

Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses - notintokyo
http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/22/yc-backed-vidyard-is-a-youtube-for-businesses/

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mdasen
I have a few questions that the Vidyard site doesn't seem to address (that I'd
need answers to in order to sell it to my boss).

1) The "Venti" plan says "unlimited videos". Does that mean that there's no
storage quota? If there is no storage quota, how would you make money off of a
large customer? Like, we have a decently sizable video library (about 250GB
and it grows by about 25GB each year) and it isn't that high trafficked, but I
can see a video library like our's becoming a burden on your service.

2) Do you support captions for the videos?

3) Is there any way to export our data out of the system?

4) Is there any API in case we want/need some further customization in front
of it?

Your service looks excellent, but what makes me so hesitant is that it seems
potentially low-to-no-margin and my boss would want to know that we aren't
getting into a service that's destined to raise prices or cut us off.

~~~
michaelrlitt
Great questions re: price and margins. The unlimited videos is achievable both
through the scale with the number of videos we host; along with scaling of the
file-size post-encoding.

2) Captions are currently not supported - would you be looking for
transcriptions on the videos, or time-coded captions based on the point in the
video? We're working on some cool features for time-coded commenting that
probably covers what you're looking for.

3) Data can definitely be exported - but unfortunately it's not something
we've implemented into the tool quite yet. Would be happy to manually support
in the meantime.

4) A Player API (for custom controls), Wizard API (for player setup and
design), and Content API (for uploading) are in the works. Assuming from the
question it's a player controls API you'd need.

~~~
mdasen
So, we actually have time-coded captions for some of our library. It's more
just a place to upload the caption file and have it served by the player.
Although, now that you mention it I'm not personally thrilled with the service
we use so more power to you! And it's nice to know that 3 and 4 are on your
radar for the future. I tend to trust YC backed companies not to do the evil
vendor lock-in type things, but it can be a hard sell to my boss who has
gotten burned many times by vendors that promise the world, we put our content
in, deliver poorly, and then we're stuck.

Good Luck!

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iamelgringo
<http://VidCaster.com> has been building branded pages for companies for well
over a year. We've been using them for <http://hackersandfounders.tv> for
months, and we've been thrilled.

VidCaster's also more than just a wrapper around the YouTube API.

They let you import the videos that are already on YouTube and Vimeo, and move
them over to VidCaster's streaming service. Crazy good service. Team has been
working with online video for years.

Also, VidCaster just demoed at 500 Startups last week and already has paying
clients like Microsoft, ZenDesk AirBnb, Twilio, etc...

What I don't get is why TechCrunch seems to give YC companies more coverage
than 500 Startups companies. I suppose it's nice to have Arrington as the LP
of one of your investors (SV Angel).

~~~
prayag
>What I don't get is why TechCrunch seems to give YC companies more coverage
than 500 Startups companies. I suppose it's nice to have Arrington as the LP
of one of your investors (SV Angel).

That's just bull-shit. Just because they covered your competitor doesn't mean
you get to talk shit about the coverage.

In addition, I just don't get why are you getting so excited about this. You
know who is eating your lunch, not VidYard, it's YouTube and the Sales
executive who don't know any better than uploading video on YouTube. You have
a common enemy called ignorance. Instead of getting riled up about competition
may be you guys should work together.

~~~
genieyclo
?

iamelgringo is a customer of VidCaster, not a competitor of Vidyard.

I also don't understand your ignorance comment. Vidcaster and Vidyard are two
competing companies.

iamelgringo brings up a salient point I think, YC companies get a
disproportionate amount of coverage on TC as compared to other startups.

~~~
olivercameron
Customer of VidCaster? I don't think so, check his previous comments:

"I happen to know Kieran Farr quite well. <http://www.vidcaster.com/> was one
of the first companies in our Co-op incubator. And, I have no doubt, that
Kieran is going to be far richer than some reporter who still makes his living
writing for a company that think that selling yesterday's news written on
pieces of dead tree is a viable business model."

~~~
genieyclo
Pardon me, I inferred from the hackersandfounders.tv site that uses VidCaster
was an independent venture and not by a co-op incubator or anything.

The main point I have against this article are that

1) It's poor journalism in that little research into competitors was done.
Leena Rao doesn't seem to be aware of the many competitors who have been in
this space for years (like VidCaster) but only a few like Ooyala and
Brightcove (which TechCrunch uses iirc).

2) Lack of disclosure as to the relationship between TechCrunch and YC
startups is a problem. There's an inherent bias without full disclosure.

------
ig1
Pretty poor journalism, the article is written as if there were no
alternatives to youtube for hosting. There are a couple of dozen companies in
the video hosting/serving space from Brightcove to Viddler. Wikipedia even has
a "List of video hosting services" page.

