March 19, 2025 • 43 mins
Why go to the store when you can buy from the comfort of your couch? In this episode, Chris chats with Eitan Koter, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Vimmi, a trailblazing company in video technology and e-commerce solutions. Eitan shares his journey from video compression to founding Vimmi and explains how his business helps brands monetize video content. Chris and Eitan also discuss the reason you’d bootstrap your company, the convergence of media and commerce, and the role of AI in the future of video marketing. Whether you're an entrepreneur or marketing professional, this episode will help you see that you should be thinking of harnessing the power of video for business growth.
Show Highlights
- (0:00) Intro
- (1:42) Eitan's background and the origins of Vimmi
- (5:01) What inspired Eitan to launch Vimmi
- (8:07) The bootstrapping behind Vimmi
- (12:40) The moment of validation for Vimmi
- (16:26) Who is Vimmi's primary target customer?
- (23:37) Launch your podcast with HumblePod!
- (24:19) How Vimmi navigates the differences in social media platforms
- (27:13) Chris's livestream fails and how to be authentic with your product/content
- (31:45) Why we make impulse purchases
- (34:10) Eitan's thoughts on the future of video and e-commerce
- (41:03) Where you can find more from Eitan and Vimmi
About Eitan Koter
Eitan Koter is the Co-founder and Co-CEO of Vimmi, a leading video commerce SaaS company providing multi-channel shoppable video and live shopping solutions to brands and retailers. With two decades of experience in startups and public companies, including a NASDAQ IPO, Eitan is a thought leader in video commerce, digital marketing, social commerce, and startup bootstrapping. He frequently speaks about futuristic immersive digital experiences and the convergence of media and commerce. As the host of the "Mastering eCommerce Marketing" podcast, he interviews brands, retailers, industry leaders and tech companies, sharing his thought leadership in video and e-commerce, drawing on his extensive industry experience.
Links
- Vimmi: https://vimmi.net/
- Eitan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eitankoter/
- We Built This Brand - “Finding the Empathy in Data with Ian Baer”: https://www.webuiltthisbrand.com/37
Start a podcast with HumblePod!
https://www.humblepod.com/our-services/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Every platform has its own ways of doing things.
Social commerce is increasing.
I mean, according to any data, it's, the latest
report I saw is gonna be like $8.2 trillion in 2030.
That's massive.
Probably around close to 20% of the overall e-commerce business, right?
So it's really substantial, and what drives this is the difficulties
(00:22):
to acquire new customers to your own amazing brand dot com website.
The rise of, you know, cost of advertising on Meta and on Amazon,
it's very competitive, and so, okay, so let's just deploy videos
and have, you know, give customers the ability to checkout
(00:43):
where they're spending most of their time on social media.
So that's what's driving, you know, this whole thing, you know, together.
Welcome to We Built This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the
creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with
practical insights that you can use in growing your own business.
Today, we're talking to Eitan Koter, co-founder of Vimmi, a company
(01:04):
specializing in video technologies and video commerce solutions.
This was a really neat interview.
We dive into his journey from working in video compression and broadcasting
to launching Vimmi, a company which helps brands monetize video content.
This episode dovetails nicely with Ian Baer's interview, which if you've
not watched it, I recommend you jump back and check that out as well.
(01:24):
So let's not delay it any further.
Here's my interview with Eitan Koter of Vimmi.
Eitan, welcome to We Built This Brand.
It's good to have you on today.
Wow.
We're really excited about this one, Chris.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You've had quite the journey in your career.
(01:44):
I was doing some research on your background and where you came
from and how you got to where you are today working with Vimmi.
And I would just love to dive in a little bit more on that.
And if you could tell me a little bit about where
you got your start and what led you to where you are.
Yeah.
So I started in the video business like more than two
decades ago, and my CEO just hired me back then said,
(02:06):
"Are you sure you want to go into the video business?
Because there's no way to get out.
You're going to stay here for your entire career." I said,
"Why?" Is that because video is just changing always.
It's revolutionizing, like, every few years, and you'll stop and you'll see.
So, yeah, I started, in a tech company.
It was really a startup.
We raised a lot of funds from VCs.
(02:27):
We even floated this company in NASDAQ.
It was a video compression company.
Here's all the days where the video was called probably
"broadcast" or, you know, we work with TV stations and helping
them in the transition from analog video to digital video.
And yeah, I mean, it was an amazing journey with the
(02:47):
companies composing of networks, and the president and,
you know, manage this company, also as a public company.
And, we saw that video is migrating from satellite and cable networks to IP.
I think we were quite
innovating back then with delivery or video over IP.
(03:08):
Today, of course, we have Netflix and Disney and all these video platforms.
It's quite obvious that video works very well.
Even 4K, right?
In terms of resolution over public networks, which are
unmanaged networks, but back then it wasn't like that.
And then in 2014, I founded with a partner, a co-founder of
(03:28):
mine, Vimmi, where we develop video technologies and video
monetization tools to help content providers and mobile
operators, to launch their own Netflix like services, right?
So direct-to-consumer video services.
And it's still, like, encompasses, like, a substantial
(03:49):
part of our revenues, and the last four years were totally
focused on this new and emerging video commerce space.
We took our existing technology and adapted it and productize it
towards the e-commerce space and today we work with brands and
(04:10):
helping them sell their products with video.
So in terms of the running company, so I, you know, as I
said, I managed, like, public companies and also raised a
lot of funds from VCs, but Vimmi, you're already 11 years in.
Already celebrating 11 years, and this is a bootstrap company.
So there are no external investors, and it's a different kind of a journey
(04:35):
from the management, the day-to-day activities, but the company is doing well.
Growing profitable company, and the idea is to serve more and just
focus on what we do best, which is video commerce today, and helping
our customers just sell more through through the power of video.
That's fascinating, and I'm a big fan of bootstrapping.
(04:56):
So, we're definitely going to spend some time
talking about that here in a little bit, but
what was the initial inspiration for Vimmi?
I mean you had all this video background.
I could understand wanting to start a video company, but you
said initially it was like Netflix for an individual broadcaster.
Tell me a little bit more about what that is and how that worked.
(05:17):
Yeah.
So the idea was that, you know, we saw the evolution of video and how video
is just taking more and more active role in variety of, let's, it's called
the media and entertainment use cases, but also marketing use cases, right?
So, I mean, Netflix and probably Disney, like Amazon Prime, and
those services are probably considered under media and entertainment.
(05:40):
And they are, today you see the transition from satellite and
cable networks towards those type of platforms, which are carried
over, the video is carried over it over the internet, and we have
customers that are serving millions of users on a daily basis.
So Vimmi is a B2B2C company.
Our customers are brands, or content providers, or mobile operators,
(06:04):
but the users are consumers who watch video, whether for entertainment
through these subscription to various packages, or to make a purchase.
Just to make a video and experience that is very, very interesting
and create a lot of, I would say impact and impulse purchase.
(06:26):
So the idea is to work and marketing, as you said, is moving to
1-on-1, of course, so we have customers in Asia that is serving
close to, like, 20 million users, okay, every day, right?
Just serving video on the limit platform, but on the other hand, like, brands
who are using video across multi channel, not only on their own website, but
(06:50):
also on their own social media accounts and marketplaces, just pushing these
videos, whether it's a live or non-live video, and maybe we can discuss about
the difference between those type of videos and just making this connection
and building the foundation for growth together with video, while using
(07:11):
video, as video is a very powerful tool to create this emotional connection.
There's a brand loyalty and moving into 1-on-1 kind of marketing
where you can interact in real time with users, respond to the
question over chat, like from within the video, and it's a really
specialized type of service that can gaining a lot of momentum.
Definitely in North America.
(07:31):
Do you think?
Yeah, it certainly is gaining a lot of momentum here.
I mean, as many of my listeners will probably know, I
mean, TikTok has really shifted to a marketplace platform.
At times it can feel like you're just on an infomercial website with how much
you have to scroll through, which I hope they get better balance about, but
(07:52):
it's definitely something that, you know, the overall is becoming a trend.
And you're seeing a lot of people even move to, "How can I sell?
How can I make money for myself?" in these kind of environments.
So, yeah, there's a lot out there.
So you mentioned your bootstrapped.
