YouSaid · the spoken record

Anthony Wood

lines on the record: 84
first: 2022-11-21
most recent: 2022-11-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It's obviously a combination, right? Like it's a combination of I'm I think some of the key characteristics, at least the way I've been successful, are passion, like being very, like, I love technical stuff. And it turns out technical stuff can make you a lot of money. So, you know, having an interest in that, being good at it, but I don't really know why I'm good at it. Growing up with a culture that valued hard work and being persistent and where the luck comes in is just how long it takes, I think, and maybe the timing a little bit. I didn't just happen to meet reastings, I sent him an email and I tried to pick out my self introduced, for example.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our mission is basically advancing human progress. And there's probably a few different areas where I give money to in that realm. One is medical and scientific research. So research around diseases, but also research around interesting kind of science things that I don't think are well funded, like, for example. I'm kind of interested in what causes ice ages. So I give money to a researcher in the UK that his team researches the fundamental causes of ice ages. People don't know what causes ice ages. And for all we know, we're about to have another one. So scientific research, mental health, mental health and homelessness, which are very closely related. I give lots of money to that. But the focus is mostly on not just giving people money, but trying to alleviate the root causes. So there's a couple other areas, but those are some of the areas I give money to.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Difficult decisions. They're less efficient, and it's easy for them to waste it. I'm not saying that they all do, obviously, because I give a lot of money to nonprofits that I think are being helpful. But actually, if I had a choice between putting money in a nonprofit versus a company that we're both kind of addressing the same area, the company would be my choice because it's going to be more accountable and it's going to do a better job. But that's your strategy, then you end up making more money from the money that you're investing. So I think it's an interesting problem. How do you? How do you use your money most effectively for the world?”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An excellent question, and it's hard to answer. If you think about money and the fact that successful entrepreneurs accumulate it, you're right. They can't spend it all. It's right. In fact, almost a very tiny part of it is what they spend. The rest gets invested. So the question I think is, well, who should be investing that money? Should it be someone like me or should it be someone else? And so I think actually people that earn money successfully through business are good at investing it as well. And so it's actually quite efficient for them to invest it versus someone else. In terms of how you could actually use the money, you know, I have a big philanthropy effort. I hired a director of philanthropy, but 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 efficient and makes hard decisions. When it's a nonprofit, they don't have those decisions.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, the way I think about it is the world is moving to streaming. It's a huge trend. The economy is cyclical. That's just the way it is. And one shouldn't confuse the cyclical economy with the fact that everyone is switching to streaming. You know, our business fundamentally has got a lot of room to grow. So we're still seeing good growth. I mean, we haven't given outlook for the next few quarters, but we haven't announced layout.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are producing originals now. Not a huge number like Netflix or an Amazon, but still many millions of dollars worth. We have a show coming out called Weird Al, a biopic starring Daniel Ratcliffe.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the reason it's benefited us is because it benefits these streaming companies. When they want to build an audience, they start spending money on marketing. How do they want to spend money on marketing? They could buy billboards or they could buy ads on Roku where with one click from the ad, you can sign up for their service. And so those ads actually are just way more effective.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only streaming platform company that that's all we do that we come to work every day trying to build the simplest, best, cheapest streaming player possible, our competitors don't do that. They come into work every day trying to figure out how to build a better search engine generally or how to sell more stuff online. Yeah. There's still a lot of innovation in the business to happen, and we're good at innovation. So I'm confident that we'll continue to compete successfully.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, of course giant competitors concerns us, but I was pretty confident in our strategy. I mean, of course, it was risk, but I felt like we had a path to winning, which we have taken and continue to take, which is basically to build a platform that's custom built for TVs as opposed to taking something that exists for, say, a phone and porting it to TVs. And so it's not just the technology. Of course, that's part of it. Like one of the advantages of our operating system is that it costs less to build the hardware, but it's also just the focus, you know, incredibly focused on that one problem as opposed to other problems where the”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both. I mean, we started out just licensing, but now we're actually producing originals, and it's very popular. People love free TV. That's become a big part of our business in that it generates a lot of ad inventory, so it drives a lot of our ad business.