Scene Stealer

VIMEO WASTED ITS YOUTH STRIVING TO BE AN ODDBALL COMBO OF NETFLIX AND A COMMERCIAL-FREE YOUTUBE. AFTER A HARD REFOCUS ON BUSINESS USERS, CEO ANJALI SUD HAS TRANSFORMED THE NEAR-FORGOTTEN BRAND INTO A $6 BILLION BLOCKBUSTER BUSINESS THAT LETS BOTH MOM-AND-POP SHOPS AND GIANT CORPORATIONS SHOOT, EDIT AND POST MILLIONS OF VIDEOS ACROSS THE INTERNET’S MOST INFLUENTIAL SITES.

- STEVEN BERTONI AND ANTOINE GARA

SEVEN YEARS AGO, VIMEO HAD Hollywood dreams. The internet video outfit — owned by Barry Diller’s IAC — had found a niche hosting flicks for artsy filmmakers who didn’t want their works to be tossed into YouTube’s unruly, ad-driven stew. But it was a tiny, money-losing business with annual revenue under $40 million. Vimeo was pinning its hopes on the booming streaming business, betting it could leverage its relationship with creatives to build a subscription service to rival Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO. It hired studio execs from Paramount and Hulu and signed distribution deals with Lionsgate, CBS Interactive and Spike Lee for content to stock the new service.

But Anjali Sud, then Vimeo’s 31-year-old director of marketing, had a hunch the company’s future was not in Hollywood hits but Silicon Valley plumbing. Her plan: shift its focus from entertainment to entrepreneurs. “Vimeo had long been a software company for filmmakers, but the market was too small,” says Sud, now 37. “There was another, much bigger market — businesses. What Squarespace and GoDaddy did for websites, we could do with video.”

She pitched the idea to Joey Levin, Diller’s handpicked IAC CEO. “Anjali said, ‘This is a real business that’s relevant to a much larger audience than anyone thinks,’ ” Levin says. He gave Sud a small team to test the idea. “We like to find smart, talented, ambitious people, throw them into the deep end and see if they can swim.”