Darren Chait, Co-Founder and COO - Hugo

Hi, I'm Darren, I'm Co-Founder of Hugo. We make connected meeting notes software so centralized searchable meeting notes built on top of your calendar and connected to the twenty tools that you team use every day. we're solving that problem of meeting notes being fragmented and distributed across the company and aligning the whole team around the knowledge that's generated in meetings. I'm speaking at Inbound later today, I'm talking about the idea meritocracy, which is a principle that comes from Ray Dalio and his book, where the best idea wins essentially. So it's a lesson we've learned in working with our customers, looking at the best teams and the way they're operating. And it's sort of one of the ideas that we're actually writing about in a book we're releasing later in the year, telling the story of how the best teams are working in fast-growing tech companies like Atlassian and Zoom and things we've learned at Hugo too, to be honest. So videos have been really caught to our growth and the way we interact with customers. The reason is something we think a lot about is bandwidth of communication. So if I send you a text message or if I send you an email or if I send you a, you know, talk to you on the phone, these things are all increasing in bandwidth. Video is the highest bandwidth form of communication other than being face to face. And of course, it's not possible to be face to face with the whole world and all your leads and all your customers. So we see video as the next best thing. It's like me being able to sit down with a customer, with a lead, with anyone out there in the market and have a real human conversation with them. So that's why video is super important to us. As a marketing-led organization, we rely on video all the way through the funnel, through to keeping our customers engaged and educated about what we're doing. So there's video right at the top. You know, our website, Made in CTA, is a video about Hugo, right through to a resource center in the product where you can see little 30-second snippets of how to do certain things. A video, it's the same way we communicate. If I'm telling you something, explaining something to you, there's always going to be an action or a next step. And unless I'm able to integrate that into my video, I'm throwing away the value of the video. I've explained something to you, you've got it, you're on board. And then you're now, you know, eager to move on. And there's no easy way to do that. If I then have to, if you then have to go and pick up the phone or go digging around for what to do next, I'm throwing all the value of just creating between us, it's dissipating. So it's super important to have a really clear call to action from each video. And when we make video content, we have that in mind. You know, we have a 30-second video on the value of collaborative agendas. So right at the end, we're like, go right on agendas for your next meeting. And if we don't have that CTA, well, yeah, you're on board, but it's a waste of time. So that's interesting for us. The reason, you know, we use social modestly, but use a whole lot of other platforms with video too. I guess the value of video for us, to answer that question in a slightly different way is we were expected to be thought leaders for our customers, current and future customers. We're selling a new way of doing things. Best practice meeting workflow in a box, if you like. We're telling you this is how you should run as a business. This is your meeting operating system. Now, you know, video is a really effective way for us to do that, because you're not going to go and read a white paper, you know, 30 page white paper on why meetings should be run this way. But I can show you with, you know, with screens, examples and graphs and tell a real story to you how to do that. So social and other channels allow us to get that message out beyond, obviously, our current customer base. And that's why video and social have to work so hand in hand for us. Friends for video in 2020. I think in general, we're already heading that way, but richer sort of CTA and richer CTAs and integrated video. So just a YouTube link doesn't cut it anymore. I want to see a video in situ, in place with CTAs, with links to other relevant videos. I want to see personalization is another really big one that I think is interesting. So how can I put in, you know, choose relevant bits of the video, customize, personalize it so it's actually for you and you'll and you're viewing that video as if I've made it just for you. I think that's a really interesting trend. And I think we sort of turn the corner where videos now have table stakes as far as education. And that's concerned. You know, when I go to a resource center or try and find best practice in any SAS product I use in 2019, 2020, if I've got to read pages of documentation, I'm out. I want to see a demo. I want to have a human explain it to me. So I think the status quo is now video if you want to be able to compete in this market. Yeah, it was actually interesting when we made our first marketing hire and the end of last year and we hired someone that was very experienced in video. That was the job description. And in fact, the way we recruited was we we all the applicants, we asked them to record a video where they were selling a product they love to use. So we would only hire a marketing person that had great video skills. And that says it all right. That for us was the most core skill. We didn't check their writing. We didn't look at their design skills. It was all about video. So so video is very, very core to us, evidentially. Why? For the reasons I mentioned, I think it's a much higher fidelity, higher bandwidth way to get a message across the comprehension and understanding of what we do and the value we bring is tenfold compared to just, you know, static visual. And and as I mentioned, the space we're in, we're we're we're selling a new way of doing things. So the emotional connection to our product, to our strategy, to the value of Hugo can it can be achieved so much easier when you can see and feel and understand my story rather than just reading collateral. And that's why I think we can't succeed in doing what we need to do from a sales and marketing standpoint without video. Yeah. So what's interesting about video for us is having video caught our strategy doesn't necessarily mean we have to always produce these these beautiful, perfect, you know, mass, mass viewer intended bits of content, right? We can if I'm trying to help someone in a support or customer success setting, we're very quick to record a short video and send it over and say, hey, here's, you know, here's something we that might help you or explain it, where I tell the story, where I share my screen, whatever it may be. So a video strategy for us is right from that one to one interaction to get a message across right through to beautifully produced content that's at the top of the funnel, driving, you know, lots of conversions for us. So it's really interesting. So I mentioned we for us in making marketing hires, video skills is critical. You know, that's that's one of the most important channels we have to communicate. And that's why we only hire marketing people with with a background or good video skills. Video skills, though, I think have changed dramatically over the last few years. I'm less concerned about, you know, can you use professional camera equipment? Or are you a final cut pro guru? Rather, are you do you understand how to use the media? How do you use video to convey a message? So being a full stack video marketer now means you're great at telling a story. You're great. You're great at creating, you know, creating the content and having the vision for it. You know, the types of messages that you go across, where that video should end up, the visuals that should support that story. So the full stack video marketer now is really a number of skills. And I think video in general is going to become or already is becoming that general skill that we're all expected to have, you know, much like some technical skills were a few years ago. It's now what you need to be a really great marketer in 2020.