What makes this company different ?

~~~
michaelrlitt
Our focus is on consolidating your web video. Many companies leverage YouTube,
that makes sense. We help them kill the outbound link created by the YouTube
embed on their site. You can host with us or YouTube and your video players
will all look the same.

~~~
justinph
So, essentially you're a front-end on the YouTube API?

~~~
michaelrlitt
It's part of the product - customers are using it to transition from YouTube
to a more professional (no outbound link, real-time data, customization, etc.)
video platform (us).

------
tommy_mcclung
We're using them as well. We like the ability to queue up videos in the
player. Has helped conversions. We also found out that the average attention
span was just about 20 seconds on a 90 second vid, so we cut it down to 15
seconds. Cool stuff.

------
ryanjmo
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Not using them for
your embedded videos (and getting the extra views on your site that will
launch you higher in search) could be a mistake for many businesses.

If you want to prevent click throughs, after the video starts to play, just
put up an invisible div over the video, but above the controls, so the user
can't click through, but can still controle the video.

Once the video ends, pop up whatever you want if you don't want their
recommended videos to show.

Best of both worlds.

~~~
throwaway32
<http://www.youtube.com/t/terms>

See clause 4F, doing this would result in Youtube blocking your site from
embedding, and would possibly result in a "google death penalty", definitely
not a good idea.

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ccollins
Vimeo recently released Vimeo Pro (<http://vimeo.com/pro>) which seems to be
addressing a similar market.

Is Vidyard competing with Vimeo or are you addressing a different need?

~~~
michaelrlitt
It's directly competitive. We've bundled in more features (chaptering, real-
time analytics, player customization, etc.) that should make it much more
compelling. We're also an easy implementation of YouTube Chromeless +
analytics.

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jordanroher
What was behind the decision to use Starbucks' size names for your plans? I
really like the site and the prices are reasonable, but the thought of signing
up for a "Venti" video hosting service doesn't sound appealing to me.

~~~
michaelrlitt
Good feedback. We needed some way to refer to the plans on calls, this was an
easy solution.

~~~
JoshTriplett
The usual solutions of Bronze/Silver/Gold work rather well for that and have
the advantage of self-evident meanings and widespread usage. If you want
something more amusing, you might try a movie or video metaphor.

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philipkimmey
This is why I love Hacker News - although there are other options out there,
their feature set (and pricing) pretty much perfectly describes what I was
looking for.

I don't know whether this will be the eventual solution vs. ZenCoder (or
something similar) and S3, but this certainly seems like a potential option.

~~~
matdwyer
Maybe I'm just cheap, but I don't see the pricing as very attractive relative
to the free options available.

I'm saying that from a relatively small business that is looking to do more
video perspective. I'm small enough to be able to host this myself with my own
player and not have problems, and not large enough to see the value in $20 or
$50 a month. I could see doing the free trial, but 1 video makes it not seem
as attractive to me.

If I were you I'd consider doing the trial for a certain number of views
instead of the 1 video - that way your true functionality grows with the views
(and value) coming to the business. If it were 5000 views a month or something
then I get to use the cue up features, see the analytics, etc, but when I'm
doing xxxx number of views a month on the videos then I'm more likely to drop
the money and convert to a paid plan.

Anyway, just my opinion, but I doubt my monthly small business video hosting
will ever be nearing the cost of my invoicing system...

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
Almost anytime you see a product and your reaction is "I could do that myself
slightly more cheaply," it means that that product isn't intended for your
use.

~~~
matdwyer
Touche. I say that a lot :-) But there are things I could easily do for
cheaper that I still happily pay for - example freshbooks & formstack

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bretthopper
SproutVideo (<http://www.sproutvideo.com>) is already well established and
probably their closest competitor as opposed to Vimeo PRO.

~~~
podman
Hi, founder of SproutVideo here!

There are a ton of players in this space. Here are some others:

<http://vzaar.com>

<http://viddler.com>

<http://fliqz.com>

<http://wistia.com>

<http://dovie.tv>

Edit: I'd also like to congratulate the founders of VidYard on their product.
It looks great. Good luck you guys!

~~~
cwhepburn
SproutVideo's pricing model seems a little mis-aligned in the space with
Vidyard and Vimeo Pro. Half the bandwidth for double the price? If you know
anything about bandwidth, $1/GB seems excessive.

~~~
podman
VidYard and Vimeo Pro are both incredibly new offerings. If you look at just
about every single established player you'll see that they have very similar
pricing models to SproutVideo. VidYard and Vimeo Pro's pricing models seem to
be based on the assumption that the majority of their users will not use that
much bandwidth.

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OmarIsmail
As a fellow entrepreneur from sunny Waterloo, Ontario I've had the pleasure of
interacting with michaelrlitt and what I can say is that these guys are going
to be big. There's obviously a lot of competition in this space and everybody
has good technology under their belt. But what sets these guys apart is that
they really get sales and marketing and that's exactly the service they're
providing. I have no doubt these guys are going to crush it.

