The Nash Attack
Welcome to The Nash Attack—my take on media and what makes us watch. I’m Jonathan Nash, a lifelong movie and TV fan who’s spent my career at the intersection of Hollywood and technology. Each episode starts with a question about media I can’t stop thinking about. I bring together firsthand experience, industry history and my own perspective to make sense of how we got here, where we’re going and why it matters. OK. Let's attack something.
The Nash Attack
How Did Roku Win?
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On this episode, we ask how Roku won—or even survived. We look back at how a small streaming company took on the biggest tech companies in the world, the choices that helped it break through, and how Roku changed the way we watch television.
How Did Roku Win?
SPEAKER_00I've got a question. How the hell did Roku win? Seriously. Roku should not exist. It was this little company competing against Apple, Google, then Amazon. Three of the biggest companies in the world. And then there's Roku. A streaming company with that purple logo working out of a strip mall in Saratoga, California. It should have been a footnote. Like Betamax or TiVo. Something that had a moment and then faded away. Except Roku didn't. It became synonymous with streaming. And it did it by being incredibly focused on one thing. Making television easier. I know this one firsthand. Because in 2015, I left my career in Hollywood and joined that little streaming company. I'm Jonathan Nash, and this is the Nash Attack. My take on media and what makes us watch.
From Hollywood To A Strip Mall
SPEAKER_00When I joined Roku, I was making a pretty significant career pivot. I'd spent several years at Disney and Fox, major movie studios, the epitome of Hollywood. But I could see that the business I'd built my career around was changing. My job was selling movies, DVDs, Blu-rays, digital. But as a consumer, I was streaming. I'd cut the cord. I hadn't bought a DVD in years. My own behavior was changing. So I started looking at companies on the other side of that transition. And then there was Roku. Honestly, I barely knew what it was. My mother-in-law happened to have one in her guest room. I'm positive she had no idea what it was. I played with it, installed some apps, aka streaming channels, signed in and thought, this is kinda great. It did exactly what I needed it to do. Then through a mentor, I connected with a VP of marketing at Roku. One conversation turned into another, and eventually, there was a role. I flipped to the Bay Area and interviewed multiple times I might add. I spent years working on studio lots and in big office buildings. Then I show up and I'm standing in front of a strip mall in Saratoga, in what looks like an old gym that was converted into office space. There's a Korean church across the street. I gave up. I walk into one of the offices and I ask someone at the front desk, Where's Roku? She looks at me and says, You're here. Are you Jonathan? We were expecting you. My mind was blown. This was Roku? This tiny office was the company disrupting the entertainment industry. And it really was tiny. The entire marketing org could fit into a meeting room. The CMO was right there. Anthony Wood, the CEO and founder, was a few cubes away. Executives weren't hidden 20 floors above you. You could see them, talk to them, argue with them, or agree with everything they said. At Fox, I was one person inside a huge machine. At Roku, we were building the machine. And I had to learn and unlearn a lot of shit very quickly.
Television Used to Be Simple
SPEAKER_00You have to remember how simple television used to be. You bought a TV, and you kept it forever. Seriously, when I was a kid, I had one in my bedroom that probably lasted 15 years, maybe 20. And nobody thought it was weird, because TVs were dumb screens. You plug them in. Cables, a VCR, maybe a Super Nintendo. Then the DVR comes along. And suddenly, you didn't have to watch something when the network told you to. You could watch it on your schedule. Then the internet arrived in the living room. And at first, it was clunky. I remember wanting a Blu-ray player that could stream Netflix. Someone even suggested I buy a Roku, and I remember thinking, why would I buy a box that only streams when I could buy something that streams and plays discs? I thought I was the smart one. Then a few years passed, and that Blu-ray player and all those discs started collecting dust. Because the one thing I thought was Roku's limitation turned out to be its greatest advantage.
