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Boxee Acquired By Samsung For Around $30M
- matdrewin 13y agoI wonder where Samsung is going with this...
- Duhck 13y agoAwesome for Boxee, its a great product (actually the valuation seems kinda low to me)
- antr 13y agoAn exit break-even for investors (money-losing if the funds' cost of capital are considered) and no real return for founders/team. The hardware-media play is tough.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mattzito 13y ago"no real return" might be a strong statement to make when you take into account retention packages and bonuses that Samsung probably put together. Sure, none of them are probably retiring, but if they can stick around at Samsung for a while they can probably do very well for themselves.
- wensing 13y agoThey did not get 'venture returns.'
- blantonl 13y agoThis is an example of a "real world" exit - where tangible products and commoditized software intersected with a knowledgable buyer.
- icn2 13y agoSeems not a so awesome exit with Launch Date: 2004 and Funding of $26.5M
- josh2600 13y agoIt isn't a very good exit. Boxee always painted themselves into a corner. They're the streaming device that could never achieve enough scale to gather content relationships. It was a great device, but plagued by the anathema that is content partnerships with modern media companies. No matter what, if you have to provide consumer content, you're gonna get fucked. Plain and simple.
- JonFish85 13y agoThis is why I fully expect an advance in streaming media to come from a business with another form of revenue (Apple, Google...). The content companies are intent on smothering any startup with great ideas, because it's a huge threat to their current business model. Like Apple did with iTunes, it's going to take a great idea and a company with a serious war chest to force progress along. Good technology alone is just going to meet this same end, time and time again (in my opinion): Comcast, Verizon, etc. have too much of an incentive to keep things the way they are now, and enough money to keep startups from reaching critical mass. Edited to add: In a lot of ways, Microsoft might be the first to really break the barrier with the XBox One. They have loads of cash, an audience that the content creators / content delivery companies need and the technology to get it there.
- pbsdp 13y agoThere's less room to fudge funny-money numbers if you actually have revenue.
- kleinsch 13y agoCurious to see why the financial numbers don't look so great for Boxee, but if this is true, I think it's a super smart move for Samsung. They're trying to push smart TVs in the living room, but those haven't taken off yet. Grabbing a company that's making some of the best living room hardware makes a lot of sense.
- fakeer 13y ago>>They're trying to push smart TVs in the living room And depending on Google and other companies shall not be wise anyway. Heard how they had to wait for few months to launch their TV just YouTube certification[1], where the OEMs that used Android didn't have to. [1]http://bgr.com/2013/07/01/google-html5-youtube-app-smart-tv/ http://bgr.com/2013/07/01/google-html5-youtube-app-smart-tv/
- jad 13y ago> Grabbing a company that's making some of the best living room hardware makes a lot of sense. Samsung doesn't need help building hardware. They need help building software. I suspect that's why they bought Boxee.
- McPants 13y agoSoftware in smart TVs need drastic changes. I won't go over the problems with the ui right now as I feel they are all pretty obvious, but what I think needs to get pushed is the connection between TVs and phones. Samsung is already starting to do this by having IR blasters on the galaxy phones and having ways to use to use the phone keyboards as a replacement for the on screen ones but it can go so much farther. For example, parental controls should be available through your phone. You should be able to see what your kid is watching and also force them to watch something else "remotely", even if you're on vacation. or maybe they are staying up too late and you turn the TV off for them. There are many other ideas but that sounds like one of the more useful ones as opposed to being more gimmicky (like gesture commands).
- ddeck 13y agoTotally agree. Samsung makes great hardware, but consistently fails at putting decent firmware/software on it. I've had numerous Samsung smartphones and all have performed so much better with pure Android vs. the Samsung "improved" Android. Their TVs seem to be getting better at least. Some previous Samsung TV's I've owned have been atrocious in the UI department.
- Terretta 13y agoI keep expecting LG to acquire Plex but maybe Plex has OEM agnostic plans.
- mike-cardwell 13y agoBoxee is a nice app. As long as you don't mind giving them a list of everthing you watch and when you watch it: https://grepular.com/Boxee_TV_Helps_Its_Self_To_Your_Viewing_Habits https://grepular.com/Boxee_TV_Helps_Its_Self_To_Your_Viewing... Use XBMC. It's just as good but doesn't have all the unnescessary social crap.
