Farhad Massoudi<\/a> went through various stages of growth as the founder and chief executive of Tubi, the ad-supported video on demand platform that Fox last year acquired for $440 million. He came up with the idea as advertisers shifted their media spending to digital platforms including social media.<\/p>\n\u201cI thought that TV channels ultimately were going to be replaced with TV apps, and in that process, TV advertising will be completely disrupted,\u201d he said in this interview with Beet.TV. He started a company called AdRise, which evolved into Tubi.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say, it was really hard to raise money for it,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the early days, people didn\u2019t believe TV\u00a0 would be disrupted. The power of the bundle was very strong, and I was told it would never change.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Netflix branched out from mail-order DVD rentals and into streaming video, it showed that many consumers were willing to pay for an alternative to cable and satellite TV by offering a quality viewing experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Netflix proved them wrong, I was told that subscription video on demand was the way to go \u2013 so, a lot of naysayers both in Silicon Valley and in Hollywood about ad-supported video on demand,\u201d Massoudi said.<\/p>\n
Advice to Entrepreneurs<\/h3>\n
He initially raised about $400,000 from friends and family to get his company off the ground, and later found a venture capital fund that led a financing round of $2 million-$2.5 million. Massoudi recommends that entrepreneurs dream big when they\u2019re pitching their business to investors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has to be a big idea, a multibillion-dollar idea, because otherwise, you\u2019re not going to attract the right VCs,\u201d Massoudi said. \u201cEven if you do, you\u2019re going to disappoint them. Financial models are such that they need huge exits.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said Tubi was working on a plan to go public, but the growth in AVOD services started drawing interest from major media companies like Fox. Before the deal with Fox, Viacom had acquired Pluto TV for $340 million in 2019, while Comcast acquired Xumo for more than $100 million.<\/p>\n
Massoudi said Fox\u2019s purchase of Tubi has given the platform access to more resources for growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt made sense to use the muscle and the power of a larger media company that\u2019s very sophisticated in this space to help better our products, our offering and our business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
You are watching \u201cInnovation, Leadership, and Value Creation: Strategies Explored,\u201d a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Progress Partners. For more videos,\u00a0please visit this page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not unusual for entrepreneurs to meet naysayers when they\u2019re seeking seed capital to start a business. However, persistence can pay off for visionaries who are thinking about starting a business. Farhad Massoudi went through various stages of growth as the founder and chief executive of Tubi, the ad-supported video on demand platform that Fox […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":74911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[8838],"tags":[8858],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}