It was a huge turnaround as they went from a $0.5m loss in 2017 to $6m profit in 2018It gave them profitable confidence again! Wistia could start to take creative risks again, such as One, Ten, One-Hundred and 16 weeks parental leave policy.Is it possible to grow a successful business, like Wistia, without taking external funding?Depends on the mindset of the founderYou need persistence, lots of persistenceYou need to have the right market, one that is growing. If the market is not ready for your product, if you don't have funding it will be very hard to keep going.One, Ten, One-Hundred is one of my favourite bits of B2B marketing I've ever seen. What was the thought process behind making it?Was born out of a conversation with Sandwich Video founder, Adam Lisago.They had done a big ad campaign the year before, this was to try and build brand awareness, which didn't work at all. One, Ten, One-Hundred was an opportunity to document this ad creation process with Sandwich.What they found with this series is that time spent with brand was up massively, brand search was up and ultimately brand affinity increased.Why does long form content work so well?Time with brand is such a hard thing to come by if you think about the amount of touchpoint customers have with your brand currently - cumulatively it doesn't add up to much.A key to any relationship is building trust and the more time you can get people to spend with you brand, the better.It was something people actually wanted to watch. It was entertaining and educational.How did it perform?$10k video performed the best, but they all performed different jobs.The $1k video shows how you can make a creative video that showcases your product well, it doesn't need to break the bank.The $10k video showcases the sweet spot of how much you could spend to get a really high performing ad.The $100k video proves that if you need your brand to be this polished and have the money to spend to reflect that, then it is worth it.It didn't just stop there with Wistia's long form content. What is Brandwagon?Ended up having conversations about brand, which sparked the idea of creating a talk show which let's the Wistia personality come through.The format means it is repeatable and they know exactly what they are doing, which makes for more efficient production.Patrick Campbell of ProfitWell said on another podcast episode that they have got their production of their video series down to about $10k, which is the equivalent to the spend to create an ebook. If it's that cheap to do, why isn't every B2B marketer doing it?Patrick and the team are pioneersSome people don't understand the impact it can haveThey are looking at how a campaign can go viral, as opposed to thinking about how they can build brand affinity.The biggest brands are now figuring out that making good content that interests people really does workA place we're really seeing this taking off is with Podcasts. Podcasting is one of the most personalised, intimate ways a person or brand can communicate with you. You're building a relationship with your customer.Is Wistia going to keep going with the long-form content? If so, what's next?"We're shooting lots at the moment but I can't get into too much detail"Wistia didn't have a sales team until 3 years ago. Why didn't you for so long, and what made you create one?It's based on focus. When they started, of course they were doing sales, but they wanted to keep the business self-service and seamless with onboarding. They'd built Wistia up pretty big without any sales team.But things change! They started speaking to different companies and finding some that had bad experiences with Wistia! This was because there were people who liked speaking to people before buying, they need someone to help them through the buying process. This actually was damaging, especially upmarket. A huge pre-customer experience gap.From the outside it looks like everyone is happy and Wistia has a great culture - which I don't doubt. But obviously throughout any journey you're going to have to make difficult decisions within the team, how do you stay grounded when making these decisions and how has that changed as you've grown?Sometimes they felt they were holding people back and they won't be fulfilled in staying with Wistia.