So talking about the inception of Vimmi, how, when I think
(08:14):
bootstrapped, obviously that means no investors, maybe
some credit card debt, but you did it all from scratch.
So did you start this?
Are you the developer here?
Did you have someone else who was helping with development?
Cause typically when I hear bootstrap, that means you got some
cash or you just know what you're doing and you know how to
get that base minimum viable product off the ground yourself.
Yes, there are a few ways to do that.
(08:35):
I'm the marketing customer facing.
My co-founder, I'm not sure if he's just managing R&D and operation.
So there was a very good demarcation.
This is very, very important.
First and foremost, like a co-founder, just what do you do every day?
There is no, you know, confusion, right?
So this demarcation is very, very important.
(08:55):
It is going very, very well over the year.
And obviously what we did initially is, to do some
consulting and some integration projects around video.
So we partnered with Cisco and Ericsson and some variety of companies
like that and build video networks for customers, which are more
just, you know, a work of design, importation, installation,
(09:18):
support, and this helps us a lot with the cash flow in the
initial days, just to put all the extra profits into development.
And we knew that we need to focus on large accounts just to help us scale
the company, and we were focusing primarily on these enterprise customers.
(09:38):
Again, so, we had a lot of enterprise experience people us in the industry, and
we just went there just to travel to a lot of exhibitions around the world and
used our networks to facilitate better connections with potential customers.
And we were lucky to win some substantial agreements that are still
carried on until these days, you know, even after 10 years of operation.
(10:02):
So these companies, it's usually like a year-long type of engagements
that are with a substantial income just to help us first serve the
customers in a very professional way but also continue investing
in development and R&D because you always need to continue
developing and invest in your future roadmaps and figure said.
(10:23):
So yeah, it's a combination of kind of a
mentality of being agile in your mindset.
We also use what they call like a narrow innovation type of, strategy.
We can call it also, like, "land and expand." So instead of just
developing a very broad solution that is maybe serving, you know, your
(10:43):
total addressable market, which is mainly billions of dollars, right?
This is nice to show investors the potential probably, but when you
are bootstrapping, you need to look for your $20 million market, right?
And just be very, very focused on what you do.
So like be very narrow in the functionality that you provide like
a laser focus and what you provide, minimal set of features serving
(11:08):
a very, very focused group of initial early adopters and users.
And once they feel that they are getting the response from us in a very,
like, on a daily basis just iterate and get their feedback and quickly develop
just for that specific customers, customer segment, then where the word of
(11:29):
mouth start to kick in and marketing costs are very, very low, and they're
introducing friends in their communities and helping us bring more customers.
And then from there, we'll just expand, and then expand
expanding your customer base and expanding your functionality.
So usually founders think they need to tell a big story.
(11:49):
It's good maybe for the vision side of things, but when you
execute and you want thinking about cash flow 24/7, you need to
make sure that you utilize your resources in a very effective way.
Just serve a very minimal set of customers
with a very minimal sets of functionalities.
Get feedbacks, iterate very fast on a daily basis and
grow from there and expand your solution and customer.
(12:12):
That's great.
I mean, when you're bootstrapping, and you're only reliant on the
money you bring in to grow the business, that's a smart way to operate.
And I mean, for myself, my business is also bootstrapped, so I feel you.
We're not developing technology.
We don't have developers, but we have editors and we have products
and services we can only offer once we have the bandwidth to do
(12:35):
it, and I think that's some good advice on how to do that too.
So that's great.
So as you were developing, as you were growing, I'd like to say
that every business has this moment of what I call validation.
It's like, I've got this great idea, and we might be getting
paid for it already, but like, this is my moment where I know
I'm on to something that's going to be really successful.
So what was that moment of validation for Vimmi?
(12:58):
Yes, I mean, this product market fit, it's like the main thing for any company.
I see, by the way, a lot of industries, like brands and service
companies, they're also implementing this type of lean startup
mentality and methodologies just to get there as fast as you can.
Talk to as many customers you can just to iterate and validate and
(13:19):
make sure product market fit just kicks in right in a right way.
And for us, I mean, there are two ways to do that, and depending
on the solution that you have in our side of the business, we have
these type of enterprise customers where say cycles are longer.
And it's a great statement of works, assigned project manager.
(13:40):
It's a very dedicated type of work, obviously, using our license
with a lot of adaptations and customization on top of it.
And on the other hand, you have these longer tail customers.
These are like, SaaS, you know, usually SaaS-based that are just signing up
for a solution and it can start with a free package, and maybe it's $149 or
(14:03):
something like that, and these are, like, it's a different type of marketing.
So first, you decide, you know, which type
of kinds of companies you want to approach.
The whole company culture, processes, job description
to accommodate this type of two different strategies.
So we knew that we are very good, again, from our background and
just working with those enterprise customers as to where we focus,
(14:26):
and on the one side, it's a lot of effort and you lose business
even after you work on an opportunity for six months, even.
But if you win one of the businesses, it's something
that's just going on and on for years if you're performing,
and the idea is to win more of these type of project.
From there, once you have the resources to allocate some marketing budgets
(14:49):
to more midsize or some longer type of customers, so this is where we always
start with the enterprise with a big customers and just went down from there.
It might work from for other companies and other entrepreneurs
where they have different background and different experience,
just probably working with his longer term customers.
But, as you know, customer acquisition is very,
(15:11):
very complicated these days, very difficult.
This is why, by the way, a lot of companies
and brands are going to social commerce.
This is why video is so powerful.
But the idea is to try to work closely and with
a customer that can spend a lot of time with you.
On the pre-sale side and understand your value, rather than just
(15:31):
going to these low touch customers where it just product led growth.
So you need to innovate the product, made a product like really, really shine.
Fine tune the product.
There is no sales, right?
So you do marketing, people are landing on your, on your pricing page.
And they set up and they can do it.
There is a conversion or not, right?
(15:52):
So there's nothing you can't talk to anyone.
You don't know who they are almost, and you need just
to make sure that the onboarding process makes sense.
And it's a different type of expertise than just.
Building this machine of going to a larger customer versus smaller customers.
So this is, this was the way that we been
successfully doing this for the last year.
(16:15):
There's a lot of experimentation where you're trying to figure out what
gets people in the door, what gets people to fill out the forms and make the
purchase and not leave it hanging in the order form and all that fun stuff.
So yeah, that's a lot to do and definitely a challenge moving to that model.
So within that, who is, you mentioned like starting with
larger companies and larger corporations and working your way
(16:37):
down, but who would you consider to be your primary target?
Like your primary target audience, primary target customer?
Yeah.
Today's a majority of retailers and brands.
Okay, larger on the larger side that they have internal executive
team and kind of a committee procurements type of approach.
So they're evaluating solutions.
(17:00):
The implementation takes longer, and these are companies that have substantial
amount of videos that are, they need a professional platform to manage all
these videos in a professional kind of a media assets management, and having
the ability to market and to publish those videos across many, many social
channels, publishers, marketplaces, their own digital assets in order to
(17:24):
make sales a frictionless or smooth experience for shoppers by implementing
all these interactive capabilities or interactive shopping capabilities
just are available like from within the video.
So each platform, whether it's YouTube or Instagram or
Facebook or Tiktok or Twitch or Pinterest, they're providing
(17:46):
different types of, I would say, shopability, right?
Or checkout capabilities.
It also depends a lot on Our customer, whether it's it has like certain
amount of followers or partnership arrangement with YouTube or others
that enable them to gain access to more functionalities in terms of just
(18:07):
implementing this conversion in a more intuitive and straightforward way.
But it's a platform that we provide, and it's just sync to
your customers, existing e-commerce platform and just help them
associate products to videos and just deploys these couple of
videos across all these destinations in a very easy way, right?
(18:29):
So usually they will hire teams just to manage those different
destinations because their API are changing like every week.
And so this is something that we do.
We manage those APIs, we'll make sure we fully updated and just, in one
click, you can deploy these videos and sales opportunities across all these
(18:53):
channels from from a single dashboard, let's say from a single console.
I think the breakthrough here, and it works both for live video and
online video, usually those short forms, short form video, vertical
videos, but also YouTube videos, which can be longer form videos.
More production capabilities, more editing capabilities
(19:15):
embedded, where short form is mostly authenticity, right?
And consistency.
So there is a different strategy that we teach for each one of
those video types and encourage customers just to make sure they
use the variety of those video types that are available out there.
And we know that those platforms are highly encouraging the
(19:36):
use of video because it just keeps users more on their platform
and the algorithm favors video, which is very, very important.
Yeah.
And in that distribution, I mean, I know from just production
work, like getting content online is its own hurdle.
It's its own challenge, and editing, producing that,
(19:58):
getting that done, it's its own, first challenge.
And then to, Get it to YouTube to get it to all those stations takes time.
So having a, from what it sounds like from what I've seen on your website,
what you've shared here, like getting it uploaded through your platform
allows people to do that better, but also it sounds like to be able to
track that data and that information as well for purchases and the ROI,
(20:20):
which is really important if you're going to spend, you know, X thousand,
you know, 15, 20, $50,000, on a video campaign, you want to see the
return on that, you know, go back to the products you're trying to sell.
So I can definitely see the value there.
Yes.
And analytics is a very important part.
I mean, we aggregate data from all the platforms that we distribute to, and we
(20:41):
just provide this as a dashboard and there is an AI that analyzes everything
and just recommend improvement of campaigns, whether it's, on the content itself
or just the length of it or time of the day and which platform works better.
And it's very, very powerful in terms of the way it operates.
So it's not just the ability to just post and publish those
(21:05):
videos, but all the redirects capabilities, for example, you want
to post on YouTube and maybe redirect it to your Amazon page.
So you manage all the "redirect to checkout,"
in a very easy way from our platform.
Like, for example, in Tiktok, you can checkout only on Tiktok.
They also provide Amazon Prime Checkout from within the
(21:25):
Tiktok app, for example, so you cannot redirect externally.
Tiktok will not allow you, but, on YouTube or Instagram, it's fine.
You can do that.
Okay, so every platform has its own ways of doing things.
Social commerce is increasing.
I mean, according to any data, it's, so the latest
(21:45):
report I saw is going to be like $8.2 trillion in 2030.
So that's massive, probably around close to 20
percent of the overall e-commerce business, right?
So it's really substantial.
And what drives this is the difficulties to acquire
new customers to your own amazing brand.com website.
(22:07):
The rise of, you know, cost of advertising on Meta and on Amazon.
It's very competitive, and so, okay, so let's just deploy
videos and have, you know, give customers the ability to
checkout where they spend most of their time on social media.
So that's what's driving, you know, this whole thing, you know, together.
(22:31):
I'm a big fan of that because my philosophy on social media since
the early days of social media marketing that I was in is that
people are lazy, and you need to make it as easy as possible
for them to click and purchase or click and fill out the form.
Whatever it is you want 'em to do.
Make if it can be done in one step, make it done in one step.
(22:52):
Yes.
And, of course, and all these platforms, I mean, TikTok
started as an entertainment platform, then it moves to
be a search platform, and now it's a shopping platform.
Okay, and YouTube is announcing always more and more capabilities and
functionalities, on their platform just to manage links and dynamic, you know,
(23:13):
clicks to checkout, and Meta are going to announce a lot of things around that.
And even today you have a Facebook shop and you can tag products
on Instagram and just make sure you checkout on Instagram.
So, that's big, and it's going to be bigger quite, quite substantially.
It doesn't matter if TikTok will be banned or not.
The trends to social commerce is just, is not going to stop and just started.
(23:41):
So
yes, you've got those challenges, and of course, you know, I would think another
big challenge for you all is the fact that every platform is like a different
language right now when, in terms of what they'll allow, what they won't allow.
So how does your platform solve that problem?
Yes.
I mean, what we found that this platform are very, very
professional and like, you know, they go into the details
(24:03):
and they test by themselves every aspect of our platform.
Like they really go, going live from the platform.
They make trouble videos.
They click to checkout.
They do a lot of things, and it's a very professional
process just to certify our platform over there.
But once you do that, there's an ongoing work just maintaining the
(24:25):
existing versions of APIs, but these API that keep updating all the time.
So we have, we are like, okay, technology partners, we have those
developer accounts for all these platforms, and we have internal teams
just managing this on a full-time basis just make sure, making sure that
we're fully up to date on those APIs and we're able to work with those
companies to provide more and more functionalities to our customers.
(24:47):
So that's like a dedicated team, we're just doing all that, and
the amount of channels is increasing like, you know, by the week.
There are a lot of specialized niches like in pets, for example.
So we got a list of different marketplaces and different platforms
that are very important for our customers to work with, and
(25:08):
we, this is one of our strengths, we move very, very fast.
We just connected these companies making sure we share our APIs and their show
theirs, and quickly doing the integration just to make sure that our customers
have the ability to deploy their products and videos across their targeted
list of marketplaces, social networks and publishers and affiliate partners.
(25:34):
So we're providing, for example, an embed code that you can
copy, take a simple JavaScript, copy and paste it on your
e-commerce platform, and you have that interactive video player.
It can be on the hero banner of the website or on the product
pages where companies can checkout from within the video.
That video, that simple JavaScript can be shared by a
(25:55):
customer with his own affiliates and online partners.
So they can also promote that videos and have
their commission from promoting this video.
So it's very easy just to embed the shoppable video and a lot of
shopping events on various platforms in the way that we've built the
platform, but of course, the major social networks and marketplaces,
(26:17):
it's API based and it's very, I mean, it's a dedicated team for us.
It's working, but for our customers, it's a seamless kind of experience.
Just the first thing you do when you start working on
the onboarding, you just connect, give us a credential.
You connect the social networks and that's it.
And every part of every video can be shoppable on these platforms.
And of course, you can go on live with
multi-channel on all these platforms together.
(26:39):
Nice.
Very nice.. Yeah, live stream.
I have PTSD flashbacks,
especially during the pandemic, we got called in to do live
stream work and it was like, okay, all right, we'll do it.
But I know how hard of a production that can be and how
hard that is to guarantee uptime and all that stuff.
(27:00):
So blessings on you all for doing that.
Yeah.
Look, there is expectation that live is, like, very complicated requires a lot
of production, time, and budget, but it doesn't have to be that way, right?
I think the new generation of shoppers, they don't care about, you know,
what type of background do you have or that they care about you as a person,
(27:23):
how authentic you are and how much time you show up and being consistent.
Yeah, founder-led content is the best marketing vehicle
out there these days, and it's full and it's free.
It's organic, okay?
So just open, you open your iPhone or
smartphone, just stop showing yourself out there.
(27:45):
Just create a list of customer pains and make sure you provide the right
content in the right stage of the marketing funnel where you are, right?
I mean, don't pitch your products always, and if no one
knows you and your brand, just provide value, right?
And if you're in an awareness stage, just provide
educational content, marketing information, right?
(28:07):
Your checklist, don't push your product.
And if you are in, your customers are considering various options, like in
the consideration phase, don't be afraid to provide competitive information.
Share information about yourr
competitors, because this will be very, very respected by your
potential customers, because you said a lot of time for them.
(28:29):
They know who your competitors are anyhow.
So just provide that information, but don't be afraid to do that.
Like how to in case studies during this consideration phase,
and when you are in this decision, your customers are in
the decision phase, yeah, just provide product information.
Like, case studies and testimonials.
Try to highlight your unique selling point and provide those prices.
(28:51):
And this is where an example video and those immediate conversion are
very, very powerful because we know e-commerce works on impulse purchase.
Like, video just provides more layers of emotional triggers and
psychological level that is like the next generation of impulse purchase.
So if you just scroll over the social media, whether it's TikTok,
(29:12):
Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and then all of a sudden you
see a video that's probably, you know, make some kind of an
impact and we make the decision in less than 2 seconds, right?
I think the response time is like 1.27 seconds that will
make a decision whether to continue scrolling or stop.
It's happened like automatic.
It's the automatic part of the reptilian part of our brain.
(29:37):
So, if you are just showing yourself there, being consistent,
this is a very, very powerful way, probably heard the term UGC,
which is user generated content, content creators by creators.
This is being created by creators for brands, so,
that's great, but also what's working today very, very
(29:57):
strongly is is EGC, which is employee generated content.
So use your team, use the founders, use the executive team to create content.
I think it's a must.
It's it should be like in the job description
of every everyone out there creating content.
Think about it.
You see content.
It comes up from various part of the company from various stakeholders.
(30:18):
The impact is very, very powerful.
It's like a snowball, right?
And the conversion rates will increase and that
cost of marketing will go down and sales will go up.
We see that like every day.
And that, and that makes a lot of sense for me.
I mean, I'm laughing because we've done some stuff for
HumblePod that is very silly, but with the intent of like
getting my employee involved in the content, you know?
(30:40):
Getting the team involved in the creation and the process so that it's not
just me standing up there, and so that people at least know another face
in the company, but also, you know, that helps reach their network too,
and broadcast what we're doing too an even larger network by doing that.
So yeah, it makes total sense to me.
Yeah, you touched on a lot there.
(31:01):
So I'm just, I'm reeling here trying to think of
where to go from that, but it was really good.
The impulse purchasing too, I'll throw this out here.
I talked to another guy recently,
andd he was talking about there has been a massive
increase in impulse purchases over the past year.
People are making less informed impulse decisions than we've made
(31:21):
in the past for things, and I think a lot of that comes from this,
you know, "Hey, we're presenting you with this information," and
like, I've noticed, like, if I click on a certain, you know, product
within, TikTok just to look at it because I'm curious, like, "Oh,
there's this dumb t-shirt with a raccoon on it, but I find it funny.
I'm going to click on it." All of a sudden that raccoon, like 15 other people
(31:43):
show up trying to advertise the same raccoon t-shirt to me and try to push
that on me. And eventually you're just like, "All right, well, that's it.
I'm going to do it." And you make that purchase decision.
There is a psychological explanation for this.
I mean, Daniel Kahneman, which is a Nobel prize winner,
just, you know, shared with us here that 95 percent
(32:04):
of our daily decision is we do it from our instinct.
We don't think about it.
It's, you know, it's the system one of our brain, which is not the, you know,
frontal part of our brain, which you just make decision in an automatic way.
So we do that impulse purchase, and after we did it,
we justify to ourself why it was a small decision.
And then we use, right, the system two, which is our thinking brain.
(32:28):
So with every, we do everything on it based on instincts,
and then we justify it to ourselves, you know, after that.
So that's route proven and yes, video makes
it this extra push much more powerful.
Yeah, for sure.
Cause then you can see it, you can feel it in any more like retail,
like especially for me, I'm being in media production, right?
(32:51):
This microphone, the camera that I'm talking to you on, I researched
the heck out of it on YouTube, made sure I was getting the right
thing, make sure I was getting something I was going to be pleased
with, you know, and everything pretty much starts with a YouTube
search because I can't just walk into a store and buy this.
I have to learn from someone online.
Hey, this is what works.
(33:11):
This is what doesn't.
Or get really lucky and know someone in town who already has one
and can tell me about it and vouch for it So when you've got an
influencer online that can vouch for that product and you've already
bought something out of their recommendation you can trust them.
You're going to continue that process.
So yeah video is very powerful very, very powerful.
(33:31):
Yeah.
So what, what are some things that are top of mind for
you right now, as, as we look at the future of video
over the next couple of years, where do you see it going?
So, the big thing here is the convergence of media and commerce.
Okay.
So this is something, you know, being in the industry for more
(33:54):
than two decades is something that we were waiting for, right?
I mean, just see what happens during the last year.
So Walmart acquires video, right?
So what's for a retailer and a TV manufacturer, TV, you
know, kind of a medium entertainment type of a provider.
JP Morgan launching, you know, Chase Media Solution.
(34:14):
Instacart shoppers with YouTube on shoppable ads.
You know, Costco launched a retail media network.
Best Buy and CNET, I mean, you see retailers, big retailers,
just making a transition to become a content and media houses.
And also the traditional media companies, they are transitioning with
merchandising and everything to be kind of a retailer or an e-commerce platform.
(34:35):
So It's all comes comes together video is just making, just to keep
drivers for all of it because we like to be entertained, and it
needs to have the right mix of entertainment/knowledge and commerce.
So these are the mega opportunities we know that there is a big
topic around retail media where the retailers are trying to utilize
(34:59):
their offline and digital assets just to sell more ad space, right?
When you can see the crazy result from Amazon and Walmart
and others on the amount of revenues that generated
just from digital advertising platform, which is huge.
So, these are major, major theme.
Again, marketing, as we spoke previously, just spoken to this 1-on-1
(35:20):
type of effort, and today with AI, which is, I think has a lot of great,
implementation today, you know, in marketing, and obviously where it's going
with avatars, and it will work for many, many use cases in terms of marketing.
And then just create, I just, I'm just testing a few
(35:42):
tools that just creating a digital clone of myself.
And it's amazing, right?
It's not there, right?
It's obvious that it's not human.
It's a machine, but it's for some, for example, training or customer support?
It's fine, right?
But maybe for those sales event, it's not
there yet, but definitely it will be there.
(36:03):
So, like today, you can work with AI avatars
to create some variety of gamification.
For example, when you're waiting for this live event, okay,
and they're like a few minutes left and people are joining.
And you need to work with his avatar just to create some
entertainment kind of like games during before the event starts.
(36:24):
And we are implementing this type of thing
because we see that it's really working.
So definitely using AI in a much meaningful way just to make sure
we provide more innovation and streamline processes and costs.
AI is such a fascinating tool, and I do think it's a tool.
I don't think it's necessarily a weapon or
(36:45):
something that's going to kill everyone's job.
Although, there are moments there's going to be fits and spurts
of that, but yeah, AI and video to me is really fascinating.
Like you said, making a clone of yourself.
I've definitely seen some of that, but I think, I wonder with sales,
how that's going to go down because sales is very trust oriented,
especially when you have a one to one connection with someone,
(37:06):
and, you know, unless you're used to that avatar being the thing
that you interface with, you know, would you come back to that?
Would you trust that kind of a recommendation?
I guess if it was undetectably an avatar, that'd be one
thing, but if it's not, you know, where does that leave us?
Yes, I think in some of, there are a lot of, like, use cases where the product
(37:29):
price is not probably high, maybe up to $100 or something, you don't, you
are anyhow doing the research on your own as you share previously, right?
You're doing like 90 percent of the process on your own, and
probably you select something, and then probably you need
to talk to someone just to give you the best price, right?
So we don't want to build a relationship with anyone.
I just want to buy the product.
So, for this lot cover the smaller, you know ticket items.
(37:54):
You can get a response from my avatar, they can provide you
the answer, and you just click to checkout, but for those
longer sale cycles, we need to build a relationship and make
sure there's a building like relationship and trust building
and having the ability to communicate and trust someone on
a longer term, then look, we are a social creature, right?
(38:16):
We like this oxytocin urethane smell, just, you know,
we need to provide the human touch is so, so important.
Definitely have to cover it when we go to exhibition or
try to be, to meet as much, as many people as we can.
So, this is this will always be, and we see
like in the retail space, I think e-commerce is
(38:38):
20 to 23 percent of the overall retail business in the US, right?
So, like, 75 percent is still happening offline, and there is no, it's not going
to change according to any report, but that digital experience is just maybe a
quarter of the overall retail experience, and it's going to be there like that.
Like, in China, by the way, it's like more than 90 percent of retail is online.
(39:03):
I think the U.S. is just the other way around because
all
those, new technologies around the
(39:38):
digital experience
and
also on the offline experience, so this is like an amazing
use case for me that I really, you know, very, I'm very
(40:00):
much interested in follow, but I need doing a major job.
Yeah that's great, and yeah, I've noticed Walmart, I was actually surprised.
I went on their website just this past week and was looking around, and
the ways that they have innovated and changed surprised me, frankly,
because I'm used to being more of a static site, and you might be able to
(40:21):
see what's in stock online versus in the store near you, and that's it.
But yeah, they're definitely making some big changes.
So that's really neat.
And that'll be interesting to watch over the coming year.
So the AI product recommendation is really amazing.
Just, you know, do you have the shopping cart?
I mean, if it's a grocery, so that shopping cart is ready for
(40:41):
you to know everything, you know what you need to purchase.
And it's very, very smart.
So just it's such such a fictionless type
of experience, which is very, very unique.
Yeah.
And if you need to buy and not think that's a real big
help because shopping is a huge weight, as you can imagine,
(41:02):
having to get out to the shops and get the
food and come home, especially with kids.
Oh my gosh.
Well, that's great.
Well, Eitan thank you for your time today.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
There's aa lot that Vimmi is doing and, I
can't wait to continue to see its growth.
But where can people find you and where can they connect with Vimmi?
Yeah, so we are at vimmi.net.
(41:23):
It's v-i-m-m-i-dot-net, where you can start
just, you have like a free for life package.
You can start trouble video, live shopping, social commerce, and if you
need more capabilities, just grow with the different packages out there.
And personally, I post on LinkedIn a lot of, about,
video marketing, video commerce, social commerce.
That's on my personal LinkedIn account, Eitan Koter, E-I-T-A-N.
(41:47):
K-O-T-E-R.
Alrighty.
Well, sir, thank you for your time today.
Thank you, Chris.
It was really a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand.
Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice.
You can also keep up on the podcast on our website at webuiltthisbrand.com.
(42:08):
If you like this episode, please give the podcast a five star review and make
sure to tell all your friends about it so we can continue to build this brand.
Every platform has its own ways of doing things.
Social commerce is increasing.
I mean, according to any data, it's, the latest
report I saw is gonna be like $8.2 trillion in 2030.
That's massive.
Probably around close to 20% of the overall e-commerce business, right?
So it's really substantial, and what drives this is the difficulties
(00:22):
to acquire new customers to your own amazing brand dot com website.
The rise of, you know, cost of advertising on Meta and on Amazon,
it's very competitive, and so, okay, so let's just deploy videos
and have, you know, give customers the ability to checkout
(00:43):
where they're spending most of their time on social media.
So that's what's driving, you know, this whole thing, you know, together.
Welcome to We Built This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the
creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with
practical insights that you can use in growing your own business.
Today, we're talking to Eitan Koter, co-founder of Vimmi, a company
(01:04):
specializing in video technologies and video commerce solutions.
This was a really neat interview.
We dive into his journey from working in video compression and broadcasting
to launching Vimmi, a company which helps brands monetize video content.
This episode dovetails nicely with Ian Baer's interview, which if you've
not watched it, I recommend you jump back and check that out as well.
(01:24):
So let's not delay it any further.
Here's my interview with Eitan Koter of Vimmi.
Eitan, welcome to We Built This Brand.
It's good to have you on today.
Wow.
We're really excited about this one, Chris.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You've had quite the journey in your career.
(01:44):
I was doing some research on your background and where you came
from and how you got to where you are today working with Vimmi.
And I would just love to dive in a little bit more on that.
And if you could tell me a little bit about where
you got your start and what led you to where you are.
Yeah.
So I started in the video business like more than two
decades ago, and my CEO just hired me back then said,
(02:06):
"Are you sure you want to go into the video business?
Because there's no way to get out.
You're going to stay here for your entire career." I said,
"Why?" Is that because video is just changing always.
It's revolutionizing, like, every few years, and you'll stop and you'll see.
So, yeah, I started, in a tech company.
It was really a startup.
We raised a lot of funds from VCs.
(02:27):
We even floated this company in NASDAQ.
It was a video compression company.
Here's all the days where the video was called probably
"broadcast" or, you know, we work with TV stations and helping
them in the transition from analog video to digital video.
And yeah, I mean, it was an amazing journey with the
(02:47):
companies composing of networks, and the president and,
you know, manage this company, also as a public company.
And, we saw that video is migrating from satellite and cable networks to IP.
I think we were quite
innovating back then with delivery or video over IP.
(03:08):
Today, of course, we have Netflix and Disney and all these video platforms.
It's quite obvious that video works very well.
Even 4K, right?
In terms of resolution over public networks, which are
unmanaged networks, but back then it wasn't like that.
And then in 2014, I founded with a partner, a co-founder of
(03:28):
mine, Vimmi, where we develop video technologies and video
monetization tools to help content providers and mobile
operators, to launch their own Netflix like services, right?
So direct-to-consumer video services.
And it's still, like, encompasses, like, a substantial
(03:49):
part of our revenues, and the last four years were totally
focused on this new and emerging video commerce space.
We took our existing technology and adapted it and productize it
towards the e-commerce space and today we work with brands and
(04:10):
helping them sell their products with video.
So in terms of the running company, so I, you know, as I
said, I managed, like, public companies and also raised a
lot of funds from VCs, but Vimmi, you're already 11 years in.
Already celebrating 11 years, and this is a bootstrap company.
So there are no external investors, and it's a different kind of a journey
(04:35):
from the management, the day-to-day activities, but the company is doing well.
Growing profitable company, and the idea is to serve more and just
focus on what we do best, which is video commerce today, and helping
our customers just sell more through through the power of video.
That's fascinating, and I'm a big fan of bootstrapping.
(04:56):
So, we're definitely going to spend some time
talking about that here in a little bit, but
what was the initial inspiration for Vimmi?
I mean you had all this video background.
I could understand wanting to start a video company, but you
said initially it was like Netflix for an individual broadcaster.
Tell me a little bit more about what that is and how that worked.
(05:17):
Yeah.
So the idea was that, you know, we saw the evolution of video and how video
is just taking more and more active role in variety of, let's, it's called
the media and entertainment use cases, but also marketing use cases, right?
So, I mean, Netflix and probably Disney, like Amazon Prime, and
those services are probably considered under media and entertainment.
(05:40):
And they are, today you see the transition from satellite and
cable networks towards those type of platforms, which are carried
over, the video is carried over it over the internet, and we have
customers that are serving millions of users on a daily basis.
So Vimmi is a B2B2C company.
Our customers are brands, or content providers, or mobile operators,
(06:04):
but the users are consumers who watch video, whether for entertainment
through these subscription to various packages, or to make a purchase.
Just to make a video and experience that is very, very interesting
and create a lot of, I would say impact and impulse purchase.
(06:26):
So the idea is to work and marketing, as you said, is moving to
1-on-1, of course, so we have customers in Asia that is serving
close to, like, 20 million users, okay, every day, right?
Just serving video on the limit platform, but on the other hand, like, brands
who are using video across multi channel, not only on their own website, but
(06:50):
also on their own social media accounts and marketplaces, just pushing these
videos, whether it's a live or non-live video, and maybe we can discuss about
the difference between those type of videos and just making this connection
and building the foundation for growth together with video, while using
(07:11):
video, as video is a very powerful tool to create this emotional connection.
There's a brand loyalty and moving into 1-on-1 kind of marketing
where you can interact in real time with users, respond to the
question over chat, like from within the video, and it's a really
specialized type of service that can gaining a lot of momentum.
Definitely in North America.
(07:31):
Do you think?
Yeah, it certainly is gaining a lot of momentum here.
I mean, as many of my listeners will probably know, I
mean, TikTok has really shifted to a marketplace platform.
At times it can feel like you're just on an infomercial website with how much
you have to scroll through, which I hope they get better balance about, but
(07:52):
it's definitely something that, you know, the overall is becoming a trend.
And you're seeing a lot of people even move to, "How can I sell?
How can I make money for myself?" in these kind of environments.
So, yeah, there's a lot out there.
So you mentioned your bootstrapped.
So talking about the inception of Vimmi, how, when I think
(08:14):
bootstrapped, obviously that means no investors, maybe
some credit card debt, but you did it all from scratch.
So did you start this?
Are you the developer here?
Did you have someone else who was helping with development?
Cause typically when I hear bootstrap, that means you got some
cash or you just know what you're doing and you know how to
get that base minimum viable product off the ground yourself.
Yes, there are a few ways to do that.
(08:35):
I'm the marketing customer facing.
My co-founder, I'm not sure if he's just managing R&D and operation.
So there was a very good demarcation.
This is very, very important.
First and foremost, like a co-founder, just what do you do every day?
There is no, you know, confusion, right?
So this demarcation is very, very important.
(08:55):
It is going very, very well over the year.
And obviously what we did initially is, to do some
consulting and some integration projects around video.
So we partnered with Cisco and Ericsson and some variety of companies
like that and build video networks for customers, which are more
just, you know, a work of design, importation, installation,
(09:18):
support, and this helps us a lot with the cash flow in the
initial days, just to put all the extra profits into development.
And we knew that we need to focus on large accounts just to help us scale
the company, and we were focusing primarily on these enterprise customers.
(09:38):
Again, so, we had a lot of enterprise experience people us in the industry, and
we just went there just to travel to a lot of exhibitions around the world and
used our networks to facilitate better connections with potential customers.
And we were lucky to win some substantial agreements that are still
carried on until these days, you know, even after 10 years of operation.
(10:02):
So these companies, it's usually like a year-long type of engagements
that are with a substantial income just to help us first serve the
customers in a very professional way but also continue investing
in development and R&D because you always need to continue
developing and invest in your future roadmaps and figure said.
(10:23):
So yeah, it's a combination of kind of a
mentality of being agile in your mindset.
We also use what they call like a narrow innovation type of, strategy.
We can call it also, like, "land and expand." So instead of just
developing a very broad solution that is maybe serving, you know, your
(10:43):
total addressable market, which is mainly billions of dollars, right?
This is nice to show investors the potential probably, but when you
are bootstrapping, you need to look for your $20 million market, right?
And just be very, very focused on what you do.
So like be very narrow in the functionality that you provide like
a laser focus and what you provide, minimal set of features serving
(11:08):
a very, very focused group of initial early adopters and users.
And once they feel that they are getting the response from us in a very,
like, on a daily basis just iterate and get their feedback and quickly develop
just for that specific customers, customer segment, then where the word of
(11:29):
mouth start to kick in and marketing costs are very, very low, and they're
introducing friends in their communities and helping us bring more customers.
And then from there, we'll just expand, and then expand
expanding your customer base and expanding your functionality.
So usually founders think they need to tell a big story.
(11:49):
It's good maybe for the vision side of things, but when you
execute and you want thinking about cash flow 24/7, you need to
make sure that you utilize your resources in a very effective way.
Just serve a very minimal set of customers
with a very minimal sets of functionalities.
Get feedbacks, iterate very fast on a daily basis and
grow from there and expand your solution and customer.
(12:12):
That's great.
I mean, when you're bootstrapping, and you're only reliant on the
money you bring in to grow the business, that's a smart way to operate.
And I mean, for myself, my business is also bootstrapped, so I feel you.
We're not developing technology.
We don't have developers, but we have editors and we have products
and services we can only offer once we have the bandwidth to do
(12:35):
it, and I think that's some good advice on how to do that too.
So that's great.
So as you were developing, as you were growing, I'd like to say
that every business has this moment of what I call validation.
It's like, I've got this great idea, and we might be getting
paid for it already, but like, this is my moment where I know
I'm on to something that's going to be really successful.
So what was that moment of validation for Vimmi?
(12:58):
Yes, I mean, this product market fit, it's like the main thing for any company.
I see, by the way, a lot of industries, like brands and service
companies, they're also implementing this type of lean startup
mentality and methodologies just to get there as fast as you can.
Talk to as many customers you can just to iterate and validate and
(13:19):
make sure product market fit just kicks in right in a right way.
And for us, I mean, there are two ways to do that, and depending
on the solution that you have in our side of the business, we have
these type of enterprise customers where say cycles are longer.
And it's a great statement of works, assigned project manager.
(13:40):
It's a very dedicated type of work, obviously, using our license
with a lot of adaptations and customization on top of it.
And on the other hand, you have these longer tail customers.
These are like, SaaS, you know, usually SaaS-based that are just signing up
for a solution and it can start with a free package, and maybe it's $149 or
(14:03):
something like that, and these are, like, it's a different type of marketing.
So first, you decide, you know, which type
of kinds of companies you want to approach.
The whole company culture, processes, job description
to accommodate this type of two different strategies.
So we knew that we are very good, again, from our background and
just working with those enterprise customers as to where we focus,
(14:26):
and on the one side, it's a lot of effort and you lose business
even after you work on an opportunity for six months, even.
But if you win one of the businesses, it's something
that's just going on and on for years if you're performing,
and the idea is to win more of these type of project.
From there, once you have the resources to allocate some marketing budgets
(14:49):
to more midsize or some longer type of customers, so this is where we always
start with the enterprise with a big customers and just went down from there.
It might work from for other companies and other entrepreneurs
where they have different background and different experience,
just probably working with his longer term customers.
But, as you know, customer acquisition is very,
(15:11):
very complicated these days, very difficult.
This is why, by the way, a lot of companies
and brands are going to social commerce.
This is why video is so powerful.
But the idea is to try to work closely and with
a customer that can spend a lot of time with you.
On the pre-sale side and understand your value, rather than just
(15:31):
going to these low touch customers where it just product led growth.
So you need to innovate the product, made a product like really, really shine.
Fine tune the product.
There is no sales, right?
So you do marketing, people are landing on your, on your pricing page.
And they set up and they can do it.
There is a conversion or not, right?
(15:52):
So there's nothing you can't talk to anyone.
You don't know who they are almost, and you need just
to make sure that the onboarding process makes sense.
And it's a different type of expertise than just.
Building this machine of going to a larger customer versus smaller customers.
So this is, this was the way that we been
successfully doing this for the last year.
(16:15):
There's a lot of experimentation where you're trying to figure out what
gets people in the door, what gets people to fill out the forms and make the
purchase and not leave it hanging in the order form and all that fun stuff.
So yeah, that's a lot to do and definitely a challenge moving to that model.
So within that, who is, you mentioned like starting with
larger companies and larger corporations and working your way
(16:37):
down, but who would you consider to be your primary target?
Like your primary target audience, primary target customer?
Yeah.
Today's a majority of retailers and brands.
Okay, larger on the larger side that they have internal executive
team and kind of a committee procurements type of approach.
So they're evaluating solutions.
(17:00):
The implementation takes longer, and these are companies that have substantial
amount of videos that are, they need a professional platform to manage all
these videos in a professional kind of a media assets management, and having
the ability to market and to publish those videos across many, many social
channels, publishers, marketplaces, their own digital assets in order to
(17:24):
make sales a frictionless or smooth experience for shoppers by implementing
all these interactive capabilities or interactive shopping capabilities
just are available like from within the video.
So each platform, whether it's YouTube or Instagram or
Facebook or Tiktok or Twitch or Pinterest, they're providing
(17:46):
different types of, I would say, shopability, right?
Or checkout capabilities.
It also depends a lot on Our customer, whether it's it has like certain
amount of followers or partnership arrangement with YouTube or others
that enable them to gain access to more functionalities in terms of just
(18:07):
implementing this conversion in a more intuitive and straightforward way.
But it's a platform that we provide, and it's just sync to
your customers, existing e-commerce platform and just help them
associate products to videos and just deploys these couple of
videos across all these destinations in a very easy way, right?
(18:29):
So usually they will hire teams just to manage those different
destinations because their API are changing like every week.
And so this is something that we do.
We manage those APIs, we'll make sure we fully updated and just, in one
click, you can deploy these videos and sales opportunities across all these
(18:53):
channels from from a single dashboard, let's say from a single console.
I think the breakthrough here, and it works both for live video and
online video, usually those short forms, short form video, vertical
videos, but also YouTube videos, which can be longer form videos.
More production capabilities, more editing capabilities
(19:15):
embedded, where short form is mostly authenticity, right?
And consistency.
So there is a different strategy that we teach for each one of
those video types and encourage customers just to make sure they
use the variety of those video types that are available out there.
And we know that those platforms are highly encouraging the
(19:36):
use of video because it just keeps users more on their platform
and the algorithm favors video, which is very, very important.
Yeah.
And in that distribution, I mean, I know from just production
work, like getting content online is its own hurdle.
It's its own challenge, and editing, producing that,
(19:58):
getting that done, it's its own, first challenge.
And then to, Get it to YouTube to get it to all those stations takes time.
So having a, from what it sounds like from what I've seen on your website,
what you've shared here, like getting it uploaded through your platform
allows people to do that better, but also it sounds like to be able to
track that data and that information as well for purchases and the ROI,
(20:20):
which is really important if you're going to spend, you know, X thousand,
you know, 15, 20, $50,000, on a video campaign, you want to see the
return on that, you know, go back to the products you're trying to sell.
So I can definitely see the value there.
Yes.
And analytics is a very important part.
I mean, we aggregate data from all the platforms that we distribute to, and we
(20:41):
just provide this as a dashboard and there is an AI that analyzes everything
and just recommend improvement of campaigns, whether it's, on the content itself
or just the length of it or time of the day and which platform works better.
And it's very, very powerful in terms of the way it operates.
So it's not just the ability to just post and publish those
(21:05):
videos, but all the redirects capabilities, for example, you want
to post on YouTube and maybe redirect it to your Amazon page.
So you manage all the "redirect to checkout,"
in a very easy way from our platform.
Like, for example, in Tiktok, you can checkout only on Tiktok.
They also provide Amazon Prime Checkout from within the
(21:25):
Tiktok app, for example, so you cannot redirect externally.
Tiktok will not allow you, but, on YouTube or Instagram, it's fine.
You can do that.
Okay, so every platform has its own ways of doing things.
Social commerce is increasing.
I mean, according to any data, it's, so the latest
(21:45):
report I saw is going to be like $8.2 trillion in 2030.
So that's massive, probably around close to 20
percent of the overall e-commerce business, right?
So it's really substantial.
And what drives this is the difficulties to acquire
new customers to your own amazing brand.com website.
(22:07):
The rise of, you know, cost of advertising on Meta and on Amazon.
It's very competitive, and so, okay, so let's just deploy
videos and have, you know, give customers the ability to
checkout where they spend most of their time on social media.
So that's what's driving, you know, this whole thing, you know, together.
(22:31):
I'm a big fan of that because my philosophy on social media since
the early days of social media marketing that I was in is that
people are lazy, and you need to make it as easy as possible
for them to click and purchase or click and fill out the form.
Whatever it is you want 'em to do.
Make if it can be done in one step, make it done in one step.
(22:52):
Yes.
And, of course, and all these platforms, I mean, TikTok
started as an entertainment platform, then it moves to
be a search platform, and now it's a shopping platform.
Okay, and YouTube is announcing always more and more capabilities and
functionalities, on their platform just to manage links and dynamic, you know,
(23:13):
clicks to checkout, and Meta are going to announce a lot of things around that.
And even today you have a Facebook shop and you can tag products
on Instagram and just make sure you checkout on Instagram.
So, that's big, and it's going to be bigger quite, quite substantially.
It doesn't matter if TikTok will be banned or not.
The trends to social commerce is just, is not going to stop and just started.
(23:41):
So
yes, you've got those challenges, and of course, you know, I would think another
big challenge for you all is the fact that every platform is like a different
language right now when, in terms of what they'll allow, what they won't allow.
So how does your platform solve that problem?
Yes.
I mean, what we found that this platform are very, very
professional and like, you know, they go into the details
(24:03):
and they test by themselves every aspect of our platform.
Like they really go, going live from the platform.
They make trouble videos.
They click to checkout.
They do a lot of things, and it's a very professional
process just to certify our platform over there.
But once you do that, there's an ongoing work just maintaining the
(24:25):
existing versions of APIs, but these API that keep updating all the time.
So we have, we are like, okay, technology partners, we have those
developer accounts for all these platforms, and we have internal teams
just managing this on a full-time basis just make sure, making sure that
we're fully up to date on those APIs and we're able to work with those
companies to provide more and more functionalities to our customers.
(24:47):
So that's like a dedicated team, we're just doing all that, and
the amount of channels is increasing like, you know, by the week.
There are a lot of specialized niches like in pets, for example.
So we got a list of different marketplaces and different platforms
that are very important for our customers to work with, and
(25:08):
we, this is one of our strengths, we move very, very fast.
We just connected these companies making sure we share our APIs and their show
theirs, and quickly doing the integration just to make sure that our customers
have the ability to deploy their products and videos across their targeted
list of marketplaces, social networks and publishers and affiliate partners.
(25:34):
So we're providing, for example, an embed code that you can
copy, take a simple JavaScript, copy and paste it on your
e-commerce platform, and you have that interactive video player.
It can be on the hero banner of the website or on the product
pages where companies can checkout from within the video.
That video, that simple JavaScript can be shared by a
(25:55):
customer with his own affiliates and online partners.
So they can also promote that videos and have
their commission from promoting this video.
So it's very easy just to embed the shoppable video and a lot of
shopping events on various platforms in the way that we've built the
platform, but of course, the major social networks and marketplaces,
(26:17):
it's API based and it's very, I mean, it's a dedicated team for us.
It's working, but for our customers, it's a seamless kind of experience.
Just the first thing you do when you start working on
the onboarding, you just connect, give us a credential.
You connect the social networks and that's it.
And every part of every video can be shoppable on these platforms.
And of course, you can go on live with
multi-channel on all these platforms together.
(26:39):
Nice.
Very nice.. Yeah, live stream.
I have PTSD flashbacks,
especially during the pandemic, we got called in to do live
stream work and it was like, okay, all right, we'll do it.
But I know how hard of a production that can be and how
hard that is to guarantee uptime and all that stuff.
(27:00):
So blessings on you all for doing that.
Yeah.
Look, there is expectation that live is, like, very complicated requires a lot
of production, time, and budget, but it doesn't have to be that way, right?
I think the new generation of shoppers, they don't care about, you know,
what type of background do you have or that they care about you as a person,
(27:23):
how authentic you are and how much time you show up and being consistent.
Yeah, founder-led content is the best marketing vehicle
out there these days, and it's full and it's free.
It's organic, okay?
So just open, you open your iPhone or
smartphone, just stop showing yourself out there.
(27:45):
Just create a list of customer pains and make sure you provide the right
content in the right stage of the marketing funnel where you are, right?
I mean, don't pitch your products always, and if no one
knows you and your brand, just provide value, right?
And if you're in an awareness stage, just provide
educational content, marketing information, right?
(28:07):
Your checklist, don't push your product.
And if you are in, your customers are considering various options, like in
the consideration phase, don't be afraid to provide competitive information.
Share information about yourr
competitors, because this will be very, very respected by your
potential customers, because you said a lot of time for them.
(28:29):
They know who your competitors are anyhow.
So just provide that information, but don't be afraid to do that.
Like how to in case studies during this consideration phase,
and when you are in this decision, your customers are in
the decision phase, yeah, just provide product information.
Like, case studies and testimonials.
Try to highlight your unique selling point and provide those prices.
(28:51):
And this is where an example video and those immediate conversion are
very, very powerful because we know e-commerce works on impulse purchase.
Like, video just provides more layers of emotional triggers and
psychological level that is like the next generation of impulse purchase.
So if you just scroll over the social media, whether it's TikTok,
(29:12):
Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and then all of a sudden you
see a video that's probably, you know, make some kind of an
impact and we make the decision in less than 2 seconds, right?
I think the response time is like 1.27 seconds that will
make a decision whether to continue scrolling or stop.
It's happened like automatic.
It's the automatic part of the reptilian part of our brain.
(29:37):
So, if you are just showing yourself there, being consistent,
this is a very, very powerful way, probably heard the term UGC,
which is user generated content, content creators by creators.
This is being created by creators for brands, so,
that's great, but also what's working today very, very
(29:57):
strongly is is EGC, which is employee generated content.
So use your team, use the founders, use the executive team to create content.
I think it's a must.
It's it should be like in the job description
of every everyone out there creating content.
Think about it.
You see content.
It comes up from various part of the company from various stakeholders.
(30:18):
The impact is very, very powerful.
It's like a snowball, right?
And the conversion rates will increase and that
cost of marketing will go down and sales will go up.
We see that like every day.
And that, and that makes a lot of sense for me.
I mean, I'm laughing because we've done some stuff for
HumblePod that is very silly, but with the intent of like
getting my employee involved in the content, you know?
(30:40):
Getting the team involved in the creation and the process so that it's not
just me standing up there, and so that people at least know another face
in the company, but also, you know, that helps reach their network too,
and broadcast what we're doing too an even larger network by doing that.
So yeah, it makes total sense to me.
Yeah, you touched on a lot there.
(31:01):
So I'm just, I'm reeling here trying to think of
where to go from that, but it was really good.
The impulse purchasing too, I'll throw this out here.
I talked to another guy recently,
andd he was talking about there has been a massive
increase in impulse purchases over the past year.
People are making less informed impulse decisions than we've made
(31:21):
in the past for things, and I think a lot of that comes from this,
you know, "Hey, we're presenting you with this information," and
like, I've noticed, like, if I click on a certain, you know, product
within, TikTok just to look at it because I'm curious, like, "Oh,
there's this dumb t-shirt with a raccoon on it, but I find it funny.
I'm going to click on it." All of a sudden that raccoon, like 15 other people
(31:43):
show up trying to advertise the same raccoon t-shirt to me and try to push
that on me. And eventually you're just like, "All right, well, that's it.
I'm going to do it." And you make that purchase decision.
There is a psychological explanation for this.
I mean, Daniel Kahneman, which is a Nobel prize winner,
just, you know, shared with us here that 95 percent
(32:04):
of our daily decision is we do it from our instinct.
We don't think about it.
It's, you know, it's the system one of our brain, which is not the, you know,
frontal part of our brain, which you just make decision in an automatic way.
So we do that impulse purchase, and after we did it,
we justify to ourself why it was a small decision.
And then we use, right, the system two, which is our thinking brain.
(32:28):
So with every, we do everything on it based on instincts,
and then we justify it to ourselves, you know, after that.
So that's route proven and yes, video makes
it this extra push much more powerful.
Yeah, for sure.
Cause then you can see it, you can feel it in any more like retail,
like especially for me, I'm being in media production, right?
(32:51):
This microphone, the camera that I'm talking to you on, I researched
the heck out of it on YouTube, made sure I was getting the right
thing, make sure I was getting something I was going to be pleased
with, you know, and everything pretty much starts with a YouTube
search because I can't just walk into a store and buy this.
I have to learn from someone online.
Hey, this is what works.
(33:11):
This is what doesn't.
Or get really lucky and know someone in town who already has one
and can tell me about it and vouch for it So when you've got an
influencer online that can vouch for that product and you've already
bought something out of their recommendation you can trust them.
You're going to continue that process.
So yeah video is very powerful very, very powerful.
(33:31):
Yeah.
So what, what are some things that are top of mind for
you right now, as, as we look at the future of video
over the next couple of years, where do you see it going?
So, the big thing here is the convergence of media and commerce.
Okay.
So this is something, you know, being in the industry for more
(33:54):
than two decades is something that we were waiting for, right?
I mean, just see what happens during the last year.
So Walmart acquires video, right?
So what's for a retailer and a TV manufacturer, TV, you
know, kind of a medium entertainment type of a provider.
JP Morgan launching, you know, Chase Media Solution.
(34:14):
Instacart shoppers with YouTube on shoppable ads.
You know, Costco launched a retail media network.
Best Buy and CNET, I mean, you see retailers, big retailers,
just making a transition to become a content and media houses.
And also the traditional media companies, they are transitioning with
merchandising and everything to be kind of a retailer or an e-commerce platform.
(34:35):
So It's all comes comes together video is just making, just to keep
drivers for all of it because we like to be entertained, and it
needs to have the right mix of entertainment/knowledge and commerce.
So these are the mega opportunities we know that there is a big
topic around retail media where the retailers are trying to utilize
(34:59):
their offline and digital assets just to sell more ad space, right?
When you can see the crazy result from Amazon and Walmart
and others on the amount of revenues that generated
just from digital advertising platform, which is huge.
So, these are major, major theme.
Again, marketing, as we spoke previously, just spoken to this 1-on-1
(35:20):
type of effort, and today with AI, which is, I think has a lot of great,
implementation today, you know, in marketing, and obviously where it's going
with avatars, and it will work for many, many use cases in terms of marketing.
And then just create, I just, I'm just testing a few
(35:42):
tools that just creating a digital clone of myself.
And it's amazing, right?
It's not there, right?
It's obvious that it's not human.
It's a machine, but it's for some, for example, training or customer support?
It's fine, right?
But maybe for those sales event, it's not
there yet, but definitely it will be there.
(36:03):
So, like today, you can work with AI avatars
to create some variety of gamification.
For example, when you're waiting for this live event, okay,
and they're like a few minutes left and people are joining.
And you need to work with his avatar just to create some
entertainment kind of like games during before the event starts.
(36:24):
And we are implementing this type of thing
because we see that it's really working.
So definitely using AI in a much meaningful way just to make sure
we provide more innovation and streamline processes and costs.
AI is such a fascinating tool, and I do think it's a tool.
I don't think it's necessarily a weapon or
(36:45):
something that's going to kill everyone's job.
Although, there are moments there's going to be fits and spurts
of that, but yeah, AI and video to me is really fascinating.
Like you said, making a clone of yourself.
I've definitely seen some of that, but I think, I wonder with sales,
how that's going to go down because sales is very trust oriented,
especially when you have a one to one connection with someone,
(37:06):
and, you know, unless you're used to that avatar being the thing
that you interface with, you know, would you come back to that?
Would you trust that kind of a recommendation?
I guess if it was undetectably an avatar, that'd be one
thing, but if it's not, you know, where does that leave us?
Yes, I think in some of, there are a lot of, like, use cases where the product
(37:29):
price is not probably high, maybe up to $100 or something, you don't, you
are anyhow doing the research on your own as you share previously, right?
You're doing like 90 percent of the process on your own, and
probably you select something, and then probably you need
to talk to someone just to give you the best price, right?
So we don't want to build a relationship with anyone.
I just want to buy the product.
So, for this lot cover the smaller, you know ticket items.
(37:54):
You can get a response from my avatar, they can provide you
the answer, and you just click to checkout, but for those
longer sale cycles, we need to build a relationship and make
sure there's a building like relationship and trust building
and having the ability to communicate and trust someone on
a longer term, then look, we are a social creature, right?
(38:16):
We like this oxytocin urethane smell, just, you know,
we need to provide the human touch is so, so important.
Definitely have to cover it when we go to exhibition or
try to be, to meet as much, as many people as we can.
So, this is this will always be, and we see
like in the retail space, I think e-commerce is
(38:38):
20 to 23 percent of the overall retail business in the US, right?
So, like, 75 percent is still happening offline, and there is no, it's not going
to change according to any report, but that digital experience is just maybe a
quarter of the overall retail experience, and it's going to be there like that.
Like, in China, by the way, it's like more than 90 percent of retail is online.
(39:03):
I think the U.S. is just the other way around because
all
those, new technologies around the
(39:38):
digital experience
and
also on the offline experience, so this is like an amazing
use case for me that I really, you know, very, I'm very
(40:00):
much interested in follow, but I need doing a major job.
Yeah that's great, and yeah, I've noticed Walmart, I was actually surprised.
I went on their website just this past week and was looking around, and
the ways that they have innovated and changed surprised me, frankly,
because I'm used to being more of a static site, and you might be able to
(40:21):
see what's in stock online versus in the store near you, and that's it.
But yeah, they're definitely making some big changes.
So that's really neat.
And that'll be interesting to watch over the coming year.
So the AI product recommendation is really amazing.
Just, you know, do you have the shopping cart?
I mean, if it's a grocery, so that shopping cart is ready for
(40:41):
you to know everything, you know what you need to purchase.
And it's very, very smart.
So just it's such such a fictionless type
of experience, which is very, very unique.
Yeah.
And if you need to buy and not think that's a real big
help because shopping is a huge weight, as you can imagine,
(41:02):
having to get out to the shops and get the
food and come home, especially with kids.
Oh my gosh.
Well, that's great.
Well, Eitan thank you for your time today.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
There's aa lot that Vimmi is doing and, I
can't wait to continue to see its growth.
But where can people find you and where can they connect with Vimmi?
Yeah, so we are at vimmi.net.
(41:23):
It's v-i-m-m-i-dot-net, where you can start
just, you have like a free for life package.
You can start trouble video, live shopping, social commerce, and if you
need more capabilities, just grow with the different packages out there.
And personally, I post on LinkedIn a lot of, about,
video marketing, video commerce, social commerce.
That's on my personal LinkedIn account, Eitan Koter, E-I-T-A-N.
(41:47):
K-O-T-E-R.
Alrighty.
Well, sir, thank you for your time today.
Thank you, Chris.
It was really a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand.
Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice.
You can also keep up on the podcast on our website at webuiltthisbrand.com.
(42:08):
If you like this episode, please give the podcast a five star review and make
sure to tell all your friends about it so we can continue to build this brand.
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