Following on from last weeks interview with Timely and Kiwi Landing Pad, we caught with the other BNZ STartup Alley winner, WIP.

WIP founders

We talked with Matt Lee, WIP’s Head of Marketing.

Webstock: What is WIP? Give us an idea of exactly what it does, what problems it solves.

Matt: WIP is a new way for video makers to share and review their work-in-progress videos.

Right now there is a massive disconnect between the video and the feedback: lengthy email chains with time-codes are the way people currently communicate changes. This just seems crazy to us given video makers are visual people and video is a visual medium. Doesn’t it make sense to approach the feedback workflow in the same way?

So that’s what WIP does: we’re a cloud-based platform that lets you upload your work-in-progress videos, privately invite clients and collaborators to give feedback and comment directly on the video. It’s really that simple.

Webstock: So all good products have a founding story. What’s the story behind how WIP got started?

Matt: Like many great products, WIP was born out of necessity. 18 November 2012 was the day WIP’s CEO, Rollo Wenlock, came up with the idea after a frustrating experience trying to share a video with a client and get feedback on it. After searching the web for a better solution he was gob smacked that nothing decent existed. He stopped by Creative HQ on a whim to pitch the idea, this lead to a meeting with soon-to-be co founder and CTO Nick Green and six months later here we are, about to finish New Zealand’s first startup accelerator program, with a full-time marketer and designer on the team as well and a product that’s used by video professionals in 24 countries.

Webstock: You were one of the winners at BNZ StartUp Alley and have been accepted in the Lightning Labs program. How has each of those things helped you and what are you learning from them?

Matt: Webstock was a great launching platform for WIP, it led to coverage in a number of local publications and put us on the radar of some of NZ’s most influential tech and business people, who have been great mentors over the last three months.

The Lab has taught us some of the science behind business and what it takes to run a successful start-up – before that we were just four guys with an idea. The 110 local and international mentors they introduced us to have also been vital to the growth and development of the company.

Webstock: Is there much competition out there for WIP? What sets you apart from your competitors?

Matt: Of course there is competition, it’s extremely rare to start a business these days and not have a competitor and we see this as a good thing, it helps to validate that there is a market out there for WIP.

The problem with many of them is they treat video makers as second-class citizens, they don’t understand the user and in some cases their products actually make the process harder by adding complex functionality to the process.

What sets WIP apart is that our team truly understands the problem and the solution and its paramount to us that the user experience is at the heart of everything we do.

We’ve built a platform that makes the video the central focus and the comments appear on the video so they’re contextual. Nobody else does this.

Webstock: Where would you like to be a year from now? What are you plans for the next 12 months?

Matt: I’d like to say we’d be kicking back on a yacht in the South of France, but we’re here to make a great product, which takes time.

The Lightning Lab will draw to a spectacular close next Wednesday with the investor Demo Day. So there are three primary focuses for us: 1) securing investment, 2) product development and 3) thought leadership and media relationships.

We have two major product releases scheduled for September 2013 and March 2014, which will enhance the feature set and functionality, and allow us to focus our marketing efforts and concentrate on the USA, which is our biggest market opportunity.

Thanks Matt! We’re looking forward to seeing WIP’s progress over the coming months.

Timely, along with WIP, were the winners of BNZ Startup Alley at Webstock ’13. Timely will be visiting Kiwi Landing Pad soon as part of their prize. In the leadup to their visit, we caught up with Ryan Baker from Timely and with Catherine Robinson, Kiwi Landing Pad’s San Francisco Director.

Catherine Robinson

Webstock: What’s the one big thing Kiwi start-ups wanting to operate in the USA should know, but don’t?

Catherine: The USA market is a 100 times bigger than New Zealand, and 100 times more competitive. This is great for “sharpening your saw”, but be prepared to adapt, change the way you conduct and operate your business.

Webstock: What are some of the main reasons Kiwi start-ups haven’t succeeded in the US market?

