Anthony Wood

Anthony Wood founded Roku in 2002, though the company's breakthrough product didn't launch until 2008. Born in 1965 in the United Kingdom and raised in Texas, Wood is a serial entrepreneur who founded five companies before Roku, including ReplayTV — one of the first digital video recorders (DVRs) that pioneered the concept of time-shifting TV, competing head-to-head with TiVo. That experience gave Wood deep insight into the television industry's inevitable digital transformation. Roku's origin story has a fascinating twist: the company was originally developing a streaming hardware device for Netflix. When Netflix decided not to enter the hardware business, Wood spun Roku out as an independent company and launched the first Roku player. The device's simplicity — plug it in, pick a streaming service, start watching — made it the gateway to streaming for millions of cord-cutters. The strategic evolution from hardware to platform has been Roku's defining move. While still selling streaming players and licensing the Roku OS to TV manufacturers (Roku-powered TVs are the best-selling smart TVs in North America), the company's real business is its platform: advertising, content distribution deals, and The Roku Channel (its free ad-supported streaming service). Platform revenue now dominates the business and carries significantly higher margins than hardware. Wood's challenge is navigating an increasingly competitive streaming landscape where Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast/Android TV, and Apple TV all compete for the living room. Roku's advantage is neutrality — unlike Amazon or Google, Roku doesn't have a competing content service or e-commerce platform to prioritize. The key growth driver is connected TV advertising, where Roku is positioned to capture ad dollars migrating from linear TV to streaming. With over 80 million active accounts streaming over 100 billion hours annually, the scale is there — the question is whether Roku can convert that engagement into consistent, profitable ad revenue growth.