Meet Chris Savage Chris Savage is Co-Founder and CEO of Wistia, as well as the host of the Wistia Original Series Brandwagon.  Chris started Wistia in 2006 with his best friend Brendan Schwartz. The pair got involved in film-making at Brown and wanted to create a portfolio website for film-makers. They eventually pivoted and Wistia is now a video sharing and analytics program that allows business owners to get insight on the performance of their video content. Wistia also creates the great video series Brandwagon.  Today's Episode is Brought to You By: This episode of Wayfinding Growth is brought to you by Sprocket Talk. If you’re ready to take your HubSpot experience to a whole new level, you need to join Sprocket Talk as a Free VIP member. Tutorials, courses, training, HubSpot updates and more. Head to SprocketTalk.com/WG to join the movement and get an exclusive Wayfinding Growth deal!  Know Your Brand Voice "This doesn't feel Wistia to us." That was a watershed moment for Chris and the Wistia team.  When the company needed to increase pricing like so many businesses need to do in growth mode, they knew they needed to communicate to their current customers. Even with transparency, the message missed the mark. Their own customers let them know that the voice just didn't feel natural and authentic. The team adjusted the message, tested it again, and found success. Even a difficult discussion with customers can be done in your brand voice in order to communicate well. Knowing your brand voice helps endear your community to you. It Takes Time and Effort to Build a Business Wistia's journey began in 2006. For what's considered a startup by many, that's a long time. It's taken time, intention and hard work to grow.  Chris shares some of the rough seas he and Brendan had to navigate through, some of the great days and many of the lessons learned. The biggest takeaways for us included: Be intentional Don't be afraid of failure Listen to your customers Love what you do Creating an Original Series to Build Your Brand Wistia has created original content to build a brand and community. One, Ten, One Hundred is a documentary series on the process to create three ads. One ad cost $1,000, one cost $10,000 and one cost $100,000. They wanted to see how each budget performed. During the meta project, the Wistia team documented it all, creating an original series they released, full of lessons and insight.  Now Wistia has a second orignal series, called Brandwagon. This series is more talk show with a guest interview and other segments, showing off the personality if Wistia while bringing value to an audience.  Chris says any brand can consider this route, and explains in the full conversation.  Connect with Chris and Wistia Chris on LinkedIn Wistia Wistia on Instagram Brandwagon Subscribe for New Episodes Every Week Be sure to subscribe on your podcast player of choice (or the email notifications below) for new episodes every week, Tuesday mornings at 7:00am EST. Wayfinding Growth is the go-to podcast to inspire entrepreneurs, business owners and leadership. “For better or worse, in richness and in want” may be for weddings, but it’s also for businesses. We will be your navigator in this journey, no matter your level. Love what we're doing? Leave a review wherever you listen!

Meet Chris Savage Chris Savage is Co-Founder and CEO of Wistia, as well as the host of the Wistia Original Series Brandwagon.  Chris started Wistia in 2006 with his best friend Brendan Schwartz. The pair got involved in film-making at Brown and wanted to create a portfolio website for film-makers. They eventually pivoted and Wistia is now a video sharing and analytics program that allows business owners to get insight on the performance of their video content. Wistia also creates the great video series Brandwagon.  Today's Episode is Brought to You By: This episode of Wayfinding Growth is brought to you by Sprocket Talk. If you’re ready to take your HubSpot experience to a whole new level, you need to join Sprocket Talk as a Free VIP member. Tutorials, courses, training, HubSpot updates and more. Head to SprocketTalk.com/WG to join the movement and get an exclusive Wayfinding Growth deal!  Know Your Brand Voice "This doesn't feel Wistia to us." That was a watershed moment for Chris and the Wistia team.  When the company needed to increase pricing like so many businesses need to do in growth mode, they knew they needed to communicate to their current customers. Even with transparency, the message missed the mark. Their own customers let them know that the voice just didn't feel natural and authentic. The team adjusted the message, tested it again, and found success. Even a difficult discussion with customers can be done in your brand voice in order to communicate well. Knowing your brand voice helps endear your community to you. It Takes Time and Effort to Build a Business Wistia's journey began in 2006. For what's considered a startup by many, that's a long time. It's taken time, intention and hard work to grow.  Chris shares some of the rough seas he and Brendan had to navigate through, some of the great days and many of the lessons learned. The biggest takeaways for us included: Be intentional Don't be afraid of failure Listen to your customers Love what you do Creating an Original Series to Build Your Brand Wistia has created original content to build a brand and community. One, Ten, One Hundred is a documentary series on the process to create three ads. One ad cost $1,000, one cost $10,000 and one cost $100,000. They wanted to see how each budget performed. During the meta project, the Wistia team documented it all, creating an original series they released, full of lessons and insight.  Now Wistia has a second orignal series, called Brandwagon. This series is more talk show with a guest interview and other segments, showing off the personality if Wistia while bringing value to an audience.  Chris says any brand can consider this route, and explains in the full conversation.  Connect with Chris and Wistia Chris on LinkedIn Wistia Wistia on Instagram Brandwagon Subscribe for New Episodes Every Week Be sure to subscribe on your podcast player of choice (or the email notifications below) for new episodes every week, Tuesday mornings at 7:00am EST. Wayfinding Growth is the go-to podcast to inspire entrepreneurs, business owners and leadership. “For better or worse, in richness and in want” may be for weddings, but it’s also for businesses. We will be your navigator in this journey, no matter your level. Love what we're doing? Leave a review wherever you listen!

