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Revolutionizing video for marketing teams: A conversation with Chris Yeh, CEO of ContentGroove

Marketers are creating and using more video than ever before. While investment continues to grow, there’s often a glut of finished video that drives little to no additional value. Why? A lot of business video is dense, long, and hard to reuse. And busy marketing teams usually have no time to sort through the videos they create.

ContentGroove, led by CEO Chris Yeh, is on a mission to supercharge marketing teams’ success with video. Through a proprietary AI engine, ContentGroove automatically extracts highly relevant video segments, related metadata, and other assets and allows them to be used downstream to test messages, generate topical interest, and drive leads.

Chris holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a bachelor’s in computer science from the University Michigan. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

AI Fund: Who do you serve with ContentGroove?

Chris Yeh: We focus on B2B marketing teams. Marketing teams today are generating more video than ever before and the problem is it’s not being fully used. It may wind up on a resource website, perhaps behind a sign-up form, but that’s about it. Teams don’t have the time to work on videos. The problem we’re solving is to advance the art of breaking that video down and allowing it to be used for everything from determining the strongest messages/keywords to driving new leads.

AIF: How did you come to this solution?

CY: Marketing videos are typically rich sources of information, messaging, and insight. It’s just hard to pull that information out. At ContentGroove, we built a set of technologies that combine keyword analysis with the processing of other video metadata. Our tech helps us understand what is important in a video so we can automatically extract video clips that concentrate on important topics to highlight downstream. Marketing teams can then leverage those clips for all kinds of real business applications like lead generation, market research, and message testing.

AIF: How do you see AI moving humanity forward?

CY: AI is one of the most important waves of technology and its impactful everywhere. Two areas it can make a big difference are on health and climate change. On the health front, AI can help people live longer, healthier lives and increase our quality of life. With climate, AI can help us understand climate change better.

AIF: What is something a mentor told you that you never forgot?

CY: Early in my career, one of the most important things someone told me was that leadership is never taken, it is always granted. Meaning, that just because I say I’m your leader and I have a leadership role, doesn’t mean you’re going to follow me. It doesn’t matter what your title is or your level in an organization. The people around you need to see you as worthy of following for you to be a leader.

AIF: What is something you do differently than most people?

CY: I keep an active life outside of work. I’ve been described as a “hobby person” – I’m a photographer, I’m an active classical musician (violinist), I enjoy backpacking, and I’m a big sports fan. I have a lot of different interests and I’ve never single-mindedly focused on business. A lot of entrepreneurs are told today to focus 100% on their companies and their whole life gets consumed by it. This kind of obsession is a good way to get tunnel-vision. I find if you’re living a balanced life that it translates well into the workplace and it’s super healthy on an individual level and for a company culture.

AIF: What is a resource you find yourself coming back to?

CY: My podcast playlist. When I am walking the dog or doing whatever, I’ll listen to podcasts—everything from business and marketing podcasts, to sports, comedy, and of course, the basics like Freakonomics and This American Life. I’ve always said, it doesn’t matter who you are, you should know what’s happening in the world when you wake up. I get a lot of my news from podcasts and The New York Times.

WRITTEN BY

Linda Lee