Chris Savage

Co-founder + CEO @wistia. Changing the way you use video at work

Host of Talking Too Loud.🎙

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@alphacolin I'm going to start scanning and texting letters to you

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@wadefoster Looking sharp!

[Signal Awards @signalawards]

The Signal Room season finale is live!!

Patrick Hinds (@TrueCrimeObsess), Deante' Kyle (Grits & Eggs), and Sarah Stewart Holland & Beth Silvers (@PantsuitPolitic) joined us to get into the mechanics of community-building.

🎙️ Listen: https://t.co/rlCPjMFSQ8

#Podcast @wistia

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@bhalligan Been too long!

[Chris Savage @csavage]

The value of a 40-minute conversation is usually one idea you remember for years.

This one stuck with me from a conversation between Ben Horowitz and @bhalligan on the podcast "Long Strange Trip:"

“Most founders don’t fail from bad ideas. They fail because they stop trusting themselves.”

When you hear them unpack it, it clicks:

→ Over-deferring = no real decisions
→ Hesitation = no movement
→ Decision debt = what actually kills companies

This felt too important to stay inside a 40-minute conversation…

So we pulled it out with @wistia Remix and turned it into something that stands on its own.

This is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been using Remix for internally.

Not to find highlights but to get to the most poignant ideas, the ones that stick with you long after the conversation, faster.

Instead of scrubbing timelines trying to piece it together, we can prompt for the core takeaway and have it build the argument.

Prompt for Brian and Ben's convo:

"Create a 45–90 second highlight reel with a narrative arc: hook, key insight, and resolution…so someone who missed the full video walks away understanding the single most important idea."

Wistia Remix came back with the top themes. Then I chose the one that rang most true to me. Then boom, this video.

Video used to be the output. Now it’s the input.

The bottleneck isn’t creating more content.

It’s getting to the thinking inside it.

That’s where Remix has been most useful for us.

[Chris Savage @csavage]

Ever notice the worn path cutting through the grass next to a perfectly good sidewalk?

That’s a desire path: a path that forms because people keep choosing it.

You can design the sidewalk.

Stay on it too long and you’ll miss the dirt path.

That’s what building open-ended products feels like.

With @wistia Remix, there isn’t one “right” way to use it.

And that’s exactly what makes it useful.

The most valuable feedback we’re getting isn’t coming from feature requests.

It’s coming from what people actually do:

→ Turning Quarterly Business Reviews into movie trailers
→ Sending clips instead of summaries
→ Pulling highlights from videos we assumed no one would touch again

None of that was the “intended” workflow.

If we stayed too close to the path we designed, we would’ve missed all of it.

Instead, we’re watching where those paths form and building around them.

Open-ended products don’t reveal themselves through instructions.

They reveal themselves through behavior.

The job isn’t to define the path. It’s to notice where people are already walking and move faster to support it.

[Zapier @zapier]

The bottleneck to building a better product wasn't headcount. It was culture.

@wistia went from 12 product updates a year to 100+ with the same size team, just by changing how they worked.

Then, AI changed everything again...

Chris Savage (@csavage) on Agents of Scale👇

[Chris Savage @csavage]

https://t.co/2R7SWiaMic

[Chris Savage @csavage]

It’s been two weeks since we launched Remix, and we’ve already rebuilt core parts of it.

Early on, we saw word timings weren’t quite right. So we reworked how pacing works under the hood and the improvement has been massive.

One thing I’d recommend trying: take a video and ask Remix to “speed it up.”
Not just playback speed…actual pacing (removing ums, uhs, long pauses that kill the pace).

I’ve been surprised how good it is at tightening something without breaking it.

Here’s what people are actually making right now:

→ Highlights from podcasts, webinars, and demos
→ Sales call follow-ups that are way more concise and usable
→ Internal videos… including a surprising number of “movie trailer” edits of long meetings

(Some of those are genuinely hilarious. Also… weirdly effective.)

What’s been most interesting to me:

This is the first product we’ve built that’s this open-ended.
There isn’t one “right” workflow. People are just…trying things.

And because it’s fast, they keep going.

It also means we’re learning really quickly what works, what breaks, and what feels off.

If you’re using @wistia Remix, I’d love to hear from you:

Where is it not working yet?
What feels clunky?
What should we fix next?

That feedback is shaping the product in real time.

More here: https://t.co/133ZpdEjxo

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@HarryStebbings We have something cooking that should help with this. Let me know if you want to hop in a beta.

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@nbaschez 😜

[Chris Savage @csavage]

https://t.co/vybbPORY6b

[Chris Savage @csavage]

https://t.co/7R211S5rdN

[Chris Savage @csavage]

https://t.co/qQkUcOqEfb

[Chris Savage @csavage]

The discomfort you're avoiding today doesn't disappear.

It just gets interest charged on it.

Take the hard conversation now. Future you will thank you.

[Chris Savage @csavage]

MAPA: Make America Protein Again

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@frankdenbowgoat Can you email me at chris AT Wistia and we will help get this taken care of?

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@hunter Glad to hear it. Happy Holidays!!

[Chris Savage @csavage]

@aubrybracco @survivorcbs Let’s gooo!