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This podcast will help you grow your B2B company quarter after quarter—with confidence, clarity, and data-backed decisions.
In each episode, you’ll learn proven strategies, practical frameworks, and first-hand insights from GTM leaders, RevOps pros, and seasoned B2B executives. They’ll walk you through how they use data to set smart targets, forecast accurately, overcome growth plateaus, and build high-performing sales and marketing engines.
You’ll hear stories of real challenges, real results, and the data-driven moves that made all the difference.
The best B2B companies don’t just look at metrics—they use them to take action. Move The Needle will help you do the same.
Databox (00:03.238)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Move the Needle, Databox's podcast about how companies are scaling up their business. Today I have an awesome guest, really excited to talk to him. Chris and I have known each other for I think the better part of a decade now, if not longer. I've admired what Chris has built at Wistia and really excited to have him on to talk a bit about some of the strategic decisions they made over the years and how they made those decisions.
Chris Savage (00:18.475)
Yeah.
Databox (00:32.778)
how they turn that into concrete plans and then how they execute. know that Chris is a visionary in terms of where video is going on the internet and how to deliver video to people. And so we'll get into some of those details, I am sure as well. So welcome to the podcast, Chris. Is this your first time?
Chris Savage (00:52.801)
On your podcast.
Databox (00:53.998)
Yeah, did John Bonini maybe interview you a long time ago? Okay, cool. So maybe it's the second time back here. Yeah, cool. For those that don't know you or Wistia, do you mind just giving us the, you know, 1690s, whatever you need really, time to tell us.
Chris Savage (00:56.066)
I think yeah, I think he did. Yeah. Yeah. First time with you on here. So thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Chris Savage (01:11.19)
Yeah, no. So Wistia is a video platform for marketers. And so we try to make it easy if you're using video at work to save you time, help you make great videos, help you understand how they're performing, get them to the right people. And while we have tons of people who use Wistia who have video in their title, like video producers and stuff like that, actually, most people who use Wistia are just regular business users who need to use video at work. So it's hosting, it's
single person recording, it's remote group recording, it's AI enabled editing, AI sound improvement, social clip creation. We have a full webinar platform. And the thing that really got the business going and people, most people probably know us for is that we really like nailed hosting. So a custom player, fastest, still fastest video player on the internet helps you control the experience for people on your website.
You know, recently we just launched something called LLM friendly embeds as an example of our innovation there where LLMs can actually see videos because the crawlers that they use can't run JavaScript. And so if you have a lot of in-depth information, which most people, companies do in demos and webinars and stuff like that, none of that stuff, none of those details are going to show up in the LLMs unless you can actually take the transcripts, help the, the, the crawlers understand what your video is. And that's the type of thing that we do here. So we launched that in November, I think.
And if you use that, we'll automatically detect when the crawlers are hitting your site, make sure the AI can actually see what your videos are all about. And if it's human looking at your videos, then they'll see them beautifully just as they normally would.
Databox (02:47.918)
Yeah, awesome. I could see you could probably geek out on video for a long time.
Chris Savage (02:52.492)
Yeah, if you didn't stop me, I could go for an hour. So I'll just we'll stop there and jump into other topics.
Databox (02:55.398)
No, that's... I don't want to call you an all-in-one video platform, but it feels appropriate-ish enough. You probably have spent plenty of time on your positioning and do or don't embrace that term, but you cover a lot of the video spectrum. I remember initially with Stia, this is years ago, the hosting was always a strength, but also the analytics. And so, because, you you post...
Chris Savage (03:09.517)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Savage (03:20.12)
That's right.
Databox (03:23.334)
the video up on your server or your website or whatever, you're not going to see necessarily who viewed it, how long they viewed it, et cetera. And then feeding that information into marketing automation platforms where it's in a B2B setting where salespeople can leverage it. So I know we could probably geek out about that for a little while.
Chris Savage (03:31.011)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (03:35.374)
That's right.
Chris Savage (03:40.163)
That's like a huge thing that people still use us for actually still innovating there. And it was one of those moments of being speaking of strategy. was like, we started working in video at the very beginning and then found our way towards helping people actually privately share video. That's the first thing that like those are our first customers. And we built analytics for that actually. And we did it because we had a customer who was doing sales compliance training.
Databox (03:57.648)
Yep.
OK.
Databox (04:05.83)
Mmm.
Chris Savage (04:06.286)
And it was a very big, well-known company that they had to do the sales compliance training. They had see if people watched it. They're can you build analytics for this? We're like, sure. So we built analytics and we built an individual video heat map. So each person, see what they watch, what they skip, what they rewatch. And if you have the first party data, you can tag them or if you force them to log in and then they can, you you can see exactly what it is. And so we were doing that. We thought it was cool. And then our customers started saying, hey, this is awesome, but can we do this for the videos on our website? And we were the private secure thing. So we were like, no, you can't.
Databox (04:13.798)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (04:19.823)
OK.
Databox (04:31.728)
Right.
No.
Chris Savage (04:36.322)
And then they're like, please, this, this data is so interesting. And so we did that. And that's when things really started to take off actually was, putting that on the website and help marketers use that data. And it's funny cause like in our webinar platform, we did the same thing. So our webinar platform is fully in the browser, but you can see if attendees are actually engaging, like if they're commenting. And so, and it's actually, far as I can tell the first webinar platform to do that.
Databox (04:39.398)
Yeah.
Databox (04:43.054)
okay.
Databox (04:47.387)
Yeah.
Databox (04:57.06)
Databox (05:01.198)
Yeah, was gonna say that sounds like it's unique, right? Because I don't know of anything that does that, right? And that's like, the thing with webinars is like, the drop off, right? It's like, how many people show up, and then how many people actually stay and listen? Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Savage (05:03.969)
It, yeah.
Isn't that funny? So it's like.
Chris Savage (05:11.447)
Exactly.
Chris Savage (05:15.018)
Exactly. Yeah. So it's just funny because it was like a lot later that we did the opportunity to exist it to to innovate in the analytics again. So we'll take it.
Databox (05:21.062)
Yeah.
Yeah, at HubSpot we used to have a phrase called 1 plus 1 equals 3. I'm sure you heard the phrase, but that sounds like a 1 plus 1 equals 3 kind of thing where you already have the analytics kind of built in for the video. And so probably putting it for the live webinar recording was not trivial maybe, but like a no-brainer.
Chris Savage (05:29.57)
Mm.
Chris Savage (05:33.582)
So, alright.
Chris Savage (05:37.132)
Exactly.
Chris Savage (05:43.695)
Exactly. And also the integrations, right? Cause it's like, you can take your data, put it in HubSpot, part of marketo, Eloqua, what have you. And then it just works for webinars and so she's like, can tell, I can understand interest data. can respond to the right people, all that kind of stuff.
Databox (05:54.958)
Yeah.
Yeah, cool. Before we get too far, Chris, into the strategy stuff, could you just give us a feel for the scale of the company? You have an interesting story, which you've shared publicly. I'll, but you you went down the path of raising capital, but then you actually bought your investors out at some point, I believe based on what you've published in the past, you're north of 50, 60 million in annual revenue.
