I accepted an offer to join Boxee and head up product — and it sure wasn’t a hard decision to make. The feeling I had when I learned their vision, competence and personality reminded me of the year way back when I met Jakob, Josh, and Ricky. It’s the sudden sensation of confidence that no one in the world is more capable and determined to pull off what you imagine. And it’s the case again. This Boxee team is extraordinary.
If you’re unfamiliar with Boxee, the premise is ambitious but simple: You’ve got this big TV over there in your living room, but you spend more time over here with your laptop because unlike your TV it allows you to watch what you want (First season of Dexter, or Vimeo), when you want (just press play), with whomever you want (“Hey C, did you see that literal lyrics music video?”). We want our TVs to work this way, too. We’ll bridge the widening gap between the passive experience of watching TV as it is now and the pervading consumer expectation that our media be more open and interactive.
We’ll do this with software — you can download an alpha version today for free — that you install on a computer connected to a TV (eventually, it’s reasonable that your new TV or game console would come installed with it). Suddenly, a different kind of life is breathed into your display. Now, from your TV, you can access all media on your network, browse all the movies available to you on demand through your Netflix subscription, or even watch live stuff through one of our partners like MLB, which allows you to see every game on any given night.
At last count, Nielsen reported that the average American watches 153 hours of TV per month (that’s 27% of waking life). I see an opportunity here to enrich quality of that life by widening and exposing the spectrum of content available to us and making the experience of watching it inherently more curious and social.
I’ll remain in NYC most of the time (HQ is here), and commute to Tel Aviv and San Francisco often to work with our teams there.
Thanks to Avner Ronen and the folks at Boxee for the opportunity and, as usual, my friends and family (especially Courtney & Patrick) for the overwhelming support to take on such a big challenge.
Finally, for those curious about Spurd, my partnership with Patrick Moberg, it will continue to live on as an essential outlet for creative expression for both of us. In fact, we had an fun project called Hush Hush well underway when I decided to accept the Boxee opportunity. We intend to finish it.
