At Vimeo, we believe that video is the most powerful medium we have for human expression at scale. That’s why we spent the last 16 years helping over 200 million users with tools that make professional-quality video easy and accessible. Most people still think of Vimeo as the indie version of YouTube (my favorite description: “YouTube’s cooler cousin”). But in reality, our platform has transformed completely over the last few years, from an ad-free viewing destination to the leading software solution that enables anyone to succeed with video.

The future is now

Before the pandemic, we were seeing demand for video increase across the board: more of our users were collaborating on video projects, creating short-form videos and publishing them across the web, livestreaming events, and monetizing their content. Then in March, our world changed overnight. Video suddenly went from a “nice to have” to an essential tool for every business. And we saw an acceleration in demand beyond our expectations. In the last 7 months we’ve welcomed over 30 million new members, seen over 60 million new videos created and uploaded, and powered millions of live events that went digital for the first time — more than the prior 3 years combined. We’ve also borne witness to countless stories of people and businesses who are using video to weather this time with grit and ingenuity:
  • L.A. Dance Project moved from in-person performances to drive-in shows and digital dance classes. By streaming live, their audience grew from the typical 150 people in a physical space to 175,000 global viewers for a single performance. 
  • Staff Pick filmmaker Law Chen used our Stories in Place grant to chronicle the experience of 886, a Taiwanese restaurant that delivered bento boxes for essential workers in New York City. He shot his film in just 12 days while remote.
  • Columbia University held their Class of 2020 commencement ceremony in May as a virtual event. It was the first time since 1758 that graduates didn’t gather on-campus.
  • Starbucks recently started using Vimeo Enterprise to distribute training videos and COVID-19 updates via company tablets to their associates across their store locations.
  • Trevor Wolfe is the Director of Product at Mailchimp. With his team fully remote, he’s sending secure video messages to walk through product demos and gather feedback. 
Stories like these give us conviction that the pandemic has not just accelerated video adoption, but fundamentally changed our behaviors and expectations. Now that the world has experienced the power of video, we’re not going back. Which means Vimeo has an even bigger role to play in enabling professional-quality video for all.

So, what’s next?

To help us move faster in realizing this vision, I’m excited to share that Vimeo has raised $150 million in new capital to accelerate our efforts to empower you with video. The funding comes from New York-based Thrive Capital (investments include Instagram, Slack and Stripe) and Singapore-based GIC (investments include Snap, Alibaba and Spotify). What does this mean for you? We’ll be using the funding to hire more talented people, to speed up our product roadmap and to invest more deeply in cutting edge video technology. We’ll also be expanding globally to better support our users across over 150 countries. Some of the areas we’re focused on in the coming months include:
  • Teams & Enterprises: Building the single video solution for the modern organization. This includes building a teams-first experience on Vimeo, expanding our video messaging tool Vimeo Record, and launching a host of more advanced security, collaboration and video library features. 
  • Rethinking live events: Reimagining how we can harness the immediacy, authenticity and in-person feedback of offline events, but from your browser. And building more ways for you to grow your audience and make money from your content.
  • Fast and easy video creation: Getting you from an idea to a finished video in a few clicks, while leveraging cross-platform data and AI to help you optimize your content for its audience and destination. 
  • Powered by Vimeo: Building off our recent native integrations with GoDaddy and Shopify to partner with more platforms, from marketplaces to software products. 
  • The highest quality video experience: Continuing to set new standards for making videos look beautiful on every device and anywhere in the world, with our work on codecs, machine learning-based playback algorithms and our industry-leading video player.
It’s been remarkable to see the role video is playing in our world right now. Whether you’ve been a “Vimean” since our founding or you just joined our community today, we’re humbled to serve you. I hope you’ll join us for Vimeo’s next chapter — above all, thank you for getting us here. My best, Anjali