Our Team Blog

welcome on board Bijan and Fred

we’re excited to announce that boxee has received an investment from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.

starting today, Bijan Sabet from Spark and Fred Wilson from Union Square will join our board.

Bijan brings a history of living room innovation from his days in WebTV Networks and Moxi Digital. Fred has been investing in the Internets since before Al Gore invented it.. they understand the web, the users and what makes a product successful on a unique level. together they bring to boxee lots of relevant experience (as well as a great taste in music – fred, bijan).

so what is it that we see in this space that has us so excited?… change. people are turning away from the traditional broadcast or cable TV experience in favor of:

  • a true on-demand experience – to watch a specific episode of The Office right now (and do it for free)
  • a connected experience – to play a song and see the lyrics, choose to watch the music video for it, or start singing the karaoke version
  • a social experience – to see a friend has a season-pass for Battle of the Bods, watch it for a few minutes, and tell them you no longer want to be their friend
  • an open platform – to play any media from any source, run any app, without a gatekeeper restricting what you can or can’t do
  • something that’s easy to use – even for grandma!

looking at these trends, both Bijan and Fred believe that boxee is positioned to become the software running tomorrow’s living room, where the Internet, social networks and TV are intertwined.

our growth from an idea based on XBMC to what you see today of boxee has not been easy. over the past year, with the support of families and friends, we’ve put our heart, soul and an unhealthy amount of time into making boxee come true. when we launched in June our goal was to attract 5,000 alpha testers. this past weekend, we passed 100,000 sign-ups.

these numbers prove people are looking for new ways to enjoy their entertainment. we’ve heard over and over again from users on our blog, forum and twitter that boxee is their favorite way to play media in the living room and on their computers. with each new user, article, and blog post about us we grow one step closer to our goal of becoming the firefox of media centers.

join us. it’ll be a fun ride!

our goals for 2009:

  • grow out of our comfortable closed-alpha cocoon and launch a kick-ass beta
  • build even more functionality and content into boxee while making it easier to navigate
  • listen to user requests, ideas and frustrations (and improve the product accordingly)
  • work with team-xbmc, developers and partners to extend boxee beyond the confines of our limited resources
  • finish the year with ~ 1,000,000 users
November 17, 2008 at 11:52 pm

38 Responses to “welcome on board Bijan and Fred”

  1. carseneau says:

    congrats !!!

  2. Aaron Cohen says:

    Avner and Gilad:

    Superb. Congrats. Not easy in this market. Good patience.

    Aaron

  3. Nick Basham says:

    You guys are going an amazing job – and you're making my investment in an AppleTV actually worth it.

    Congrats on the new funds – I can't wait to see what's coming down the pipe.

  4. hereandthere says:

    Congratulations – its great to see capital still flowing into such excellent ideas. As a boxee user in New Zealand – I find it absolutely amazing (even without access to Hulu and some other bits and pieces) and really do beleive you have a winner on your hands here. Its really great to see that others (with $$$ in their pocket) can see the same. Im looking forward to joining you on the journey.

  5. Dr. Dre says:

    Great. Thanks. I didn’t even know Battle of the Bods existed until this blog entry!

    Despite that, I still praise your work and will continue to share it with others.

  6. Doug K. says:

    Great! Saw this at the NY Tech meetup and was looking for it on the Internet last night! Nice coincidence your good news of today.

    Doug

  7. Blair Poloskey says:

    Congrats! Fred has been one of my favorite VC bloggers for awhile now. I am sure you guys are going to do amazing things in 2009 – and if you are still looking for Windows testers, ping me.

    -Blair

  8. Shawn says:

    Would your RSS feeds be able to be used to website publishers and bloggers in keeping their content fresh for search engnies? :-)

  9. Smooftdum says:

    Hi!

    Nice Blog! Happy to keep following this!

    http://ladesalign.yi.org/

  10. jyoseph says:

    Congrats on 100K, wow!

  11. laurence says:

    To you guys who are hitting this, I am deeply impressed. I am grateful for the invite to be an alpha tester. I had a few snags on the whole process but over all throughly satisfied!!!

    It takes courage to do this. I am a true believer and now a huge fan…

    hoo aah !!! on the funding!

    Laurence

  12. Hi!

    Huge congratulations!

    I'm working for a swedish digital media startup. We're developing webTV solutions for the european sports community. Since you mention your platform is open I would love to check Boxee out and see if there is any possibility to develop plugins and/or extensions to synergize with Boxee. We've been looking for something like this for a while. Please get back to me if this is of interest.

    Kind regards,

    John Sjölander

  13. solacetech says:

    Great Product With unlimited potential! Thanx for making want to cancel my cable tv =)

  14. Priemegique says:

    Nothing seems to be easier than seeing someone whom you can help but not helping.

    I suggest we start giving it a try. Give love to the ones that need it.

    God will appreciate it.

  15. Rich says:

    Awesome Alpha. After running on my macbook it is what made me buy an apple tv. File Share, HULU, RSS. Keep it coming. I wasn't an alpha tester, but will look for where to leave detailed feedback.

    I think you have a really serious shot at hitting this out of the park.

    Good luck.

    Rich

  16. dayhoccunny says:

    I like blog.boxee.tv and category this very interesting.

    Best Regards news

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