Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Wistia CEO, Chris Savage: Master the Art of Pivoting, How to Adapt and Grow Against the Odds
Thu, 12 Dec 2024
Chris Savage is a master at pivoting. He co-founded Wistia with his best friend in his living room, originally aiming to create an online filmmaking competition platform. When that didn’t work, they shifted to portfolio tools and later to secure video hosting for businesses, which became Wistia’s core offering. Chris wasn’t afraid to turn down major clients like HBO when their goals didn’t align. Despite running a $300k monthly loss and receiving multiple life-changing acquisition offers, he rejected them and took on $17.3M in debt to continue growing the business. In this episode, Chris opens up to Ilana about the highs and lows of building Wistia, how he made tough decisions, and what it takes to build a lasting business. Chris Savage is the CEO and co-founder of Wistia, a leading video-hosting platform designed to help businesses create, host, and analyze video content in a way that maximizes engagement and drives growth. In this episode, Ilana and Chris will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:19) The Twists and Turns of Launching Wistia (05:02) Pivoting and Finding Success in the Unexpected (08:22) From Zero to Paying Customers (10:14) Rejecting an HBO Deal and Searching for Investors (14:51) How Focus and Authenticity Drive Success (18:02) Building a Serious Business with Fun Marketing (20:33) Learning to Make Tough, Risky Decisions (23:11) Chris’s Secret to Balancing Creativity and Speed (26:34) The Struggle to Close Deals and Break Even (30:31) How He Pushes Through Hard Moments (31:05) Turning Down Life-Changing Offers (35:23) What Chris Learned from Taking Time Off (38:24) The Power of Building a Personal Brand (43:05) Why Wistia is the Top Choice for Video Marketing (46:17) Chris’s Top Business Lessons Chris Savage is the CEO and co-founder of Wistia, a leading video-hosting platform designed to help businesses create, host, and analyze video content in a way that maximizes engagement and drives growth. A strong advocate for the Boston startup ecosystem, Chris is passionate about exploring unconventional paths in tech, entrepreneurship, marketing, video, company-building, and behavioral economics. Before founding Wistia, he contributed to an Emmy Award-winning documentary and, in 2009, earned recognition as a Top Young Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek. Connect with Chris: Chris’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/cjsavage Chris’s Twitter: https://x.com/csavage Resources Mentioned: Webinar Wizard: https://wistia.com/webinarwizard Leap Academy: Ready to make the LEAP in your career? There is a NEW way for professionals to Advance Their Careers & Make 5-6 figures of EXTRA INCOME in Record Time. Check out our free training today at leapacademy.com/training
Full Episode
The most valuable things, they don't happen quickly. They take a long time.
Chris Savage, co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a video for business which we're using as well.
Everything we do is about making it easy for you to get more value out of your video and enable you to use video better.
From starting in his co-founder's living room, Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with over 200 employees and millions of customers.
We thought we would do this for six months and then get rich. We thought that's how startups worked. It took a lot longer than I thought before things really started to connect and work. It's very hard to know if you're doing the right stuff, but if you do it long enough, you end up training your intuition.
Based on everything that you've gone through, what would be an advice to your younger self?
The first thing I would say is...
Chris Savage, co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a video for business, which we're using as well. And from starting in his co-founder's living room, Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with over 200 employees and millions of customers. But Chris, it wasn't an overnight success. Take us back in time to your college days.
Definitely not an overnight success, no. Yeah, I started Wistia with my best friend from college, Brendan Schwartz, and we thought it would be an overnight success. We thought we would do this for six months and then get rich. We thought that's how startups worked. And that's not how they work. It took a lot longer than I thought. before things really started to connect and work.
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