Case Studies
Cloudapp
CASE STUDY
When Scott Smith joined CloudApp as VP of Sales in 2016, he knew it was an easy decision. The San Francisco-based visual communications startup was growing fast, had a passionate userbase, and had just raised a round of funding. Two of the investors were Scott’s former leaders and mentors: Tikhon Bernstam of Parse and Kyle York of Dyn.
What Scott didn’t know was in six months he would also be running marketing, and not long after that, he’d become CEO. Scott wasted no time building off CloudApp’s past success and brought the company to new heights.
As CEO, Scott has made key executive hires across sales, marketing, and engineering, raised more capital, opened a Utah office, and increased revenue. He’s scaled the company quickly and spent responsibly. And he’s just warming up. CloudApp is the right company at the right time.
“There is a significant shift in where people work,” Scott said. “More and more people are remote, and CloudApp eliminates the need for an office or a live meeting by making collaboration easier. It allows your co-workers to see what you’re working on by using instantly shareable videos and images.”
But unlike competitors like Zoom, where both parties must be on a call at the same time, which requires detailed scheduling and coordination, CloudApp allows you to record and share now. It can then be consumed at the leisure of the other person. That convenience and flexibility is helping drive adoption.
Despite all the success, Scott will be the first to admit there’s a learning curve as a first-time CEO.
“There have been times I didn’t know what to do,” Scott said. “Not that I tried things to see if they worked. I literally didn’t know what to try.”
In those instances, Scott often turned to his former boss and CloudApp investor and board member Kyle York, CEO and Managing Partner of York IE.
SCOTT SMITH
“During those times, I would basically enlist Kyle to talk about the problems I had,” Scott said. “He always had practical examples. He wasn’t Jesus sharing principles. He gave real-world examples of how he handled certain situations. That’s what makes Kyle different from, say, Jason Lemkin. Jason shares great business principles. Kyle shares practical templates about what to do.”
Scott said he appreciated how willing Kyle was to answer his texts.
“Kyle is quite literally the person I text the most, other than my wife,” Scott said.
As CloudApp continues to grow and scale, there will be plenty more opportunities for Scott and Kyle to text (perhaps with some CloudApp embedded links). Hopefully their texting plan is like CloudApp’s future: limitless.