Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost, spent his first weekend in California in many months dealing with the blowback from a story in The Sunday Times (of UK) that has the company scaling back its global ambitions in favor of a US-only focus. We talked earlier this evening, and Volpi said none of those things are actually true. (PaidContent had talked to Joost spokesperson earlier today.)
“We are focusing on US, Western Europe, China and a few other Asian markets,” he told me. “Taking a more measured approach to our expansion, and keeping it in sync with markets where online advertising is mature enough.” Volpi pointed out that Joost launched in China two weeks ago, and has recently signed content partnerships in Scandinavia. When you add to the mix UK, France and a couple of other Western European countries, Volpi said it is pretty obvious that the company is not scaling back from its global ambitions.
“What we are not doing is chasing every market, because as a start-up we need to be focused,” Volpi added. Due to its heritage - it was started by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis - Joost had received a lot of press coverage. God knows, I wrote about them a few times. The fact that it is run by Volpi, a highly regarded former Cisco executive and funded by the likes of uber VC funds Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, it is hardly a surprise that Joost is being closely scrutinized. The company raised about $45 million in May 2007.
Joost was supposed to be the delivery vehicle for Hollywood content in the US. Instead, Hulu, a web-based video company backed by major networks chose its thunder and market, leaving Joost scrambling to play catch up. It has Viacom and CBS as its primary US partners, and it clearly needs to sign-up more A-list type content providers. Furthermore, the BBC’s iPlayer (where the former Joost CTO currently works), Kangaroo and other players are beginning to challenge Joost on its turf in Europe as well.
That said, the company doesn’t have much room for error. It needs to quickly improve its client and platform. Joost client has been subject of much criticism. Volpi knows that. He said that Joost is going to announce a new web-based platform in a few months. (We offered them 5 ways they can get out of trouble. Anil Gupte had listed 7 reasons they could be in trouble.)
When I asked Volpi about layoffs, he said that company realigned its work force. A few people were let go recently, as I first reported for NewTeeVee. Many contractors were cut as well.
As a result Joost of today is a trimmer version of its former self, thanks to pruning by Volpi, who became Joost CEO in May 2007. Some of these details were outlined in a Portfolio article. I tried to pin down Volpi on the total number of employees the company currently has, but he would not comment.
Rafat in his report says that Joost has about 100 employees. By that yardstick and my own not-quite-confirmed-data, that’s a head count reduction of around 35 to 40. Volpi said that the company is adding more “engineering” folks in their New York office and contrary to published reports has no plans to shut down the Netherlands operation.
Photo by Joey Wan.
11 trackbacks so far
10:16 PM PT
[...] a widely circulated report that his company was scaling back to focus on the U.S. market in an interview with Om tonight. Om surmises that the company has reduced head count by 35 to 40 to about 100, though Volpi [...]
11:49 PM PT
[...] han llamado la atención estas declaraciones en GigaOm de Mike Volpi, CEO de Joost, en las que afirma que la compañía no está recortando en modo alguno sus aspiraciones globales [...]
4:59 AM PT
[...] werkte. De geruchten dat Joost het kantoor in Leiden zou sluiten werden door CEO Volpi ontkent in een interview met GigaOm. Hij gaf wel toe dat ze meer technische mensen toevoegden aan het team in New [...]
8:02 AM PT
[...] han llamado la atención estas declaraciones en GigaOm de Mike Volpi, CEO de Joost, en las que afirma que la compañía no está recortando en modo alguno sus aspiraciones globales [...]
9:28 AM PT
[...] Joost CEO On US & Global Plans, Cutbacks - GigaOM [...]
1:49 PM PT
[...] A company rep told PaidContent that the statement was “completely untrue”, while GigaOm heard that the company had laid off some, but was hiring more engineers. Joost has had an interesting, [...]
1:43 AM PT
[...] Mike Volpi widersprach gegenüber dem Blog Gigaom dem Bericht der Sunday Times. Man plane zwar eine Neuausrichtung, aber man wolle sich sicher nicht [...]
12:31 PM PT
[...] Joost CEO On US & Global Plans, Cutbacks - GigaOM [...]
12:47 AM PT
[...] dem Branchendienst Gigaom widerspricht Joosts CEO der o.g. “aus der Not geborenen” ausschliesslichen Fokuss…- und zeigt auf, dass Joost weiterhin in Europa & China aktiv sei und dies auch zu bleiben [...]
9:37 PM PT
[...] de Paid Content, es rotundo: lo niega. Ese el hecho, no que no se produzca realmente. Segunda vía: entrevista en Om Malik donde dan los detalles claves: We are focusing on US, Western Europe, China and a few other Asian [...]
10:46 AM PT
[...] Om Malik of Giga Om interviewed CEO Mike Volpi shortly after that report. Mile countered the Times article and said the company isn’t scaling back at all. Just the opposite, he told Malik, the company just launched in China two weeks ago. “What we are not doing is chasing every startup market, because as a startup we need to remain focused.” As a result the company is taking a “more measured approach to our expansion.” That’s all it is. [...]
5 comments so far
4:01 AM PT
Sounds like a great company. Good article.
4:17 AM PT
Let the speculation begin on what Joost is going to do to regain the market ;).
Its going to be an interesting Summer is all I can say .
6:19 AM PT
“He said that Joost is going to announce a new web-based platform in a few months.” Finally, they see the light! Hope it’s not too late for them.
6:28 AM PT
While Joost tried to dazzle us with a great GUI and P2P technology, a video site is ALL about the content. Joost tried to get the media guys to give up 50% of the revenue and Joost also wanted to cotnrol the advertising relationships with brand name advertisers. Both of these are non-starters with major media companies. The media folks know that their content has value over a long period and is where all the value really is. They learned the lesson on cable, where a channel like TVland can make money off of old TV series. Why give Joost 50%. There isn’t a lot of money out there now for the content and the content will still have value later. All the gain in the deal Joost proposed was for Joost and not much was there for the media folks.
Maybe the International markets will be different. Maybe the Scandinavian content isn’t worth much over time. But if that is true than Joost won’t get a lot of viewing or ad dollars. China is a huge market, but the popular content there is all pirated. “Prison Break” is number one on the Internet there and is posted to pirate P2P sites, fully and idiomatically correctly translated, only a few hours after it is broadcast.
Joost is headed for the dead pool unless one of the “bigger fools” can be convinced the business has value before it dead pools.
11:46 AM PT
Hulu kicks ass in the US. Joost will most likely have some killer content, although not the network stuff. the good news is Hulu is helping to develop the internet TV market that Joost kicked off and that may make life easier for Joost when it comes to monetization.
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