Roku, Inc.
Compare market positioning with top industry peers
Explore Roku
Core profile pages, founders and related research hubs for this company.
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2002 to present
Anthony Wood is the CEO of Roku, in the role since 2002.
Roku is the highly strategic, highly independent, and foundational leader of the global 'Streaming Wars'. Based in California, they are the large, invisible tollbooth of connected television. While Netflix and Disney spend large billions fighting to make the best TV shows, Roku executes a highly effective, alternative strategy: they control the television itself. They build highly cheap streaming sticks and, more importantly, license their operating system directly to large TV manufacturers (like TCL or Hisense). They are the absolute default 'home screen' for millions of American televisions.
Roku operates a highly optimized B2C and B2B Digital Platform model. 1. Hardware/Player (The acquisition engine): Selling cheap sticks to capture the user. 2. Platform Revenue (The absolute profit engine): Roku acts as the large digital gatekeeper. If an independent streaming app wants to be on the Roku home screen, they have to pay Roku. 3. The Roku Channel: In a highly aggressive pivot, they launched their own free, ad-supported streaming app (FAST channel), buying up cheap content (like the Quibi library) to sell TV ads directly, completely bypassing Netflix.
President
2010 – 2015
5 years
Served as President of Roku during its critical early growth phase, overseeing business development, channel partnerships, and the expansion of the Roku platform from a hardware device maker into a full-scale streaming operating system. He helped sign key content distribution agreements that established Roku as the standard connected TV platform.
Chief Executive Officer & Chairman
2002 – Present
24 years (current)
As the founder and continuous CEO, Anthony Wood made the critical, existential strategic pivot to transition Roku from a low-margin hardware manufacturer into a lucrative, software OS licensor and digital advertising platform. He orchestrated the successful launch of The Roku Channel in 2017, capturing free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) viewership. Furthermore, he prioritized platform neutrality, protecting Roku's independence in a severe market dominated by tech conglomerates like Amazon and Google. Most recently, he pushed Roku to launch its own strategic line of first-party smart TVs to strictly control the entire consumer hardware supply chain.
Wood's ultimate legacy is building Roku into the number one smart TV operating system in North America. His effective, disciplined focus on frictionless user experience and aggressive ad monetization transformed a niche streaming box into a strong $11 billion digital advertising leader. Yes. Yes.
Roku competes against tech conglomerates (Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, Apple TV) and global consumer electronics brands (Samsung Tizen, LG webOS) who control their own hardware ecosystems and retail distribution.
Anthony Wood is the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Roku, Inc. An inventive electrical engineer who graduated from Texas A&M University, Wood invented the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) at ReplayTV in 1997 and has served as Roku's chief executive since founding the company in 2002.
In 1997, Anthony Wood founded ReplayTV, inventing the world's first commercial hard-drive-based Digital Video Recorder (DVR) that allowed television viewers to pause live TV and skip commercials. ReplayTV pioneered the shift toward on-demand consumer television viewing.
In 2007, Netflix founder Reed Hastings brought Wood into Netflix to design the original Netflix streaming box. When Hastings decided not to release Netflix-branded hardware, Wood spun the technology out into Roku in 2008, launching the Roku DVP with Netflix as an anchor investor.
While early competitors focused on hardware sales profits, Wood recognized that streaming hardware would eventually become commoditized. In 2013-2014, he boldly pivoted Roku into an advertising and OS licensing platform, unlocking exponential high-margin recurring software revenues.
Wood guided Roku through its successful 2017 NASDAQ IPO, established The Roku Channel in 2017, expanded into programmatic CTV advertising via the Dataxu acquisition, and scaled the platform from 15 million to over 85 million active households.
Wood is supported by seasoned digital media and technology executives, including Chief Financial Officer Dan Jedda (former CFO of Stitch Fix and Amazon VP of Finance), President of Roku Media Charlie Collier (former CEO of FOX Entertainment and AMC Networks), and President of Devices Mustafa Ozgen.
Roku maintains a dual-class share structure where Class B shares carry 10 votes per share versus 1 vote for Class A shares. This grants Anthony Wood substantial voting control, ensuring long-term strategic focus on platform scale and operating leverage.
Executive compensation at Roku emphasizes stock options and performance share units with multi-year vesting schedules tied to compound platform revenue growth, active account expansion, and free cash flow generation.