ideas that perplexed Eilian. “Investors started offering us indecent sums of money to become the ‘Instagram of video,’” she said. “Every time we left one of these very upbeat venture capital meetings, I wanted to throw up.”
Fending off that hyped-up encouragement, Eilian had a hunch that Instagram would be the “Instagram of video.” Moreover, she wanted to focus on strategy rather than become beholden to raising more and more capital, and attract lots of consumer users to chase another company’s vapors—because users do not always translate into revenue. “I wanted our business to make money,” she said. “I wanted to be cash-flow positive.”
Eilian did not believe the company could break even fast enough by pursing the consumer market. She also did not see Videolicious doing well by attempting to satisfy consumer and business customers at the same time. Corporate clients saw the prosumer version sold for $150 each and wondered why they paid much larger licensing fees, even though they had the more powerful version.
So Videolicious nixed the prosumer edition of the app to fully pursue the enterprise market, which Eilian said was a bigger market opportunity. Videolicious has landed such clients as Hearst, Time Inc., Gannett, and The New York Times.
Even after realigning and seeing some success, Eilian said she remains skeptical. With many of her clients in the media world, the withering of the industry has given her pause. “As much as I am passionate about media, I don’t want my business to be dependent on a market that has trends like this,” she said.
That pessimistic outlook, Eilian said, has meant pursuing other industries for clients, as more and more businesses try to populate their social media streams with video content. “All of them have to fill their Facebook and Twitter feeds,” she said.