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And that's actually our biggest business is selling video ads. And it's pretty clear that advertising is a huge opportunity. $80 billion a year spent on TV advertising in the U.S. alone, and it's all moving to streaming. So one of the things that we did that people didn't appreciate at the time, but now they do is we started something called the Roku Channel, which is essentially free ad supported movies and TV shows. And when we started it, everyone was trying to copy Netflix. But we were like, most countries in the world, TV is free and it's supported by ads. The US is sort of unique in that the industry evolved at a point where you pretty much have to have a pay TV subscription. That doesn't need to be that way. With streaming, we can offer people free content and just have it supported by ads. And so that's what we did with the Roku Channel. And so it was the first time really there was a lot of mainstream content that was available for free.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so they're always surprised when they find out that we're their number one source of customers. Your service has ads in it, then we get we don't get money from you directly, but we get some of the add inventory. Just the same way like.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, so it's, I mean, our model is not a traditional cable model, as you just pointed out. We get paid for distributing content, but we don't have a monthly subscription like a cable operator has. But we do have a billing platform. Part of our purpose-built platform for TV is building in tools for the industry to help them sign up subscribers. We can promote them. We can do one click billing. So we have a lot of influence on signing up subscribers. And so our model is basically if we sign up a subscriber or we do billing, then we get a piece of that subscription revenue. So back to the underestimated part of it, that also comes into play in that most media executives, when they start getting into streaming, they underestimate Roku because they all have Samsung TVs or an Apple TVs.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An important decision and very key to our success, and it's a hugely successful program for us, the Roku TV program. I mean, for a long time, we debated should we actually make our own TVs? And it was clear that that's a tough business to be in. So we decided licensing would be by far the best approach.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Continually underestimated and still are, I think. In fact, I view it as a pretty big competitive advantage that people underestimate us, and so they're always surprised when they lose. So, for example, it's amazing the number of media companies, executives that didn't think streaming would be popular. They just thought there's nothing wrong with cable and satellite. The world is not going to change. When it was so clear that, of course, it's going to change. The internet has disrupted every industry and it's going to disrupt video as well. And then I can think that the point when Roku became like, well, maybe actually maybe we should think about buying Roku. We had finally become so valuable that it was too expensive for them.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't want to run the companies to the ground But absent that, why would you sell? It's just getting more valuable every year.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't remember exactly. I do remember that there was, I probably gave them a price that was unreasonable, and they probably said no. But I think that's if we just go to a higher level, I think if you're an entrepreneur and you start a company and you've already been successful like I have in terms of financially successful, then you don't really need it for the money anymore. It just becomes hard to do a transaction just based on money. My attitude for Roku has always been look, as long as I see a path to us continuing to grow and be successful, then there's no reason to sell. The reason to sell is if you think the competitive dynamics or the market have gotten to the point where it's difficult to be standalone and successful, that you need the leverage of being part of something else. And then that would be a legitimate reason.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“acquiring us we were not really interested in selling but i mean you know even if you're not interested in selling at some point”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He didn't really entertain a possibility. He didn't. They tried to buy us, or they didn't even try to, I mean, it depends what you mean by try to buy. They were interested in.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If it was off, then you didn't know if you were looking at your DVD player or not. So, if you just keep them on all the time, then it's easy to find. So it just makes it easier and it doesn't actually change the power consumption. It just wasn't what people were used to. So we had a lot of resistance to it, but it made it a lot easier to use, and now it's the standard.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was a very controversial decision, but it was to make it easier to use. We didn't put a power button on their remote control because if you go back to sort of what are the things that is confusing to people about different devices on their TV is, you know, you have a source button on your TV and you change the source and the source might be an Xbox or a DVD player or a rookie player. And one of the things that made it hard was you didn't know if your DVD player was turned on or off.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big focus for us, even kind of a correlated to that, is that consumer electronics, especially when dominated by Japanese companies, they started competing by adding more options. And so that just started adding more and more buttons to their remote. And they got to the point where TV remote has a lot of buttons and no one knows what they do. And so we put a lot of effort into our remote control to reduce the number of buttons, yet still being powerful and simple to use.