Page 32 - Forbes - Asia (March 2020)
P. 32
TECHNOLOGY
By Angel Au-Yeung Photograph by Timothy Archibald for Forbes
Roku Redo
30
ANTHONY WOOD is betting Roku’s future on what viewers hate: advertising.
D thing consumers are said to loathe: advertising. Serial entrepreneur
It’s a necessary pivot. Roku’s original business,
Los Gatos, California,
selling inexpensive dongles that let TV viewers Anthony Wood at the
headquarters of Roku.
The name means
tap into the internet to stream 500,000 movies “six” in Japanese, a
and TV episodes from Netflix, Disney and many nod to his half-dozen
business ventures.
DVRs and Netflix have more, is a low-margin one that has never turned a
taught a generation to hate commercials. An- profit. Even worse, streaming has become a com-
thony Wood should know—he created one of modity, with streaming apps integrated into any-
the first DVRs that allowed viewers to skip com- thing that can get online, from PlayStation con-
mercials, and he also worked briefly at Netflix, soles to tablets to smart TVs. Wood, 54, is now
directly under its cofounder Reed Hastings. But betting that Roku can move beyond its hardware
Wood’s latest pivot, in the midst of the streaming business into a more lucrative software business:
media revolution, has been to bet the future of measuring the reach and effectiveness of ads on
his streaming device company, Roku, on the very streaming apps.
F ORBES A SIA MAR CH 2020