Welcome to Episode 109 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast from the leading authority for jobs & careers in the tech industry. For this episode of our podcast, I interviewed the Founders of Wistia, Brendan Schwartz and Chris Savage. Wistia is a company that creates video software for growing businesses and they've helped over 500,000 of them. What is truly amazing about the Wistia story is how the business has grown with a very limited amount of outside capital and they have gone on to build one of the marque B2B software brands in the industry. Here's a very random fun fact that I have to share about Wistia. You know when you go to the team section of a company's website. Then you mouse over the photo and it switched over to a different picture? Well, Wistia invented this style and in the early days of the company their team page went viral and ended up landing them a bunch of customers. It is a simple, yet effective example of their creativity and over the long-term, their approach to content marketing is probably one of the best examples out there. If one word could sum up this episode it would be transparency which is a trait that I admire about Brendan and Chris. They share lots of stories about getting the business off the ground, to all the trials and tribulations, and lots of amazing advice. In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like: -Brendan and Chris' background story prior to starting Wistia. -All the details about how they founded Wistia and started to gain traction. -A cool story about how they had to make a hard decision by saying “no” to HBO as a potential customer and why that decision ended up being an important one for their future. -Why they didn't take on traditional venture capital to fund the growth of the business and what led them down the path of taking on $17M in debt financing last year. -How they have built a strong culture that is centered around transparency. -Plans for future growth. -Plus, a lot more. Ok - quick side note… This is exciting because you have two options for catching this episode. You can either listen to the audio from your favorite podcast app or, for this special episode, you can watch the full video of this interview! The video version is classic, as the background from one of their in-house studios at Wistia looks like a Blockbuster store with real VCR movies in the background. Don't miss it! Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!

For entrepreneurs today, advice on the ‘best practices’ for building a fruitful company abound - prescriptions for raising capital, increasing revenue, and hiring the correct team are often just a click (or the turn of a page) away. In periods of expansion and evolution, founders are tasked with making and implementing pivotal decisions necessary for propelling growth. During these times, it’s not uncommon for leaders to lean heavily on the startup handbook to better understand the ‘right’ way forward; however, as most leaders come to understand, what works in theory doesn’t always play out in practice, and at some point all responsible leaders must consider if the company they’re running is the company they aspired to build. On this episode of the Reboot Podcast, co-founders Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz share how listening to their instincts led them to flip the script, throw out the startup handbook, and take back ownership of their video-software company, Wistia. Brendan and Chris remark on how buying out their investors released the pressure they felt to implement quick solutions for the sake of driving short-term growth and increasing revenue, and the way in which this shift opened the doors for a more creative and joyful work experience. In this conversation, Jerry, Brendan, and Chris propose an important question for all leaders, “What type of company do you want to work for?” Leave us a review on Itunes! Follow our step by step guides: - How To: Leave a Review on Your Computer: - How To: Leave a Review on Your iPhone: Never miss an episode! Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on all our episode releases.