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zabeth24
Using vidyard on my site and Tumblr blog. Best part is seeing the viewing
analytics.

~~~
michaelrlitt
Thanks (I'm a founder). We're super glad you're getting value!

~~~
jcc80
I like the site - very nice. Has a somewhat similar look to mine...only better
(<http://www.growtap.com>). Well done.

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Shenglong
Your pricing says $40 per 100 GB, up to 3 TB, but your Grande plan is only
$20, which also includes 100GB. You also make the claim that for most
businesses, that 100GB is enough bandwidth - which I assume means businesses
that go over probably do so on account of multiple videos.

If one video of mine in particular was running over-bandwidth, wouldn't it
make more sense for me to buy an additional plan at half the price, rather
than pay the bandwidth fee? I know it's potentially inconvenient to do so, but
it makes the pricing a little silly. I could also host the same video multiple
times, and have a rand() select between them, or select the ones that have
been selected the least in order to redistribute bandwidth.

It's kind of like on some McDonald's menus, where an Apple Pie is $0.69, or
you can buy 2 for $1.39.

Edit: I'm going to email your sales with the FYI.

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jpdoctor
An entire company built around an incremental change to youtube/vimeo/100
other video sites?!

Really?

~~~
cal5k
An entire company built around yet another version of
Friendster/MySpace/Orkut?

Facebook will never pan out.

~~~
jpdoctor
Good point. Anyone want to start an automobile company?

~~~
cal5k
Elon Musk beat you to it ;-)

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metachris
I've just seen the pool-party video which appears after clicking on any of the
pictures on the about page (<https://secure.vidyard.com/about_us>). It's
weird, and the background music reminds me of erotic movies. I understand that
you want to come across as young and dynamic, but I'm not sure this is
bringing the message across for your target audience.

Edit: Downvoters, please explain. I didn't mean to insult, but am offering
honest feedback on a perceived weak spot - one which I fear could impair the
founders intention to make the right impression on their target audience.

~~~
michaelrlitt
Thanks for the insight - we'll definitely change it, we just thought it was
something fun for launch :)

~~~
metachris
Didn't mean to take out the fun - I'd recommend to think about changing at
least the music though :) Good luck with your startup! I really like what you
are doing; this market is ripe for some innovation.

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tlogan
I have been wondering why YouTube have not started something like this.

BTW, there is also <http://vidcaster.com> which doing the same thing. Vimeo is
doing the same thing now.

Personally, I think if you have multiple sites, then with Adobe Suite and
Amazon CloudFront and a few dollars on odesk you can make excellent "video
presentation" site for your business. Maybe there is a market for even more
customizable service? Something like heroku for Video/FAQ/Tour part of your
site?

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chedigitz
Looks like a Compelling offering! Congrats on the techcrunch coverage.

A key selling point in platform selection is YouTube's massive traffic, while
tons of other platforms may win based on the feature set, at the end of the
day, the views are on YouTube.

Vidyard seems to be playing the youtube traffic angle well by allowing the
videos to remain on YouTube while wrapping the YT API + chrome less layer.

GOOD WORK by you! I'll be testing out that 100GB cap soon.

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scotje
Personally, I find the "Pricing" line of the comparison chart to be
misleading. For $199 (a year) you get 50GB of space and 250k views with Vimeo
Pro. Under the Free Viyard plan you get 1 video and 101GB of bandwidth. Also,
the "Unbranded Player" line of the comparison is checked for Vidyard even
though the pricing page says the Free plan uses a branded player.

Maybe just get rid of that pricing line in the comparison?

~~~
michaelrlitt
Will do! Thanks for the positive feedback.

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anandkulkarni
The branding opportunity for online videos here is huge. It looks like YouTube
missed a large niche here that Vidyard's going to eat up.

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wmboy
Looks like a great easy-to-use service, but not one that I expect hackers
would use. Why wouldn't you just host your video on Amazon S3 and play them
back on your website using something like JW FLV Player?

That solution would cost about 10-20 cents a month (unless you've got heaps of
traffic, in which case you're hopefully making heaps of sales anyway...).

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jeffreymcmanus
Article says they're using RTMP streaming. Doesn't that mean it won't work on
iPhone/iPad because there's no Flash there?

~~~
michaelrlitt
We do HTML5 fall back for iOS/Android devices.

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rdl
I'm always amazed at people who embed YouTube videos on corporate websites,
after agonizing about fonts, colors, etc. to get pixel perfect design
everywhere else.

At the very least, if you're going to embed youtube, turn off comments on the
video :)

Vidyard looks like a great solution for a lot of people.

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JoshTriplett
The description "Foo is an X for Y" only works when it doesn't provoke the
obvious response: "No, X is the X for Y".

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rorrr
Yet another startup with tons of competitors and no real innovation.