Roku Didn't Need to Be Apple
SPEAKER_00Now I'm an Apple guy, and we'll get into that another time. But the point is that I had the first Apple TV, and I loved it. If Apple had launched an actual Apple television, I would have bought it immediately. Hell, if Apple had made a car that they were always talking about, I would have probably bought that too. Well, if I had the money. Apple TV was this premium black hockey puck you could connect to your television. Beautiful, expensive, very Apple. Roku's approach was different. It didn't need TV to feel luxurious. It needed it to feel easy. Roku's first streaming player launched in 2008 around Netflix. It was literally called the Netflix Player by Roku. Then more services arrived. Suddenly that little Netflix box was becoming a gateway to streaming. And this is one of the most important things I learned at Roku. A product doesn't always have to be perfect. Sometimes it needs to be good enough in exactly the right ways. Roku wasn't trying to be the Mercedes of streaming boxes. It was building something your parents could buy at Walmart, take home, plug in, and understand immediately. And over time, you could get one for 30 bucks. Roku couldn't outspend App or Google, but it could become a product a retailer recommended when someone walked in and asked how to get Netflix on their TV. Sometimes that's how categories are won. Not with the perfect product, but with the product that becomes the default answer.
The Remote
SPEAKER_00Maybe nothing captures Roku's philosophy better than the remote. Think about a traditional cable remote. It's like someone went into a button meeting and said, give me all of them. Then there was the Roku remote. Simple, tactile, obvious. You could hand it to someone who'd never seen one before, and they'd figure it out. Compare that with some of Apple's remotes over the years. Beautiful, elegant. But it took a while to master. Roku wasn't trying to win any design awards, it was trying to make the TV work. Then Roku did something really smart. It put branded shortcut buttons on the remote. As a consumer, press the button, the app opens. And from a business perspective, that's equity. That remote sits in your home every day, and Roku could sell partners that front row seat. And even the simplest part of the product became a part of the business model. Simple for the consumer, valuable underneath.
The Roku TV Revolution
SPEAKER_00But the biggest shift wasn't the box. It was realizing that eventually, you don't need the box at all. When I joined in 2015, Roku TV was still relatively new. The idea was straightforward. Instead of selling consumers another thing to plug into the television, put Roku inside the television. Now when someone buys the TV, Roku's already there. That was huge. I'd spent years thinking, why the hell do I need all these boxes? I literally had a piece of furniture to hold all my devices. So many cords. I just wanted a screen on the wall, turn it on, everything's there. And then when I got a Roku TV, that's what it felt like. Just the television. Roku would solve the problem in a completely different way from Apple. The operating system became the TV. And TV manufacturers had their own problem. Building a great smart TV operating system from scratch is hard. Roku already had one, and Roku needed distribution. That created the perfect match. TCL and HiSense became Roku's first TV partners. TCL, in particular, was trying to build share in the US with affordable TVs. And Roku gave them a streaming experience people actually wanted to use. And now Roku wasn't just selling boxes, it was becoming the television.
Switzerland
SPEAKER_00There was another thing that made Roku special. Apple had iTunes, Google had Google Play, Amazon had Prime. Roku was just Roku. That's it. Not trying to sell you a phone, or search, or two-day shipping. So Roku could position itself like Switzerland. Its job wasn't to beat its partners, it was to enable them. That made Roku incredibly valuable. Years later, I was at Apple, and suddenly I was sitting on the other side of the table. And now I was the partner. And I saw why Roku's position mattered. Roku would work with you, build promotions, create custom experiences, put you on the home screen. You could become a part of the product, rather than simply buying another banner ad. And partners paid for it because it worked. Roku built something incredibly valuable, attention inside the TV itself.
Thinking Outside The Box
SPEAKER_00And this is where Roku's story gets really interesting. Because the company kept evolving. At first, the business was selling devices. Then Roku TV takes off, and Roku became a platform. The device isn't the destination anymore, it's the entry point. Now millions of people are using Roku. So the next question becomes: how do you monetize all that usage? Advertising, distribution, and eventually, the Roku channel. I'll admit, when the Roku channel was first brought up in a meeting, I was nervous. It spent years telling partners, we're neutral, we're Switzerland, we're not competing with you. And now we're gonna launch our own streaming channel? Great. But then I understood what we were trying to do. We'd done the research. People associated Roku with streaming being easy and free. You didn't need a subscription to have a Roku account. So give people something they can watch immediately. No additional subscription, no friction, and monetize the viewing through advertising. Meanwhile, the interface itself was becoming incredibly valuable. Think about the screen before the show. You turn on the TV, there's Roku. Before Netflix, before Disney Plus, before whatever you're about to watch, Roku's there first. That's real estate. Traditional TV sold advertising inside the programming. Roku could create value around the entire streaming experience. It was sitting between the streaming service and the viewer. And that's a powerful place to be. And that's the part people miss when they describe Roku as a hardware company. The box got Roku in the home. The platform became the business. The device was just the door.