- laumars 13y agoThis shouldn't be news to anyone because the whole point of Boxee -the very reason it existed to begin with- was to integrate social media concepts into a HTPC. The Boxee devs have been very clear about that - in fact it was central to their advertising back when they first launched. If Boxee had been secretive about this or even added such features post-launch, then I might understand the authors rant a little more. But complaining that a social-optimized HTPC leaks data is a bit like complaining that Facebook shouldn't be used to back up private photos when it's quite clear that people intentionally use Facebook to share their pictures. And for what it's worth, the social media stuff in Boxee was actually quite nice (I've not used it since the beta - so I can't comment on how it performs now). I could watch some stuff on YouTube and then recommend it to my friends and visa versa. It worked like a more convenient word of mouth (ie "Hey Bob, I saw this documentary about the territorial habits of cats and I know you like cats so you might want to check it out". I could just switch on my HTPC when I was in the mood for some TV and there would be my friends recommendations). It's just a pity the UI looked like a competition between drunk people to invent the most gaudy interface known to man.
- mike-cardwell 13y agoI am the author of that blog post. At the time that post was written, their privacy policy never stated that they collect this information. It seems to have been updated since to say that they do in fact collect this information, but they don't offer any insight into how long they store it for. Their privacy policy now states: "We collect and store information regarding your use of the Boxee Platform, including (i) the content viewed, (ii) the time and date of each viewing, (iii) the application used in viewing the content and (iv) IP addresses, including internal IP addresses, of devices accessing the Boxee Platform" Also, as I wrote in my blog post, they never responded to my questions that I sent to privacy@boxee.tv. I find this in their privacy policy quite interesting: While we collect and store IP address information, that information is not made public. We do at times, however, share this information with our partners, service providers and other persons with whom we conduct business. We may share hashes of your IP address with other third parties, but these hashes cannot feasibly be reversed into the IP addresses themselves or linked to you individually. I bet they've done this wrong. "Protecting" data by hashing it doesn't work when the number of possible hashed items is small. There are only 4 billion IPv4 addresses. I just don't trust them.
- jeffehobbs 13y agoBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
- eps 13y agoWoah, that's low.
- faramarz 13y agoSeems like an awesome buy for Samsung, at a bargain too!
- fish2000 13y agoI work in the same building as Boxee’s New York HQ, four floors down – now I know why I’ve been seeing such a marked uptick in the amount of Boxee employees out on the sidewalk chatting excitedly, in like the past two weeks… to my upstairs neighbors, I say congrats!
- trustfundbaby 13y ago$30 Million acquisition on $26.5 Million in funding is probably not something they'll feel great to be congratulated about.
- fish2000 13y agoHa, I’ll just empathetically wince at them instead in passing.
- slacka 13y agoOn my 47" I've used many 10' UIs, XBMC, PS3, x-box, Apple TV, etc. Boxee and X-bar(PS3) are my favorite. Don't know if XBMC or Boxee designers should take the credit, but if Samsung is getting the talent responsible, 30M is a steal.
- dakimov 13y agoThe schoolboys from this site are laughing at their faces for such a miserable exit.
- nhangen 13y agoSmart pickup by Samsung, who has struggled to build software matching the quality of their hardware. Smart TV's just aren't that smart. As Samsung is my electronics brand of choice, I'm hoping this results in a better user experience out of the box.
- mickeyr 13y ago"Streaming Entertainment Startup Boxee Acquired By Samsung For Around $30M" So after 9 years of business they are still considered a startup? At what point do you stop being a start up?
- tg3 13y agoAfter you get big or die or get acquired.
- AndrewDucker 13y agoWhen you are self-sustaining. If you spend 9 years living off of investors then you're still a startup.
- yangtheman 13y agoI am not an insider, but had worked at Samsung HQ several years ago. Knowing their tendency to look for lowest price in anything and committee-based consensus building, I am sure it took them a while and hard bargain to reach $30M. IMHO, such practice only allows them room to acquire non-prime (past-prime) companies. And their culture is largely not compatible with startups in the US. I would be interested to see what happens to Boxee team in 6-months to year down the road.