AskVideo

Background

 

My journey to product started and coming electronic producer

 

Even though I had releases on international underground labels, and had DJ’s like Carl Cox playing my tracks,  it was hard to make a full-time living at it in Toronto, needed to find other ways to support myself to make a living.

 

So I got a job with Cubase one of the largest audio software platforms worked as a product specialist.

 

When my National Sales Manager broke away and started his own audio skills tutorial company called AskVideo he tapped me to be his number 2.

 

The Product

 

Audio skills software tutorial content aimed both at aspiring and established music producers.

 

We covered all the major DAW software, Cubase, Ableton, Pro Tools, Logic etc.

 

Starting out initially as tutorial DVD's sold via our website, and many wholesalers and resellers, evolving into an online learning platform.

 

I authored 14 of the courses in my own right but also worked with other content producers and our customers to ensure we had exactly the right content for our users.

 

Strategy

 

A way we were able to make it scale quickly was to partner with the major audio software developers.

 

We made our content roadmap align with their release roadmap, collaborating with alpha and beta releases long before releases to the public.

 

New features are often poorly explained by their internal teams. Over technical, and boring. being german companies literally got lost in translation.

 

We made content fun, engaging, and easy to understand.

 

facilitated the development of product features that

aligned with the use cases and the outcomes that audio

professionals in different segments are trying to accomplish

(Musicians, professionals, Mix engineers, TV and Film etc)

 

I ensure our products demonstrated how new workflows

and features could save our target audience significant

time and money, that's a major pain point for all end users.

 

Our partners experienced a bump in sales 20-30%

​

ASK video was sold to a competitor MacProVideo, but it has continued to grow.

is now the largest independent audio skills platform in the world.

​

​

Takeaways

​

Customers weren't paying for tutorials, they were paying for better results in their creative work.

​

Our partners weren't distributing our products for the fun of it, they did so to improve the adoption rates of their upgrades.

​

I learned a simple instruction technique that served me well as an instructor but also as a Product Manager: Every time I explain a new feature, I explained what I was doing, and why I was doing it.   Works great in videos, but also works with team members and new features.

​

When the market changes you need to move fast and act accordingly.  Our competitor was able to find a new cost structure, generate a subscription model, and gain market share faster than we were.

​

​

​