Roku’s CEO explains why he hasn't been crushed by giants like Apple and Amazon — and why a newcomer can conquer the streaming TV market (ROKU)

Roku CEO Anthony Wood

Roku, the streaming TV platform company, competes with giants like Apple and Amazon.
But even though those big tech companies have similar gadgets, Roku continues to thrive.
Roku CEO Anthony Wood attributed the company's success to a variety of factors like its superior software designed specifically for TVs.

Roku CEO Anthony Wood is not afraid to go toe-to-toe with industry heavyweights.

The scrappy streaming TV company he leads is a tiny player, with a relatively modest $5 billion market cap, competing against giants like Google (market cap: $770 billion), Apple (market cap: $868 billion), and Amazon (market cap: $717 billion) in the quest to dominate the future of TV.

Yet against all odds, Roku is holding its own. The company's 19 million users streamed more than 4 billion hours of video in the last three months of 2017 and its stock has tripled since its September IPO (Although the stock was down in after hours trading on Wednesday when investors got spooked by the company's outlook for 2018.)

Why hasn't Roku become road kill?

According to Wood, the smart TV market is a new playing field where size and history don't offer any advantages for the tech giants that have dominated PCs, smartphones and other platforms.

"Look at the trends. Every time a new computing platform emerges, the operating system has changed," Wood told Business Insider in an interview on Wednesday..

"The way I think about these things, they used to be small companies too," Wood said of the tech giants Roku competes with. "They competed with ginormous companies. But when markets change, opportunities abound."

No original content means no conflicts

Roku sells inexpensive hardware gadgets that connect to TVs and allow users to stream online video. The company also licenses its software to TV makers so they can integrate its service directly into their products. Unlike some of its competitors however, Roku's goal isn't just to sell a bunch of dongles and boxes. The goal is to get its software platform onto as many devices as possible and to become the operating system of choice for the new generation of smart TVs.

Roku's lack of history in the tech industry is actually one of its biggest advantages, Wood argues. Roku is wholly focused on building an operating system for smart TVs from the ground up instead of trying to shoehorn existing software into the TV, the way Google, Apple, and Amazon do. (Apple TV's operating system is based on iOS, and Google and Amazon base their TV platforms on Android.)

Roku's software is designed specifically for TV and TV hardware. Wood said that rival TV operating systems from Apple and others were originally designed to run on pricey smartphone hardware, which can cost hundreds of dollars. Roku's software can run on hardware that costs a lot less and is optimized for TV.

Wood also credited Roku's openness for allowing it to compete against its larger rivals. Roku doesn't produce or sell its own video shows. Roku is effectively a neutral player that supports any and all streaming services, from Netflix to Hulu to Youtube.

By contrast, Apple, Amazon, and Google all make or sell their own content, which creates competing interests as they try to establish their hardware and software products as the smart TV standard. Amazon's Fire TV gadget doesn't support a native YouTube app, for example. Users who choose one of those companies' platforms miss out on content they want to watch.

That's not good for users, but it's great for Roku.

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