02 Jan 2019 Spotlight on Vidyard

Describe your company and primary product(s) and/or service(s).

Vidyard is changing the way that businesses communicate. Our platform allows organizations to showcase videos on their website, create one-to-one personalized video emails, and track real-time viewer analytics. This means businesses can better understand how audiences engage with the video content, helping them generate qualified sales leads and target buyers.

How many employees currently work at your company?

Vidyard has grown from a small but mighty team of two in 2010, to a powerhouse of nearly 250 employees today. In 2019, the team plans to continue hiring across all departments and regions.

Our vision is to empower human interactions that support the future of businesses. We do this by helping organizations succeed through the strategic use of online video.

Where are you located?

There are three offices, each located in Kitchener-Waterloo, Vancouver, and Boston. We also have a remote team who focuses on growing our UK market expansion. Over the past 12 months alone, more 100 new staffers have joined our flourishing, diverse family. In November 2018, we were even recognized as one of Waterloo Area’s Top Employers.

Describe the culture at your company.

At Vidyard, we’ve built a company culture that’s centred around customer success, employee engagement, and community involvement. Sure, we’ve grown quick, and yes we’ve made mistakes along the way, but mistakes have been fundamental to building the human-centric team we are today. We’re all aboard, we celebrate successes and we never stop hustling, innovating and learning so that we can continue to offer our customers the BEST experience possible.

What does your leadership team (and company as a whole) do to support/grow that culture?

To help support and grow our culture, each quarter, our leadership team offer employees the opportunity to participate in a survey called Employee Net-Promoter Score (ENPS) tracking. These survey results help our leaders establish and implement innovative programming that supports continuous learning and healthy culture development across our company.

When your employees talk about your company, what do they brag about?

• Vidyard offers unlimited vacation, stock option plans, generous subsidies for health and wellness, continuing education and association/memberships aid, as well as RRSP matching – all on top of competitive pay and health benefits.
• Vidyard’s corporate stakeholder list prioritizes Community Engagement, so the company participates in programs all year that support local community initiatives.
• Staff is encouraged to enjoy free catered lunches daily with their colleagues (with dietary restrictions available). Free healthy snacks and refreshing drinks are also available throughout the day.
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Describe your most recent achievement/milestone as a company.

This past November, the world recognized the fruits of Vidyard’s labour. Not only were we named one of 2018’s Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50™ Companies, but our Community Engagement program (and commitment as a Pledge 1% Member) was highlighted on the Nasdaq stage in New York. Big bells also rang throughout the offices to celebrate new customer wins that month.

Are you hiring? Why should a candidate apply to your company? What are the benefits of working for you?

If you’re going to spend eight hours a day on the job, we want to make sure you’re working with amazing people achieving memorable things. We’re always looking for top talent to join our growing family, especially those who are self-starters and are relentlessly resourceful in all they do. Our Vancouver location is also in an old gold rush building in the hip area of Gastown, and it breeds creativity. Visit our careers page for more information about working with us.

Who is the ideal employee for your company?

We’re a diverse family that’s all aboard on one rocket ship. We celebrate each other’s unique strengths to help us go the distance as one. We believe in direct and transparent communication, so we respect open and honest conversations. We’re relentlessly resourceful, meaning that we come up with creative solutions to tough problems. And we own it, meaning that we take accountability for our actions. If we’ve just described you, then you’re our ideal candidate!

What is your company goal for the coming year?

In the coming year, hiring top talent will remain one of our goals. We’re in search for the best of the best – and we take culture-add very seriously. To support our mission, we’ll continue to teach and educate prospects and customers on all things video strategy. We’ll also continue scaling our popular Integrations Directory so that our customers don’t have to open up another tool to add video to their workflows. A video should be this easy.

 Tell us an interesting fact about your company.

The idea behind Vidyard first began as a video production agency called Red Woods Media. The team produced beautifully tailored videos for businesses, but the magic happened later. Once they shipped, clients would ask: “is the video working?”

Vidyard as a tool stemmed from a University of Waterloo fourth-year design project by the company’s co-founders, Michael Litt, and Devon Galloway. After graduating from Engineering in 2011, Litt and Galloway incubated their idea for a video analytics tool for businesses at Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator program, and Vidyard was born. The two then returned back to Kitchener-Waterloo with seed funding in hand.

By providing businesses with a platform that measured and tracked video views and engagement data, then mapping data into leading marketing automation or customer engagement platforms, businesses could justify the impact that their videos had on generating qualified leads.