Sherry Khan Is Telling Corporate Stories with Sleek Animated Videos

Name: Sherry Khan

Company: Anideos

What are you building, and who benefits most from it?

We have built a creative agency that blends animation and development in the most beautiful form. Anideos is a place where an artist’s craft is respected and the developer’s code appreciated. Our innovative animated videos and future-proof tech solutions benefit startups and enterprise businesses in scaling from the ground up and keeping pace with the transformative world.

What is one of your startup’s most impressive accomplishments?

In less than three years of starting Anideos from scratch, we have had the privilege of onboarding big names such as Roche Pharma, Kraft Heinz, Stanford University, and Boston University. Working for U.S. government departments, including the Department of Defense and Blue Halo, has also been one of our remarkable achievements.

What has been the biggest challenge so far, and how did you overcome it?

While our services are comparatively budget-friendly, we face difficulty matching costs with companies that do not have a substantial presence. Yet, the clients often prefer them just to get things done at a low price, overlooking the quality of service. Dealing with clients with a used budget and a stretched timeline has been our biggest challenge.

To work it all out, we have always been on the front foot and have made considerable efforts to keep the quality standards intact, no matter what. This has also helped us in winning the clients’ trust.

What tool or app could you not live without and why?

Since we’ve worked with clients globally, we believe seamless communication, collaboration, and effective task management are more essential than anything else. Therefore, the two must-have tools for us are WhatsApp and Todoist.

What marketing strategies have worked for you?

There is no universal solution or one-size-fits-all approach to marketing your business effectively. What works for one business may not work for others. Thus, we keep experimenting recurrently with new tactics and strategies. Things that have worked for us include the following:

• Using the penetration pricing strategy to attract a wide fraction of the market and then gradually switching to value-based pricing
• Putting organic marketing before paid marketing. Strategies such as SEO, community building, social media, and content marketing helped us cater to a larger audience and gain traffic over time

What has been your biggest business failure to date? What did you learn from it?

Throughout my career, I’ve faced a lot of obstacles, but none of them has stopped me from learning new things every day. My greatest business failure was in the initial days after founding Anideos.

Back then, we were way too eager to jump on new projects that, somehow, we were unsuccessful in delivering up to the client’s expectations—all due to a communication gap.

This experience taught me how important communication is. To deal with this issue and prevent such a situation from happening in the future, we set a destined timeframe for understanding the client’s needs and expectations first. Now, before taking on new projects, we discover and analyze everything needed to deliver the best product.

I take pride in the fact that all my mistakes have shaped me into what I am today and motivated me to work harder toward a brighter future.

What’s the best specific piece of advice you have for other entrepreneurs?

The one piece of advice I’d like to give my fellow entrepreneurs is not to set unrealistic expectations for themselves and their teams. Remember: Growth takes time, so know your industry and competitors well and take actionable steps to outpace them.

Another word of advice—ensure a realistic cash flow forecast for the next two years and plan multiple revenue streams for the long run.

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