“Our goal isn’t to entertain and to then monetize through entertainment. Our goal is to help any business or professional or organization use video the same way that they use text or image as a powerful way to communicate.” – Anjali Sud.
If you take a look at Vimeo today, save the name, you might scarcely recognize it from what it used to be. The company has moved from being a striving competitor with YouTube to becoming one of the biggest video creation platforms for professionals. This is thanks to one woman, a powerhouse called ANJALI SUD.
Take 1: The Beginning
In 2004, Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein undertook a project for a website called College Humor. The project was a video sharing platform where Jake and Zach could share short videos with their friends. Jake created the name Vimeo from the words: video and me. In 2006, Connected Ventures (the company that owned College Humor) was acquired by Barry Diller’s company – IAC. In 2007, IAC had instructed Jake and Zach to work on Vimeo full-time.
Vimeo was created to be a video sharing platform more like a smaller competitor to YouTube. However, the business began to lose money, a lot of money. It was failing – it had a revenue of less than $40 million. To salvage the remains of the now sinking Titanic, the company decided to develop a subscription service like Netflix and Amazon Prime. The company even hired experts from film production companies and signed deals with distribution companies. However, it still was not hitting the mark.
Take 2: The heroine steps into the scene
“I saw an opportunity to champion the creator side of the platform. So, I just started doing it. That opened up a path for me to do that formally… You just have to permit yourself and not wait for formal permission to do it” – Sud on Vimeo.
In 2014, Anjali Sud came into the Vimeo scene as the Head of Marketing. She was later promoted to the position of General Manager of the content creation arm of Vimeo. In 2017, she was appointed as the CEO.
Upon her appointment, she pitched an idea that could revolutionize the business to Joey Levin, the CEO of IAC. In an interview with Forbes, she said: “Vimeo has long been a software company for filmmakers, but the market was too small… There was another, much bigger market- businesses. What Squarespace and GoDaddy did for websites, we could do with video.”
Joey Levin then gave Anjali a small team of 50 people and a duration of 1 year to test the viability of her idea. Within that year, Sud and her team launched Vimeo Business which gained a lot of traction. Anjali had turned what was an entertainment company into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform where content creators can create videos and distribute them anywhere on the Internet.
Take 3: Putting the pieces together
“The way I think about a strategy is, “Is there a problem to be solved? Is it a mission-critical problem? And can you solve it better than anybody else?” – Sud
The first thing Anjali Sud did in her role as Head of Marketing was to understand her customers – who they were, what they liked about the platform, etc. From her research, she was able to understand the customer base and develop ideas on how best to cater to them.
However, she believed that gathering data was not enough, she needed to have actual conversations with these customers. In her interview with McKinsey&Co, she stated that she went to trade shows, managed Vimeo’s booths and interacted with customers. By doing so, she was able to understand the frustrations and identify where the pain points were.
Sud further intensified her efforts with Vimeo, following her appointment as CEO. She recognized the need to understand the market trends and build strategies around them. To achieve this, she dedicates her time to speak with about three video-tech startups every week.
Take 4: Vimeo – Before meets After
After Sud’s appointment, Vimeo’s transformation was sudden. Now, on Vimeo, content creators can upload their videos, as well as watch the videos of other creatives on the platform. Unlike YouTube and Netflix, the platform offers cool features such as a video school (which gives tutorials and lessons on content creation), a tip jar (which allows creators to get cash in form of tips from viewers); the platform also enables the creators to sell their videos.
Every day, the Vimeo staff selects their favourite new videos and share them on the platform. This is a feature called “Staff Picks”.
Also, the platform offers a Freemium model, whereby anyone can sign up for free. However, this package comes with limited features and only 500MB of storage space to upload videos every week. The Vimeo Plus is an upgraded version that costs $12 per month and comes with 5GB storage space per week, while the Vimeo Pro cost $20 a month and comes with 200GB, no bandwidth caps as well as other features.
One thing that makes Vimeo stand out is its “No Ads” feature which means users can enjoy their experience on the platform without the interruption of ads, unlike other video platforms. The platform is used by companies such as Forbes, Deloitte, Starbucks amongst others, to live-stream events and deliver employee training.
Take 5: Predicting the future
With Anjali Sud at the helm of affairs, Vimeo is set to soon become a publicly traded company.
In November 2020, Vimeo raised $150 million at a $2.8 billion valuation from Thrive Capital and Singapore’s GIC. In January 2021, the company also raised $300 million at a $6 billion valuation from T. Rowe Price and Oberndorf Enterprises.
At the end of 2020, it was reported that Vimeo had over 1.5 million paying customers generating a revenue of $83.8 million in revenue in the 4th quarter alone and about 170 million viewers.
With the capital that has been raised for T. Rowe Price and Thrives Capital amongst others, Vimeo is set to expand globally. Anjali stated that the company is looking to hire more professionals, invest in cutting edge technology and support its users in over 150 countries of the world.
Vimeo, in the past four years, has been able to carve a niche for itself and this can only attract competition, but Anjali is not so bothered about any competition soon, in fact, she says: “we have the focus, we have the capital, I think we have the patience. So this market is ours to lose.”
There is a lot to learn from Anjali Sud’s feat with Vimeo. She has, in four years, transformed a failing company into a market leader. While this may be a wonder to some, it is an inspiration to all and we love to see it!
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