Catherine: Firstly there are already a number of successful Kiwi companies, like Litmos and Aptimize for example ­ but we want to see a lot more of them. In my experience there are several key issues that can affect kiwi companies:

• Don’t try to “boil the ocean”. Choose a single vertical and concentrate there. This is a foreign concept to many NZ companies ­because we’re from a much smaller market, we tend to generalize our approach
• Speed to market. We create great innovative products in NZ, but markets and demand change rapidly and this has left many companies scrambling to adapt to the changes. Worst case it means missed opportunities for success
• Cost. Starting a company to be global from day one used to be prohibitively expensive for most early stage companies. In the last five years this has quickly changed, and the cost to enter market can be dramatically lower

Webstock: For Kiwis freshly arriving in SF, Silicon Valley, the hub of the web… what should they expect in the way of culture shock?

Catherine: Silicon Valley is vast and there is no big “Welcome to Silicon Valley” sign. It’s 1500 sq miles of tech campuses, strip malls, housing estates, business parks and cities that merge together.

San Francisco is about 70 kms from Santa Clara – one of the cities inside Silicon Valley. Prepare to spend a lot of time traveling and have plenty of buffer time built in. Being late is not a good start to a meeting here.

Technology plays a significant role in the Bay Area. If you are lost or need help ­there is an app for that.

Contrary to popular belief-there is good coffee in San Francisco!!

Webstock: A year or so down the track how’s Kiwi Landing Pad going? How would you sum up the year and what are you looking forward to in the future?

Catherine: KLP is a long term play – the vision is to provide a landing point for an increasing number of Kiwi businesses wanting to expand into the US and in doing so reduce their risk and the time it takes to set up an office and accelerate their business development plans through our knowledge, networks and community.

In the last few months we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of companies wanting to establish residence at KLP, a reflection of a growing awareness and more companies thinking globally.

Timely founders with the winning cheque at BNZ Startup Alley

Webstock: What are your expectations around a visit to SF and the Kiwi Landing Pad?

Ryan: Our expectation is that it’s going to be frickin’ awesome! For both Andrew and I this will be our first visit to San Francisco. Although, one of the cool things about being part of the cloud ecosystem is that we’re already working with a few SF based companies – so there’ll be familiar faces for us to meet with right from day one.

The Kiwi Landing pad will be fantastic to use as a home base. We’re hoping to corner all of the residents there and hear their war stories of getting traction in the US.

Webstock: The US is a huge market. Is it a realistic target for you? If so, does that scare you? Excite you?

Ryan: Yes, the US is a huge market, with lots of potential customers for our product. But inevitably that also means more competition as well. The US is already our largest source of customers for Timely – but currently our conversion rate sucks on US accounts – so there’s something that we’re not doing right and it’s great timing for us to get over there and figure it out. It’s exciting for sure!

Webstock: Are you expecting anything in the way of a culture shock, going from Dunedin to SF?

Ryan: I’ve been to other parts of the US before – so not expecting general culture shock. But in terms of Silicon Valley culture – yes, I’d say the maturity and size of the startup/tech space over there is going to be pretty different to what I’m used to!

Webstock: A couple of months on from BNZ Start-Up Alley at Webstock, how are things progressing? And in what ways has winning the competition helped you?

Ryan: The timing of winning Webstock was awesome. We are using the prize money on advertising and this is already starting to bring in new customers. We’ve also had increased interest from investors, which was always part of our plans once we had the demand for the product proven. The geek-cred has been cool too – and we’ve met a bunch of other start-ups that we didn’t know before who we’ve kept in touch with.

Webstock is the second best thing I’ve ever won in my life (in the 80’s I won an Omnibot, that will never be beaten).

Webstock: Where to from here for Timely?

Ryan: We are still growing at a really healthy rate – so the challenge will be to keep doing what is working well and to manage that growth. We will be hiring over the next few months – and building a team of ridiculously awesome people will be a big focus for us.