Chris Savage (06:15.032)
Mm.
Mm.
Chris Savage (06:21.73)
That's right. Yeah, we're north of there. solidly north of there. And yeah, we we had raised 1.4 million in angel financing in two rounds. I mean, we raised it in 2008 2010. So it's a very different time. I was really I was seeing like a lot of money to me at the time where there's like seed rounds or like, whatever 10 million bucks. And then yeah, we we decided that we want to keep the business independent and had turned down some opportunities to sell the company.
Databox (06:32.998)
Totally.
Databox (06:38.569)
Yeah, exactly.
Chris Savage (06:50.252)
want to do a reset with the investors and also the team because I had sold people like, join this company and the equity someday we're going to sell the business. And then if I'm turning down selling it, that's like, you know, lot of hubris to do that. And we felt like we wouldn't sleep well at night if we didn't take care of everybody. And so we ended up raising 17 million in debt to do this buyback. So it was a tender offer. Everybody got to decide if they want to sell their options or sell their shares with their investor.
Databox (06:57.958)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (07:15.734)
employees options got it okay
Chris Savage (07:18.582)
And then it meant that my co-founder and I ended up with control. So we had control mostly before this, but didn't have like full control. meant that we have full control. Then obviously the debt forced us to be profitable and we thought that would be a good thing. We thought it would give us like rigor and focus and that we, our hunch was that that was actually what drove our success and that, that this focus is so, it's so easy to think like the next idea is better than the current one.
Databox (07:26.896)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (07:48.429)
It's so easy to think that thing you're not doing is gonna be more important than the thing you're doing. But our hunch was, know, when we stay focused, we end up doing so much better stuff. And we also have more constraints, which forces us to be more creative. And that's actually what matters. And the cool thing is, I mean, the business has grown tremendously since we did that deal, we've paid off all the debt. So yeah, it worked out.
Databox (08:06.918)
since you're done. Yeah, it worked out. So you look like a genius from fine retrospect for sure. And you can easily say, that was a good call. Whether it's right or wrong, it's always tough to tell with any strategic decision, but it worked out. Yeah.
Chris Savage (08:12.492)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Savage (08:18.208)
It is. Yeah, that's I think the hard thing about them is like you don't know what paths you didn't get on.
Databox (08:23.046)
Right, exactly. Yeah. So as you know, or as I share with you, I've written this course. I spent a lot of time like reading or revisiting books around strategy and planning. I've read like Blue Ocean Strategy. Let's see, what else? Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumell. I'm thinking, I'm missing them all. I read them all last year. The EOS book around...
around planning, scaling up from Vern Harnish, Seven Powers, all these books. I read them what I discovered is that there isn't any step-by-step path to take a company from strategy through to planning through to execution. There's a lot of strategy books. There's a handful of good planning and execution books, but none that kind of connect to the dots. And so that's what I set out to build with this. So now I'm interviewing successful CEOs about, you
looking back at some of the strategic decisions they made, how they do their planning, how they create, set goals for their teams, how they hold people accountable, how do they motivate teams to keep going, et cetera. So love to just dig into a little bit with you, starting with strategy. So I know you've made a bunch of strategic decisions along the way, but love for you to just pick one or two or three that you think were the biggest ones, the most important ones, putting aside the buyback, but more a strategy on how you're helping your customers.
Chris Savage (09:49.647)
Yeah, I can think of two big ones that kind of stand out of I have been as you have been I've been doing this a long time, it'll be 20 years this summer. So it's you know, we've made a lot of changes. But I will I remember when we were probably, I'm gonna say a million in revenue around there. And we were just growth was starting to go is pretty fast. Actually, I think we growing about 100%. And
Databox (09:59.505)
Funny.
Databox (10:08.858)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Databox (10:16.575)
Yep.
Chris Savage (10:18.284)
But we had a lot of different customers. So we had customers who were using us for marketing, customers using us for sales, customers using us for training, like all different sorts of things. And we had sold every customer, so we knew that they were using us for these different reasons. And I remember trying to position this on the website and saying like, hey, we do all of these different things. And then trying to figure out what to build. And it was incredibly hard to figure out what to build, because how do you build something that works for all of these use cases at the same time?
Databox (10:31.759)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (10:47.822)
It basically got us back to making only the most foundational things. So it was very hard to pick a direction or pick a lane. And we were trying to decide what to do. And I actually went to a conference. So I went to business of software and saw Mike McDermott, who is the CEO of FreshBooks that give a talk and great talk. And then after I caught him in the hallway and I kind of explained to him the situation and he's like, well, which customers do you think are best?
out of this. And I was like, I think I mean, I think it's the marketers, like, I think they like the analytics the most. I think they feel like they get the most value, they have budget, their spending budget to try to grow, like, it's not a cost center. And he's like, Okay, just do that. And I'm like, but what about all these other use cases? What am I gonna like, I'm getting them now. He's like, well, if you're really clear about who you're for, some people will still sign up for you, actually. If they think you're the best tool, they're still going to sign up.
Databox (11:43.43)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Savage (11:47.087)
And I was like, this is a funny idea to know that you're going to say, I am only for this one use. And I still know that other people are going to see that. But if I describe that clearly enough, they're going to figure out, especially early adopters, how to take it and apply it what they're doing. And that was the moment that like pushed us all the way in. We came back and said, Hey, we're private, as I was talking about before, like private sharing. And we're also this market. We're to go 100 % on the marketing side.
Databox (12:04.347)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (12:17.326)
And when you look at like the following probably three to four years, growth really accelerated and we built much better, more differentiated things. So the analytics, your time was one example, but we built like, we were the first people to build lead capture into a video player. And we were excited about it, solved our own problem. We were putting videos on website. Some of them were long, like we're like people will sign up for a webinar. So why won't they sign up for like a long
Databox (12:36.656)
video. I remember that.
Chris Savage (12:46.83)
recorded and so we built the thing for ourselves, started working, built into the product and then you just watched it take off. And then it turns out there were some other use cases that could benefit from that, but that focus allowed us to go much faster in the right direction.
Databox (12:59.8)
Yeah. You would have never built leap capture for a training. Yeah.
Chris Savage (13:02.238)
Exactly, we would never built these integrations. There's all these other things we wouldn't have done. And it basically got us out of this, this mode of feeling indecisive into a mode of feeling, we can actually be really decisive about what we
Databox (13:14.66)
Yeah, that's cool. This isn't a setup, people aren't going to believe it, but that's literally the first exercise in my course under strategy is find your ideal client profile. And I walk people through how to do it. didn't come up with it, right? But I think a lot of people skip that. And then what I find is almost every decision flows from there. I know that you guys did an exercise years ago called defining your view of the future, which is aligned with your vision. And so.
Chris Savage (13:22.35)
Yeah, yeah
Chris Savage (13:40.835)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (13:44.517)
That's what like one thing that defining your ICP allows you to do is say like, who are we helping and how are we helping them? And then how are we going to be different from other companies that might be trying to do this, do similar stuff. so you talk a little bit about like how that flowed and what maybe what your vision is and, all that stuff.
