Michael Litt and his wife Donna.
Why my first customer was a dream customer (and not just because I married her)
Donna rarely called me with good news. She was Vidyard's very first customer. Back in 2010, we launched a software platform to help businesses manage their online videos, but it was far from perfect. Its many flaws kept her dialling us for customer and technical support. She didn't realize we were a three-person skeleton outfit. At the time, our company's 1-800 numbers all got routed to my cell phone.
Startup gurus tell budding entrepreneurs to ship out a minimal viable product – one just functional enough to entice people to use it and and provide feedback for improvements. That's good advice, provided you can find a customer who actually cares enough to tell you what's working and what isn't. In my case, I was fortunate enough to find that customer. Donna changed the trajectory of my business. As luck would have it, she also changed my life.
At that time, she was director of customer operations for a human-resources software company that hoped to use more video as part of its marketing. Donna was deadly serious about getting our product to work for her, and because it didn't, she sent us a steady stream of support tickets and phone calls. Full story
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