The Y Combinator video startup that accidentally nabbed success in Japan

Photo credit: Victor Bezrukov.

There are plenty of stories about entrepreneurs from North America or Europe targeting – or “pivoting” to – Asian markets. For Michael Litt, co-founder and CEO of Vidyard, his startup kind of slipped and fell into Asia when he discovered 5 percent of its enterprise users were in Japan.

His startup kind of slipped and fell into Asia.

“We have 50,000 users,” he tells Tech in Asia. “16.3 percent of them are in APAC.” At that point, he realized that he perhaps needed to have people on the ground in the continent, particularly Japan. His Y Combinator (summer 2011) business, an email video marketing system, is currently growing at 5 percent per day.

2016 has brought a flurry of activity and learning experiences for the Canadian who developed his business in Waterloo, Ontario – near the US border and part of Canada’s “Technology Triangle.” He’s been making trips to Hong Kong and Japan this year, and speaks to me from a conference room in Tokyo.

A Salesforce portfolio company, Vidyard has raised US$60 million to date.

Making email relevant again

Michael Litt, co-founder and CEO of Vidyard. Photo credit: Vidyard.

“Email is the victim of its own success,” Michael says. Think of the number of times you’ve really read every single message in your inbox. Then consider the number of times you’ve actually clicked through to the links in the email. It’s gotten to the point where companies celebrate 1 percent openings and/or click-throughs of their email blasts.

In an age where more and more things are becoming automated, people are going to crave personalization, he says. Videos, especially when a single person talks to an email recipient, can help. At the same time, videos are becoming more and more important – the plethora of short videos on your Facebook feed and video marketing campaigns makes that clear. But people are unsure how to make them.

Michael and his team, in the process of trying to understand video for customer sales and customer service, realized that video production and creation are still problems for a lot of people. Sure, plenty of people have smartphones in their pockets with recording capabilities, but one faces the burden of making the resulting video look good. Also, sending someone a video you’ve taken on your phone isn’t as easy as sending a text.

That’s why Michael and the crew created ViewedIt. The tool allows for the recording of quick messages – including screenshares – that can then be emailed. The software will track who opens the email and how long they spend viewing the video message.

People aren’t buying what you do but why you do it.

To demonstrate, he takes a quick screenshare of him scrolling through the Tech in Asia website. I get the video in an email, and as I watch him scroll through an article, he speaks to me from a recorded video in the corner, telling me that, as I’m watching the video, he’s getting a notification saying that I’ve seen it.

Skiing to Y Combinator