Invest Alongside Boston's Top Angels: Link to Our Syndicates Page Action Jack Barker move over! Chainsaw Jack Huntress is the real deal. CEOs don’t get more dynamic than this geologist turned founder. Jack's startup, HomeBinder offers invaluable tools to help homeowners manage and record work done on their most valuable asset. It’s getting real traction via home inspectors eager to help home buyers. Breaking News: HomeBinder is in Techstars! Special mention in this episode:  Ed Hosepian and Dean Kahr. Thanks for your generous help in the purchase of the big, dilapidated house in Cambridge. Guys, you were right! Jack Huntress trained as a geologist and geophysicist then worked as a consultant for decades. Acted as an intrapreneur in building a new practice at an existing firm. No Conjoined Triangles of Success for this Jack – he’s a truly action-prone CEO. How “Chainsaw Jack” got his name. Story told by super angel and CEO whisperer Joe Caruso (Link to Joe Caruso Episode Page) Jack’s owned a bunch of homes including one built in the 1700s. Having been orphaned at an early age he had to come up to speed fast on home maintenance. Homeowner is more like a home steward. Lack of continuity on home maintenance information. HomeBinder solves that problem. Jack bought a house from an owner who had a binder with loads of details about the house including paint colors, receipts for work done, warranties and manuals. This gave Jack the idea for HomeBinder. We homeowners did not have a good way to keep information about the home before HomeBinder. Proactive home maintenance rather than reactive. For the most valuable asset homeowners own, their house. Home inspectors create binder for homeowner, making their life easier. Integrated into home inspection software. Someday, you won’t buy a house without a HomeBinder report. Sal thanks Jack for helping in a crucial moment in the purchase of big dilapidated house in Cambridge. Thank you, Ed and Dean! Getting tens of thousands of HomeBinders set up by home inspectors. Need to enlist other players in the home buying process to grow even faster. Building valuable data on the home. Can tell you about the electricians and plumbers who will show up. Really important! Biggest complaint for plumbers & electricians is that they don’t call you back. Career advice for your kid who’s handy but not a great student. Get the kid into the trades; they’re not going away! HomeBinder is like a drip campaign for the home inspectors in helping inspectors stay in touch with home owners. Sal reads inspiring review from listener Andy_C_B. He points out an underappreciated objective of the podcast, to inspire young people to take on big challenges. Please leave a review on iTunes. Jack’s pivot. Thought real estate brokers were the best initial channel for HomeBinder. Discovered they were not. Real estate agents actually do few transactions per year compared to home inspectors. Average home inspector does 250 to 300 home per year. Home inspectors are ideally positioned to create the HomeBinder. Jack used to dodge managing people; he’s now embraced people management in his startup. Jack Huntress thinks people management can be greatly improved to the huge benefit of our economy. When you get a high-performing team it’s glorious. We should want to go to work. HomeBinder will be in Techstars Boston this year. Inspired by Clem Cazalot of Techstars to apply. Ideas are easy, getting it right is far more valuable than being the first to do something. There was Friendster, then there was My Space and then there was Facebook. Instant success that’s taken seven years. TED Talk by Bill Gross, a very useful way for angels and founders to spend seven minutes: (https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_the_single_biggest_reason_why_startups_succeed?language=en) CORRECTION: during the interview I mentioned Bill Gross, the bond genius. The Bill Gross I should have mentioned is the startup genius with the TED Talk linked above. The biggest factor for startup success is market timing, i.e. Lots of companies throw in the towel and a year later their market takes off. Why Jack decided to start a company. Jack was not a good fit at a large company; too impatient with things not being done right. First run at it was as an intrapreneur. Starting a company is like an itch. Like Jack’s need to build potato canons, trebuchets and the like. If you find yourself spending too much time on your hobby and too little time at work, you should take the hint that you’re in the wrong job. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone was a ditherer but his future father in law was not. Filed patent on the telephone just hours prior to another person. Jack’s story about Arthur D. Little & Co. Invented synthetic penicillin, color contact lenses, inkjet printing etc. Sold at a fire sale. Biggest obstacle was raising money. Bootstrapped for four years. Jack read his family into the business he was founding, yet being a startup CEO has been a very lonely experience. Techstars is a great place to find peers to talk to. Sal recommends finding a board member/investor that you can open up to. Jack Huntress’ parting thoughts: founders need to take care of themselves. Eat well, exercise and get enough sleep. Brings to mind wisdom of Brendan Schwartz that you can’t out hustle the competition, you can only out think them. How are you going to out think the competition if you’re exhausted from working twenty-hour days? Link to the Wistia Episode

“You’re going to get judged by your video.” If this quote scares you, you’ll want to listen to this week’s episode. With 80% of online content set to be video by 2019 more brands are pushing into the space. However, many are afraid of looking stupid. We talked about using video to build your brand and your business this week on the On Brand podcast with Wistia cofounder and CEO Chris Savage. About Chris Savage Chris Savage is the cofounder and CEO of Wistia, a web-based video hosting solution built for businesses. After graduating from Brown University, Chris and his co-founder, Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan’s living room in 2006. Chris founded the company with the goal of helping businesses effectively market their products or services more creatively through video. Recently, Savage and Schwartz turned down an offer to sell Wistia and took on $17.3M in debt instead, which allowed them to buy out their investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry. Episode Highlights The story of Wisita. We talk a lot about story on the On Brand podcast. Wistia as a business has several fascinating stories including the classic startup story of the founder starting a business in his living room. It also has a new story about taking on debt to take back the business and focus their efforts moving forward. “I’ve never seen employee engagement higher.” When you buy out your investors and take control of the company, it sends a message to your employees. After some initial fear (mostly based on misunderstanding about debt), the Wistia team was excited about being to take tangible control of their business. “If I get on a camera will I look stupid?” This is the million-dollar question for brands considering video. Actually, this customer pain point drove Wistia’s content marketing in a unique direction. After watching their videos, viewers would asked what they did to make them look and sound so good. Eventually, Wistia started creating their own video tutorials. What does the future hold for video? “Lots of people are consistently creating great stuff. That wasn’t the case a few years ago.” What’s harder moving forward is creating unique content that connects with your customers. What brand has made Chris smile recently? Chris gave a shout out to cool new initiatives by Mailchimp and Envision. To learn more, go to the “Learn” section of the Wistia website, follow Chris on Twitter, and check out his personal blog, Savage Thoughts. As We Wrap … Before we go, I want to flip the microphone around to our community … User experience designer Larry Sickmann found the On Brand podcast for the first time and likes what he’s hearing so far. Thanks for listening, Larry! Did you hear something you liked on this episode or another? Do you have a question you’d like our guests to answer? Let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #OnBrandPodcast and you may just hear your thoughts here on the show. On Brand is sponsored by my new book Brand Now. Discover the seven dynamics to help your brand stand out in our crowded, distracted world. Order now and get special digital extras. Learn more. Subscribe to the podcast – You can subscribe to the show via iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, and RSS. Rate and review the show – If you like what you’re hearing, head over to iTunes and click that 5-star button to rate the show. And if you have a few extra seconds, write a couple of sentences and submit a review. This helps others find the podcast. OK. How do you rate and review a podcast? Need a quick tutorial on leaving a rating/review in iTunes? Check this out. Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!