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely. That's always been a huge part of our strategy. And I think our competition continually underestimates how simple consumers want their TV experience to be. Like television, they want to sit down, maybe drink a beer, and they want to watch something as quickly as they can. And they don't want to get confused trying to figure out what they're going to watch. And so that has always been a...”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so our goal was to offer a solution that was very inexpensive, that was super easy to use. You didn't have to be a gamer to use it, and just had a lot of content.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the strategy was we will make some money on the hardware enough to basically finance the business, but we're not going to try and make a profitable business on it. We're just going to use it to build scale.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was not hard to convince. Initially, it was more like the internet companies like Amazon or YouTube or Hulu was sort of the internet experimental branch of different networks. Those companies that had made the decision to do streaming, they wanted to be on Roku because we were a leading streaming platform. But if you went to traditional media companies that had traditional businesses, they had no interest in streaming. They viewed it as a threat to their business. So they did not take their services and put them on streaming for a long time.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When it first started shipping, it was just Netflix. And then I think we added Amazon Prime after that Prime Video came out fairly soon. And then after that, we added the App Store. So there was HBO, Hulu, I think, came out around that time. And then because of the App Store, you started getting lots of little companies publishing stuff.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What Reed thought would happen. That was his sort of vision of the way things would play out. And that's what lots of people thought. But my experience in the TV industry was that price was incredibly important in the TV business and that web browsers were a very inefficient way to distribute software. Like they required lots of memory and lots of processing power and that it was not the way to make a, there'd be ways to do it a lot cheaper and manufacturers always pick the less expensive way. And so that's why we focused on cost, and that's why we were successful in web browsers or not, because it just adds quite a bit to the cost to build a TV if you try and use a web browser.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was $99, which was a big milestone back then because that was very inexpensive compared to other Satop boxes. So, yeah, the way I was thinking about it was that Netflix would be the killer app that would allow us to launch a new television platform. And that was my goal. My goal was always to be the platform for TV. Just like phones have Android and PCs have Windows and I felt like TVs needed Roku But we needed a way to launch that and get scale, and that's what Netflix was for me. So, although we launched the first product is the Netflix player, we quickly started adding other services. We added an app store. We added billing systems. I mean, we added all the pieces to build a television platform. And that was the goal.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And so 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”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And the decision was good for me. Like it was a great, great decision for us. But I was like, yes, that sounds great. That's what I wanted from the beginning.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think he was getting worried. I think he came to the conclusion that Reads one of Reed's characteristics is he's very focused, so he'll pick a direction and he is maniacally focused on that direction. And so when I came in, the direction was we're going to build a box and distribute to all our customers. He then, I think he then decided that a better strategy is to just license our service widely to other hardware makers. We're clouding the pitcher by making our own hardware. And so if I take this team that's working on this hardware and I spin it out and put it in Roku, then Roku can still finish the box, but it'll just be one of many boxes that we can license.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so Apple TV existed back then as well, and actually, I think, if I remember correctly, Apple TV was the turning point. We were working on these other deals. It was becoming clear that we were going to get them, that you were going to be able to at some point get an Xbox and watch Netflix's service on it, that it would be built into TVs. Then we approached Apple about the same kind of thing on Apple TV. Let's let Apple TV stream Netflix. 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? Something along those lines.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idea is that if you had an Xbox, there would be an app on your Xbox that would let you watch Street, let you stream Netflix.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We talked about it obviously before he announced it. I mean, the sequence of events were that we were in the hardware. I hired this guy to go to try and sign up Xbox and some TV companies. That we were having good success there.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that's right. And the studios had a large existing business they were more interested in protecting than they were in opening up this new front.