Hank [BS/MSEE,
MSM $$$, Ph.D. Mgmt] teaches Skype-to-Donna
Yesterday we called Donna DeMarco, Co-Founder of www.viddler.com via Skype from the classroom. Pretty cool! A video of the conversation is here: The openess which Donna responsed to class questions is to be commended. There’s a lesson here for class members who go on to start their own companies…….
Today’s blog assignment is for class members to comment on the single most important thing they learned from the interface with Donna. Your comments are????
What was interesting about Donna’s response to my question was that fact that she mentioned the age difference between her and her partner. I think it is really cool that she was able to work with someone who is so much younger than herself. This comes to show that as long as you know your “stuff” and have that great idea, you can potentially work with anyone, despite the age difference.
Don’t let generation gaps stop you from pursuing an idea as a team. Granted, it mostly makes it easier to work with someone around the same age, but you never know who shares your enthusiasm and overall vision.
To me it was very interesting to learn that they are currently making their main profit through consulting jobs. They never set out to consult other internet companies but it turned out to be their main source of income at this time. The lesson that I have learned from this is that anything is possible. From doing so much research and having so much background knowledge about web companies more opportunities have open for them. So it’s important to recognize these opportunities when they come to you and take advantage of them.
From the short interview with Donna from Viddler, I learnt that it “CAN†be done! That it is “realâ€, there are students just like me starting businesses which become very popular. The most compelling fact with the conversation with Donna was, the simple fact that it is possible for students while in college to start up a company which could become as popular as Viddler in less than a year. Since the start of this class, I have had this eager motive to start a small company and I believe it CAN be done. So back to the question, “single most important thing they learned?†My answer would be, the interview with Donna has further boosted my trust and confidence in some ideas that I may have, and has motivated me to start a company.
One thing that I learned and was somewhat amazed with is the fact that the entire team did not meet until recently. They just had their conversations on skype, which I think would be hard to do because you learn much more about a person by talking to them in person and observing their body langauage than talking on a phone, but it seemed to work very well for them. This fact confirmed my skeptical idea that such a company could coexist similar to this.
I was most impressed with the fact that they earn their money through consulting jobs. It seems like most sites we have been looking at lately make their money through banner advertisements on the sides. I like how Viddler doesn’t do that. I was also impressed that she put so much trust into a kid who was so much younger than her. Obviously he is very bright or else she would not have gone into business with him.
I have to agree with Alex in the fact that the single most important thing that I learned is that the co-founders are real people who are very similar to all of us in the class. This website was started by students fresh out of college and is now being compared to youtube, which is quite a compliment.
What I found most interesting is how Donna linked up with her partner. She had linked with a person who is about 20 years younger than her and plays football for the school. They had a nice “synergy” and went from there. I learned that when finding your “soulmates” in any particular endevour, one should
be open to all ages, backgrounds, and personalities. It is your team that makes or breaks your idea/product. Overall, I found Donna’s words to be enlightening and beneficial.
The single most important thing I took out of the conversation with Donna is that your source of revenue may not always be what you intend it to be. Not in the beginning at least. Their main source of income is from consulting other people at the current time. This made me realize that you have to keep your eyes open and watch for other potential opportunities as you start and begin to grow in your business.
It was good to see how laid back she was. When many people think of a person who is in charge of a company, they think of someone who is hard to talk to. I found Donna to be very personable. A lesson to learn from this is to always be availabel and ready to talk to people. Never think that you are too good to take advice from students or someone younger. Good advice can come from anywhere.
the most important thing to be taken from talking with Donna was that it doesn’t take a huge amount of capital to do something big, or compete with an established competitor. Their startup was built from the ground up with money made from winning entrepreneur competitions, and it wasn’t a particularly large investment. Yet, despite being so much smaller than Youtube, they provide an arguably better service, based on upload limitations. Donna showed that success can be attained by the small guy, and that we as students are only a good idea away.
I found it interesting that their website didn’t rely on sources of income to initially start their company. They are just now planning on integrating advertising into their website to help make their website more profitable, I would normally think that this would be something a company would want to do right away, but they are obviously doing just fine.
I learned that an entrepreneur doesn’t have to do something entirely new. An entrepreneur just has to do it better. When Viddler was founded, YouTube already existed. Digital video had already been around for years. But Viddler was able to provide a better product. A better product requires a new outlook on the problem, but not necessarily a new problem. Viddler made streaming video over the web powerful (with deep tagging) and simple.
I’d also have to say that the most interesting thing I got out of the call was that one’s eyes should be kept open for oppertunities at all times. They are running an effective video site, and it generates no revenue. Not exactly what most of us thought was happening. But success comes in many forms, and having the knowledge to do such things is a very valuable asset.
I found it very interesting, the amount of work they put into the site and then did not see any money come out of the project directly. The idea that building and maintaing a monstrous website would lead to profits from consulting work was kind of funny. Also using this was the first time ive used skype to have a tele-conference with someone hundreds of miles away, I thought that was very cool.
I really liked the way that Donna talked about keeping in touch with all of her competitors (now including vodpod, I’m sure) through Google Alerts. It’s an interesting and important form of market research and perfect for tech companies!
I was surprised to hear that the Viddler team is making money through consulting. I was more surprised, however, to hear that their plans for a self-sustaining Viddler.com included in-line advertising. Since their website is lacks much in the way of text to support the ads, I don’t really understand how they plan on doing this. I was expecting to hear Donna mention something about advertising banners targeted toward the site’s demographic.
Hey Hank! This is Jeremy from last semester. I’m following this blog and really liked the “interview.” I thought it was cool how things can come together if you are willing to put the work in. I right now would have no idea how to start putting an idea like Viddler together, but with the right people working together and putting in the effort (multiple interviews for contracts, consulting to pay the bills, etc.) it is pretty cool to see what can happen. This give us entrepreneurial students a little more hope in dreaming big. Thanks!
Wow! thanks for all the feedback. Couple of comments:
consulting revenue - as a start up, always keep your eyes open for revenue options. but it surprised us too.
generating revenue - our goto market strategy is to use viddler.com to prove the technology & build brand recognition. Once we have that ( and a large consumer base) we can start generating revenue. Without that statistically sound large consumer base, we wouldn’t be able to generate revenue.
Ad revenue is scheduled first - stay tuned to see how it works - ads will be on timeline, like tags.
Next is premium subscription. we estimate about 10% of our members will pay for higher quality, more storage & advance features.
then its on to B2B services - larger customers where we’re providing “solutions”
Our challenge has always been sticking to our guns on this rollout schedule. But we believe each phase builds upon the previous to give us a higher probability of success. The challenge ( and skepticism from investors) is the ability to have both a B2C & B2B business. Time will tell
thanks again for using viddler. you’re always welcome to leave me a message or question at viddler, or via email at donna (at) viddler(dot)com