
Video is exploding and Mux raises a Series A - jon_dahl
https://mux.com/blog/video-is-exploding-and-mux-raises-a-series-a/
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kevinmannix
Congrats! Few questions I have - I'm also not knowledgable about the space, so
forgive me if they come off a bit naive.

1\. Can you give me an example of how a company would use Mux? I can't quite
grasp that from this page alone + looking through your homepage. Are you
hosting video? Plugging into 3rd parties for metrics?

2\. Is Zencoder still around? How did your successes / failures there
translate into Mux, both from a tech / product standpoint & a management /
operations standpoint.

3\. You discuss how Netflix is only the size of a more niche channel like
Discovery. Even so, it's large in the realm of online video - how do you aim
to protect your product / strategy from being swallowed up or replicated from
Youtube or Netflix, who are big fish even in the cable / satellite video world
& even bigger in the smaller pond of online video?

Again, congrats & best of luck to the team going forward.

~~~
jon_dahl
Thanks! Answers below.

> 1\. Can you give me an example of how a company would use Mux? I can't quite
> grasp that from this page alone + looking through your homepage. Are you
> hosting video? Plugging into 3rd parties for metrics?

We don't host video. We monitor video players (web, mobile, TV, etc.) to
understand when problems happen, like rebuffering or slow load time. The best
analogy is probably something like NewRelic: NewRelic helps companies
understand their application performance, and we help companies understand the
performance of their video streaming.

> 2\. Is Zencoder still around? How did your successes / failures there
> translate into Mux, both from a tech / product standpoint & a management /
> operations standpoint.

Yep - we aren't involved anymore, but Zencoder is still a great product and a
great business. We learned a lot there, and when we decided to tackle
analytics, we built the product that we wish we'd had to optimize and validate
other tools we've built (like Zencoder and Video.js).

> 3\. You discuss how Netflix is only the size of a more niche channel like
> Discovery. Even so, it's large in the realm of online video - how do you aim
> to protect your product / strategy from being swallowed up or replicated
> from Youtube or Netflix, who are big fish even in the cable / satellite
> video world & even bigger in the smaller pond of online video?

Netflix and YouTube are definitely the giants right now, and are both great
companies. Two thoughts on this. First, we think the universe of online video
is still significantly bigger than these two, and that the growth of the
entire online video ecosystem means there is still a huge opportunity to be
hand. Second, we (philosophically) think the world is a better place if media
is decentralized, and we want to bring Netflix-grade sophistication to
everyone else in the market, large or small.

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daniel_levine
Excited to be working with Mux. I've known the team for nearly six years and
from Zencoder to Video.js to Mux I'm continually blown away by their ability
to build great technology and be great people.

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Heff
(Also a Mux co-founder) For anyone interested, we just rolled out new pricing
tiers that make the service more accessible, including a $50/month starter
plan and free Lite plan. [https://mux.com/blog/announcing-self-serve-pricing-
signup/](https://mux.com/blog/announcing-self-serve-pricing-signup/)

This is compared to our prveious entry level price of $1k/month when we were
focused only on developers at larger media companies.

Happy to answer any questions around pricing.

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jon_dahl
Hey! Co-founder of Mux here. Happy to answer any questions.

~~~
100k
Congrats!

Can you talk about how Mux's focus differs from your previous efforts in the
video space?

~~~
jon_dahl
Definitely - we take a lot of inspiration from other products we've built. We
saw first-hand from our last 6 years in the video space how many publishers
are basically blind when it comes to their video streaming. Intuitively, if
you're going to build a business around online video, you should probably
measure and monitor your online video - but it's hard to do well. Our goal is
to make it simple.

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mlmilleratmit
Congrats! That's a big war chest to go to market.