Did Roku Win The Living Room?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so I love Roku. I'm incredibly biased. That should be obvious by now. I spent five years there. Some of the most important years of my career. I owe my last decade to what I learned at Roku. So let's challenge the premise. Did Roku really win the living room? Because globally, that's a much harder argument. Inside Roku, there was a belief that TV operating systems would eventually consolidate around a handful of major players. And Roku was going to lead the way. Anthony Wood would say, in the future, all TV will be streamed. That was the vision. But the world didn't consolidate that neatly. And Roku's strength was much greater in the US than around the world. I know that firsthand. I'd take meetings in other countries where we were actively trying to grow Roku. And sometimes the people sitting across from me didn't really know what Roku was. That's the reality of being a smaller company. You can't do everything. You can't fight every giant everywhere at once. Roku made choices. The US came first. Build scale, win there, international would come later. You can argue that waiting limited Roku's global opportunity. That's fair. But I don't think failing to become the world's dominant TV operating system means that Roku failed. Look at who was competing against. The fact that Roku survived is part of how it won.
Roku Understood Its Lane
SPEAKER_00So here's where I land. How did Roku win? I think it came down to three things. First, the product. It was simple, affordable. Easy enough that almost anyone could plug it in and figure it out. It didn't have to be the perfect streaming player. It had to make streaming easier. Second, distribution. Roku built incredible relationships with retailers. So when somebody walked into a store and asked, what's the easiest way to get Netflix on my TV? Roku became the default answer. Then Roku TV took that idea even further. Eventually, you didn't have to buy Roku. You could buy TV that was Roku. And third, focus. For Apple, TV could be a hobby, but for Roku, it was the business. If Roku failed at streaming, there wasn't some cash cow waiting to save it. Roku had to win to survive. And sometimes, David beats Goliath because David had more at stake. Product, distribution, focus. Roku understood its lane. And then it kept making the lane bigger.
No Longer The Underdog
SPEAKER_00And now we get to the weird part. For most of Roku's history, it was the independent underdog. Now Fox has agreed to acquire it. So if that deal closes, what happens when the independent platform becomes part of a major media company? Fox could give Roku more resources, more scale, more opportunity, or it could damage what made Roku special in the first place. Neutrality, independence, partners' trust. That's the challenge. And the next few years will tell us whether Roku's second act is as interesting as its first.
We Were There
SPEAKER_00There wasn't one day when Roku won. That's the funny thing. When I joined, I constantly had to explain what it was. I'd tell somebody where I worked and get a blank stare. It's how you get apps on your TV. It's an iPad, but for your TV. It's how you get Netflix on your TV. Then that stopped happening. Roku started showing up in stores, built into the TVs, you'd mention Roku, and people knew exactly what you were talking about. Somewhere along the way, this tiny company that started out in a converted gym in a Saratoga strip mall had broken through. And there's something about that experience I didn't fully appreciate until years later. I still run into people I worked with at Roku, and inevitably we reminisce about the strip mall, about the early products, the things that worked, the things that absolutely didn't. And there's this shared feeling of holy shit, we were there. Now, maybe that's delusions of grandeur. We weren't starting Apple in a garage. We weren't in that dorm with Zuckerberg, but I understand that feeling a little bit better now. There's something special about joining a small company, believing the world is going in one direction, helping build something around that belief, and then watching the world actually go there. Roku didn't have to beat Apple, or Google, or Amazon. It survived them. And it built something that changed the way people watch TV. And I got to be a part of that. And years later, that's probably what I'm most proud of. That's my take. What's yours? Until next time, this is the Nash Attack.
