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Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

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Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#61

Post by raypaw »

iamelgringo wrote: post #23

http://VidCaster.com has been building branded pages for companies for well over a year. We've been using them for http://hackersandfounders.tv for months, and we've been thrilled. VidCaster's also more than just a wrapper around the YouTube API. They let you import the videos that are already on YouTube and Vimeo, and move them over to VidCaster's streaming service. Crazy good service. Team has been working with onl…

Hey gang. Ray from VidCaster here. iamelgringo, as always thanks for the love. I've had a few conversations with Michael (Vidyard CEO) over Twitter and he is a great guy and their product looks great as well. On the TC story, I left a comment that we are looking forward to a friendly rivalry but the reality is that VidCaster offers a different value prop — we give our users the ability to create turnkey SEO-optimized video websites. In fact, I'm sure there is room for both VidCaster and Vidyard — as we look to the future of VidCaster we think it could very well be a player-agnostic solution for users of services like Vidyard (and Brightcove or Ooyala for that matter). As for the rivalry between 500 and YC, I liken it to the rivalry between Indiana University (my alma mater, as well as my two co-founders) and Purdue. When I meet someone from Purdue, I raz them about it but just for fun. I share your frustrations regarding coverage from TC -- I think one of the problems is that TC writers don't have "beats" (at least to my knowledge) so there is no one who has a comprehensive understanding of the OVP space and how each new entrant is differentiated. Contrast that with Ryan Lawler at Giga-Om who places new product announcements like Vimeo Pro in context of the larger OVP space. But as Ice-T taught us, don't have the player — hate the game.

Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#63

Post by ig1 »

olivercameron wrote: post #31
iamelgringo wrote: post #23

http://VidCaster.com has been building branded pages for companies for well over a year. We've been using them for http://hackersandfounders.tv for months, and we've been thrilled. VidCaster's also more than just a wrapper around the YouTube API. They let you import the videos that are already on YouTube and Vimeo, and move them over to VidCaster's streaming service. Crazy good service. Team has been working with onl…

This trend of other companies trying to hijack other companies launches is really disappointing, especially when said company is in your incubator. Why not submit something for Vidcaster separately?

It's perfectly reasonable to discuss competitors in a thread discussing the announcement of a new company/product, we should of course keep such discussion civil and respectful, but HN is a discusion site not a cheerleading one.

Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#64

Post by michaelrlitt »

kfarr wrote: post #60
iamelgringo wrote: post #23

http://VidCaster.com has been building branded pages for companies for well over a year. We've been using them for http://hackersandfounders.tv for months, and we've been thrilled. VidCaster's also more than just a wrapper around the YouTube API. They let you import the videos that are already on YouTube and Vimeo, and move them over to VidCaster's streaming service. Crazy good service. Team has been working with onl…

Hi all, I'm Kieran, one of the founders of VidCaster here. iamelgringo is a passionate fan of our service but does not speak for our company. VidYard's product looks simple and solid. I am happy to see continued validation of the business video market and congrats to the team for addressing what we agree is a common and growing pain -- the difficulty for businesses to leverage video to drive sales and increase the ef…

Sounds awesome. Thanks to both you and Ray for the positive comments, etc. E-mail re: beers is en route to your inbox.

Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#65

Post by throwaway32 »

ryanjmo wrote: post #51

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Not using them for your embedded videos (and getting the extra views on your site that will launch you higher in search) could be a mistake for many businesses. If you want to prevent click throughs, after the video starts to play, just put up an invisible div over the video, but above the controls, so the user can't click through, but can still controle the v…

http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

See clause 4F, doing this would result in Youtube blocking your site from embedding, and would possibly result in a "google death penalty", definitely not a good idea.

Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#66

Post by michaelrlitt »

mdasen wrote: post #58

I have a few questions that the Vidyard site doesn't seem to address (that I'd need answers to in order to sell it to my boss). 1) The "Venti" plan says "unlimited videos". Does that mean that there's no storage quota? If there is no storage quota, how would you make money off of a large customer? Like, we have a decently sizable video library (about 250GB and it grows by about 25GB each year) and it isn't that high…

Great questions re: price and margins. The unlimited videos is achievable both through the scale with the number of videos we host; along with scaling of the file-size post-encoding.

2) Captions are currently not supported - would you be looking for transcriptions on the videos, or time-coded captions based on the point in the video? We're working on some cool features for time-coded commenting that probably covers what you're looking for.

3) Data can definitely be exported - but unfortunately it's not something we've implemented into the tool quite yet. Would be happy to manually support in the meantime.

4) A Player API (for custom controls), Wizard API (for player setup and design), and Content API (for uploading) are in the works. Assuming from the question it's a player controls API you'd need.

Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#68

Post by metachris »

michaelrlitt wrote: post #59
metachris wrote: post #29

I've just seen the pool-party video which appears after clicking on any of the pictures on the about page ( https://secure.vidyard.com/about_us ). It's weird, and the background music reminds me of erotic movies. I understand that you want to come across as young and dynamic, but I'm not sure this is bringing the message across for your target audience. Edit: Downvoters, please explain. I didn't mean to insult, but a…

Thanks for the insight - we'll definitely change it, we just thought it was something fun for launch :)

Didn't mean to take out the fun - I'd recommend to think about changing at least the music though :) Good luck with your startup! I really like what you are doing; this market is ripe for some innovation.

Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#69

Post by benologist »

iamelgringo wrote: post #23

http://VidCaster.com has been building branded pages for companies for well over a year. We've been using them for http://hackersandfounders.tv for months, and we've been thrilled. VidCaster's also more than just a wrapper around the YouTube API. They let you import the videos that are already on YouTube and Vimeo, and move them over to VidCaster's streaming service. Crazy good service. Team has been working with onl…

"What I don't get is why TechCrunch seems to give YC companies more coverage than 500 Startups companies."

Bucketloads of free traffic from HN.

Re: Vidyard (YC S11) Is A YouTube For Businesses

#70

Post by bdesimone »

jordanroher wrote: post #13

What was behind the decision to use Starbucks' size names for your plans? I really like the site and the prices are reasonable, but the thought of signing up for a "Venti" video hosting service doesn't sound appealing to me.

This. 100x this. Not only only does it personally rub me the wrong way, but also it is confusing to people who don't have Starbucks in their country.

Venti means 20. Grande means big. Short means...what the hell? What am I buying here?

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