Chris Savage (13:50.669)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (13:58.851)
That's right.
Chris Savage (14:03.726)
Yeah, so I think, I mean, that carried us for a very long way. And I think it was very, it is hard to do that because you're basically feel like you're saying, Hey, if I'm getting some of these people signing up for me, or let's try my product and they're not the ideal customer profile, do I need to stop getting them? Do you need to stop serving them? So, is my growth going to slow when I do this? And, you know, so it feels, it feels scary, but for us it compounded and continued and got us to a better place.
Databox (14:24.1)
the risk yeah.
Chris Savage (14:30.062)
I'll jump forward to the, to like what I think was probably the biggest strategic shift we made, which was in 2021. And so like the short version from the beginning to that is we grew a lot, got profitable, did the debt thing and really just like tried to be the best in the world at this video hosting thing for marketers. So we're going to do this better than anybody else. And our strategy is we're going to integrate with all the other tools. And so our thinking was
Databox (14:34.394)
OK, yeah.
Chris Savage (14:59.662)
we choose the best product in each category and we link them together, everyone else can do the same thing. But then COVID happens in 2020, people are remote 2020 and 2021, everyone starts using way more video. And what we see pretty quickly is that our customers are telling us that they're now overwhelmed. So video is much easier to use, but they're using 10, 15 different tools to accomplish the jobs they have with video. And so we did a bunch of research, we talked and interviewed
with like we interviewed like 500 ish customers. And that was customers of us, customers of products, customers who were building their own thing, like people in the space using video. And we saw some pretty consistent threads. And one of the things we saw is that people are tired of using this made tools, didn't want to use this many. The people who were in charge of video often did not have video in their title. It was ahead of marketing. It was ahead of customer success. It was the Academy program. It was somebody else.
who had figured out video and embraced it, but it was not necessarily the video producer. And they said, I don't want all these tools. This is overwhelming. I don't wanna keep up with all these updates. So I want one or two places I can go and I want a trusted brand to do this. And this whole time, the way we did our marketing was teaching people how to make video, teaching people how to use video. So we built up all this earned trust in all these things beyond hosting. In fact, most of our marketing was not about hosting at all.
Databox (16:00.837)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (16:23.279)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (16:27.95)
It was about everything else. And so we sat in 2021, we're like, you know, we think we could do this. And this would mean us expanding tremendously the footprint of our products. This would mean creation tools as kind of everything I listed at beginning. And that was going to mean way more people in product and engineering.
Databox (16:28.132)
Right. Yeah.
Databox (16:44.324)
Yeah. Creates the webinar, the webinar tools, podcast recording like you're doing all. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Savage (16:49.774)
Yeah, we have podcasts recording, podcasts hosting, like Loom-like video messaging, higher quality polished video recording, a virtual studio, easy online editor that's not designed for video producer, but designed for someone at work. The webinar thing, all of this stuff, we greenlit in 2021. Yeah, and we laid out this strategy that we said, hey, we're gonna be this video marketing platform.
Databox (17:10.67)
wow. Okay. That's bold.
Chris Savage (17:17.058)
that is so easy to use across these different tools. And we're gonna build it all. And we're gonna build it all because we can make it so seamless that we can save people so much time. So if you use our webinar product, it needs to be great, but it needs to be in the browser. And the second it's done, the recording needs to be in your WISC account. Then you can edit it. And we saw that a very high percentage of webinars are edited. And then they're published on something like us. So, okay, that part's gonna be easy.
Databox (17:20.698)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (17:35.376)
Right. Thanks, Anil. Yeah.
Databox (17:41.808)
Yep.
Chris Savage (17:43.203)
But then also you're gonna wanna make clips of it. Okay, and you're gonna need to send the emails, the registration, we're gonna do it all. And by doing that, if you use us for webinars and use us for hosting, you're gonna save a ton of time. Use this webinars and hosting and use our channels product, you're gonna save a lot more time. If you record clips that go on your webinar with Whistlet, you're gonna save more time. And so we're gonna create these workflows and it's gonna be hard, but we believed that if we did that, we could end up in a place where we can compete with all the point solutions.
because we have this breadth and you don't need every feature if you can save people tons of time and you're reliable and easier. You need the 20 to 30 % of the best features in each category. And then you can overcome the difference by being this all in one. And so, I mean, it was a big bet that we made and huge change. I mean, we hired a tremendous number of people to do it. We did it all under our own steam.
Databox (18:20.848)
Sure, yeah.
Databox (18:33.574)
Was that like the last big strategic change you've made is 2026 now? did that, is that kept you busy for four or five years? It has. Okay. Yeah. Got it.
Chris Savage (18:40.47)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that has and it was one of those things too that I think a lot of these strategic changes take time. And I know that. I funny thing for me was reminding myself of the early days, which is like it's early twenty twenty three and we've launched two out of the five things we planned on launching and they're just starting to go. But they're not ripping yet. So what does that mean? Does it mean the strategy is wrong? Does it?
Databox (18:53.103)
Yeah.
Databox (19:00.058)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Savage (19:08.334)
And I remind myself, well, didn't just like, wish it didn't start and six months later we had traction. So it takes time. And the real question, I actually just wrote a post about this on LinkedIn at the end of the year, because like, I feel like it's so easy to miss this is like, the real question was like, are we getting feedback on this stuff? Cause if nobody cares, they don't, they don't tell you anything. But if they tell you they hate it, you're onto something because you might be solving a problem. Exactly. And so.
Databox (19:11.29)
Yeah, you're right. Right. Yeah.
Databox (19:28.678)
I like it, but it doesn't do this. I'm not going to use it. You need something.
Chris Savage (19:34.307)
we were getting a lot of feedback, but the traction was not the way there yet. And I realized this is, this is a good sign. We just have to stay on it. And so now I can look at it. And like, if you were to objectively look at our metrics for a lot of these things, like I think our webinar projects probably the best example. If you looked at it two months after we launched it, you'd be like, like this is bad. So you spent all this time in my never making this thing. And if you looked at it like nine months after you would say, probably.
Databox (19:49.606)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (19:53.091)
fuck. Yeah.
Databox (20:00.89)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (20:01.87)
And if you looked at it at like a year and a half after launch, you'd be like, oh shit, like this thing is, this was a good decision. And that's how this stuff goes, which I think is like kind of interesting.
Databox (20:06.63)
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, I think there's a term for it, the trough of despair. So like once you launch something and there's like, shit, nobody, we spent all this time. Nobody's paying attention to it. Right. Nobody's trying it. Our email campaigns are getting low click rates or whatever it is. Yeah. And I don't, like, don't know. You tell me, do you think that can be overcome with more promotion or is it just that iterative process where you get like one new customer to be happy at a time? So what's.
Chris Savage (20:15.607)
Totally.
Chris Savage (20:25.879)
Exactly.
Databox (20:41.358)
What's more important?
