Eitan Koter is the Co-founder and Co-CEO of Vimmi, the video and social commerce platform with two decades of experience in startups and public companies, including a NASDAQ IPO, Eitan has become a recognized thought leader in video commerce, digital marketing, social commerce and startup bootstrapping. As the host of the Mastering eCommerce Marketing Podcast, Eitan engages with brands, retailers, industry leaders and tech companies, drawing on his extensive experience to share actionable insights. Eitan has also been recognized as a Top Retail Expert for 2025 by Rethink Retail, underscoring his influence in the retail and eCommerce sectors.
Questions
· Could you share with our listeners a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?
· Could you share with our listeners, you mentioned Vimmi has been in operation for 11 years, but could you share a little bit about the organization and maybe the types of customers that you actually serve?
· What are maybe some soft skills, as well as maybe any hard tools that you’d recommend, especially in that video space, and you trying to convince people, and you need to sound like you’re convinced.
· Could you also share with us why is social commerce crucial for the future success of brands and give us a little insight on what social commerce is.
· Can you also share with us what’s the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely can’t live without in your business?
· Can you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that have had a great impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you’ve read recently, but it has had a great impact on you.
· Can you also share with our listeners, what’s the one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about, either something you’re working on to develop yourself or your people.
· Where can listeners find you online?
· Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?
Highlights
Eitan’s Journey
Me: Now, we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share a little bit about their journey. So, could you share with our listeners a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?
Eitan shared that he started in the tech sector. So, it’s been more than two decades of experience in variety of sectors, primarily the internet sector, eCommerce, media and entertainment. He started in the video space for video compression company, actually technology company, about two decades ago, and it’s still in the video space. He takes a unique approach of bringing this video or media experience into the commerce and eCommerce world and having variety of seeing these use cases and explosion of video like in video marketing and video commerce and all the activities that we can do today with video. It’s really exciting to see.
He managed a public company in the past, just running Vimmi, which is already 11 years he’s doing this. So, Vimmi is a video commerce SaaS platform. They’re a bootstrap company, growing and profitable. This is his third startup already, so he brings variety of expertise, both in managing large enterprises and small startup, but also in various categories and sectors, like he mentioned before, but primarily his total focus these days is around next generation of immersive commerce, or what we call V commerce, which is the ability to make purchasing online much more of an interactive experience, rather than just simple product page with few pictures. There’s so much technology and innovation these days around video and augmented reality and virtual reality and variety of immersive experiences that are just changing the game completely for online shopping.
About Vimmi
Me: So, you spoke a little bit about where you are currently working Vimmi. So, could you share with our listeners, I know you mentioned Vimmi has been in operation for 11 years, but could you share a little bit about the organization and maybe the types of customers that you actually serve?
Eitan shared that they operate for the last 11 years already. Traditionally, they started building online video platforms from large content providers, media companies, enterprises. Those are companies who want to launch their own Netflix, like type of service for their customers, think about the mobile operator who is just launching a video service, just sourcing content from various content providers and providing an experience which is available across all the devices, on their mobile phones, on their big screens, on Apple TV, Android TV, and a variety of customers like that that are just managing the entire flow of content preparation, content hosting, the streaming, the content delivery networks, all the variety of applications.
And a big part of the solution is the data and analytics, and they have millions of users just working with their platform on a day-to-day basis. So, they are a B2B company, their customers are usually enterprises, and they serve their consumers. So, it’s a kind of a B2B2C type of experience.
And here’s how they started and about four years ago, he saw something interesting. He saw what’s happening in China with live shopping. So, he doesn’t know if listeners and you are familiar with this concept in China, they started to just go live for hours, can be even 12 hours just showcasing products online, on various applications, and actually make a sale during these events. It’s kind of an interactive service where one host is just streaming to potentially millions of viewers, those viewers are able to chat, there’s a chat functionality like on Facebook Live, or Instagram Live, and there are moderators there who can support and answer questions.
But there is also a call to action, there is a Buy Now button on the video player itself from the shopper’s perspective. So, here is another, what we call immersive, or something which is not normal, eCommerce looks the same for more than two decades, you have this similar product pages, add to cart, all the usual stuff, but here, and it started in China, and there were just some of these sellers already sold billions of dollars just doing live shopping online.
