Vidgrid Q&A
MESA sat down with Nick Stokman, CEO of Vidgrid (formerly Ilos), to ask him about his experience working with MESA.
Tell us a bit about your background, your career history, and your business. What prompted you to get involved with MESA?
I am an entrepreneur from an early age and, by end of high school, had a lawn service business with 30 accounts generating about $20K each summer. In college, I majored in accounting to “learn numbers” but, in taking my first job out of college, found corporate America un-satisfying and wanted to go the entrepreneur route. I had the idea for Ilos when in college and made the move to get Ilos going on a full-time basis. Ilos is a software platform for businesses to seamlessly record, share, and store videos and is growing rapidly. Icontacted MESA on the recommendation of Harold Slavik of New Counsel. Harold stated that “MESA is the one true mentoring program in the Midwest” for software startups.
What was your biggest business challenge before working with MESA? Has MESA been able to help you work through it, and if not, what happened instead?
The biggest challenges were to figure out what market to go after first and to accurately identify key roadblocks to address to grow revenue. MESA has brought discipline to the Ilos planning effort. MESA has also introduced Ilos to and insisted on the use of “best practice” marketing techniques especially towards growing upper funnel leads.
What, specifically, is your favorite part about working with MESA, and why?
MESA is fully dedicated to mentoring and nothing else. Different than others, MESA pays more attention to a company’s operating details and follows up.
If you were going to recommend MESA to a colleague, what would you say?
MESA is dedicated to your success. Recognize that getting mentored is time consuming so get the most of it. MESA creates dialogues with its mentees that makes the relationship feel 2-way.
What three words would you use to describe your experience with MESA?
Dedicated. Generous. Experienced.
Anything else you want us to know about your experience with MESA?
MESA’s dedication is awesome!