I’m Jakob Knutzen, co-founder of Butter. Ask me anything! 💥
Jakob Knutzen
148 replies
Hey everyone 👋
I’m Jakob and I’m currently working on Butter, which is a video conferencing tool that lets you plan, run and recap super-engaging sessions from one place. We’ve launched on Product Hunt twice before, so super grateful to be able to do an AMA here!
I previously founded StreamCrux, a game-streaming startup. It failed 😅, but it’s where I learned how to run a fully remote company.
Ask me anything about building remote companies, product- and community-led growth, facilitation, remote work and the future of collaboration!
Replies
Yuliia Mamonov 🇺🇦@yulia_mamonova
Hi Jakob! Thank you for taking the time for an AMA. It's always super exciting!
If you don't mind me asking, how do expect to overcome the competition in a highly-competitive niche like this, with giants like Zoom holding a giant share of the market? What helps you beat the competition? Were you worried or did you ever doubt the project in the beginning for these reasons?
Thanks for answering!
Share
@yulia_mamonova Great question! Everything comes down to focus - we're building Butter for a very specific use case: workshops and trainings. The giants are almost per definition generalist tools.
That's how all Davids win against Goliaths
And nope - never doubted that! Going up against giants is often easier than against a red field of startups!
Product Hunt
Thanks for taking the time to do this, Jakob!
Butter has such a strong personality, especially for a meetings platform, how did you manage to do that so well? It's so fun and approachable!
@aaronoleary Thanks so much for the lovely words!
One of the core problems we're solving is lack of engagement in online meetings and sessions. The fun personality was actually an experiment in the early days which people reacted super well to!
Since then we've just leaned into it - and gotten the right people on board that can build it out! (We have a lot of fun around it too 😉)
Hello Jacob, thank you for the post. For a video conference tool, there are some big competitors. Did you think that was a significant disadvantage for you when you were building Butter
@ozan_yalcin1 Great question!
Actually, quite the opposite - it was great that the incumbents made people way more comfortable with video conferencing. That paved the way for us to build a tool very specific to an individual use case!
@ozan_yalcin1 we have launched our product on product hunt. please check out and your upvote and share is appreciated. https://www.producthunt.com/post.... and upvote.
Hey Jakob, Butter is nice.
I built a a product focused on crowd technology which generated authentic crowd noise and crowd visualization, which got acquired by Bizzabo a little over a year ago.
Two questions if you don’t mind:
1. What’s the current state of the video conferencing market?
2. What are your thoughts on hiring talent overseas to manage any manual, time-consuming tasks to help your core team focus on strategy and results?
Asking 1 just out of curiosity as I haven’t touched the space for a few months. And 2 because that’s what we did to do a lot more, with less, when building our business.
Thanks 🙏
@cederlund
Haha thanks for the nice words - glad to hear you like Butter (and butter too?).
1. Hmm, I'd say we're seeing a consolidation for sure. The hype of the covid era is for sure gone. We're seeing two types of companies now:
A) The incumbents (Zoom, Meet, Teams)
B) The vertical challengers (e.g. Butter)
Many of the unfocused companies in terms of use cases didn't survive. We've also seen quite a few acquisitions (e.g. mmhmm acquiring Macro, Miro acquiring Around).
2. Overseas is a broad definition :D
But I'd definitely say that hiring low-cost labour to help with manual tasks make a ton of sense. Have done that in the past too!
Love the questions!
Jakob
@jakob_knutzen1 yes, I do like butter too ;)
interesting! thanks for the answers. did not know Around was acquired by Miro.
a follow-up question :) what are your plans for Butter moving forward given the consolidation you are talking about?
@jakob_knutzen1 just saw Butter 2.0 launching soon. I guess we'll know tomorrow, then?
@cederlund Make it the next big thing - we're building Butter specifically for synchronous collaborative sessions. I think video is just the first step there!
What's the one thing your users appreciate the most about butter?
@jakob_knutzen1 Never tried them, gotta check this out. My favorite are the reactions...simple as that
@svenahrens we have launched our product on product hunt. please check out and your upvote and share is appreciated. https://www.producthunt.com/post.... and upvote.
And while we're at it, a personal question: what's your favorite "mode" now for running a company, now that you've seen the old-school way and the new-school remote way? Any clear preference, or is it a "depends"? Asking for a friend ;-)
@svenahrens
Remote for sure 😃
Co-located is really awesome for cohesion and hanging out with colleagues etc.
But there's just no competition with the extreme efficiency, talent density (through recruiting the best people worldwide) and flexibility of a remote company.
@svenahrens we have launched our product on product hunt. please check out and your upvote and share is appreciated. https://www.producthunt.com/post....
and upvote.
What do you do for marketing?
@richard_gao2 Social media (organic), community building - and launches (like PH 😉) - and then we rely heavily on our Product Led Growth loops!
Why butter? Is it because butter is better? Or is it because butter is smooth? Have you considered naming it ghee instead?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee
@nityafumbleswithdesign Haha, we were joking that we were making meetings smooth as butter. So we initially became MeetButter. That sounded weird though - so we dropped the Meet 😎
Haha, Ghee is new :D Didn't know of it!