Chris Savage (20:41.97)
I think what most of us do is we underestimate how hard it is to get traction. So it's usually much harder to get traction on something than you would think because there's too many details and things that like you have to get exactly right to like connect. But then when you get traction, we actually also underestimate how far you can take that traction. So it's much harder to get the traction than we think, but if you can get it,
Databox (20:49.37)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (21:04.262)
Mmm.
Chris Savage (21:09.314)
then you can usually take it way farther than you can imagine because we don't think in terms of, you know, eight billion people in the world. We don't think in terms of like millions, like 350 million people in the U S like you don't think about that every day. It's very hard to like nothing else in your life is close to that except like maybe like looking at a lawn and looking at the blades of grass and thinking these, this is how many people there are. And like, you know, a third of the U S or whatever, like it's just not like you don't think that way. And so
Databox (21:29.026)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (21:37.31)
For that reason, I think it's very easy to not understand how far you can take things like one of the great mistakes I think that entrepreneurs make is they actually find traction, they get to a few million bucks, then they think, I can't get to 10, I can't get to 15. And it's like, well, in our internet world, you probably can. But I'm sorry, I feel like I'm going off on the wrong tangent here.
Databox (21:48.57)
Right. Yeah.
Databox (21:55.493)
No, I want to bring you back in a little bit. So to me, the two examples you gave me are both like selection of your customer and then what you built. And so I get, are you a product guy? Is that like your thing or did you lock your way into it? yeah, and a market guy. But both of those examples are product. And of course, your marketing is well aligned to your product and well aligned to who you sell to or market to.
Chris Savage (22:05.442)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (22:13.358)
I would say I'm a product guy and a market guy. Yeah, I'm
Databox (22:24.944)
So I'm not underestimating the importance of that. But
Chris Savage (22:26.734)
I think it's very hard to out market a bad product. So like if you have a bad product, you market it ton, you'll get people to try it, but you'll have bad churn, you won't have good expansion. you may get a lot of feedback, but if the product's bad, you may struggle to take the feedback and turn it into something good. If you have a great product, everything is easier. The only exception to this rule is if you have truly baked in distribution.
Databox (22:31.661)
Okay, got it.
Databox (22:50.501)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Savage (22:56.706)
then you can get away with having products that are not as good and people, or if it's like purely cost that people are factoring into a decision, then yes, you might have a ton of distribution. This thing is tremendously cheaper. You include it, people use it. They know it's not as good, but they're saving money.
Databox (23:04.741)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (23:09.302)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So companies don't have problems like Microsoft, right? Salesforce, even HubSpot, like they have distribution that they've built up over the years across multiple channels. And when they launch something, everybody's checking it out and talking about it, giving them the right to adapt.
Chris Savage (23:22.922)
Exactly. And so you don't have to have the best product to have a significant impact on revenue or retention or what have you.
Databox (23:28.506)
Not judging them specifically, yeah, you don't have to have the best product. Exactly. Yes. Yeah.
Chris Savage (23:32.237)
Yes. but I do think back to your question of the first 10, I think that the key is getting like 10 really happy customers. And if you can do that and it's not some unbelievable wild niche thing that literally has 20 potential customers. if you can get 10 that are actually happy, you can get a hundred. And you basically have to keep looking at it like that. It's like, I need my first 10 and then I need my next hundred.
Databox (23:41.807)
Okay.
Databox (23:48.632)
Yeah. Yeah.
Databox (23:54.373)
Right. Yeah.
Chris Savage (24:01.39)
And then I need a thousand. And once you get to a thousand, there's enough consistency and understanding probably that it's actually not that hard to go to 10,000. You know, you're through a lot of the hardest knotholes at that
Databox (24:02.884)
Yeah.
Databox (24:10.008)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, agreed. I'm going to rewind back a little bit. I can easily go down to planning now, but I want to stay up on strategy for a little bit more. You made that decision, in 2001, right? And that's kind of carried through. You've had to aggressively revisit the strategic decisions there, and you presumably are busy iterating on either adding new features to it to complete that vision or tweaking those and improving those features, et cetera.
Chris Savage (24:27.362)
I join ya.
Databox (24:41.242)
I'm wondering whether you have like an annual process for revisiting your strategy and saying, hey, yeah, I'm doing it a little bit.
Chris Savage (24:46.04)
So we have, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have an annual process that goes through our planning and links into the strategy. I mean, we have updated the strategy since then, since 2021, and it's mostly been because of AI. So it's been like, hey, AI is here and coming. We need to explore this. And then we have expectations for this. And then like, I mean,
Databox (24:55.759)
Okay.
Databox (25:03.12)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Savage (25:14.626)
The biggest change for us, I would say, is that the AI around transcription is so good and cheap that we were able to say to every Wisted customer, like, hey, every video used to pay us to transcribers. Everybody was transcribed automatically. It's really good. Now we know what the videos are, where before they were just a black box. So suddenly all these other things start happening where we're helping you with your titles and doing titles automatically. And we're doing descriptions for you. We're giving you tags. That's helping with organization. That's like all that kind of stuff. And so
Databox (25:21.936)
Yeah, ridiculous.
Databox (25:32.89)
Mm.
Databox (25:43.226)
OK.
Chris Savage (25:44.495)
we have tweaked and updated it. So it's kind of like, you you can look at our strategy at any moment, but the biggest change was 2021. And then each year we basically use OKRs as an expression of how will we, what are we really trying to accomplish this year? What should we set our sights on that feed into this overall vision? And the, yeah.
Databox (26:03.664)
Okay.
Databox (26:07.846)
Awesome. Good. Yeah, keep going. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off.
Chris Savage (26:11.222)
Yeah, so we've used OKR and we really adopted OKRs, I'm gonna say four years ago or so. And we tried many times before and hadn't been able to get it to stick and now have been able to get it to stick and it has become very valuable. And yeah, the OKRs are planned annually. We have like a base case for everything, a target and a stretch target. And so.
Databox (26:16.152)
Okay, same. Yeah.
Databox (26:37.334)
exactly what we do. Yeah.
Chris Savage (26:39.638)
Yeah. So the base is like our current trend. And, know, if you're doing expenses, we look at like, what's the base of this thing. so like, let's not assume that things all worked. Let's assume that we're on the trend. What does that mean? The target is something that based on where we are, we believe we could hit it. So you have to believe you can hit it. And then the stress target is like, if we hit the things early or have some massive breakthroughs, we could hit it, but we'll probably be hard otherwise. And so that's how we calibrate across these things.
Databox (26:46.726)
Mm-hmm.
Databox (26:55.544)
Yup. Yup.
Databox (27:02.522)
Yep. Yep.
Databox (27:08.472)
Wow, it's like we share a brain here, Chris. This is exactly how we do it at DataBox. And it's also the same, exactly what I baked into the course. So once strategy is defined, then you're in a position to define your objectives, right? I assume the strategy and the objectives are very, the objectives basically help you achieve the strategic vision. Yeah. And I think a lot of people miss that. So a lot of people adopt OKRs from my understanding and from my interviews.
Chris Savage (27:22.157)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (27:28.118)
That's right, yeah.
Databox (27:35.938)
talking to people without really thinking through the strategy piece. And I know you don't skip that. You've aligned that well. Could you give us an example of like one objective that you did at some point over last few years or what's this year? So something that just gives people an example?
Chris Savage (27:51.945)
Yeah, I mean,
Let me think. I this should be very easy. there's so many of them. Let me think of a good one. Okay.
Databox (27:58.703)
I know, I feel the same way.
I'll give you one of ours for this year. It's make customer success our number one priority. That's why it's like, you know, it's a, it's a ambition thing, right? So it motivates the team. It's that's just the objective. There are key results tied to net retention. yeah.
Chris Savage (28:07.617)
Okay.
Chris Savage (28:17.334)
Yeah, like one we had last year was increased monthly active customers. And that's like a very high level. So we'd say, here's our major objectives, no numbers in them, here are the key results within that. So that would be within a key result of accelerating growth in a certain category. And it was like, okay, you want the revenue thing to happen here, you want the multi active customer thing to happen here, you want this other thing to happen here. And those, we believe those will add up to hitting this objective that everyone can understand.
Databox (28:21.902)
Okay, perfect.
Chris Savage (28:46.21)
and then there's the company OKRs and then team OKRs within that. So every person can see how their OKRs ladder up and impact the overall is the goal.
Databox (28:56.614)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So you probably don't know this, but we just launched OKR functionality in the data box. So because we have all the integrations with the tools that people use and we pull the performance data out, we can automatically check the attainment of the results. But then you have the tree structure that the high level company wide objectives and then maybe functional objectives. in our case, a lot of times we have cross-functional teams that own an objective or an initiative. And so they're measured on the key result.
Chris Savage (29:04.29)
How cool.
Chris Savage (29:11.202)
That's awesome.
Databox (29:26.63)
So yeah, so totally in line with that. And then on the modeling side, you mentioned having the base case, which is really like kind of not much changes and allows you to say, our expenses, assume, in our case, our expenses are aligned to the base case. I imagine you're similar since you're operating positively. And then on top of that is like, what if we have incremental improves in some things that we know will work? And that gives us that target. And then from there, it's like,
Chris Savage (29:41.88)
Yeah.
Databox (29:55.311)
Okay, we're making a big swing on these two or three initiatives, big initiatives or objectives for the year. And if that work, they could get us to here and that's our stretch. So that's exactly what we're doing too. So how do you model all that out?
Chris Savage (30:05.922)
That's exactly right. Yep.
Chris Savage (30:11.694)
I mean, we have a good data and FP &A team that has really embraced this. they help everybody. We look at them, you you can look at a lot of these daily. I'm obviously can do that with data box. But yeah, and then we have usually right now we're on a funny schedule where we do tri-annual planning. Have I talked to you about that? I don't think so.
Databox (30:26.032)
Yeah.
Databox (30:34.596)
Okay. no, but I love that. I've actually tried to push that internally. Go ahead, explain it.
Chris Savage (30:40.29)
Well, basically we're doing quarterly and we're like, we're spending too much time planning. So what if we drop one of them? And we've now done this for, I think like three or four years where three times a year we get together and do planning. And we actually were remote, we get, we bring together the senior people to do this in person. And so we do like a three day, we call it the tri-annual business review, which we call Tabor.
Databox (30:43.376)
Yeah, exactly.
Databox (30:51.974)
Yeah.
Databox (31:00.144)
Okay. Yep.
Chris Savage (31:08.918)
And there's one like at the two weeks. so people will come to the office that we still have in Cambridge. And there'll be like a Tuesday where basically you download on how the last four months went. At the highest level. So everyone has a picture beyond what would fit in like an all hands. You know, this is instead of the 15 minute performance thing in all hands, it's like a, four hour version.
Databox (31:31.526)
a deep dive on each area of the business.
Chris Savage (31:34.403)
And so then everyone knows, and also what worked and what didn't. So, what did we learn about the customer that's telling us that this stuff, certain things are resonating, certain things are not. And then you go away, there's nothing planned on the Tuesday. Everyone works with their teams and they come up with roadmaps and plans based on those things. And then basically we get back together on Thursday and go through them, all the plans and everyone gives feedback. So you get cross-functional feedback. Everyone knows why you're doing what you're doing. Then when it's communicated out,
What it means like the next to all hands where everyone hears about this, you can go to your, your manager, your manager's manager, and they can tell you why the marketing team is doing XYZ thing or success is doing ABC thing and how it fits into what we just did. And it's worked super well. Um, this cadence has worked well for us. I think we've made good pivots at those moments that we probably wouldn't have otherwise. And I would also say that the in-person piece has really helped because my experience running a remote business is that.
Databox (32:11.588)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (32:31.182)
It's the disagreements that are the hardest part. And so you have to have trust with the team to disagree, to push back, and also to give each other feedback. And if you don't feel like you know somebody, they're only like a box on your screen or like a, you know, a face in Slack.
Databox (32:34.416)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Databox (32:48.298)
Yeah, if you guys people on a call, you don't want to be the jerk, right? Yeah, as many people
Chris Savage (32:51.594)
Exactly. so, we find that just bringing people together, the same reason why we do an offsite with the whole company, it actually helps the strategic planning part a lot and helps execution a lot.
Databox (33:01.862)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did that a year before last where we had all the management team come in and it was like two or three days and it definitely helped get everyone on the same page. We did it virtually this year for a handful of different reasons, but yeah, no, I like that. And I love the three times a year thing. I feel the same exact way. We do quarterly planning every 90 days and I feel like we're like just getting to the point where we prove something out of that. It's like, we got to kind of take a break for a week or two, put together our shit.
Chris Savage (33:30.409)
Exactly.
Databox (33:30.724)
it's not to everybody like get that feedback and then it's like, why isn't it going faster? like, because I just think two weeks off to put this together.
Chris Savage (33:39.361)
You know, there's something else that really helped us that is on the product side, we started making a part of the planning to have visions of what the product can be in the future. And it's like two to three years in the future. And it is kind of our current imagining based on what we're hearing from customers of where things could end up. And
Databox (33:52.114)
Okay. Oh, wow. Okay.
Databox (34:01.233)
Okay.
Chris Savage (34:02.654)
This has been really interesting because I find that a lot of the disagreement discussion is actually like using short-term decisions as a proxy for the future. Those like, if you don't want to do this lead capture thing, are we not for marketers anymore? Are we not, you know what I mean? So, and it's very helpful when someone can say, hey, based on what I know today, this is what I think the product will end up looking like in this area in two, three years. Because then you engage on that. And I found it, I've seen folks go from disagreeing
Databox (34:11.546)
Yeah.
Databox (34:17.167)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Databox (34:26.427)
other.
Chris Savage (34:32.142)
in the short term to being like, oh, no, what we're clearly I'm 100 % online with this. Now tell me why, you know, a versus B versus C now. And it's like, oh, and then well, they usually have an answer, which is like, we're hearing from customers that this is a real problem. Oh. And so it actually, it's, it's more work to create the visions, but it has saved, I think, tremendous amounts of time and created a ton of alignment by doing this. I also just think that people
Databox (34:53.7)
Yeah.
