Animoto co-founder Jason Hsiao discusses the company's unit economics and customer acquisition strategy with Nathan Latka.
Insight
Hsiao argues 'try a lot of things' is terrible startup strategy advice
“The biggest kind of bullshit kind of strategy advice we've been given and what a lot of people tout is just try a lot of things and see what sticks. And I just realized, man, especially for any kind of early stage startup, time and resources is limited, and yo…”
Insight
Video SaaS faces intermittent usage because customers rarely produce video continuously
“And what's interesting about video as opposed to, I think, a lot of other SaaS businesses is video is still kind of one of those things. Even though video is everywhere, not everyone is actually convinced that they, you know, yeah, that they need to be using v…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Animoto's average revenue per customer is $200 to $250
“Yeah, more like the two, two 50 kind of range. So we kind of have our professional plan, the middle plan.”
Disclosure
Animoto pitched Sequoia the exact week the 2008 financial crash hit
“We were actually about to raise kind of our first serious round, like literally the day, the week of that, where everything kind of like everything crashed and Sequoia posted their rest in peace, you know, memo or whatever it was. And we were like sitting in w…”
Disclosure
Animoto has over 100,000 active paying subscribers
“We have active, we've got like a 130 active paying subscribers, and a lot of them are kind of coming back. So, but active, I'd say right now, like, you know, over a 100,000.”
Disclosure
About 20% of Animoto customers remain active subscribers indefinitely
“We know that, I don't know, about, like, about 20% of folks who come in will actually just stick around, you know, with us forever.”