Our portfolio company Boxee announced a second round of funding today, led by General Catalyst. With half of the last round still in the bank and now $6mm of new capital, there is a lot that Boxee could be doing. But in his blog post announcing the financing, Boxee's CEO Avner Ronen listed the four things that Boxee is doing right now and will continue to focus on:
Going forward we plan to focus on:
- Improving the product
– We are working on the Beta release (due later this fall), but also
looking beyond Beta and into the roadmap of 2010. The idea is to have a
healthy mix of development driven by user feedback (which is the
essence of the upcoming Beta) and innovation that comes from within
Boxee.
- Adding more content – We believe Boxee
can be a great partner for independent content producers as well as big
media companies. We will try to bring more TV Shows, Web Shows and
Movies from ad-based, subscription-based and a la carte type services.
- Attracting more developers
– While we have an App Store on Boxee, we know it needs some love. For
Developers, we know it needs to be easier to develop and monetize apps.
For users, we're going to make it easier to find apps on Boxee. Last
but not least we're going to extend the APIs so everyone can do more
with Boxee.
- Bringing Boxee into devices – Boxee
today is mostly serving a tech-savvy audience – those who feel
comfortable connecting a computer to a TV. To make Boxee more
accessible for a mainstream consumer it's important for us to get Boxee
embedded into connected TVs and Blu-Ray players, game consoles and
set-top boxes. We're already talking to device makers to ensure Boxee
works on a variety of platforms for 2010.
I like that there are only four things Boxee is doing right now. It could even be three or two. And I like that Avner has clearly and concisely articulated what they are, both inside the company and outside the company. The more everyone knows what you are working on, and what the priorities are, the better off you'll be.