Databox (34:59.066)
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because I think in an org that's trying to figure out how to grow, they're often thinking of like, what can we do tomorrow? What can we do next month or this quarter? And it's like, and then those things end up being incremental changes because you don't have the vision of where you want to be. So I think that's genius. So it sounds to me like your view of the future is not just something that you came up with or you and your founder came up with, it's something that you've kind of almost like pushed to the
organization to like contribute to and it's a living thing every four months sounds like.
Chris Savage (35:29.368)
That's right.
That's exactly right. And, and I think that is a big change. You know, if you were to like, show me of 2015, how we work today, I would be surprised by this. And also I can tell you, like, I, I, this sounds so stupid to say I'm getting chills, but like, get chills when I think about, there are certain teams that have come back with a vision of something that was like not on my radar, not on my co-founders radar, not a thing we would have come up with that I was like,
Databox (35:55.449)
Right.
Chris Savage (36:00.605)
my gosh, like if we do this, like this is going to be unbelievable. And you know, when you leave those things like inspired yourself, like it's a very different feeling. And so there's a lot of stuff like that that has happened that I was like, I can't believe how big these people are dreaming and also what they're like the steps they're taking to get there. So I think that's partially why we haven't had to update the overall strategies. We have these mechanisms that are adding a big enough like tweaks to them.
Databox (36:02.938)
That's awesome. Right, right, right.
Databox (36:09.701)
I bet.
Databox (36:28.517)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (36:29.314)
that they're changing, it's evolving, but it's like co-evolution, it's not just top down. There are certain things that are, which is like ideal customer profile and that like we would not okay a massive change to that, wouldn't just probably evolve like a massive change to that without being involved very deeply, you know?
Databox (36:32.346)
Yeah. Yeah.
Databox (36:47.343)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, understood. Yeah, think part of it is because you enabled the team or you're empowering the team to have that input, to give them the space to provide that input, not just to you, but to their whole company, And so I think that's part of it, the empowerment that you're doing. But also, my guess, just from external observation, is that you also have done a really good job at that upfront vision. And you, your founder, your team have just thought far enough out that
Chris Savage (37:15.992)
Yeah.
Databox (37:16.676)
that you're anticipating some things that others wouldn't. And there's plenty of space between now and the future for innovation,
Chris Savage (37:26.156)
Yes, for sure.
Databox (37:28.614)
Cool. All right, so into planning. So you have the OKRs. You must be assessing them on at least every four-month basis. But are you looking at them more frequently? Or is somebody on the team working more frequently?
Chris Savage (37:42.575)
Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. We. Yeah. So there's like depending on the area the business like the people who manage and own their customer problem that they're solving or the challenge that they have like they're looking at this stuff all the time. Right. We'll have conversations with them in like OKR reviews like usually every other month or so. It kind of depends on the things some things we want to stay hyper close to. So we're looking at it all the time talk about all the time and there's certain things that are like
We don't expect them to change that much. We don't expect it to swing the business that much in the near term in a good way. So it's solid, consistent. And so you don't have to look at it with the same cadence.
Databox (38:22.788)
Yeah, so it sounds to me like your whole team is empowered to analyze. And they're analyzing their own work for sure, making decisions on a daily basis probably without checking in with you or even their managers. And then on a twice, twice a quarter, twice every four months, once every other month, you maybe are having some kind of review. Is that synchronous, meaning you're in a meeting or is that asynchronous communication where...
Chris Savage (38:27.512)
Yes.
Yeah.
Chris Savage (38:34.444)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Chris Savage (38:48.384)
It's both. Yeah, it's both. There's a lot of asynchronous. I mean, there's a lot of asynchronous with videos, as you would imagine. So there's a there is a lot of that. I mean, there's also like, yeah, but there are certain areas I am in there looking at stuff every single day. And
Databox (38:55.078)
All right,
Nuh-uh.
Databox (39:06.246)
You mentioned there's certain things that you're paying attention. How do you decide what those things are? What is the criteria for you, your time, maybe your found?
Chris Savage (39:13.054)
you know, it's the things that should have the outsized impact. So it's something that's new and I'm trying to understand like how well it's resonating. And so this, one of the feeds is like the data of the performance. And one of the other feeds of data is like the customer's using it and talking to them. And so I'm talking to customers a lot and
Databox (39:32.26)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (39:33.199)
That is, I look at that as one of the ways I have my understanding. It's like, okay, are you using our group recording feature? What do you like about, do you like this? Do you like that? Is this broken? Is this? And I'm, I also share a ton of feedback with the team because I use Wistia a absolute ton. So one of the big changes with our strategy is I used to never log into Wistia or I did, but not that much. It would be like, you know, I'd go and poke around how videos are performing maybe twice a month before.
Databox (39:36.774)
Okay.
Databox (39:44.987)
Yeah.
Databox (39:49.638)
.
Databox (39:57.434)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Chris Savage (40:01.089)
and I have had days, like I had a day in December that I emailed the company or or slacked the company because I couldn't, I spent five hours working in Wistia. So I recorded my podcast in Wistia. I hosted a webinar in Wistia. I went to another event that was hosted by somebody in Wistia. I was editing. It was, and it all worked. I couldn't believe, I was like, this is unbelievable. And I also had feedback about everything. I was just like,
Databox (40:11.206)
Okay, got it.
Databox (40:19.046)
There you go. Yeah.
Chris Savage (40:27.48)
this thing on the podcast analytics, like I'm confused by this and I like this and like this thing's not good. And this thing over here, this one feature, I had this weird clicking sound and it was all, it was just feedback feedback. So it's like, I'm sure they're annoyed. I'm like,
Databox (40:38.714)
But it sounds like overall the sentiment of the note was like, we're awesome. You guys are doing a great job. You've put...
Chris Savage (40:44.338)
was, I couldn't believe it. was just, it's not that my day is actually that different than it was like three years ago. It's just that now we solve all these other problems. I'm literally using the products every day. And so I noticed the little changes and then I also noticed the little problems. And so it's kind of fun. It's not kind of fun, it's super fun. And it reminds me of the very early days where I was in there every single day and I was giving feedback every day. So.
Databox (40:54.714)
Yeah, right.
Databox (41:10.254)
Right, right, because that's what you're.
Chris Savage (41:12.6)
But that's another, I look at that as a very real data point of like, so when I go to a webinar that's hosted with Wistia, usually someone says, what's this platform? It's awesome. And when I have been, people will say, is this a Wistia webinar thing? And so when you see that, you think, well, damn, people don't usually talk about products. So like, it takes a lot to do that. And then I'm like, all right, well, what does it look like in our performance data? I'm like,
Databox (41:23.238)
you
You
Chris Savage (41:39.723)
Is this jump, is this growing as solidly as it should? And is it, know, if you're, it is great, but sometimes it's not. So it's why is that? And so then it causes you to go find the right problem to zero in on. Maybe it's a messaging thing. Maybe it's an onboarding thing. Maybe it's a pricing thing. Maybe it's what, and so I'm constantly trying to have that full picture of like, a customer would experience and then take that and put it directly against the performance data to help me understand.
Databox (41:45.584)
Yep. Right.
Databox (42:02.372)
And then look at the data. Yeah.
Chris Savage (42:06.19)
what problem is actually needs to be solved today. And often someone's already on it, but sometimes they're not. So that's part of the job.
Databox (42:13.765)
Yeah, right. like, do your, I don't know what your org structure looks like these days, but do you have like product managers that are doing similar work so you don't have to be the guy that's figuring that out?
Chris Savage (42:22.99)
Yes. Yeah, we have a bunch of product managers. They do not report to me. And so they are doing that. But one of the things that's hard when you have like, I think we have over 10 product managers, they are in their area. then, you know, back to this seamless thing we're talking about of like, it needs to all interconnect. That stuff, there's so many different ways for it to interconnect and so many different funny things there. There's a lot of stuff there that as the user, it's almost easier to see.
Databox (42:43.654)
Mmm.
Chris Savage (42:52.29)
sometimes.
Databox (42:52.422)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When you step away, yeah, yeah. The job, understanding the job to be done and then putting the pieces together and the product to accomplish that in a way where the user doesn't necessarily have to think about it, right?
Chris Savage (43:04.398)
Yeah, like funny little example, but we changed how our group recording works so that it uploads as you're recording. So like it uploads a high thing res thing. It used to wait till the end. I noticed it instantly and it was like a delight. was like what waiting one second at the end of the recording for it to work. It was like, okay, people are going to notice this because this is the worst part of this whole thing is the way.
Databox (43:14.608)
Okay.
Databox (43:20.782)
Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. It was like the part where like, it work?
Chris Savage (43:29.358)
Or like a different thing of like we change our encoding so that it's much faster and it does the first, it can encode in real time. So if you're playing a video, it'll encode it as it's playing. But we record all these other, we encode all these other versions. So if it's like being shared at scale and it's, you know, someone has incredible bandwidth and they're on a huge screen, it's really high quality. And if the bandwidth is really low, blah, blah, and those still take time. I'm like the detail on the messaging of what it says it's doing really matters on that thing. Because like,
Databox (43:33.626)
OK.
Databox (43:38.918)
Okay.
Databox (43:55.472)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Chris Savage (43:58.703)
If I'm ready, is it ready for me to actually share it or not? Should I share it in this exact moment or do I have to wait two minutes? Doesn't seem like a big deal when you're looking at the performance data. our performance data is better, it's 50 % better. But when you're sitting there as the customer, huge deal. And so for me, it's like that mixing between the pieces is what's so important.
Databox (44:17.668)
Yeah, gotcha. Cool. So back to what you said a little earlier, like you pay attention to the things that could potentially have outsized returns, right? And then your teams are paying attention to what they're working on. I assume you have functions, different functions, sales function, et cetera, where they have their own metrics that maybe don't change that frequently and they're paying attention and drive into that. The question is, do you and does the rest of the team have visibility into what's going on across the business?
or no? Yeah. So and then like what is the culture around like people monitoring how the business is going? How transparent are you? So why do you do it that way? Yeah.
Chris Savage (44:49.399)
Yes.
Chris Savage (44:59.896)
We're very transparent. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, we've been very transparent basically since the beginning. It's like, how are we doing this month? Lord, look at all the finances. What's happening with the objectives and okay. Ours like all of them. that's a part of our all hands every month as we go through and say, here's where we are. We actually rate it with a grade now. That's like shows people like, stretch is an a target as a B bases to see below bases, a D, you know,
Databox (45:07.504)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Savage (45:29.97)
And so you have this grid where you can really quickly see across everything. How are we doing? And it's very interesting because like you can't, we're in a world that's changing constantly, right? So, know, AI search, good example, it's been pretty hard to predict like marketing traffic data. Is it going to go up? Is it going to go down? Is it going to be the right, you know, people who are more commerce related and ready to buy, is it going to be less? And so you've seen things that are like, wow, there's S tier above this too. So it's like, it's S tier.
and it's flipped to C up. And then it's like, is there a problem? Do we create a problem or is it a market thing? And so yeah, that is all being communicated and you have access to everything. And I think that, yeah.
Databox (46:10.608)
Okay. Everyone has access to everything. then you're reviewing it, all of that on all hands.
Chris Savage (46:16.694)
We don't, can't review everything with everyone because there's too much detail. So we, we review the highest level things and then we are an editor. So the senior manager team is saying like, Hey, this thing is something that a lot of people can help with. A lot of people can understand. Let's go deeper on this one this month.
Databox (46:33.798)
Okay, got it. So you kind of rotate through things and that way, everybody has a better understanding. And of course, you've there for years, you have a really good understanding. So yeah, that's cool. What do you find that does in terms of like enabling the team and like in terms of decision-making or whatever?
Chris Savage (46:36.674)
That's kind of how we do it, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Savage (46:53.888)
Well, I mean, I think that a lot of leadership is just modeling. And so by going that we have to be thoughtful with how we go through it, because that's how other people are going to go through the data to have like, we're blase with it, they're not going to take it seriously for take it seriously. But we're also like, understanding when there's issues, like that's how people are going to do it. And so very much.
Databox (46:59.268)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Savage (47:22.26)
I see the job as like of how we manage data and objectives and the strategy of like, okay, we need to be serious when it's time to be serious. We need to be clear when there's a problem. And we need to, should also be celebrating the things that add up to the solution. So whenever you're doing lots of new stuff, it's back to the kind of like that 10 customer thing. You know, the first customer uses something or upgrades or something might not seem like a big deal by itself, but it is.
Databox (47:34.308)
Yeah.
Databox (47:44.005)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (47:51.663)
If it is like a repeatable new thing that's going to become big. And so we have to look at that and say, Hey, this upgrade is a big deal. So we're going to talk about the specific customer, talk about why they upgraded. And then you do it again and again and again, and then people, it's all this reinforcing stuff so that hopefully everyone has access to the right data to do their job. And they have like an example of like the Wistia way to do it. Um, so that we end up in the best spot, but yeah, a lot of it is just like.
Databox (47:54.096)
Totally.
Chris Savage (48:20.97)
how this stuff comes together and what's the story to empower people to then use all the things that they need.
Databox (48:27.174)
Got it. Cool. right. And then this last question, and we'll wrap up the, so in the, in the course that I put together, it's strategy plan, execute, adjust, which we just kind of covered all of that stuff. And you, clearly have processes where teams are empowered to adjust. You're reviewing certain things. The management team is reviewing certain things. It sounds like you divide and conquer a bit with the management team members where they can, they can go and things in order to get things to the outcome that you want, which is happy customers and, then results in the business.
Chris Savage (48:46.254)
Yeah.
Databox (48:55.914)
And then on the last step in the, or there's two more steps, but repeat is the next step in the course. Walk me through a little bit, like once you've kind of figured something out and how you like operate business as usual and like, how do you, how do you go from like innovation, experimentation, launches, et cetera, to like, this is part of Wistia now, and then we're going to continue doing this.
