Tyler Williams

So Tyler, you're kind of building a new home for video on the web, but it's not kind of any home in your words. think it's kind of like more of a creator first platform more specifically for like motion designers, filmmakers, animators and things like that, which is really exciting. I'm like super interested in this both philosophically and like technically and have lots of questions, but I think it'd be really great to start like at the inception of this. Like what was the exact moment or moments like where you were just like, okay, I'm building this. Did it, did it happen slowly? We were like sort of playing around with the idea or was it kind of just like a, yes, I've got to do this.

Yeah, you know the... Myself and ⁓ my previous co-founder of Motion Array had kind of watched the decline of Vimeo. Even back to, I think, 2019, we were tossing around the idea of, there needs to be a new place for, you know, video makers to host their work and one that celebrates kind of the artists and the work. And I think we even went down the path, but then kind of got caught up in the acquisition of Motion Array. So we didn't pursue it any farther. And then, you know, sold the company. Kind of lost my way a bit. Very strange, right? You sell a company and you think, it's gonna be all perfect. But, you know, you lose your identity a little bit. you know, I was like, okay, I'll start doing some angel investing. I'll start working on all of these other tech ideas that I had kind of while we were building Motion Array that I wasn't kind of able to focus on. And so I did that for, you know, about four or five years. And every time I started on a project, it kind of ended the same way. You know, I just didn't have the... passion for it, kind of when it came down to it and ⁓ you know the passion is kind of what pushes you along when you kind of hit a lull. So after like trying to force myself to build these other projects last year, I was like screw this I'm quitting everything and I'm just gonna take a break and enjoy my three-year-old son and my daughter and just take a break. So that's what I did. I took about six months off. and wasn't really looking for anything, you know, and then all of sudden I saw that Bending Spoons had purchased Vimeo and I was like, man, given their track record, I was like, this isn't good for the community. Maybe now is the perfect time to start something new. And yeah, that was kind of the inception and then yeah, I just started at that point. and then.

And with the.

The reception to it was like so overwhelmingly positive and it seemed to have, so I think in tech terms, know, in tech terms, have what they call product market fit, but then there's something called product market pull, which is like pulling you. And that's what I felt that, you know, we kind of had right out of the gate. it's been.

And that, that kind of intangible thing as well that you were alluding to earlier that, that it fits for you motivationally. It's not just like, there's a need for this out there. It's like, actually this aligns with my spirit or whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, and it's been so awesome just kind of being back in the community and like looking at work again, because I think,

Did you have a long break from that? Is that part of what the issue was, was like when you stepped out of it, you were like, I don't have my tribe or my people anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. And even before that, right? Like I was a motion designer. Then we built motion array, which was like templates for people and stock music and that kind of a thing. And you're kind of catering towards a different audience there. And then, you know, once it starts becoming a larger company, you kind of get pulled away from the community and the work and all of that stuff that you were.

Mm-hmm.

so passionate about and it's more about the business and all of that. So I would say even before we sold the company, kind of, I lost touch with watching work and kind of where things are going and diving back in and seeing how amazing the work is now, it's been awesome.

So, I mean, I'm pretty sure from what you said and from what I've read, you didn't do much like motion design yourself towards the end, the middle and end of doing Motion Array, because it was way more about like running the business. We can talk about like, I'd love to dive into Motion Array and that whole thing later, but did you in the break between these two major projects of your life do any art? Did you do any motion design? Did you try and get back to it there or did it just not feel right?

I did. You know, I took this, I was like, I sold a company, a tech company, you know, like I want to angel invest. And I kind of tried to force myself into this more like tech bro type role. it just kind of like looking back, it just feels so gross, right? Like that's totally not who I am. So yeah, I feel, I feel much more fulfilled at these, these days. So yeah.

Great. Yeah, maybe we could dive into that just a little bit about is it failure rank? Is that still going? Is that still in the background while you run frame rate or are you now just like fully all in nothing else?

Yeah, so Failure Inc. still exists. It's kind of like a holding company and underneath it, I have other companies that one, I invest through. that's still going because the investments are still out there. Some of them, some have crashed and burned, yeah, so that's still going. And in fact, ⁓ FrameRate is a company underneath the umbrella of Failure.

That makes sense.

But yeah, all of my focus is totally on frame rate. And it's funny because I used to check my other email address under failure and now it's all just like, I gotta make the default, the frame rate email. So.

