Michael Litt. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a leading video marketing platform called Vidyard. While he’s not bringing leading video-based technologies to market, he serves as general partner at Garage Capital, a seed stage fund focused on supercluster companies looking to expand their networks in the Silicon Valley. He also sits as Communitech’s board of directors, a KW-based organization designed to help companies start, grow and succeed.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – N/A
What CEO do you follow? – Shannon Stubo
Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – You need a big support network and focus your energy into building a business

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:41 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show
02:16 – Michael was in Episode 414 of The Top and back then, they only had 132 people on their team
02:30 – Vidyard now has around 250 employees
02:38 – Vidyard has 3 offices
02:44 – Vidyard has launch multiple products including a self-serve product called Viewedit
- 03:13 – Vidyard just had 100K users sign up after launching Viewedit, which is free
- 03:33 – It’s currently a chrome extension
04:22 – Michael shares how they spent their last amount that was raised
- 04:51 – Vidyard had their series C in January of 2017
- 05:30 – Michael believes that the CFO should be the “house of no”
- 06:00 – Everybody should be accountable for their finances and Vidyard uses Adaptive Insights for budgeting
- 06:43 – Vidyard has to be very careful with their lifeline and maintain their cash flow
07:23 – Michael’s goal as the CEO
08:39 – Vidyard’s RPU has grown over time
08:53 – Target for upsell is 30% of net new revenue
10:03 – Annual logo churn
10:13 – Net retention
10:42 – Over thousands customers are using Vidyard’s platform
10:57 – Viewedit is being used in tons of organizations
11:46 – Michael believes Vidyard will double, year over year
13:00 – Streaming cost for Vidyard
- 13:11 – Vidyard streams over 50M videos a day
- 13:15 – Vidyard subscribed on the Netflix model
14:41 – Weirdest strategy Michael employed to get new customers
- 15:08 – The strategy was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk
- 17:17 – Michael shares how they were able to get customers from companies in other countries
- 19:10 – New CMOs in a company are one of the best target customers, so Michael looks out for new CMOs announcements
19:54 – Payback period is usually 18 months
- 21:02 – Payback period reflects your company’s status
21:20 – CAC
- 21:35 – Michael is also looking into zero-cost marketing
22:09 – Michael won’t sell Vidyard to Salesforce, even with a $300M offer
22:55 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Use your funds conservatively and make everyone accountable for budgeting.
How your company is doing reflects on your payback period.
Make sure you have a big support network in place.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

810: SaaS: With $70m Raised, White Board Videos Secret to VidYard 2x YoY Growth

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders