When you hit a milestone like your five-year anniversary you can’t help but get a little nostalgic. It’s a big milestone and it coincides with what has been one of our best years. So, we’ve taken a brief step back from our busy schedules to take a trip down memory lane. Here are five standout moments that have helped Viddyoze become the business it is today.
September 29 2015: Hello World
Day one is always a big moment. It’s symbolic, a marker that draws a line between the past and the future. It’s exciting, of course, but also nerve-racking. You never quite know how things are going to turn out.
The good news is that it went well. Incredibly well. The launch was much bigger than we thought it would be and we soon realised that Viddyoze had a successful future ahead of it. We knew then we were onto something pretty special — and that there was a real demand for our software.
That was an important moment. Having worked so incredibly hard for months on end, taking risks we’d never taken before and investing a lot of our own cash into the business to get it off the ground, it was reassuring to see users all over the world respond enthusiastically to Viddyoze.
Lights, Camera, Viddyoze Live Action
To this day, Viddyoze Live Action remains one of our finest hours. Not only was it one of the most innovative things we’ve ever done, but also a lot of fun. It’s an experience we remember fondly (alas, stories for another time). The short of it is that we wanted to push the envelope with our animations for our 2017 update, which, at the time, was the biggest iteration of our software. So, we set our Head of Animation, Relja Trajković, a challenge: change the game.
And he did just that. The end result was that he made it possible for creators using our app to be able to add their logos and images to real pre-made footage and for it to react dynamically — i.e. the logo behaves as it should, as if it was always part of the scene. This was groundbreaking technology for the time. In fact, even today, very few people can do this correctly or as well as Viddyoze — not by a mile.
Relja was instrumental to this. We really couldn’t have achieved what we did with Viddyoze Live Action if it wasn’t for his skill, his technical nous and his inventiveness. Along with his team, he continues to advance Viddyoze’s animation capabilities further, ensuring that we’re ahead of the curve while setting new benchmarks for excellence along the way.
$1 Million in Sales… In Just One Month
In January 2017 we made just shy of $1million — the most sales we’d ever made in a single month. It was at this point that we understood that Viddyoze had mainstream appeal. Moreover, it opened up our eyes to the fact that the market and appetite for the kind of service we offered was far bigger than we first anticipated.
It was also uncharted territory for us as entrepreneurs. When you experience something as insane as this for the first time, which you have no previous reference point for, it knocks you off your feet. Beyond the simple logic of significantly more sales and customers being a good thing, the speed and scale of that month was completely new to us. It forced us to quickly grow and adapt as founders, a sort of new mindset for a new reality.
Unexpected moments like this have been crucial in our journey with Viddyoze, contributing greatly to our professional development as leaders. In turn, we’ve been able to action new knowledge and new insight, helping develop the business in fresh, exciting and better ways.
C-suite f-bombs
We’re shaped and defined not just by positive experiences, but bad ones too. And we’ve had our fair share. We’ve made mistakes, lots of them, and hiring c-suites in 2017 is probably one of the worst. And while it’s not the most memorable of our moments, it’s still one of the most important.
Two and a bit years into the business we decided that in order to bolster our business repertoire, we needed to invest in c-suite employees. We were of the opinion that we didn’t have the experience or the ability to take the business further and where we thought it needed to be. So we reasoned that executive-level professionals were just what we needed to get us there.
We were very wrong. Hiring them had the opposite effect. There was a cultural disconnect but also we were left wanting. They didn’t have the chops to back up their so-called authority. And it was devastating. It almost ruined the business. But here’s the trick. In the 18 months that followed the last of our goodbyes to them, the business went from strength to strength — and all under our management. We weren’t the problem. We just needed to believe in ourselves. While we’re more confident than ever in our capabilities, the experience also left us more grounded. The good times may not last forever.
Meeting with the NBA: Lightbulb Moment
In 2018 we found ourselves in New Jersey meeting with the NBA. That was certainly not your everyday experience. After all, when we started out, that kind of possibility was not even on our radar. But, to our surprise — not that we didn’t know we were onto a good thing with Viddyoze — it showed just how far we’d come in such a short space of time.
It was a pivotal moment for two other reasons. Firstly, the NBA reached out to us, revealing that big brands were interested in what we had to offer. Secondly, it opened up our thinking. We realised that our technology could go a lot further and that we could also develop a more robust B2B arm of our business.
While the meeting didn’t lead to any opportunities to work with the NBA, the experience has had a lasting impact. And it has helped shape our future vision significantly.
