Animoto is a cloud-based service that allows users to easily create professional-looking videos from photos and videos. It has been very successful due to its scalable cloud infrastructure, great user experience where it "just works", and profitable business model. Animoto serves both free and paid customers and has grown rapidly, demonstrating it is a poster child for the cloud computing model with no infrastructure of its own.

1. animoto
cloud poster child

2. why i use it?
• it just works!
• its cool, engaging, unique
• reasonable value - $30/year
• it manages my content
• nothing to install - use anywhere

3. why a poster child?
• totally cloud based
• scalable
• great user experience
• a successful business model

4. the no-infrastructure
startup
• everything runs in Amazon’s cloud
• most expensive thing they own is their
coffee machine
• owning the infrastructure would cost $2M
• using the cloud for everything else: PayPal,
Google Checkout, Google Domains,
Salesfore.com

5. going viral on facebook
• animoto facebook app has 2M users
• went from 25,000 users to 700,000 in one
week
• 20,000 new users/hour
• went from using 50 encoding machines at
one time to 4000

6. the need to scale
• peak 450 render requests per minute
• 30 to 40 servers running overnight
• hundreds of servers running midday
• 8000 servers running during peaks

7. great user experience
• it just works
• you always know what it is doing and when
it is done
• steady stream of enhancements
• always engaging you in nice ways

8. ~3 years old
• year 1 - wow the precious first users
• year 2 - serve the most passionate
customers: photographers, businesses, non-
profits, schools
• year 3 - profitable! add value with styles,
ride user captured video wave
• company growing at 50% per year

9. successful biz model
• freemium model that works
• free - 30 sec limit, personal use, branding
• plus - $30/yr, no time limit, personal use,
branding
• pro - $250/yr, unlimited use, no branding,
exclusive themes and content
• 10% conversion rate from free to paid

10. bring on the extras
• pay to download video file
• pay more for higher quality video
• licensed music
• exclusive video styles
• priority support

11. doing everything right
• free for education
• free for charity/non-profits
• developer program, api, widgets
• affiliate program (promote animoto, get a
commision)
• gift it, tweet it, like it

12. iPhone app
• free
• use images and video from your device or
the app
• choose licensed music
• watch it, share it, save it to your device