And this type of service was really interesting, because it involves video right and media and some form of entertainment, but eventually the purpose of this is to create conversions, to create sales and sell products, showcasing them in a variety of options, and just having the opportunity to sell online just push people to sell. It’s kind of a more of an emotional type of experience, something which is more generating brand loyalty and better customer relationships. And during the last three to four years, this type of use case has evolved to the Western world, and it’s highly adopted right in the US. And that’s one form of what we call video commerce, or shoppable video, that live shopping experience where brands and companies can just go live, today they can go live across multiple channels, for example, their own social networks, but also on their own website, and just having this sales opportunity on a multi-channel level.
Another form of video which is very, very interesting is these short form videos, it usually goes to TikTok or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts and giving the ability for users again to purchase when they click to purchase, they have been redirected to a product page where they can check out.
So, they see a growth of this form of video, both short form, long form and live video, across multi channels and across the company website, just giving the ability for users to check out during these events. So, video is not only used just for increasing brand awareness or getting impressions and views and likes, but it’s also today, we are able to do this convergence of video and commerce and create these conversion opportunities across multiple channels from a single dashboard, from a silicon console, this is what Vimmi is doing.
They are a bootstrap company, they have a lot of patents, there’s a lot of technology involved, but they never raise funds. So, it’s quite a unique experience that it evolves a lot of having this innovative mindset, but also trying to do things in a very efficient way, because cash flow is just the name of the game for this company.
Recommended Soft Skills and Tools Needed in the Video Space
Me: So, selling products online using video, if you could share with our listeners, maybe one to three, I would say main things that you should include in a video to ensure that you’re able to captivate your audience, because video can be very daunting. Even for myself as a podcaster, I’ve been podcasting since 2016, but we just recently converted from audio only podcast to video last year September. And it’s not that I was afraid of doing the podcast with the video on, but it’s more so it requires a lot more preparation than if you’re just doing audio only. So, if someone’s not familiar, if they’re lacking that confidence, what are maybe some soft skills, as well as maybe any hard tools that you’d recommend, especially in that video space, and you trying to convince people, and you need to sound like you’re convinced.
Eitan shared that he thinks the best place to start is through these short form videos, these are usually 30 seconds long, not more, initially when you just get started. And there is a structure you can follow, okay, anyone can do that.
And by the way, no one cares about the background that you have, just need to have like a great audio, just good lighting just for people to see you, and can do it from your mobile phone. The most important thing with this short form video, in terms of the structure and how to be persuasive in a copy that converts is start with a hook, not with a sales pitch. Because if you are an unknown brand, no one knows you, you need just to build relationship, and how you build relationship by providing value.
So, having this give first mentality, share information about the industry, about market trends, about trends and things that are happening in the industry in a variety of educational content, this is very important. So, what they really recommend for anyone is just create a list of like 50 pains or gains that your customers might have, like within your niche, and try to create a quick video just answering those pain points. And the pain point can be referred as a question, and this can be your hook. The hook can be like something to just capture your attention, usually through questioning, it’ll be a very small question, just focus the audience immediately, and they maybe they will stop scrolling and listen for another, usually three to five seconds.
And on that second section, try to create some personal connection through probably a story. One of your experiments can be a success story or a failure but try to make a connection between the paint or a specialized story, because you are here to provide some value, probably you have experience with something again.
The third part, just show, don’t tell show, show like a success story, or some kind of a transformation that you did, or some kind of a failure that you did, but how you overcome it.
And then, end with the bang, provide some kind of an insight. It can be even just one insight that is very, very powerful that give users something to think of, to think about.
Again, just when you’re creating those short form videos, it’s important to mention which part of the marketing funnel you are right now. If you’re just getting started new brands or just launching a new product, don’t push products, during this awareness stage again, provide educational, content marketing information and checklist.
And if your potential buyers are moving to the second stage, maybe the consideration stage of that, maybe thinking about buying a product or a service that you can offer. So, don’t push your product, hold on, just provide those comparison, just compare yourself to others. Don’t be afraid to mention your competition. Provide some case studies, how to’s and when you feel that you are already in the decision stage of the marketing funnel, then yeah, provide some unique selling points, talk about pricing, provide some testimonials, and try to create that conversion, and this is where they highly recommend just to make those videos shoppable by connecting them to product pages or to checkout pages, or just providing a coupon code, or just talking about where you like people to transact during these videos. So, it’s important to build this foundation of give first value-based content production, but also keep that sales page to the last part of the marketing funnel where your viewers already know you.
So, what they usually recommend is just be genuine, okay. Show your true self. Authenticity is like non-negotiable. What’s winning today is authenticity and consistency, it’s much more powerful than any other even paid media or advertising, a lot of budget you can place, right?