Nice. Yeah. Just briefly, maybe we could talk about the name failure, Inc. It's a name that stands out and speaks to me, even though I don't know enough about the inception of it. yeah, the failure Inc is cool. Talk to, talk to us about why you chose that name.

Yeah, two reasons. The first one being kind of giving myself permission to fail and pursue anything and you know that's the only way to grow. And you know not to get too personal but... the way I was brought up and kind of my background, I felt like, you know, I had the cards stacked against me and it was almost like I was a failure from the start and I'm trying to prove myself out of that. So,

Yeah, I hear that. So maybe just going back to frame rate then, like you started, was it just you in the first like little while you're building it? You're an engineer, you're technical by back.

I'm a motion designer. have messed with development over the year, just toying with it. So yeah, it was just me kind of trying to build an MVP. And then I showed it to, to Joey from school of motion and he's like, Oh wow. You know, this is, this is awesome. Let me introduce you to some people. And he is actually the, the person that introduced me to Justin. Talked to Justin, it was kind of this loose, ambiguous conversation at the beginning, you know, but I got the inkling that he wanted to be involved in some way. So kind of kept that line of communication open and yeah, so here we are. He's joining next week and I think it's gonna be awesome.

Yeah, I saw that. That was very exciting. So I'm just staying with the early inception of it, because I feel like this is really important, that early step of building and laying the foundation of what we'll become. And you're still super early with this. It's still the early days. Design decisions then are very, very important. And also they belie the kind of reasons why you started this. Maybe we could talk about like what you thought was sort of non-negotiable about this new video platform, like in terms of the first things, like the simplicity of it, or as an example of something that I love about Framerate already, it was one of the first interactions I just loved was I clicked on a video and then like the background went gray and like disappeared a little bit and I was focused on the video. And then for whatever reason, I don't know why, I just like deep muscle distracted memory. I clicked out of the video, like as if I was going to like scroll down and then the video went away. And I felt like it was a really nice hint. It was like keeping me connected to the video. Whereas on other platforms, you can press play and then you can like scroll down and get distracted and look at other things. And the video is playing up there. I'm presuming that's all of that's intentional. And I'd love you to just like go long form and just talk to us about like when you sat down and started trying to build this MVP, like what was important to you about the experience, what you, what you still trying to reach for.

Yeah, you know, think first and foremost, it's putting the work first. You know, ⁓ I feel like on other platforms, you're, and you're trying to watch a video, but up here in the top right, it says join free or something, right? Or below the video, it has some kind of call to action to try and get you to join. And you have to think about it from, you know, the viewer's perspective. You want them to watch your work if you send them a link or something like that. So it's all about having them focused on the work. yeah, that's kind of just driven all of the decisions. Even like the top navigation, I try to have it as minimal as possible, as well as when you land on the homepage, you start seeing work kind of immediately. We're not burying it on some... obscure little links to watch the videos. We want the videos to be, you know, first, the most important part of the site, you know. Because ultimately it's like, the artists want to show their work, they work hard on it, and they want to, you know, earn more work and more revenue from this work. And, you know, if you're hiding it somewhere on the site, it just seems ridiculous and counterintuitive. So.

Yeah. It's amazing how when you...

Rather than putting the features and all of that stuff on the homepage, it's just about the work.

It's amazing when you like, when companies build UI around things like video or products or whatever, how often the thing, the, the, the thing around the thing can become more than the thing. Like, just distract from it. Not necessarily literally, not necessarily in terms of scale and stuff like that, but just there's something about the kind of the stuff around it. There are some sites you just go to and you're just like, I can't even look at the thing that I'm trying to look at because there's something just, just distracting me here. So that was immediately what. felt really good about it in your approach. But you're about to enter this like new design phase with like a design studio. I forgot the name of who they are or who that is. What are you guys thinking and talking about right now? Is it more brand focused or is it like the actual user experience? Okay.

Yeah, it's more brand focused at the moment. In fact, it's all brand focused. So we're just working on kind of logo design, typography, that kind of thing. I've never actually done this process. So it's been fun to kind of learn. Yeah, you just start with ideas, what the company's about, what's important, kind of the mission of the company. And then you start developing a few different logos and ideas and then.

Right.

That's kind of where we're at. We've decided on a few that we like, and then we're going to explore them further and then get into typography and color palette and all of that later. So yeah, we're not touching really the UI, though I'm no professional UI designer. I just know what kind of I would want on a site, but that should all be tightened up hopefully after this brand design process. So yeah.

Cool.

know, what they say about AI. It's like, hopefully this is the worst this site will ever be, but yeah.

