I cofounded and ran a competitor to Vimeo from 2008 to 2019. (Sold, rebranded, had a covid boom and then the same problem everyone else had)

Always wanted to be Vimeo. They were the cool us.

Loved this video and wondered why we couldn’t be that …

youtube.com/watch?v=nMu… (and a sign that this for me seminal Vimeo video is now on YT but not Vimeo).

We pivoted to SaaS earlier and I always thought Vimeo could win in that market and was surprised it never pivoted earlier when it was clear YouTube had one social. And it could never be Netflix.

There was a strong gap in the market for pure play SaaS. And Vimeo had the tech (as far as we thought), money and resources to win this. Going up again Brightcove and Kaltura and the pure enterprise plays on the other hand is tough. Enterprise is enterprise.

Sorry you had a rough ride. Looking from the outside in we were constantly in a state of “why aren’t they making better strategic decisions, as they can win this, oh well”

I guess the internet always eats it’s children.

(also Viddler was the site that predated both of us as a SaaS play and also struggled, hard market I guess)