Once people know your true self, you’re creating a community, you foster a space for connection and dialog. And by the way, this is very powerful with Gen Zs and millennials, because they need to feel connected and they want to be part of a community, that’s the recommendation, and we usually recommend to start creating those videos. You should just pick a topic and just open the camera, maybe at the beginning it’s going to be frustrating or not so easy, but he guarantees that anyone can do that, and eventually will not spend more than 5-10 minutes just creating those videos.
The editing is not that important, what’s important is the content, and you’re just putting yourself in front of the camera for people to get to know you better, having this human connection, right?
And just be consistent for at least two to three months. Post three to five videos per week, and they usually see in very, very high probability that companies are able to break through because this type of founder led content, or employee generated content (EGC) is so powerful in marketing today, and this is where they usually recommend to start.
Now going back to the questions, if you are happy, probably doing a weekly live show, probably again discussing about things that are happening in the company or a new product launch. You need to just have the ability to pre-event, just to market this specific event in your social media and newsletter, create some kind of a FOMO, continue promoting the event, during the event itself as well, right through the team, they can push messages and invite more people and even post event. You can send the recording, and you can outreach to people, because if someone want to chat with you in their platform, they you ask them to sign up or to log in, and you have their credentials as well, so you can reach out to them with follow up, with retargeting and the follow up messaging.
And this is a great place to start. And if you feel you’re totally excited with the video, you can go for this long form video. Long form video is just these 16 by 9 or horizontal videos that usually goes to YouTube, longer form really requires higher production value, a lot of editing. This is something they usually recommend to get to at a much later stage.
The Importance of Social Commerce for the Future Success of Brands
Me: Now, kind of dovetailing off of what you just explained to us, could you also share with us why is social commerce crucial for the future success of brands, and give us a little insight on what social commerce is.
Eitan shared that social commerce is the ability to create transaction conversions and having the ability for users to shop a brand’s product or service, not on the brands.com, Shopify website, for example, but on social media. So, what happened is that brands have realized that it’s again today it’s so expensive to just acquire new customers or just bringing customers to your own website, it requires a lot of advertising budget, a lot of creatives, a lot of inbound activities, newsletter, the effort is much more difficult. It’s like, very, very crowded, all over. Even on Facebook and Amazon and various other channels, it’s very, very expensive. So, why not just deploying our content and our promotions, and even a checkout opportunities where consumers are already spending three, four hours a day of their time on social media networks. So, that’s the big promise with social commerce.
And social commerce, by the way, just to give you some idea is expected to be $8.5 Trillion Dollars, right…..Business volumes in 2030, that’s huge. That’s really huge, no one can ignore. And it’s again, the ability to create all those transactions online.
Now, every platform works differently. With TikTok, for example, they have TikTok shop, right? So, TikTok shop is like Amazon, you should set up inventory, you should set up product pages, they even can talk about fulfilment, fulfilled by TikTok. Instagram and YouTube is also giving us the ability to tag products, to create links, redirect product pages from within video.
With YouTube, it’s more complicated, because it depends how many followers you have. So, in a certain level, it just give you the ability to add products below the video player, even add links to the video player itself, just to redirect users to shop somewhere else.
So, we see more and more investment by social media networks towards shoppable experiences, having given more tools, both for brands and for technology companies and in the very platform, for example, they’ve integrated all the different APIs and all the different interfaces of all these social media networks. So, if you’re a brand or a creator and you’ve set up an account with Vimmi, the first thing that you just connect all your social media accounts. If you have a Marketplace account, an Amazon, Walmart, whatever, just connect it there, or you can go live, upload videos, connect them with product pages, and in one click, just deploying those videos across the entire list of channels, and they make sure they provide that shop ability or that transaction ability across each of one of those social media networks, marketplaces and different channels. And of course, you can take this video as an embed and deploy it on your own website if you have as well, just to make product pages and the main page much more interesting, future proof, immersive type of experience.
Me: So, we’ve gained a wealth of information as it relates to shoppable videos and social commerce and the future of social commerce globally. Just to kind of tap back, you mentioned that in 2030 social commerce is expected to be at 8.5 trillion in comparison to where we are now, do you have an estimate of what the dollar value is currently?
Eitan shared that he has a 2023 data, it’s like 1.3 trillion, so it’s going from 1.3 to 8.5 that’s in like seven years. Today, if you go to TikTok, for example, they work also in Asia, for example. And by the way, he sees this also in the US. Yes, like, if you’re just starting out as a digital native, right? For example, you have an online shop. The first thing that you do is not setting up your Shopify or whatever, eCommerce website on your own, amazingbrand.com, what you do you open a TikTok shop, because in TikTok shop, you have the affiliate marketplace, those affiliates are like content creators, influencers inside TikTok, and you don’t even need to pay them, because they’re taking a share of the revenues if they’re being able to make the transact, make sales for you.
So, you can work with them, just crafting the video, scripting, you send them the product, like product sitting or product gifting, it can be also digital products or a service or a physical product. They will create videos, post them on their own account on TikTok, but they will make a reference and provide a coupon code or create a link to redirect to your TikTok shop.
So, if you set up your own Shopify, no one knows about it, right? It could be an amazing design, whether you do it on your own or took an agency, but no one knows about it, you need to invest hell of a lot of money and effort to just start bringing customers to your website. But if you just launch on TikTok, everyone knows about it, you can just work with those influencers or TikTok bring you customers.
That’s a huge shift in the industry. And by the way, it works like that, obviously on Amazon, with Amazon affiliates, and there are, like, YouTube influencers and Instagram influencers, and that’s a very, very powerful way just combining the power of those social networks and video, because video is just the fuel of everything, TikTok is just video. YouTube shorts is obviously video. Instagram is all video. So, you need to have those videos, you can create them as a brand, you can work with content creators or with those affiliates.
And we know that social commerce is booming, but also influencer marketing is booming because it’s a very, very effective way. We know that those videos that are been generated and produced by influencers are much more effective and powerful by the videos that the brand is creating for some reason, so inference and marketing is growing, it’s coupled together with social commerce and video is just the fuel that just drives everything together.
App, Website or Tool that Eitan Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business
When asked about an online resource that he can’t live without in his business, Eitan stated that he can share things that helped him a lot during video production and video preparation. So, obviously, ChatGPT is amazing for just creating all these content ideas. It’s always important to understand what’s working and what’s not, but ChatGPT is a great source just to give you content ideas, high level scripting can shorten a lot of time on your day just to make sure you have this idea. So, once you capture the video, you can just upload this to a lot of AI tools out there that just can do the quick editing for you.
He’s using VEED.IO, just upload a video there and just few clicks, it has the subtitles, cut all the mistakes and we can quickly create, create some kind of a background or some effect. Don’t spend too much time on short video editing, doesn’t worth it….. few minutes, that’s it because what’s resonate and what’s important is the content itself, it’s the value that you provide.
So, this is another tool. So, this is just cut the whole production and concepting effort by 80% from what it used to be, probably even two to three years ago. Okay, and it’s really exciting, because you post these videos and you’re creating content, and you can deploy them across all of your social channels, and you will get some responses.
And this is the way it works, it’s not a linear growth, it’s just the hockey stick growth. Suddenly, one of the videos, and he experienced this himself, he’s quite active on LinkedIn, because they are on the B2B side. So, he has probably few thousands of views on every video, but some of those videos getting 50,000 views, 100,000 views out of nowhere. And it’s very interesting, because it’s a surprise. Initially, it was a surprise, he wasn’t sure why this is happening, and he spent just five minutes on this video.
And other videos maybe he spent one hour just polishing and editing, and no one was really interested. So, this is when he realized that it just hit a nerve because the content of that specific video was in the right timing in terms of what people are searching, what people are looking for, what people are talking about.
And then, once you have that hockey stick, you’re a completely different level. Now your exposure within the algorithm is much, much better. And then continue to post having this consistency, and then you have another hockey stick and another hockey stick. This is how these things are working. All the social media networks doesn’t matter where you want to push, they are giving higher priority to videos in their algorithms, it’s very, very important to mention, and this is all organic, not paying for advertising or anything. The way to grow today is work on these organic videos, and you can see what’s working and that video that is working very well, performing very well, push that with advertising. Then the return on that spend is going to be very, very high.
Me: So, I think the last thing I heard you say was you were talking about the hockey stick and that the algorithm for most of the platforms are focused on video, and that we should really focus less on editing and more on the value on the content that we’re putting out.
Eitan agreed and also, he mentioned that you need to decide as a brand who is your ICP or persona, where you want to focus. If you’re targeting like Gen Zs, you must be on TikTok. If you’re targeting millennials, you need to be on TikTok or Instagram, maybe. And if you are targeting like Gen X, you need to be on Facebook. And YouTube works for the entire generation, right?
