What We Learned from Rebranding to Opening a San Francisco Office in Just Two Months
Powtoon’s Execs Reflect on Our Most Recent Milestones
On May 10, we traveled halfway across the globe to unveil our brand new offices in San Francisco through an absolutely awesome launch event. We met local Powtoon users, presented the new Powtoon brand, and showcased special guests from Facebook and YouTube.
One month later, we’ve caught our breath and are now looking back on what this event means for Powtoon moving forward into a new brand, new office and entirely new region. We caught up with our CEO, COO and Business Development Manager to debrief from the Powtoon SF launch event and look ahead to the future.
What Was the Overall Vibe from the Event that You’re Taking Back with You to Powtoon?
Ilya Spitalnik, Powtoon CEO: Having built Powtoon over the past six years, I can’t tell you what it means to host a live event with our tribe present. It was standing room only and the energy in the room was palpable. Here we were, launching our stateside Powtoon presence, and we were completely blown away. We also brought in a facilitator who did a really awesome job getting people to mingle with each other and create laughter and an energy that was off the charts.
Daniel Zaturansky, Powtoon COO: What we tried to do was bring as many Powtoon users as possible under one roof to thank them for being with us throughout our company’s journey. We also wanted to understand the needs and opinions of our tribe, and how we can help them make better Powtoons and ultimately succeed in their jobs. Additionally, we were looking to find and meet new people to introduce them to Powtoon and our new brand.
I think it went very well. It was successful from an event perspective as people had a blast and stayed right until the end. We even had one guy who came all the way from Seattle just to be there for the event.
Talia Finn-Jakar, Powtoon Business Development Manager: There was an amazing feeling of everyone at the event “being in it together,” and everyone was excited to meet new people — both from the Powtoon team and within our tribe. There was a vibe of “something new is coming and we’re a part of it.” Everyone who was there felt a closeness to the team during the event — it was a very casual interaction. Overall there was a Powtoon-y vibe. That’s what we really wanted and I believe we accomplished it. There was a closeness and awesome vibe that resonated throughout the event.
What Was It Like Having Representatives from Facebook and YouTube at Our San Francisco Launch Event?
Ilya: It’s redundant to say what video means in today’s era — right now we’re in the middle of that storm. Powtoon is one of the top tools to use to create video content, and a specific point of pride for us is that Facebook and YouTube don’t only consider us partners, but also important friends and came to speak at the event. As Rachel [Rachel Branch, Recruitment Training Manager at Facebook] put it, “We’ve never seen such a response [to users using Powtoon to create video].” It was the same thing from YouTube. Julian [Julian Bryan, Incubation Project Manager at YouTube] mentioned that Powtoon users are achieving 43% view rates when the industry average is 27%. That’s huge.
Daniel: Rachel and Julian were really professional and talked about Powtoon in a passionate way. They weren’t just saying that Powtoon is a great tool, but they also talked favorably about the potential of Powtoon as a company. Many people in the audience weren’t aware of our new features (some hadn’t used Powtoon in years) and it was refreshing for people to see that we’re progressing in such an incredible way.
So, Why San Francisco?
Daniel: To us, San Francisco is really the tech capital of the U.S., and it’s important for us to have a presence here, close to our users and to talented people in the industry. Also, it is much easier to raise funds for the company in San Francisco since most of the top VC’s have representation in this area.
Ilya: The plan that we have is to be present in the U.S. — that’s where we’re most valued, where our product is most used, and we thought to start our U.S. journey in San Francisco in the center of the tech universe.
The truth is that our ship landed on that shore, in San Francisco, and that’s where we dropped our anchor. But that’s not to say that we’re stopping our U.S. expansion in the Bay Area. Our aim is have Powtoon everywhere. In the rest of the U.S. and beyond.
How Are You Looking to Leverage This Event and Our New Presence in San Francisco for Powtoon Moving Forward?
Ilya: It’s a way to showcase a new Powtoon for a new era. This event coincides with our enterprise launch.
We’ve already surpassed the 500 reserved seats in the enterprise launch— we’re over subscribed. Right now we’re trying to figure out how to navigate that, and the event is really helping to spread the word about Powtoon to the region. This event and launch also set a precedent and baseline for us to be launching Powtoon for agencies. The new San Fran office gives us the ability to structure meetups in the area for agencies and enterprises involved in the marketing segment, so keep your eyes on that space, because there is a lot of excitement coming soon.
Daniel: The event was a great way to introduce our team. Myself and Casey Atud, our Lead Evangelist and Community Manager, who will be the first people to run the new office and begin working with and reaching out to the people in the area. We’re looking to host events around marketing topics and training people about how to use Powtoon best. Whoever considers themselves to be an internal comms person, or those who work in HR, training, or any field like that — those are the people we want in our tribe, and we would like to support them as best we can.
Talia: The reason behind the event was to establish our presence — both existing users in our tribe and future Powtoonists in our target audience. What we were trying to achieve was establish ourselves as a leader in the video creation space — by bringing key people in from Facebook and Youtube (who are monsters in the space and the region). Next, we were looking to establish our community within San Francisco for our tribe members, and penetrate the marketing and agency segments. Finally, we want our Powtoon SF team to get connected to the people in the area and see how people there use Powtoon, how it’s solving challenges for them, and how it’s perceived. If we can cultivate that, that’s great, and if not, we’re looking to create more awareness for Powtoon in San Francisco.