I am standing 15 days away from my PH launch what should I be doing today to make this launch a success?
@kovid_batra Haha, we'll see if we know how to!
But overall two things: A) Community and B) Content
A) Rally your community around the launch and make them excited
B) Make awesome content (video etc.) that make the product exciting for new users
@kovid_batra Hope it's helpful! I actually recorded this 6 months ago for a PH event - might also contain some goodies! https://www.loom.com/share/53764...
@jakob_knutzen1 this helps. Also, do you have access to PH support groups like these.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsh...
If you would like to use this you can use this and share if you have access to any.
How do you convince people to use your platform when there are giants in the market (slack, skype) etc. Also there are free tools (Google Meet) to for this purpose.
@haseeb_hameed We're laser focused on complex sessions (e.g. trainings and workshops). Slack and Skype aren't really our competitors. Google Meet doesn't have the same functionalities.
What is your core channel of acquiring customers?
@varunvarma91 Great question! As mentioned to @richard_gao2 : Social media (organic), community building - and launches (like PH) + relying heavily on word-of-mouth plus product growth loops!
Has it been hard to optimize Butter for SEO (due to the use in food?)
What tricks have you done to get traffic to your site so you can grow?
@happhi Haha, good question! Having an easily recognizable and fun name has been really good for word of mouth, which has outweighed the downside of branded SEO ranking.
Many other brands have gone the same way (e.g. I don't think Zoom ranked super well for their brand name to begin with either).
In terms of growth channels, the main one is the product itself! We've got some good product growth loops going. On top of that, Community+Events, Social Media and launches (like PH 😉)
@jakob_knutzen1 Makes perfect sense. Great name…will check out your product asap. Have a great day.
What's the first thing you celebrate with StreamCrux ?
@wawa_trkl Haha, with StreamCrux it was probably getting started on the tech startup journey! Even if it failed, it was still a great ride!
Thanks for doing this Jakob!
Community building is top of mind for us this year. If you were to rebuild the Butter community from square 1 again, knowing what you know now, how would you get started?
@mitchell_comstock Hmm, great question - I think to be patient and that it takes time. And know that outcomes aren't always directly measurable from day 1.
I really loved this podcast with Camille Ricketts which very much encapsulates how we've done things (https://www.lennyspodcast.com/ho...)
Hey Jakob,
I'm the founder of a new online collaboration tool, and we're still figuring out who is the best target to sell to. Who do you think has the most applicable use case for online whiteboards and task management tools?
Thanks for connecting with the PH community!
@paul_vanzandt Super interesting question!
I think whiteboards is becoming a very crowded market, so I'd probably look at some VERY specific use case. Some part of the market that likes Miro/Mural or any of the other "generalist" whiteboards but feel frustrated that they don't do X.
Haha, that's the best I can do for recommendations! Just be SUPER specific on TA and use case!
@jakob_knutzen1 Thanks for the advice, Jakob! At Fresco, we're trying to take inspiration from how you handle usability and engagement to make whiteboarding less of a slog. Good luck on the launch tomorrow!
@paul_vanzandt Appreciate it, Paul! And best of luck with Fresco - sounds exciting! Counting on your support tomorrow too 😉
Wavel AI
Favourite cuisine and what kind of books do you read?
@nikhil_mehra2 Japanese (everything - not just Sushi and Ramen)! Closely followed by Italian and then Vietnamese.
Books: Mostly fiction - Sci-Fi and Fantasy (currently working my way through Brandon Sanderson)
Hi Jakob, thanks for the AMA.
Butter has a slick UX and UI, kudos on that!
Let's say that video conferencing is a "game", do you see Butter playing this "game" or changing the "game", and how so?
@ieraj Great question!
I think video conferencing as a game is changing. Being a video conferencing tool is not enough anymore - that's just a utility. You need to solve a specific use case - and deeply so.
Butter is a synchronous collaboration tool - starting with solving the most complex types of sync collab: Trainings and workshops. Video is a key component of that. But who knows where that might head in the future - one cannot be tied to a medium if one is solving such a big problem!
@jakob_knutzen1 great point, thanks for the insights!
Agreed, on the synchronous collaboration tool part! I've done some pieces of training online in the past in which navigating between Zoom and Miro/Mural/Lucidspark was both tedious and time-consuming (new links, new tabs, etc.), hindering the training flow and causing extra confusion for people.
@mycelebs_elle Great question!
Top 3 would be:
1) Documentation: Notion - we document everything here!
2) Async communication: Slack - we use that as our virtual HQ
3) Sync communciation: Butter 😉🧈
... but there's way more 😊
Love butter since the first sight, game changer in video collaboration and give spices for facilitator to properly engage with online audience. I'm curious how you start the ideation process and innovate in such competitive spaces to find your value proposition compare to other platform? any hint what could be surprise launch for us butter lover 😁
@indrakusumasp Thanks so much for following and supporting for such a long time, Indra!
Ideation: Always start with the problem you're solving for the user! That's what we did to begin with and still do to this day. That's also why we do tonnes of user interviews
Launch: Haha, you'll have to wait and see today - launch soooooooooooooon!