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. And I talked to Reed, and I would have conversations a Netflix player. We should build an operating system for TV. We should run apps. It's going to be a lot more stuff besides just Netflix, and people aren't going to want a separate box for every streaming service. He's like, yeah, that's a good idea. But that's in conflict. They would be competitors to Netflix. Is that okay? And he's like, I think that's okay. And there was a lot of work on the sort of non-hardware part of Netflix. There was a lot of work going on. I said, well, how are we going to get access to this content? Because back then, it wasn't just a technical problem. It was a huge business model problem.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was hired to build their hardware box. They wanted a little box that they could give to customers so they could connect it to their TV and stream Netflix so they didn't have to use their, you didn't have to use your PC.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so they had at this time they had had a beta version of their streaming service, but you had to have a piece on a PC browser.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I wanted to deal where Roki would make the hardware. But that wasn't going to happen. So I basically decided well, if he's not going to let Roku do it, then maybe I should just go do it at Netflix.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, that's right. And it is very unusual And I didn't really think he would do it, but he did. And Reed is very out of the box thinking that way. Like he's fine doing things that aren't the norm as long as it gets him where he wants to go. And so I think he had a lot of respect for my ability and he had bought all the Roki products. He loved them. And he figured I would be perfect to build this product for him.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a long process. He would go back and forth between like. When I sent him an email, he'd be like, Yes, we need your help. We're going to do this ourselves. And then at some point, I got a call from a recruiter saying, we're looking for a VP of internet TV for Netflix. And I was like, hmm, well, it sounds like they're really going to do it themselves. And I called up Reed and said, Hey, I hear you're looking for a head of internet TV. I'd be willing to do that for you if you let me keep running Roku at the same time. Like I can do it as a side project. And he's like, okay, that sounds good.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, so the Sandbridge Solden's, I would say the hundreds of thousands, which was good, but not a huge hit. And basically, at that same time, it's not that I remet Reed, I maintained our relationship. And I would check in every once in a while and say some version of are you guys ready to do a streaming video player yet? Because when you are, I want to make it for you. I remember one meeting with Reed where he said Reed is very strategic and he knew that many companies had missed transitions in their industry. He knew his industry was going to transition from DVDs to streaming. He just didn't know when. Nobody did. Hand. So he actually told me once that I've allocated, I'll call it 3% of our revenue to keep working on this idea of streaming in the background so that we don't miss the transition.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, so it would stream public radio, it would stream internet radio stations, it would stream. Music from your local library”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yes, my sixth company. I thought, you know, kind of an Asian sounding name would be cool for a consumer electronics company. And me and Susan and my wife were having. Dinner at the sushi restaurant. So I started talking to the waitress about different words in Japanese. And I said it was actually, depending on how you count, it's either my fifth or sixth company. So I asked her what the Japanese word for five is, and she said, go. And go was kind of a failed tech company. So I thought, no, can't use Go. I said, what is six? And she said, Roku. And I said, oh, that sounds cool”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it would show the time and then on the hour, it was like this giant sort of steampunk room and then on the hour the robot would take off and fly around and fix the pipe and things like that.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different purpose. Yeah. So he made this first product was basically High definition photo, video and audio player. And then we made these little compact flashcards that had what we called live art on them. So this was like a nature picture with a stream where the stream was kind of moving, you know, the water was flowing And we had clocks, we had some cool clocks, like a robot that would fly around like a cuckoo clock.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even if you don't know exactly what it is, I mean, you have to have something to start with, but it might not be where you want to end up eventually.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The original concept was just the category that there's going to be a lot of devices. So I know that's kind of vague, but that was the idea. And specific product ideas, a streaming player was on my list, a video streaming player. Wasn't time yet. You know, that's why Netflix was still mailing out DVDs back then. And that's why I met with Reed Hastings. I was like, obviously at some point this is going to be an internet delivered video company. And he's like, yep. So I was sort of like, well, maybe there's something we could do together. But when I first started the company, the timing wasn't right for that. So I figured, we'll just build a product, kind of start building my team and get into the market. And I'm a big believer in, you know, getting into a big market area unadjusting.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went around, I talked to a few people. I think I introduced myself to Reed Hastings of Netflix fame and had lunch with him. Back then, Netflix was around, they were just doing DVDs by mail.”
2022-11-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Roku: Anthony Wood · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT