What is it like to work at VideoStitch?

That might be hard to know without meeting us, so we’ve put together something that helps you know us better. The photos below are of a typical day at our Paris office, alongside highlights from a real, live Q&A we recorded with four team members: Founder/CEO Nicolas Burtey, Director of Software Engineering Wieland Morgenstern, Software Engineer Julien Fond, and Innovation Officer Florent Melchior. Our idea was to put ourselves in your shoes, as you consider joining us, and to shed light on topics we think you’ll find important.

What was your main drive to create VideoStitch and How has it evolved?

Nicolas:  It’s fun. These are things many of us were already doing at home in our spare time. In the past a lot of us had jobs with titles like “software engineers,” but what we do here is closer to applied sciences. There are many different aspects to our technology and, as a team, our responsibilities are really broad. We believe it’s way more than just a technology but a wave of the future. We all have the “Maker” attitude, but as a company the hard part involves making the technology accessible and developing the market.

What are some of the technical aspects at VideoStitch?

Wieland:  A huge part of our product development effort is on computer vision, but also general mathematics and engineering. We all love playing with cameras. There is usually a ritual where, in the first week of joining the team, you have to go out and create videos. Especially if you haven’t done much before. We want everyone to have that experience—and you do it with gear that’s sometimes is extremely experimental. In the workplace too, we’re constantly experimenting to see what works. To give you a sense, over the past 6 months we developed 360-degree stereoscopic video stitching. Nobody had really solved that as yet. It was exciting and frightening at same time. And in the end, when we finally got to test the result on a VR headset, we could feel our heartbeats in the palm of our hands

How do you balance the technical and business side of Videostitch?

Nicolas:  Stitching takes a lot of computing power, and nobody likes hauling around huge computers and batteries! But deciding what to solve first is hard because the business side is being invented from scratch. It’s hard to even define the industry. This isn’t just video recording. The end product is not just a movie, or a clip of blowing out birthday candles that you post to Facebook. The technology lets you do much, much more, so the business model of video production doesn’t exactly translate. Our challenge is to help define it, and because of our technical aptitude, our advantage is that we can adapt the core product very quickly to enable new uses and new kinds of businesses. That means a lot of collaboration between business and technical team.

How big is the VideoStitch team ?

Florent:   A lot of people think we are a team of 400 , but we are only 20. VideoStitch is a very multi-cultural company. We have customers in more than 45 countries, and our team is fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Ukrainian and German. It’s required that you are fluent in English, and French is a plus, but not mandatory. Speaking a second language as well a mother tongue is a huge plus.

What does it take to be at VideoStitch?

Julien:  When something breaks, it’s up to you to fix it yourself or invent a solution. We don’t have many extroverts and the office can be very quiet, but our work is based on collaboration and helping each other. Everyone really cares about the work they do, and we are detail oriented…but without being a pain in the ass. We give  lot of feedback and we see things through to the end. And we love celebrating birthdays.

Who should apply?

Nicolas:  Our technical work is quite difficult, so at least a Master’s degree, and a PhD is great. People should have 3–5 years of experience. The business side is different though. Again, everything is new so nobody has much experience! It’s mostly important to have an open personality. Be a really, really good listener. And be autonomous, because you will need to explore and be extremely flexible, but also be ready to ask for help when you need it.

How big is the team in San Francisco?

Julien:  Right now the team in San Francisco is just George, and Nicolas will relocate in a few months. We do weekly meetings over video. Eventually we want SF to be as big as Paris, but it will take a while

You say you’re a startup, What do you mean by that?

Florent:  We are funded with venture capital and, in the Silicon Valley model, our goal is to grow very quickly. That can mean there is more risk involved, but also a great opportunity to have a big impact. Working here will feel different compared to almost every other job, at least in France.The big difference is that we run a lot of experiments that will seem risky—because they are! But the point is that we learn quickly from our mistakes, and once we get it right we will be a leading company in a very large, rapidly growing market. That’s the goal.You should also know that we have working habits more like in the U.S. We work hard and spend a lot of time together. Every Wednesday night we have dinner as a team, and after a long day we sometimes have beers in the office. We dress and behave casually, but we’re also very committed and sometimes work into the night. Our benefits include health insurance and time off, but we believe in being scrappy, not cushy. That’s core to who we are.