{"id":21630,"date":"2021-05-27T12:44:26","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T11:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.experts.ng\/blog\/?p=21630"},"modified":"2022-09-24T06:14:23","modified_gmt":"2022-09-24T05:14:23","slug":"meet-anjali-sud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experts.ng\/blog\/meet-anjali-sud\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Anjali Sud, the 37-Year CEO Who Turned the Fortunes of Vimeo Around"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anjali Sud is about 37 years old and she is the CEO of Vimeo<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Vimeo is all over the news; you find it everywhere on the Internet, especially Ads on youtube. But this was not always the case. Vimeo was struggling at a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what happened, and how did Anjali Sud turn things around for the company?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Vimeo Started<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Vimeo started as a competitor to Youtube and Netflix<\/a>. It was an ad-free video platform that provided premium video content to its users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vimeo had a clear mission – to create a higher-quality alternative to Youtube. That is to be like another version of Netflix, but with Youtube type of content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To do this, Vimeo invested heavily in creating its own content and curating content on the platform. There was a lot of catching up to do, and they felt they were equal to the task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They went after professional video creators and filmmakers. A few years down the line, things were not exactly working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anjali Sud and How She Led the Vimeo Pivot<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Youtube is estimated in the year 2020 to be worth $170 billion, while Netflix hit $194 billion net worth in 2020. Now, take a moment to imagine a new company with maybe a few million dollars budget trying to compete with those two. That was a huge task before Anjali Sud when she joined Vimeo as Director of Marketing about 6 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vimeo did not have the kind of money those two have for content, not to talk of marketing. It didn\u2019t take long for her to see there was a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Anjali started taking a second look at Vimeo’s strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I developed a point of view, myself and a few others within the company, that we probably weren\u2019t going to compete well with Netflix in original content because we probably weren\u2019t going to have $17 billion to spend on it”, Anjali revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And people who wanted entertainment were already used to going to YouTube. It was going to be a hard-to-break habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVimeo had long been a software company for filmmakers<\/a>, but the market was too small\u201d, she said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Discovery of a New Market<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, Anjali Sud came up with an idea…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There was another, much bigger market\u2014businesses. What Squarespace and GoDaddy did for websites, we could do with video.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than wait idly for ‘management’ to steer the ship, Anjali went directly to the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She asked for a meeting with Vimeo\u2019s parent company CEO, Joey Levin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She pitched him her idea, which was – Pivot Vimeo from an entertainment and content source, to provide tools for small businesses to create video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn’t matter where the video ended up (YouTube, Instagram etc.), Vimeo would help them make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small businesses, mom-and-pop, and even big businesses realised that video and the internet were core to their growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they didn’t have the resources or expertise to create high-quality content<\/a>. That’s where Vimeo could come in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Levin was fascinated by the idea. Vimeo was struggling and losing money. What’s the worst that could happen if they gave this a try?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He decided to give her a shot. Anjali put a small team together and started to pilot her idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She wasted no time and quickly made Vimeo a one-stop shop for filming, editing, and sharing video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sales, profit, subscribers – all the numbers surged significantly higher than they’d been the previous year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results were clear, and she was named CEO of Vimeo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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