By Khalida Sarwari
Six years ago Anthony Wood was dining at a Japanese restaurant when the name for his sixth company came to him: roku, or ‘six’ in Japanese. And thus was born the media streaming company that is credited with changing the way Americans watch TV.
On May 20, the company celebrated the sixth anniversary of shipping its first streaming device. Mayor Emily Lo was on hand to personally congratulate Wood, Roku’s founder and CEO and the inventor of the digital video recorder. The mayor declared May 20 “Video Streaming Day” in Saratoga.
The Roku streaming player was initially designed to stream movies from Netflix, which up until that point was available only on DVD.
The business is a pioneer in the media streaming industry, Lo said, and proof that companies can have their corporate headquarters in Saratoga and be successful.
“This is something that I’m very grateful of,” she said, before reading a proclamation that she presented to Wood and his “launch team,” the company’s very first employees.
Lo was joined at the celebration by council members Chuck Page and Jill Hunter, who smiled as they posed for photos with Roku employees. “Everyone say Roku,” someone instructed the group before snapping a photo.
Both Page and Hunter offered their congratulations to the company for thriving in a city that isn’t known for being a commercial hub.
“Only 1 percent of our property is zoned commercial; we don’t have a lot of space for businesses,” Page said. “So to have you guys here, stream on and I love purple!”
Standing in front of a banner that read “Happy National Streaming Day,” a suspenders and baseball cap-sporting Wood presented plaques to each member of his launch team that was in attendance. Many of them wore purple polo or T-shirts, the color associated with the company and its products, to commemorate the day. Afterward, employees lined up at a Kara’s Cupcakes truck for a sweet vanilla or red velvet treat.
“It was an exciting time,” Wood said of Roku’s first few years, taking a moment to remind his employees of Roku’s milestones over the years. Last year, customers streamed 1.7 billion hours of TV, a substantial jump from 1 billion hours in 2012. Twenty-five percent of Roku customers stream an average of 35 hours a week on Roku. Roku has sold 8 million streaming players since 2008 and now offers 1,500 channels.
“It’s changed the economy of TV, the way TV is watched,” Wood said. “So I’m looking forward to the next six years. It will be amazing to see what happens in six years.”
What the next six years hold for Roku is anyone’s guess, but the company did reveal that it will be releasing a Roku TV within the next six months. With a built-in Roku operating system, the TV is the first of its kind, according to Tricia Mifsud, a spokeswoman for the company.
Roku employs 250 people at its Saratoga headquarters, but also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Portland, and Austin.
Lo said she and her fellow council members would like to see Roku expand their operations in Saratoga.