Yeah. So I know I'm jumping around a bit. I don't want to lose the kind of the inception or the backstory. Like maybe you could talk a little bit for the people who don't have the context about like the whole thing that changed with Vimeo and what that used to be. The kind of the world that it used to be, the kind of staff picks, the kind of pride that people took in being on that platform and like not necessarily the details or the ins and outs, however you see the story really.

Yeah, I'll just kind of, yeah, my own personal story with Vimeo. So I am a motion designer. Before that, I wanted to be kind of a commercial and music video director. But I landed in motion design because I needed a job after I graduated. So, you know, for me, Vimeo was the first place that I would go.

because think a lot of people lack that context.

Every morning when I got to work, when I was drinking my coffee, kind of looking for inspiration, seeing what's new, seeing just some of the craziest, inspirational work that's out there. And I believe it was on the homepage, you know, and then you had your feed, which was really nice to kind of show you the new work from all of the people that you were following. And then I don't remember when, but it just started kind of getting buried on the site. And then, you know, social platforms kind of. started taking some of the work and it just seemed to be very fragmented. yeah, again, I can't remember when, but it seemed Vimeo kind of took another, took a turn and wanted to go kind of more enterprise and start offering tools. And it was more about, yeah, the tools and stuff and not about the work of the artist you know, when they went more corporate, more enterprise, that's kind of the part that like hurt the most because I feel like our community is the one that built Vimeo into what it is because we all gravitated towards, you know, I think it was 720p at the time, video playback. We wanted higher quality playback. We wanted a better video player over YouTube because YouTube at the time was, yeah, had pretty bad. player and we wanted some customization. So I feel like the community built Vimeo into what it was and then they just kind of turned their back on everyone and started going down this more enterprise corporate type tools that the community wasn't really asking for or looking for. yeah.

And presumably like there was a reason. Well, yeah, I don't know. What are the reasons behind that? that just economics of like, I don't know. Yeah. Does it cost loads to host that many videos? Was that why they were doing it? Were they losing money? Do you have any context there?

You know, I don't really have any background on that. I'm assuming, I think they got acquired at some point and then by a PE firm. And then it was probably like growth at all costs. Let's grow this thing. And they kind of hit some type of plateau and then saw kind of the enterprise as the way to go.

So you're building like way more creator first, like exactly kind of what was there in the beginning or even better. And maybe we could talk about like, yeah, your vision for it. Like what does creator first mean? Like one of the things I've, I think I've heard you say about is like protecting and is in everyone's minds at the moment as like artists is protecting from AI training or I know there was that thing in the Vimeo terms of service, which was like.

Exactly.

No AI training to date, which I remember reading about, which obviously spooks people. Yeah. What, what, what, what goes underneath that title for you of creator first, like other than what we've spoken about already with focus and videos front and centre.

Yeah, you know, think aside from putting the work first, putting the artist first, It's also about helping the artists, as cheesy as it sounds, thrive. And that's the other side of this entire thing, getting people that are looking for artists to work with into the site and viewing the work so that we can make the connection. So it's not just, hey, here's a bunch of cool work that only artists watch. It's, hey, here's a bunch of cool work where you can find artists to work with. And that to me, that's a huge part of it, right? And then with the AI Yeah, so I think with AI, it's kind of a weird place. I see the usefulness and kind of workflow, but as far as like training on off of people's work illegally, to me, that seems like a no-no. And as far as we can, we will try to protect everyone's work and have no intention of like selling anything for other people to train on. But you know, lot of these companies are, they don't pay any attention and just do whatever they want, you know. ⁓

Is that an unsolved problem at the moment? How do you, can you, presumably you can't fully protect against AI training with scraping and stuff like that, but is that something that you're thinking about now or is it just on the cards to properly lock down and think about later?

So currently there's, what is it in the site map of the site or whatever, the robots TXT, there's a way that you're supposed to be able to block AI from scraping the site. That is in place. Whether or not they're listening to that, I highly doubt it.

I'm sure Disney did that with all of the C-dance stuff and that didn't go too well for them.

Yeah, so if something else comes along and we can implement it, we'll definitely do that. Again, it's like to the best of our ability.

Yeah. Of course. It's tricky.