Me: All the generations.
Eitan agreed, exactly, because TikTok is like this form phone video. Short form videos is exploding, and it’s growing, but long form video is growing as well. Any form of video is still growing, definitely live video, so that’s the place to be, it’s free that you can create those videos cost nothing. You can do it on your own, again, with those AI tools that we mentioned. And if you’ve been consistent, it’s going to be the best marketing effort that you ever had, guaranteed.
Me: All right, so your one tool that you can’t live without is VEED, the platform that you use for editing, correct?
Eitan agreed, yes, and there are other similar platform, it’s VEED.IO, yes, it just editing everything. By the way at VEED.IO, he started to create his own AI avatar, so, he’s posting him, a virtual copy of him. Just posting, no one knows and these tools are just first versions of the tool, and the quality is really, really amazing. So, you can just create a script, paste it to VEED.IO, it will create a video with you. So, it’s really, really nice.
Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Eitan
When asked about books that have had a great impact, Eitan shared that a book that created a huge impact is Marketing for SuperVillains: Diabolical Tips on Differentiation, Decommoditization and World Domination by Jesse James Wroblewski.
A lot of books are discussing about marketing strategies and funnels and all these processes, which is great, but Jesse is saying that what’s most important is to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. And he defines like 12 different spheres of differentiation that you can associate yourself with. And he’s explaining how to create that process and how to find the right messaging that is truly, truly, truly differentiating you from others. So, being different is much better than being better.
So, just focus on your unique story and find why you are doing what you’re doing, and just putting this message out in a highly, highly efficient way. So that’s, for him, a must book for any business owner.
What Eitan is Really Excited About Now!
When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Eitan stated that has he mentioned, specifically for the business, he’s been in the video commerce Industry for two decades, we see now the convergence of commerce and media, right.
So, what we see now is that brands and retailers, they are becoming content providers. They are creating video series, it’s not just this commercial, they’re creating, like, a full TV series, creating content that build their brands, position them in the industry, and giving them the opportunity for creating these kind of a shopping opportunities.
And on the other hand, we see the media companies, the traditional content providers, they are becoming commerce, they are selling merchandising, they’re using their infrastructure and video resources to get more and more sales opportunities. So, video and commerce are merging across the board in everywhere, even Netflix and Disney launching advertising based packages, not just paid subscription, it’s a convergence of retail and commerce, it’s the ability to probably receive and see advertising instead of paying, and in those show notes or in those videos or episode, you could also have the opportunity to scan a QR code to make a purchase with a unique proposal. So, this is really, really exciting.
And also, on a personal note, just having this time for his hobbies, for himself. So, he rides mountain bikes at least two, three times a week. So, there’s something that he loves to do for quite a while. So, just having this space, know when to stop, and just the way to be more focused at work is just think about your priorities. Priority in life, some priority in work, what’s important for you to spend time on, and what you can delegate, just save more time, be more efficient makes everything works better.
Where can listeners find Eitan online?
LinkedIn – Eitan Koter
Website – https://vimmi.net/
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Eitan Uses
When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Eitan shared that he has a few, number one is, “The only way to fail is by giving up.” You fail, it’s okay. You learn, you adapt, you continue. So, if you stop, then obviously you fail. So, this is his belief, for him, he always feels like he’s winning so that’s kind of a mindset.
It’s very positive, but it’s not always positive, because sometimes people can call him like probably a daydreamer or fantasizing on things, but you need to have this kind of a winning approach, that tenacity to learn and to do things and don’t give up, that’s all.
Me: Never give up. Love it. Well, thank you so much Eitan for hopping on our podcast, Navigating the Customer Experience, you certainly served us wonderfully today by sharing such great value as it relates to social commerce and the value of video and just where marketing and commerce is going for 2025, and beyond, what platforms are best, the importance of ensuring that we don’t focus too much on the editing, too much on the minor details and more on the value, and just really trying to utilize the technology that exists out there, like the tool that you mentioned, VEED.IO that you can use to kind of make your life a little bit easier, and get the information out there so that you can really serve your niche in the best way possible, and set yourself apart, and provide a competitive advantage in comparison to those who offer the same services and products that you may have to offer. So, I learnt a lot as the interviewer, I’m sure that when this episode is published, our listeners will get great value out of it as well. So, we just want to extend our deepest gratitude to you for sharing all of this wonderful information with us today.
Please connect with us on X @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience.
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