At Viddler, we are working on HTML5 feverishly but allow me to do a quick brain dump on personal thoughts on HTML5. It’s guaranteed that this list will change over time.
The Good:
- Lower CPU requirements
- Open standard
- Works great in mobile environments, keeps power usage low
The Bad
- No support for closed captioning
- Javascript based when you want to design the player
- Javascript is a security risk for hosted environments, like Tumblr, Facebook, WordPress.com, RSS Readers
- No Internet Explorer support (coming in IE9)
- Lack of Security on Stream. tags need open access to streams.
- Ad Serving Not Possible, initial implementations include giving out Javascript tags
- Autoplays randomly when loading pages using default tag
- No Room for Interactive Experiences – Overlays/Sharing functionality/
As of today, support HTML5, it’s great in mobile experiences, but it has a long way to go before coming the default in desktop browsers.
In one of my early college internships when working inside sales and cold calling, someone told me “Sales is getting as close to a lie, without ever telling one”
Having aged a few years, and having helped make many of the buying decisions for Viddler, I could never disagree more.
It’s all about authenticity.
What traits does an authentic sales person have? I came up with a list of things that I would suggest to all future salespeople that contact me and other entrepreneurs like me:
1. Listen
If you are going to read a sales card and spew off facts for 10 minutes without asking my needs, maybe that will work on people that you are cold calling, but dude. I called you. I don’t need everything I read on your site reiterated again. Take a few minutes and ask “what are you looking for?”.
2. Respond like you listened
This is a good dating rule too! But not only respond like you listened, meet me on my level. If I am not talking big-game corporate wiz, don’t talk big-game corporate wiz.
3. I don’t care
I don’t care if you got your SVP of global operations to approve a deal.
I don’t care how great your CEO is.
I don’t care if you climbed 5 levels up the chain to get authority to get a discount.
I don’t care if you are going to get the VP of product on the line to reiterate what you just said.
I don’t care if you tell me how much you love my product, especially when you don’t use it
Not only do I not care but these “big company” things but they make me kinda worried you are not the right fit for my company.
4. I do care
I do care if you say I am going to need a few days to work this out with people on your side.
I do care if you shoot me an email during downtime that you may have noticed.
I do care if you noticed another Tweet about Viddler.
I do care if you actually use the site, and have insightful feedback on it
5. Respect your competition
Having respect for competition says alot about someone and character of the company. Saying “they may be good for this, but this is how we differentiate” is an authentic answer. Just remember the competition has references to offset anything myths that may be said.
6. Don’t repeat my name
“Well Rob, this is how much I know your name, Rob. And you know what Rob, I have salesforce pulled up and am reading our entire history of our calls…. Rob” This is what I interpret if you say my name over and over again. It’s just tacky. May work with others, but not me. Sorry.
It should be noted my inspiration for this post was when choosing a Managed DNS provider to help add another layer of Viddler redundancy. We ended up going with DynDNS and sales talent, Josh Delisle.
Viddler has not hired any sales people outside of the original team. When Viddler does hire this person, my hope is that we can find people, like Josh, that know how to talk on this authentic level with customers.
Was researching CSV icons for viddler analytics. Found some interesting examples from the different vendors we work with. Shared them below, let me know if you know any other good examples!
Yesterday, Dmitry Shapiro, founder of Veoh, put together an incredibly respectful post going over the in’s and outs of Veoh going bankrupt.
First off must say I have a ton of respect for the Veoh team, Dmitry, and the product itself. It was always incredible seeing the pure amount of technology come out from the Veoh team.
Also, being a co-founder of a video site myself, I can’t imagine how painful it must have been getting stuck in court instead of working on the product and going bankrupt because of that. Not sure I would have handled it as gracefully as Dmitry did.
Allow me to take a step into memory lane…
It is 3 years ago and the race of the video destination. Veoh, Revver, vMix, vSocial and the 800 pound gurilla… All of us competing with features, community and spending a ton of money to do so.
What I want to share is how Viddler has lucked out into building built a sustainable business where others have failed:
1/50th Raised in Funding – in total Viddler has raised less then $2M in funds. Not on purpose either.. We really just couldn’t raise more funds then this. Whether it be bad location, crowded space, or me being first time entrepreneur, this is tiny round compared to the sites we were competing with. What it forced us to do is stay small, control our budget, and get profitable based on lower overhead. Today, Viddler is 16 people. Everyone on board are rockstars at what they do and we are hiring at a slow and steady pace keeping the quality high.
Market Maturity – video marketing adoption, personal branding, viewers watching video.. all of this has increased to where we are at a point where our product makes sense, and even worth paying for.
Bandwidth Costs Affordable - three years ago, the price per GB of bandwidth we were paying was 50x what we are paying for now. If we were paying what we did 3 years ago we wouldn’t have a sustainable business today.
Video Advertising with No Ad Sales Team - three years ago you needed to sell directly to advertisers to have a chance at selling preroll/overlay inventory. Now with the many different ad networks and standardization with VAST compliant networks it’s all about optimization. The $250k/year + commission VP of Ad Sales is no longer needed.
English Focus – We haven’t had an international “non-english” presence at all. If it’s questionable, we can’t interpret it, and overseas it’s not allowed on Viddler. This keeps costs down. Veoh was hosting alot of Anime. That content is expensive to delivery.
Bethlehem, PA – An hour from Philadelphia and two hours from NYC, we might as well be based in the middle of nowhere. This has helped us focus on the product (instead of the local scene), stay under the radar with competition, and hire extremely talented people (no competition in Bethlehem) at significantly more affordable rates then California, Boston, or NYC.
Again, all the respect to Dmitry. Wish him the best in his next venture, and hope this conveys how we are still around, and going to be around for the long haul.
On this thanksgiving would like to detail, things I am thankful for.
Thankful for being able to build Viddler these last 4 years and focus on passion of online video.
Thankful for family, that keeps on loving me, no matter how far I am, or focused with work I have become.
Thankful for having worked the amazing Donna DeMarco, co-founder in Viddler, who has helped build a balanced Viddler and and an amazing family of her own at the same time.
Thankful for Poland engineering and fact that they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving so they will be able to watch over our servers.
Thankful for an incredible designer.
Thankful for every Viddler investor, employee, uploader, and viewer.
Thankful for a great girlfriend, Dana Fish, that understands why this Viddler obsession might be first thing I give thanks for at this point in my life.
Thankful for the few of you, reading this blog, taking the time to follow this adventure.
A few Viddlers have asked me why this can’t be free for everyone, as Youtube does.
This is a good question, giving away everything for free is a very expensive business decision to pursue. We are focused on profitability and are certainly turning a little 37signal’ish.
To give you a little sniffy sniff.. check out what analytics looks like for me:
Hello and welcome to my personal blog. My name is Robert Sandie, a digital entrepreneur, co-founder and President of Viddler. Join me as I update this blog on the daily challenges of startup.
In one of my early college internships when working inside sales and cold calling, someone told me “Sales is getting as close to a lie, without ever telling one”
