A short story of how the entrepreneurship mindset and initiative of Anjali Sud changed the game for Vimeo – Also appreciate the Board & Investors @Levin of Vimeo who listened to Anjali Sud. (Story Tweeted by @AniketHarathi)

Imagine trying to compete with YouTube and Netflix at the same time.

That’s what Anjali Sud faced when she joined Vimeo 6 years ago.

She quickly felt their strategy was wrong and brought it up in a meeting.

Today, as CEO, she took Vimeo public.

Here’s what happened…

1) 12 years after the company’s founding, Anjali Sud joined Vimeo as Director of Marketing.

Vimeo was on a mission to create a higher-quality alternative to YouTube.

2) In an attempt to do so, not only was Vimeo highly curating the content on its platform, they were also heavily investing in their own content.

They were to go-to spot for filmmakers and professional video creators.

3) She quickly had thoughts on Vimeo’s strategy

“I developed a point of view, myself and a few others within the company, that we probably weren’t going to compete well with Netflix in original content because we probably weren’t going to have $17 billion to spend on it”

4) And people who were seeking entertainment went to YouTube. It was proving to be a hard-to-break habit.

“Vimeo had long been a software company for filmmakers, but the market was too small”

5) She had an idea…

“There was another, much bigger market—businesses. What Squarespace and GoDaddy did for websites, we could do with video.”

6) Rather than sit idly by while ‘management’ steered the ship, Anjali went right to the top.

She called a meeting with Joey Levin, Vimeo’s parent company CEO.

7) She pitched him her idea. Pivot Vimeo from an entertainment and content source, to providing tools for small businesses to create video.

It didn’t matter where the video ended up (YouTube, etc), Vimeo would help them *make* it.

8) Small, mom-and-pop, businesses were realizing that video and the internet were core to their growth.

But they didn’t have the resources or expertise to create high-quality content. That’s where Vimeo could come in.

9) Levin was fascinated by the idea. Vimeo was struggling and losing money. What’s the worst that could happen if they gave this a try?

He decided to give her a shot. Anjali assembled a small team and started to pilot her idea.

10) She wasted no time and quickly made Vimeo a one-stop-shop to film, edit, and share video.

Sales, profit, subscribers – all the numbers surged significantly higher than they’d been the previous year.

The results were clear.

11) She was named CEO of Vimeo.

Today, 4 years after becoming the company’s chief executive, Anjali and her team took Vimeo public.

Learnings?

“An Employee with an Entrepreneurship Mindset and a Listening Board can change the fortune of any organization.”

Click here to read an interesting article on “Entrepreneurship Mindset” I wrote some time back…