Productize Podcast
[64] Designing a Better YouTube (as a SaaS) w/ Jason Schuller & Chris Molitor
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Today I’m talking to a friend of mine, Jason Schuller.
We go back to the times of WordPress themes when he ran Press75, one of the early popular theme shops. He since sold that business and has gone on to design focusing on simplicity and minimalism.
More recently he and his partner Chris Molitor came together to build Rivyt, a really cool idea where you can basically drop in your YouTube channel URL and it instantly generates a beautiful looking website pulling all your video descriptions.
We talk about how they came to the idea, the design concept, the launch on Product Hunt and learning from early users.
Enjoy!
Episode Notes
[3:00] How Rivyt works and the problem with YouTube.
- “We solve a problem for the sub 1 million subscribers content creators: recommended videos. If they send viewers to their website instead of their channel, they avoid people getting lost through the YouTube’s recommended videos rabbit hole.”
[12:42] Where the concept of a better YouTube channel came from.
- “I wanted to leave that world of downloadable products. It’s a headache in terms of support and from start to finish it was a long process. Whereas with a SaaS approach there’s the possibility for instant experience.”
[14:35] How to approach the tech side of the project from a designer background.
- “WordPress was the easiest way for us to take this idea and get it off the ground, in short time and for zero dollars.”
- “I can’t sit down with a book and learn Javascript. I have to take something that already exists, break it apart and figure how it works.”
[23:06] Launching on Product Hunt. Trying different pricing models, and on-boarding without the need to register.
- “You can actually jump in, create a website without even registering.”
- “The price point helps communicate expectations.”
[29:56] Integrating customer feedback with their experience building video related plugins. Including Amazon referral links and comments.
- “We’ve heard from some subscribers that it’s the thing they’ve been waiting for. They’ve tried Squarespace, they’ve tried WordPress, it just got too complicated from them.”
- “We’ve got just 1 cancel subscription. Churn of 1.”