Chris Savage (49:18.636)
A lot of it is like, who is going to own it. And so there, you know, one thing that's been interesting to see is sometimes we'll, there are people who are better at the launching part and there are people who are better at the scaling part. So I like to talk about this as like there's the pioneers, the settlers and the city planners and everyone's kind of like wired a different way. And so it's like, you know, there's the people who just want to pilot. They're willing to go out West and have no idea where the gold is and start digging.
Databox (49:21.967)
Okay.
Databox (49:39.802)
OK.
Chris Savage (49:48.623)
And you have to be crazy. And a lot of the stuff is not going to work and you might die. You might get dysentery. And then if you find the mine, then there's like, oh, like there's a mine here, like, let's go and the settlers show up and they start building infrastructure. And they start figuring out like, what are all the things we need? Oh, we need a bank and we need a hospital and we need a grocery store and blah, blah, blah. And then there's the city planners who are like, yeah, we're going to go from one of each of these things to a thousand. And so the question is, what stage is the project at and who should own it based off of that?
Databox (49:52.326)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (50:16.522)
And sometimes it is literally within a team. have someone who's the more of the pioneer and someone who's more the settler. So it was more the city planner and the one team owns the whole thread all the way through. Sometimes it switches teams. It depends on the thing, honestly. And so we kind of look at it as like, once this thing is consistently here and good. Is that what do we expect from it? You know, do you expect it to stay where it's at?
Is this something that needs to be tremendously better before it gets scaled? All those types of questions.
Databox (50:49.062)
You're more of a PLG model, right? So you are profitable, as you mentioned. So my guess is that when you build something, you're not necessarily going and saying, hey, let's spin a team up from two to 10 people. So, or maybe you do that in some areas, but my guess is when you're scaling something, it's you're thinking much more programmatically product and marketing first. Is that fair? Yeah.
Chris Savage (51:13.236)
Usually, yeah. mean, the only thing is sometimes we have found, and this is where like AI coding, AI enabled coding has changed things is we can have a smaller, there has always been certain people who, for us at least, take, You know, one or two people can build something totally brand new and like hit a winner like right out of, right from the start. And so,
Databox (51:20.549)
Mm.
Chris Savage (51:39.605)
Sometimes we'll do in the past, we take that small one, two person thing. And then as it starts to work, we'll hand it to a team who can scale it. And so that is a way that we've done it. I will tell you, there are some things where we're doing more things now where there's like two people on something and they're using a lot of AI to enable and help them with the development that is letting us go much faster than we would have before.
Databox (51:46.818)
OK. Yeah.
Databox (52:03.462)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (52:07.542)
And also having someone manage more scale than they would have managed before. So I expect a lot of this to change. I mean, I think that's the other thing is like, you know, we're getting into the, do you execute and then just keep executing and keep updating, keep repeating. I would not be surprised if what we see in like a few, a few years, let's say like three years is that, you know, the arc, what you, the size of the team that we expect to manage something is actually different, probably smaller.
Databox (52:10.95)
OK.
Databox (52:20.411)
Yeah.
Databox (52:36.056)
Riot. Riot.
Chris Savage (52:38.486)
with maybe more shared resources where it's like, hey, the PM is managing something, this PM and this designer are both managing two teams instead of one. And each team has like two or three engineers on it where before each would have had seven. But the output is actually faster than we see now. So that's kind of what it looks like things are going to.
Databox (52:48.23)
OK, yeah.
Databox (52:53.049)
Okay.
Yeah, faster. Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's same, same thing here. It's like the, especially with the AI coding, the amount that can get done. So we, one of the bottom XR businesses building integrations with other tools to pull the performance data out so that people can then do what they do in data box with it. Uh, and that, and that, like the, the speed at which we can do that now is, is much faster.
Chris Savage (53:16.576)
It's yeah, it's pretty it's pretty wild out there.
Databox (53:19.738)
And then of course there's AI and marketing, sales, that everything goes a little faster. It's like one of my thesis is, is that you have to, as an organization, be transparent with your performance because the amount of things that can get done is not something that one individual can possibly consume and even understand or fathom. And like, I noticed it about a year ago when the team started to like put together their plans, using just using ChatGPT, it became so much that I couldn't possibly even read it all.
And so it's like, yeah, what's the high level and go, right? So I think AI is forcing us all to move at a faster clock speed for sure.
Chris Savage (53:58.031)
I think that's, yeah, that's 100 % right. And I think that's also why you have to distribute ownership across the business. And, you know, we talked a little bit about that with visions, like roadmaps and goals and who's looking at the data and like, that's the only way to scale. And I think when things felt slower, maybe you could feel like you could have the throughput to go look and you just can't. it's, it, and also you're just slowing, you're just, become the bottleneck.
Databox (54:05.178)
Yes.
Databox (54:20.184)
No, you can't have the throughput. yeah, yeah. The bottom. Yeah, absolutely. I had a meeting this morning where working with somebody who's putting together email messaging and I'm like, I can't be the bottleneck here. You need to find a new solution for getting the final editing or whatever. Get me out of this. so yeah, I hear you. Any last words of wisdom for a company trying to scale? You've clearly done it. So it's like your one big thing that you always stress with people.
Chris Savage (54:33.443)
Yeah.
Chris Savage (54:49.022)
yeah, I mean, I would say like, this stuff can be hard, like, especially if you're like the pioneering type. we're talking about a lot of like, how do you take instinct and taste and turn it into a system that enables other people to work? And so I would say get help, you know, get people who are really good at this, who want to do it and like, co-create don't just don't think you have to do it all exactly yourself.
Um, use tools like data box that help you. So, uh, I think that it can, the other thing I would say is younger me believed that creativity came from chaos and that can happen and more seasoned me knows that actually the right constraints create creativity. And so if you give people a customer problem to own and you give them the right objective and KR and you give them the vision,
Databox (55:30.352)
Mmm.
Databox (55:44.932)
resources that,
Chris Savage (55:45.44)
It feels like you're giving a lot of stuff, but ultimately you're actually giving them freedom to experiment within that space. And in a lot of, for most people, that's actually easier. And so they can be more creative with more structure. So don't be afraid of that. So it, doesn't happen overnight, but like with enough consistent effort, you can figure this out.
Databox (56:02.82)
Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Cool. If somebody wants to follow along with you, what's the best place to follow you?
Chris Savage (56:08.364)
Yeah, best place to follow me is LinkedIn, Chris Savage on LinkedIn. You can also check out my podcast, Talking Too Loud with Chris Savage, wherever podcasts are sold.
Databox (56:15.078)
Cool. Both things worth the follow. As you know, I follow you closely. I think I'm usually one of the first people to comment on your LinkedIn posts. You always have good intentions here. So thank you for that, Chris. Cool. Thank you very much for taking the hour with me here today and sharing the behind the scenes of how Wistia works. I think a lot of people will be well informed and be able to apply a lot of the stuff that you shared, both in terms of the practical things that you do to scale the business, but also like the mentality that you have.
Chris Savage (56:22.03)
Hahaha
Cool.
Databox (56:42.758)
on how you run the company. So thank you for sharing your insights.
Chris Savage (56:45.696)
Awesome, thanks for having me, this was fun.