It's definitely like we're not hosting MP4, so it's not like something you can easily just grab and download. But as you know, there are tools out there to pull anything off of Vimeo and YouTube and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. Yeah. But hopefully like, yeah, anyway, I don't have any comments on that. It's a tricky area. but it's great that it's kind of like priority in your mind. I have a question about like, maybe you're not thinking about this. I'm to, cause I think I'm just so excited about the platform and you're still so early. I'm probably going to ask questions right now, which you're just like, yeah, I need to think about that later. I'm not sure, but like, I'm interested whether you've thought about like algorithms versus curation on a video platform. Like, you know, staff picks on Vimeo was always like a really wonderful thing. Cause you felt like there's a human, they're behind it. They care about the curation. I care and I trust that curation. So I'm going to follow it. And then on the other hand, there's YouTube, right? Which is just fully algorithmic and other places. I'm curious, maybe what the setup is today, whether you're thinking about like doing that kind of curated, like best picks things. or whether you're going to use algorithms on the homepage. How's that all playing out in your mind?

Yeah, so it's a little bit of both. Our selects, which are kind of our staff picks, are definitely hand-picked, and I think they always will be. I don't see that going away. When I say, you know, it's both, the trending videos are driven by a very rudimentary algorithm of like... how long they've been on the site, how many views they've had, how many likes, that kind of thing. It's nothing like super complex to try and hook you in to keep scrolling and watching more. So yeah, that's kind of where it's at right now. And I don't really see it changing much, to be honest.

Yeah. What about the like community and like the comment side of it? Is it going to remain like the main artifact is the video and there's just comments underneath or do you see framerate expanding into something else like either like more of a community or maybe like I've heard something about like review links or something like that. Like, will it ever be something that's a parallel with frame.io or things like that? Or are you going to keep it more like a gallery type place?

Yeah, I think currently it's about trying to get the artists on the side and their work so that we can start pulling in the people that are interested in working with the artists. Once we have that dialed in, I think it only makes sense to start working on other products that, again, align with the mission, which is to help the artists thrive. And in that case, there's a lot of ideas out there. A video review system would be great. as well as maybe even that's some kind of portfolio builder where you can build your own portfolio and easily, you know, embed the, build your own portfolio and embed your own videos. Yeah, so there's a lot of different ideas going around, but again, it's all, you know, focused on the artists and not trying to change from that.

So like maybe a basic question I should have asked earlier on, which is just like, how's it going? Like how long you've been, has it been live? How are you feeling about it? And it feels like really exciting. I saw you say the other day that like some of your, your great heroes in motion are there. And it certainly feels like it when I dip into the, to the platform now. Yeah. How's it, how's it feeling? And, and then maybe we could go into like, you mentioned about getting the people there, the creators there, and then next pulling in the people that are interested in booking those creators. Is that like a on the shelf but coming up sort of thing?

Yeah, know, since we kind of opened it up and started getting some people coming to the site, it's just been, the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive and it's just blowing me away, to be honest. But I don't take that lightly. Like to me, a positive review is like more pressure on myself to live up to kind of the expectation. ⁓ So it's going well. I'm working a lot. I am...

Mm-hmm.

scaring my wife a little bit, I think. Because...

I saw something that you posted the other day about your kid saying, dad, I know when you're grumpy, you're building or something like that.

Yeah, so.

in good way as well as whatever, that's not a

When I'm working on something, I have a hard time putting myself away. And this has happened before, kind of with Motion Array, as well as other projects that I've done in the past. But so she's, you know, a little concerned that's of the work-life balance. But again, you know, at the beginning, it's always intense, especially with when you have such positive feedback and you want to live up to the expectations of everyone. So. It's going amazing. I couldn't be more happy or more excited to be honest. Yeah. And then when you see people sign up like, like MK12, that's dating myself a little bit. I'm an old guy, but like to have them on the site is just mind blowing. And then of course, you know, some of the newer guys and the work that they're doing, it's just incredible. So I think community building is going really well. you know, kind of out of the gate, we had this lifetime free membership for the first thousand users. I knew there needed to be some kind of incentive or, you know, something to get people on the platform. And ⁓ what's unfortunate now is I have people emailing me like, Hey, you know, I heard there was a free thing and I'm like, sorry, we kind of ran out of that a couple of weeks ago. But,

Yeah, thanks for that. I'm one of those people. Appreciate it. gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, people are still joining and it's just been amazing so far.

Kudos to you for doing that. That's a big commitment as well, like in terms of your or your company's money to host that for forever. Does that feel like a gamble or like a big thing? Is it a big amount of costs? I don't want to ask too many personal financial questions, but...

