IndustrialSage Transcript Danny: Hey, so let's jump in today's episode. I've got a very special guest today. I have Chris Lavigne who's the Head of Production for Wistia. Chris, thank you so much for joining me today on IndustrialSage. Chris: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat all things Wistia, video, brand, and beyond. Danny: I'm super excited. So anyone who listens to IndustrialSage knows that I'm a total video dork but for those who aren't familiar with Wistia please let them know who you guys are, what you guys do. Chris: Yes, so Wistia is a software company up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We make software that helps folks build their audience through brand affinity. Primarily our big thing is video hosting. We have a suite of tools like channels that let you host your videos, almost like a YouTube but for businesses. So you put it right on your website. You don't have to worry about any of YouTube's ulterior motives, their ads, their related videos that are actually to your competition, all that stuff. Danny: Awesome, all right. So interesting word you threw out, brand affinity, through brand affinity. So I want to jump into that in just a minute. Before I do that though I want to just get to know about you a little bit. So, all right, so you're Head of Production. Tell me a little bit about, how did you start in video? Chris: Wow, well you've got to go way back-- Danny: Take me back! Chris: I'm not going to bore you, I'll spare you the details but I always had a camcorder when I was growing up and I actually got into video because it was an easy way to get an A in school. If you made any type of a video when I was in elementary school and middle school it was an easy A because you were editing tape to tape. I had my camcorder and then a VCR and I was editing linearly like that. But then I found out that I actually kind of had a knack for it and I loved it so I studied video in college. I hustled my way doing wedding videos and building up my gear throughout high school and college and doing some product videos actually for some folks that are- my family's in manufacturing, so some product videos for some manufacturing companies locally. And then I ended up freelancing doing more of those product videos, testimonial videos. And that's actually when I found Wistia through one of my friends. He was very early at the company and he was saying, "Hey, I'm working for Wistia. It's this video software and they don't even have the video on their website. You should come up here and meet the company." So I traveled up from Rhode Island with all of my gear to Cambridge in February of 2011 and I walked into this company and it was my first experience with a startup. It was so interesting and casual and I'd never seen startup culture. I've always been around manufacturing. I thought that if you wanted to have a job in video you'd have to be at a TV company or out in Hollywood. So needless to say I made a quick video on spec for Wistia, kind of just like a tour of the team. I called it the "Meet the Team" video and they loved it. They put it on their website and what's crazy is they noticed more deals coming through almost immediately. People wanted to see who they were about to do business with. And things snowballed from there and I ended up joining the team full time. I fell in love with the work I was doing at Wistia, fell in love with the company, and I've been here ever since. Danny: That's awesome, so all right. So funny thing, when you were doing what we now know as linear editing: did you know that that's what that was at that time? Chris: Oh, absolutely not. I thought that that was just the way that you edited video, tape to tape,