Savage Thoughts: Archive

4 tags

Impressive growth comes from impressive culture

We’ve been putting together a video series at Wistia called How They Work. In it, we go around and interview inspiring businesses about their company culture. Each How They Work is about three minutes long. They are designed to capture just a few of those sweet, sweet nuggets of culture that are drivers of success. Clover Food Lab is the most recent company to be featured on How They Work....

Feb 12th

3 notes

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Two principles of highly productive teams

One of the major challenges that we’ve gone through in the last year is figuring out how to stay highly productive as our team grew from 5 to 12 people. While we’re still early on in this process, I thought I’d share some of the lessons that we’ve learned so far. Communication between 12 people is very different from what it was between 6 people, which is really different from when it was between...

Jan 26th

25 notes

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Please prescribe a best path for your product

Please tell me: What is the best way to use your product? This seems like a simple question, yet there are so many great companies and well-respected entrepreneurs that absolutely fail to make it clear what the best path through their product is. These products continue to thrive because of strong brands, ad budgets, and momentum. But there is so much lost opportunity: the opportunity to create...

Oct 18th

24 notes

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Confronting entrepreneurial fears

Being an entrepreneur is all about fear: fear of failing, fear of missing out, fear of making the wrong decision, and even fear of success. The difference between succeeding and failing is how you choose to confront your fears. The day you quit your job is going to be scary. The day you make your first cold call is going to be scary. The day you pick a price is going to be scary. The day you...

Jul 11th

25 notes

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Trust in t-shirts

In the past two years, Wistia has spent over $6,000 printing more than 400 shirts with our logo and sending them out to customers and friends. There’s no way to measure what the return for this has been. Even though I don’t have any statistically significant data to prove it, I’ve always just trusted that sending out t-shirts is a good branding strategy. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen...

Jun 7th

6 notes

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You can be an expert at anything

I like to think about learning new skills as a pursuit of happiness. Some skills are easy to learn and can provide a lot of joy, like playing ping pong. Others seem impossible to learn but if only you could learn them then you’d be happy, like being a successful entrepreneur. Here’s how I’d graph out the fun generated by playing ping pong over time: For the most part it’s a linear...

May 16th

21 notes

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Build a great brand experience

It’s really hard to build a brand. It’s hard to get the attention of others, it’s hard to get people onto your website, and it’s hard to create something that people will buy and use. We realized early on that the best visitors we get hear about us through word of mouth. Word of mouth is driven by happy people who have a great brand experience. This is how we’ve focused on...

May 5th

56 notes

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10 Ideas For Those Critical Early Startup Sales

This post initially appeared on Dharmesh Shah’s excellent blog, OnStartups. Closing your initial sales at a startup is one of the most challenging parts of building a company. Many startups die before they ever close a deal. Unless you’re entering a well established market there will be uncertainty with your product, approach, and timing until you have enough customers to prove that you...

Apr 26th

15 notes

Dear Continental Airlines,

Brendan and I flew back from Austin on Tuesday having just finished an exciting and invigorating weekend at SXSW. There had been much talk of conversions, funnels, and improving metrics. That’s when I realized; I was sitting right infront of a broken conversion funnel: your in-flight DirecTV. Let’s take a look at the current state of your funnel. My reactions are in bold. The flight attendant...

Mar 18th

7 notes

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What's in a name?

People frequently ask us why team members at Wistia have formal titles even though we’re such a small company. This is a great question and something that I’ve asked myself. Let’s see how we decided to go with the titles we use now. Over time, through trial and error, I’ve discovered the secret to a team getting tons of work done: give people autonomy, ownership, and the power to make change. ...

Mar 10th

48 notes

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Surprise and Delight: The secret to creating...

I have come to expect that when I call a company for customer support, I am subjecting myself to frustratingly long hold times, mazes of prerecorded soundbites that have nothing to do with my problem, and customer support reps who speak from a script and can’t do anything to help me. I know I am not alone. But, our low expectations do provide companies with an opportunity: the opportunity to...

Jan 4th

23 notes

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The value of time in pricing

We’ve changed the pricing for Wistia probably 20 times in the last three years by listening to customer feedback. During the feedback process we monitor how similar groups respond to new pricing. What do videographers think of the pricing? How are medium sized software companies responding? What about life sciences? The funny thing is that we consistently see polarized reactions to pricing within...

Dec 21st

2 notes

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Making Ideas Work

I hear great ideas for new companies all the time. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these ideas never mature into startups, and even fewer become lasting companies. This is ironic because most people think building a startup is all about having a great idea. (I believe the phrase goes “if only I had thought of Facebook, I’d be rich!”) The truth is that while a good idea is essential, it’s...

Nov 16th

24 notes

Nov 4th

1 note

Three critical areas that will fall flat without a...

Every company has a culture of some sort but when it’s clearly defined it makes decision making better, makes hiring easier, and acts as a marketing tool. Defining company culture early can be the difference between success and failure. Decision Making A company is built by making an incredibly large number of small decisions over time. At the beginning, when the team is small it’s possible to...

Oct 28th

Oct 26th

3 notes

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Oct 25th

3 notes

Oct 24th

81 notes

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5 ways to ride the inbox zero train

Inbox Zero: The mysteriously wonderful feeling on an empty inbox. I’m riding the inbox zero train - well actually it’s about inbox 4 or 5 right now. I’m often asked how I do it, so in the interest of sharing and learning more here are my rules of thumb. Keep your emails short Nobody wants to read long emails. Keeping emails concise will accomplish more through less...

Oct 19th

Customer Experience Should be King

It really bothers me when it’s clear that a startup has prioritized their company’s experience instead of prioritizing the customer’s experience. Let’s look at two scenarios out of the support world. Scenario 1: Company’s Experience is Prioritized a customer has a problem they submit a ticket with an unfamiliar support system they receive an automated...

Oct 11th

1 note

Sep 24th

875 notes

Watch

With @brendan and @wistia team doing some secret celebrating!

Sep 23rd

Watch

It’s awesome to see my friends at UsableHealth featured on CNN. That’s one hell of a way to kick off the buzz.

Sep 22nd

1 note

5 tags

What's the CPM of my SAAS?

Today, I was on BuySellAds (a great ad network we use at Wistia) perusing publishers when I was struck by something shocking. I was looking at placing an ad on SuperAwesome (fake name to keep the site anonymous) and wondered how much it would cost to buy all of their inventory. SuperAwesome does 7 million pageviews a month and sells ads for a $.50 CPM (CPM is the cost for every 1000 people who...

Sep 22nd

51 notes

Watch

Great talk from @jonahlehrer describing how “a ha” moments work in the brain.

Sep 17th

Aug 25th

Aug 24th

2 notes

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Aug 8th

1 note

Jul 23rd

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Jul 16th

Jul 14th

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How I outsourced my apartment hunt

In an attempt to reduce stress, save time, and find a suitable apartment without losing half of my life to craigslist, I decide to outsource my apartment hunt. Because many have asked, this is how I did it: Why? If you’ve used craigslist recently, you’ll know that the apartment section is a complete mayhem. Apartments are constantly re-posted by different agents multiple times per day. Places...

Jul 14th

10 notes

2 tags