Yeah. I think if you do it right, it's not super expensive. And the idea is like, you know, first thousand that's the market's huge, right? Like there are a lot of motion designers and editors and stuff. So the idea is to have, you know, everyone else join and hopefully like that's the thousand is just a drop in the bucket at that point. So.

And get momentum going. It's kind of like a marketing play, I guess, right? ⁓ Yeah. And it really has as well. Like Justin has just joined and that like also feels like a really significant moment for me. But I'm sure it feels like huge for you and the team. What went, like, how did that happen? Maybe you could talk about, obviously you knew him already. Like when, when did it kind of formalize and why do you think he's

You have to get the flywheel going somehow, you know.

So excited about frame rate.

Yeah, know, kind of Joey introduced us, just kind of to, I wanted his feedback and, know, and again, like he was kind of hinting at being interested and, and I was hinting at, you know, having him be involved somehow. I did not expect him to join. You know, he was like, again, like he's a legend, right? So, and I'm, I'm a fan boy. So,

Yeah.

Yeah, even like talking to him, like, whoa, like you're really down to earth and like, cool. You know, like I've met some other people, I'm not going to mention any names, but like when you finally meet them, you're like, okay, like that's weird. know, what's the saying about don't meet your heroes or something. But yeah, so we kind of started talks and at one point he was like, I can't do it. You know, it's, it's a big risk.

the

He had his job at Buck. And some other things I don't want to go into. I'll just let him speak for himself. But yeah, once I presented some kind of offer and how we can work together, I tried to get creative to solve the problem. Yeah, he accepted and now it's kind of we're off to the races. So super exciting.

Mm-hmm. Sure. Great. And what's his role going to be mainly with the platform?

Yeah, you know, I think his strong suit, is like community building, curation, you know, he doesn't really have a formal title at this point just because it's just, you know, kind of the two of us at the moment. But yeah, he's going to kind of see up.

Sure. Vice President of Operations Europe Global. Something like that. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Great.

Yeah, something like that. No, more on the marketing side. ⁓ Yeah. And, you know, I really, I'm, you know, such a big fan of his and what he's done in the past. And I know his kind of high standard for quality. And it's almost like by bringing him on, I'm having to hold myself accountable to meet kind of his expectations too. So I kind of see it as a way to, yeah, just better, better the product and better everything.

So you alluded to this idea a minute ago about like this kind of two sides to the platform. The first step is to bring the people, the great artists, then you're doing like a killer job at that already. And like the community needs it. It feels like there's big hunger there. You're building a platform already, it's very early, but it feels like the right shape, the right experience already, it's going to improve. But there's this other part, which is like the people who need the artists, the kind of two-sided marketplace thing or whatever. I'd be interested to know how you're thinking about that, like, and how you will approach that eventually. What does that look like?

Yeah, so I think for the site to be successful, not only should we be displaying the artist's work, putting it front and center, but we should also be helping the artists find new clients and generate more revenue. And to me, you know... it's going to kind of happen organically, right? If there's great work on the side, people will start finding out about it. And, you know, similar to what we used to do at Motion Array when we needed a designer, we'd go to Dribbble and look for stuff, right? So I think some of that's going to happen organically, but I definitely think in the future, you know, I could see us not advertising for people to join Framerate, but advertising for people to come and, you know, find the artist. So... ⁓ essentially advertising on behalf of the artists. Because if we can really help the artists grow and find new clients and new work, you know, that's what a successful site looks like to me.

primary model for you guys in terms of like sustainability is creators paying for the hosting, guess. Yeah, but you're being really decent and thinking about the economics for them, not just you, which is great.

Yeah, that's like I know. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm a motion graphics designer. I'm an artist at the heart of it. I just always try and put myself in the shoes of everyone else and what I would want from a platform, right? Like I don't want to pull some kind of switcheroo, you know, five years later where we're like, yeah, any work you... Generate has to go through the site and we're going to take, you know, 10 % of it or something like I don't foresee that ever happening. It's just about hosting the work and you know, and that's it.

No, it doesn't feel like it. ⁓ and so like, presumably there's an aspect of like your offering as well. I just changed some of my main portfolio pieces onto the site and then I embedded them on my site. So there's like an embed ability as well, like Vimeo. So it's not quite like, I believe I never, never put my stuff on Dribbble or anywhere else like that. You can put your videos on places like that, but then you can't like use that in your own way. Maybe you could talk about that as a strategy and, and how it's been building that maybe more technically. and maybe small things like I think it's a variable width player and things like that. don't know. Maybe you can talk about that strategy and the technical side.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately I'm just trying to look at it from the perspective of the artists and what they would want. Not only do you want to host your work and, or not only do you want to just display your work and have it be found and watched and that kind of thing, but you need, you have your own portfolio and you need to host it there or embed it there. And yeah, I think it only makes sense to kind of follow that, that playbook. Yeah. And as far as the... player and all that stuff. Yeah, I just want to keep it as minimal as possible even on the embeds. Though we do give you lots of customization capabilities. I didn't want to have a frame rate logo on there. I just feel like, you know, it's kind of crazy to have a little advertisement on your work. But yeah, I don't know what else to say.

Yeah, that little, that little Vimeo thing or that little YouTube icon that we're all so used to seeing on any kind of player embed, you deliberately don't have that. ⁓ and yet like not, you know, just being devil's advocate here. And yet that would create a kind of like ⁓ a, a sort of connection back to your platform. Like there would be a, a flywheel if, it genuinely remains a really like genuine platform with like great integrity. It's not necessarily a bad thing that people go there, but yeah, maybe you could talk about that. Do see yourself ever doing that? Would you ever have something at the end of the videos which would display other videos or is that just like off the cards? No way ever. Yeah, great. Okay. Well, I was just wondering, I wanted to probe a bit.

There's no way in hell I would ever show up. Yeah, no videos at the end, no advertising. The logo thing, I don't really foresee ever adding a logo, especially if you're a paying member. The only thing that I'm kind of stuck on is like, hey, you know, if I'm an artist, and I come to your site, I'm like, wow, where are you hosting your video? I wanna know. There's really no way to figure that out currently. I thought about having a right click or something that might would bring up view on frame rate, like button or something like that, but yeah, I don't foresee putting it front there.

Cool. I'm aware that like we moved past the motion array and that's like a huge part of your history. And I'd love to do a semi deep dive into that now and just like learn about the inception, what it was like in the early days. And then like you alluded to the fact towards the end, you kind of burned out a bit. So maybe we can just like navigate that arc. I'd love to hear the story. How it like right from the first moment of like when you first built it.

Yeah. Yeah, so it's a funny story. It literally was late one night when we were at, myself and the co-founder, Eddie Levin, we worked at the same studio here in Atlanta and we had to work late into the night for some reason, some stupid reason. And it was literally like a dark and stormy night. we were like, we both took a break and we're standing there talking and... You know, I had been building templates on the side just to help bring in extra income. I was selling them on other sites like pond five and Revo stock, which isn't around any longer. cause I had had a daughter at the time and I was trying to earn extra money so that my wife didn't have to go back to work. so I was building templates and I told Eddie about them and we kind of just were brainstorming and we were like, Hey, I bet you could allow users to customize these templates online and render them on a server somewhere and then spit the video back out. And this was 2011, so it was a long time ago. And we were like, yeah, we need to work on that. And then we were like, wait, that's gonna cost a lot of money. Because, you know, the development and all that stuff at the time. So we were like, hey, let's just make a template site and we'll start it. It'll be like, you know, an all you can eat buffet, download as much as you want for a monthly fee. And we'll make a bunch of money really quick because it's such a great idea. Why wouldn't everyone sign up for it? Well, the first idea never happened and Motion Array. kind of grew over the course of nine years. we were like, okay, we'll make that site first. And it was funny, we both put in, I think $750 to have a company offshore build the site and you get what you pay for. So it was very basic and there was a lot of... process just to get one video online. We were making all the thumbnails, different sizes, kind of thing. Lots of work. yeah, the two of us built or made all of the templates for probably the first two to three years. I think we made like a thousand each, kind of towards the end. And it was later on, you know,

huh. Whoa.

Probably around the two year mark, we were like, hey, I think my wife told me, she's like, you can't keep doing this. Like you're working full time, then you're coming home and you're working full time again, you know, on Motion Array. And so we kind of came to the point where we were like, okay, we're making just enough money a month off of the site. where we can quit our day job. And so once we did that and we quit our job at the studio and went full time on Motion Array, I mean, you could see it on the graph, right? Like that's when kind of things started taking off. And it was around that point where we started doing kind of a proper site design and redesign and having it built properly where things were automated. And then during that whole process, the idea of having other people contribute to the site came about and we figured out a way to do that. And then, yeah, after that point kind of there was another spike in growth. and then it was kind of, you know, growing. Okay. But then. I don't remember what point it was, probably like five years, and Eddie came to me and he was like, hey, we should start this new category called Premiere Pro templates. And I was like, Eddie, that's stupid. What is a Premiere Pro template? But he kept pushing it and I'm glad he did. So I was like, all right, you know, we kind of, we always try to think simply in how. how you can do things as quickly as possible to test them. So I was like, whatever, just build one, put it up for free and let's make a blog post about it see what happens. Well, we put it up and I remember posting on Reddit like, Hey, we have this template, but we put it in the editors forum and, the editors sub Reddit and they seem to get a little worried and they didn't like it. think that's kind of where everyone is right now with AI, right? they were concerned. But then, you know, aside from the few vocal people on Reddit, people started downloading it like crazy. You know, I was convinced enough to where I was like, okay, yeah, you're right. I was wrong. You were right. We should make this category. And then once we did that, I mean, we created the category of Premiere Pro templates. There wasn't one to begin with and it was just kind of crazy growth. And I mean, it only makes sense, right? Because you're allowing video editors, which is a much larger market than, you know, motion graphics designers to use. these pre-built graphics in their native software and not have to go into After Effects, which is highly complex and steep learning curve. yeah, kind of after that, it was just like some crazy growth for the company. And then we started hiring too many people and lesson learned there. But yeah, we did start hiring a lot and building. Yeah, just building the company out, you know, marketing. development team, all of that. So we just kind of kept growing, kept growing. And then at some point, I think it was around year eight, close to year nine, Eddie approached me and he's like, hey, I've been talking with this, this investment guy and he says that the market is really hot right now for companies like ours. And I was like, Yeah, whatever, you know, that's fine. Like, I didn't think too much about it, but the more we started discussing it, you know, it's so funny because at that time we were concerned about Adobe kind of taking the template market and putting them online, kind of our original idea, right? And then at that point, would they try to cut off all of these external template providers? We felt kind of vulnerable, to be honest. And we had been seeing such great growth, we didn't want to miss the bus. So we were concerned about an online editor. We had no clue about what was coming with AI. And then we had been doing it for nine years and we just decided to... you know, start a process with selling the company. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Big, big journey. And presumably you're glad that you ended it or you sold it because towards the end it was more, more stressful than it was enjoyable. Is that fair to say?

You know, towards the end it was all meetings, stand-ups, just that kind of a thing, right?

Do you think you mentioned that you hired too many people. Do you think you could have done it in a different way to make it more sustainable and enjoyable, regardless of what was coming with AI or the future, things like that? Could you have done things differently and kept it a different feeling? I guess this question proceeds my next question, which is really about like building frame rate. You're so early now, you're going to do things differently, but yeah, could you have done things differently?

I mean, I didn't dislike what we were doing. It was definitely a lot of fun, especially like in retrospect, right? Like it was great. Like even, even the lowest points, you know, you're like, man, can't believe, can't remember that. All learning experiences and you know, yeah, it was great. It was a lot of fun. So it wasn't horrible, you know, we just had been doing it for so long.

Totally.

And yeah, a lot of it was meetings and stuff like that kind of stuff that comes with just running a business But Yeah, I don't know that we could have done anything differently

And so as you're starting from right now, like what's forefront in your mind about how, if this does go much bigger, much further, for longer, like what's forefront of your mind about like how to do it differently for you internally and the team.

Yeah, I think. For me, I just want to stay involved as much as I can, kind of on the ground, talking to the users, hearing what they want. Yeah, and just being involved with the work that's being created and the tools that everyone's using and that kind of thing, that stuff excites me. yeah, I think just being more involved in the... the creative process of frame rate.

And where is that taking place? that primarily on Reddit or like, are you, where are you chatting with folks on the platform?

So currently, with the first thousand users, everyone was invited to a Discord server. That's where we're getting a lot of the feedback and it's...

Okay, yeah.

You know, I can't stress this enough, like that group of people have made such a huge impact on the site already. Like there's so many things that I never would have thought of and bugs that I never would have caught. So yeah, hats off to those guys and I can't thank them enough for joining that Discord server. So that's where the majority of it is happening. A lot of people will email me on the side and ask for things and yeah, I try to... know, way out suggestions and what I think really needs to be implemented and you know, there's like nice to haves and then there's your must haves, so.

What are you hearing most from them at the moment and is there anything that you can kind of like give us a sense of like that you're working on like over the next one to six months without making promises? I know how it is.