On this episode of Protect the Hustle, we talk about being self-aware of one's strengths, trusting the convictions of the entire company, and hiring the right team to compliment those strengths helped Wistia become a video-marketing hub. Wistia Co-Founder Brendan Schwartz shares his experience of problem-solving and team building to create a company that serves 300,000 businesses daily.

Invest Alongside Boston's Leading Angels Via Syndicates: Opt In Here Cambridge-based Wistia has taken the road less-traveled to success. They did not raise a lot of money but now compete with richly-funded startups. What’s their secret? Listen to the interview with the delightful founders of this popular video platform, Brendan Schwartz and Chris Savage, as they discuss the unique culture and vision that make the startup remarkable. During the interview I pondered naming the episode “They Did It Their Way”; an echo of the song made famous by Frank Sinatra. I decided against this title because Chris and Brendan are nothing like the self-absorbed crooner. Actually, they are two friends from college who built a business together and still enjoy working and socializing with each other. The beautiful story of their friendship is only one of the attractions in this bravura interview. Highlights include: Brendan Schwartz and Chris Savage Bio Wistia’s Founders Lived and Worked in a 10-Person House in Cambridge Keeping Costs Low “When we started Wistia, we were both 23 years old. I think really the thing that was the most attractive to me was that it was an adventure, and that no two days would be the same.” Wistia’s Founders Tried a Lot of Ideas Before They Found Their First Use Case How Wistia Found its First Use Case Startups Tend to Undercharge for Their Services; Wistia Was No Different in This $400 per Month from the First Corporate Client Was a Lot Compared to a Burn Rate of $1600 per Month “Today, Wistia is a video platform.” “It’s really trying to make it easy for you to get value from your videos.” “There's no way Wistia would be what it is today if we weren't crazy scrappy for many, many years.” Sal Asks for Your Review – He Points at Chris & Brendan Significantly! Great Advice on Finding Your First Use Case The Savage Rule: “If you're not embarrassed by the stuff you're putting out in the world, you probably have taken too long in protecting it or trying to make it perfect…” On Being Friends and then Co-Founders – Dos & Don’ts Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz, Like Bettina Hein of the Founder of Pixability, Are Very Wise About their Schedule Chris Savage’s Brilliant Responses to the “Sleep When You’re Dead” Idea Wistia Has Been Massively Capital Efficient Compared to Brightcove & HubSpot – Their Investors Are Elated!! Over-Funded Competitors Undone by the Video Market’s Slower-Than-Expected Growth Wistia Is Has Put in Place a Financing Structure Unusual for a Startup “We hit on this idea of raising debt so we could do right by the investors, and we could really take a bet on ourselves…” Startups Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz Admire Parting Thoughts from the Founders of Wistia “I wish everyone could just think longer term.”

Chad talks with Chris Savage & Brendan Schwartz, co-founders of Wistia, about building/launching new products, hiring, and managing company identity & vision. Wistia Chris & Brendan on Giant Robots Wistiafest video marketing conference Soapbox Thank you to Storyblocks for sponsoring today's episode!

