A Secret to VidMob’s Success

As VidMob’s growth has continued its acceleration over the past few years, people often ask me what our secret is. It’s easy to respond that our foundational belief in the irreplaceable nature of human creativity pushed us down a path that has been strategically advantageous in multiple ways.  I can talk about how this led to the system architecture that today we think of as “services in the loop”, which by connecting creative intelligence (signal) and expert creative response (action) into one seamless software platform, enables our models to learn faster, our creative insights to get smarter, and our platform to deliver more measurable value to our clients. 

I can also talk about how our day one mission-driven path (we’re going to create a million quality jobs) led us to realize early-on how important purpose was, which led us to launch our 501c3, VidMob Gives, laughably early in the company’s development.  This entrenchment around values led us to imagine what a stakeholder-driven company should look in the 21st century, and this gave us a reason to be that was bigger than hitting quarterly numbers.  This dramatically altered the caliber of the talent that we were able to attract and culminated in our bizzarro world experience of The Great Resignation – growing from 130 to over 300 people last year, and losing almost none in the process.

I can also talk about my co-founder Craig’s advice in 2015 about how in the early days of Facebook, they had many partners, but they did most of the work with the few that they really liked.  This led us to invest deeply in showing up the right way every time for our partners, and how our relentless adherence to this has led to the many wonderful partnerships that we have today.

And the thing is, all of these are true.  But I want to talk about a different secret weapon today – our female leadership.  In a technology industry that is still disappointingly dominated by men, VidMob has taken a different path.   Our head of US enterprise client partnerships is a woman.  Our head of client solutions is a woman.  Our VP of product is a woman.  Our head of platform partnerships is a woman.  Our CMO is a woman.  Our head of talent acquisition is a woman.  Our heads of strategic client management and creative operations are women.   The first company we purchased, Chiligum, was founded by an incredible entrepreneur named Deb Folloni, who also happens to be, a woman.  Two thirds of the independent directors on our Board our women.    And many, many more leaders in our company are women.   All in, 64% of our employees report to a woman on the management team.   And we are one of the few technology companies that actually has more women than men (51/49%).

How did we end up in this position?   After all, VidMob was founded by 3 men, so it’s safe to say that this was not an inevitable outcome.   Well, the answer here is actually stunningly simple.   We just hired the best people in every case, and a hell of a lot of them turned out to be women.  

I focus a lot on strategy, and as part of that, I usually shy away from discussing things that might be too helpful to our competitors.   But it’s Women’s History Month, so I guess I’ll break my own rules.   Here’s a freebie – if you want to build a truly great company, hire more women in positions of leadership.