Yeah, you know, it's so funny because I like built the platform made embedding and tested it slightly. Like I was always very nervous about the embedding. And I think once we opened it up a little bit and people have started testing it on multiple platforms, that's kind of been the biggest focus is getting that right on all the different platforms, as well as like reaching out to the platforms. reaching out to the platforms and trying to have them kind of whitelist our site as a provider. We're still struggling with that with a couple of companies. But embedding's big right now. ⁓ Once we get that in, dialed in, I think that's gonna be great. As far as the future goes, think, know, yeah, got a couple of, few ideas. Yeah, I'll just share them. One would be definitely kind of a,

you

a simplistic review system, right? Like I've heard from a lot of people that Frame.io has just become this thing that their clients don't even want to open up because it just looks too complex. ⁓ So definitely just a streamlined version of review where you upload something and people can comment on it, right? That only makes sense. I'm toying with the idea of having not just, you know, videos kind of...

Mm-hmm.

that you watch, but more of like project pages where you can build out, like say you have multiple videos and you have behind the scenes and you have, you know, nice little animated gifts and that type of thing. More like, more like a Behance where you can talk about the entire kind of creative process for the project rather than just here's my video, you know, that kind of a thing. That's still kind of on the back burner. It's marinating. What else?

Have you ever thought about like, I was uploading one of mine the other day and I saw like you choose three tags and one of them was like tutorials or education. And I was like, I haven't seen that much on the platform. Like the only thing close to that I've seen is like Justin's update, which is more of like a sort of a platform update sort of thing. Yeah. Where does education tutorials courses like I can imagine like, you know, motion design education like on that one day, but I don't know. Where do you sit with that?

Yeah, you know, I made that category thinking that a lot of the tutorial guys would be drawn to come and upload their stuff there. That's yet to be seen. Hopefully it comes with time. I do remember, you know, again, early days of Vimeo, that's where I went to watch tutorials. It wasn't YouTube, but you know, I understand the reason for putting it on YouTube. They already have a huge market and you know, you can earn bad revenue, blah, blah, blah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mmm.

Yeah, but as far as courses go and charging for them, maybe at some point, definitely not a priority at the moment.

Yeah, my only reason for not uploading there right now is like the people are on there like legit and they don't need education. So, but I would do it like eventually if there's a, if there's a right place for it. I really care about experience and YouTube is a horrible place in some ways to experience tutorials because of the distraction. Sometimes it's great because of the discoverability, but for focused experiences for education, just, that, that could be a beautiful thing for what it's worth.

Yes. Yeah, you know, I have, I forgot about this. I have a crazy idea of some kind of integration with, with After Effects and Premiere and that type of thing where you can watch the videos through an extension or something while you're following along with the tutorial or something like that. Definitely still just a vague idea, but I could see that being pretty cool.

Mm-hmm. And so yeah, like stepping out and looking further afield, like those are some things you might be working on, may or may not be working on in the next how many months, but like further out four five years, is there anything about your vision? Like maybe you and Justin are talking about like high level about where you hope it will be in five years. Maybe it's obvious from what we've spoken about, but I'd love to just hear you say it if it's clear for you.

For me. again for it to be successful, right? Like it should be known as the place you go to find artists to work with. If you want to find someone that does cell animation, you come to Framerate, right? Like it should just be known like, you know, ubiquitous for people. ultimately that's where I think it should be in five years, aside from having... you know, everyone on the platform. I remember, again, early days of Vimeo, it's like, ⁓ I saw this commercial, you know, I want to watch it, right? And you go to Vimeo and you search for it and it was, a lot of times it was there. you know, I think just growing the community and then again, trying to follow up that with bringing the other half in to... the clients, right, the clients for the artists. And providing tools for the artists to help, just help have their work be seen and discovered workflow, that kind of a thing. It's all so rapidly that it's like, it's hard to even think about five years from now, but yeah, I definitely want to stay true to the artists. That's one thing we learned with Motion Array was like, the platform was all about the artists. Like if we treated them well and you know, we didn't try to...

Yeah, well, I mean. Yeah, of course.

change the percentage of revenue that they were earning and get really creative with how we can squeak out more money, that they would have our back, we would be the platform for them. So I'm taking that and applying what I learned there to Framerate. And it's all about the artists always.

Mm-hmm. Great. Tyler, thank you. mean, this has been great to speak to you so early. You're clearly like a great grounded founder. Your heart's in the right place with all this and just thank you for what you're doing for the community. It's just epic. I can't wait to see where it goes.

It's yeah, it's my pleasure. It's been a lot of fun and yeah, it's just been great to have something pull you out of bed in the morning and keep you up late at night, you know.

Great, cool, thanks a lot.