Vimeo
Careers at Vimeo
Mission
To empower creators to make, share, and sell amazing videos directly to viewers
History
Known for its default use of High Definition videos, Vimeo has become a favourite of creative producers, artists and musicians everywhere. A portmanteau of “video” and “me”, Vimeo was founded in 2004 by Jake Lodwick and Zach Klein. Lodwick, a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, had a history with his co-founder.
The two were instrumental in developing the comedy website College Humor. Lodwick was the College Humor’s first web developer until it became Connected Ventures in 2004. It was during this time that Lodwick began to develop Vimeo as a subset of Connected Ventures. He brought on Klein on to his new project and launched Vimeo as a simple video-sharing site.
Vimeo’s focus on facilitating the creativity of its users in a user-friendly manner attracted a loyal group of users in its first few years. Subscription rates grew to a point that Vimeo started attracting acquisition offers in its second year. In 2006, Vimeo was acquired by InterActive Corp (IAC) as part of its acquisition of a 51% stake in Connected Ventures.
Soon after, Lodwick was replaced as CEO by Dae Mellencamp and Vimeo began its transformation to its present form as a major competitor to YouTube and Facebook. Klein too left the company around the same time to pursue other ventures.
Following its acquisition, Vimeo introduced its memberships model which provided limited space to free users and larger capacity to paying subscribers. In 2008, Vimeo introduced a premium subscription that charged users a $60 annual fee and provided them with 2 GB per week. The storage limit was later raised to 5 GB. In 2011, Vimeo offered another subscription package for larger organizations and businesses, allowing 50 GB of storage and additional services.
In 2013, Vimeo launched its first feature film “Some Girl(s)”, which showcased the Vimeo-on-demand feature. The on-demand streaming model increased Vimeo’s popularity among indie filmmakers in subsequent years. Today, Vimeo has over 20 million subscribers and receives millions of unique hits every month. Vimeo has an annual revenue run rate of more than $75 million. Its current CEO is Kerry Trainor.