A key to success in any business endeavor is the ability to measure, monitor and modify business activities to get the best possible return on investment. This holds true for the use of video and video marketing. It is no longer sufficient to just post a business video on YouTube and hope that people will find it and view it. Nor is it a wise business investment to create a video and not check on how it is being viewed and received by the intended audience. A marketing video is a powerful tool and it must be calibrated appropriately using the right video analytics tools. On this podcast episode, the second of a two part series, hosts Joel Goobich and Brendan Carty continue their conversation with Brendan Schwartz, CTO of video hosting and analytics platform, Wistia, about the entire spectrum of video hosting, video analytics and video marketing tools that any business can and should upgrade to and use.

To measure, monitor and control business growth you need the right business tools. And Video Marketing is no different. With the stampede to using visual imagery such as video as a basic mode of business messaging and content creation, it's crucial that any business using upgrade their video marketing by using the best and most advanced video analytics. On this two part podcast episode, hosts Joel Goobich and Brendan Carty have a comprehensive conversation with Brendan Schwartz, CTO of video hosting and analytics platform, Wistia, about the entire spectrum of video hosting, video analytics and video marketing tools that any business can and should upgrade to and use.

Brendan Schwartz, Co-Founder and CTO of Wistia, shares some hilarious stories about his journey going from bootstrapped to raising a round of funding, to not making sale for months after raising that money. He touches on early product pivots, sales, prici Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode Ben talks with Chris Savage and Brendan Schwartz about Wistia Wistia Chris Savage's Twitter Brendan Schwartz's Twitter

➡️ Like The Podcast? Leave A Rating: https://ratethispodcast.com/successstory➡️ Join 321,000 people who read my free weekly newsletter: https://newsletter.scottdclary.com➡️ About The GuestChris Savage, the CEO and co-founder of Wistia, a leading video platform, embarked on the entrepreneurial journey with Brendan Schwartz in 2006, establishing the company in Schwartz's living room after graduating from Brown University with a degree in Art-Semiotics. Wistia has evolved into a multimillion-dollar business with over 80 employees and 350,000 customers. In a pivotal decision in 2018, Savage and Schwartz turned down a substantial acquisition offer, choosing instead to take on $17.3M in debt, demonstrating their commitment to independently building and growing Wistia. Chris is a vocal advocate for the Boston startup scene and is particularly enthusiastic about unconventional paths in the tech industry, entrepreneurship, marketing, video, and company building.Before founding Wistia, Chris Savage gained recognition for co-producing an Emmy Award-winning feature-length documentary and was honored as a Top Young Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek in 2009. Beyond his professional pursuits, Chris and his wife have embarked on another significant venture – starting a family. Their daughter, Zoë, assumes a managerial role, and their latest addition, Olympia, seemingly grasps the importance of company values, having been born just hours after an all-hands meeting, showcasing a remarkable alignment of personal and professional milestones.➡️ Show Linkshttps://www.instagram.com/csavage/https://twitter.com/csavage/https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjsavage/ ➡️ Podcast SponsorsCollective - https://collective.com/successHubspot - https://hubspot.com/  Kajabi - https://kajabi.com/success (Code: success)ButcherBox - https://butcherbox.com/success (Code: success)Justin Wine - https://justinwine.com/ (Code: success)Green Light - https://greenlight.com/successIndeed - https://indeed.com/claryThe Sales Evangelist Podcast - https://thesalesevangelist.com/ NetSuite — https://netsuite.com/scottclary/ Factor — https://factormeals.com/successpod50 (Code: successpod50)HelloFresh — https://hellofresh.com/50successpod (Code: 50succespod)ZBiotics — https://zbiotics.com/success (Code: success)➡️ Talking Points00:00 - Introduction01:19 - Chris Savage's Origin Story09:04 - Trailblazing in Video Hosting09:58 - Entrepreneurial Lessons Learned16:25 - Breaking Out of Your Shell21:24 - What Makes a Good Podcast?24:15 - Wistia's Future: To Sell or Not to Sell28:45 - Video's Business Model Evolution36:42 - Surviving Beyond Investment39:07 - Strategic Prioritization Insights43:02 - Sponsor: The Sales Evangelist Podcast43:46 - Delegating Ownership Wisely47:20 - Entrepreneurial Time Commitments53:03 - The Mental Side of Entrepreneurship55:08 - Embracing Fear for Growth57:20 - Demystifying Company Culture1:04:00 - Passionate Perspectives on Marketing1:10:12 - Connect with Chris Online1:11:55 - Advice to the 20-Year-Old Self1:15:11 - Defining SuccessOur Sponsors:* Check out Miro: https://miro.com/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy