Today on Decoder I’m talking to Anjali Sud, the CEO of Vimeo. Now, you probably think of Vimeo as a smaller competitor to YouTube — the company’

How Anjali Sud reinvented Vimeo

submited by
Style Pass
2021-05-26 22:30:05

Today on Decoder I’m talking to Anjali Sud, the CEO of Vimeo. Now, you probably think of Vimeo as a smaller competitor to YouTube — the company’s been around for 16 years, and that’s what it was for most of that time. But when Anjali took over as CEO, she stopped all that to reinvent Vimeo as a software company that serves video creators. And that market is booming: at the end of 2020, Vimeo had over 1.5 million paying customers generating $83.8 million in revenue in Q4 alone. In fact, Vimeo grew so fast in 2020 that it accidentally turned a profit in the third quarter even as the company was trying to reinvest in growth. Later this year, Vimeo is going to go public in a spinoff from its parent company IAC.

That’s a remarkable success story — all because Anjali decided to stop competing with YouTube, Netflix, and other consumer video companies and find a better market to play in. But it also means that, well, there still aren’t any great competitors to YouTube. I asked Anjali about that, about where Vimeo sits in the creator economy, and how she sees the company growing.

There is a lot going on with Vimeo, so I just want to start there. You became the CEO a few years ago. You did a massive pivot away from the Netflix, YouTube, original content model that has been successful. You’re about to go public.

Leave a Comment