Wood: Netflix took 20% of Roku before selling stake to Menlo Ventures
Anthony Wood · Roku: Anthony Wood · Nov 21, 2022 · at 44:56
Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, explains how Netflix initially backed Roku during its spin-out and why Netflix ultimately sold its equity to Menlo Ventures.
0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 23.4s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Right. And so they, I think they got 20% of the company. So after, Netflix invested and we started shipping the Netflix player, we then decided to raise venture money. And so we raised money from a venture capitalist called Menlo Ventures. And then Netflix decided they didn't want to appear to be favoring any one hardware manufacturer. So they sold their shares to Menlo Ventures.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Anthony Wood
Wood: Nonprofits Are Less Accountable and More Wasteful Than Companies
“It's actually very difficult to give away money effectively because there's less accountability versus a company. Like if you imagine putting money in a nonprofit versus putting money in a company, well, the company is measured and is very motivated on being e…”
Wood: Steve Jobs rejected Netflix app on Apple TV over hardware rivalry
“And I think Reed sent an email to Steve Jobs saying, are you guys interested in this? And Steve Jobs replied, no, we're not interested because we hear you're building Hardware that competes with Apple TV. And so why would we ever do business with you? You know…”
Wood: ReplayTV burned $20M monthly and missed its IPO window
“You know, even though we raised two hundred million dollars plus the burn rate had cranked up and we were spending, you know, I remember some months it would be twenty million dollars a month. The thing that changed the dynamic is they went public Before us, w…”
Wood: US TV Advertising's $80B Market Will Entirely Move to Streaming
“You know, there's, I don't know, 70, eighty billion dollars a year spent on TV advertising in the US alone, and it's all moving to streaming.”
Anthony Wood: Selling iBand for $36M felt like selling out
“And looking back on it, selling a company for 30, whatever million dollars is quite successful, but that's not the way it felt. Like I wanted to build the real company. I didn't want to just make the money. It felt like I had sold out.”
Wood: TiVo used dot-com funding to subsidize DVRs at $99
“TiVo, then Teleworld, decided that they would take advantage that this was like in the dot com boom. They would take advantage of the fact that they could raise a lot of money. They raised a lot of money, and then they started subsidizing the DVRs. Yeah, so th…”