Ashwin Navin

Last updated
Ashwin Navin
Ashwin Navin by David Shankbone.jpg
Bornc. 1977 (age 46–47)
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)CEO and Saxophonist
Known forCEO and Co-founder Samba TV
RelativesAlvir Navin

Ashwin Navin (born c.1977) is an American entrepreneur, who is the CEO and co-founder of Samba TV, a data and analytics service that measures television viewership using opt-in data from Internet-connected devices and set-top boxes. The company has been compared to more traditional TV measurement firms like Nielsen which rely on the people meter to gather viewership data. [1] [2]

Contents

Prior to Samba TV, Navin was the president and co-founder of BitTorrent, Inc. He joined Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, in 2004 and reportedly handled business and company-related matters while Cohen focused on engineering and product development. [3]

Navin reportedly evaluated Cohen's invention for Yahoo! in 2004. Although it was a notable development for the Internet, BitTorrent was widely considered to be the bane of the film industry, because it made the cost of transferring large files, including unlicensed film copies, negligible to the end user.

Navin is also an investor in SELFMADE, Collective, Invisible Commerce, Klarna, Cameo (website), GGWP, Convoy Inc, Impossible Foods, vidIQ, Touch of Modern, Crunchyroll, and HappyCow. [4]

Early career

Navin is a 1999 graduate of Claremont McKenna College with a dual B.A. in government and economics. Before BitTorrent, he was employed at Yahoo! from 2002 to 2004 in its corporate development group which handled corporate strategy and acquisitions. Before Yahoo!, Navin worked on Wall Street with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch both as an investment banker and research analyst. [5]

In 2000, Navin helped start a technology-based financial services company called Epoch Partners. Epoch was essentially the investment banking arm of several online stock brokerages including Charles Schwab, Ameritrade, and TD Waterhouse. Epoch Partners was eventually acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2001. [5]

Commercializing BitTorrent

Ashwin Navin in 2007 AshwinNavinJI1-crop.jpg
Ashwin Navin in 2007

Cohen entrusted Navin with the responsibility of crafting a business model for BitTorrent with hopes of bringing BitTorrent out of the fringes and into the mainstream. Navin has assumed the public face of the company as an evangelist for its commercial viability. In 2007, Navin launched 3 commercial products: the BitTorrent Entertainment Network in February, the BitTorrent SDK in June, and BitTorrent DNA in October. As the foundation for these products, in 2006 Navin acquired uTorrent [6] which is the largest Torrent client in the world, outside China. [7] [8]

To catalyze BitTorrent's commercialization, Navin began by engaging movie industry executives directly. Although predicted by many to be highly unlikely, BitTorrent has struck relationships with many major media companies including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, MTV, Lionsgate, Kadokawa Pictures, and some others. [9] [10]

Beyond copyright issues, BitTorrent also faced struggles with cable companies and ISPs which were overwhelmed with high volumes of P2P traffic on their networks. In the wake of FCC hearings that pitted Comcast and BitTorrent against each other for traffic management policies that inhibited P2P file transfers, Navin was responsible for striking a deal with Comcast that resolved the companies' differences and defused a contested issue in the Network Neutrality debate. [11]

Founding Samba TV

After leaving BitTorrent, Navin founded Samba TV in 2008 (at the time called Flingo) with the vision of developing software for Smart TVs. The initial goal was to help media companies like Showtime, FOX, A+E Networks, TMZ, Revision3, PBS and CBS develop TV apps that synchronize with linear Broadcast programming and Non-linear media. [12]

In 2011, the company launched its patented automatic content recognition technology, which uses video fingerprinting to identify on-screen content and power cross-screen interactive TV apps on Smart TVs. [13]

Mark Cuban, August Capital and Gary Lauder led Samba TV's first round of l funding at CES in 2012. [14] And, in 2013, with the Samba TV name, the company launched the first cross-screen advertising solution tied to real-time contextual awareness of what's on a Smart TV screen within a household. [15]

In 2017, Inc Magazine named Samba TV one of the fastest-growing companies in America. [16] In 2020, Samba TV publicly confirmed that it crossed over $100M in revenue for the 2019 fiscal year and published its path for continued global expansion. [17]

In 2021, Samba TV filed for an IPO led by various underwriters including BofA Securities, Evercore ISI, Oppenheimer & Co. and other investment banks. [18]

Related Research Articles

BitTorrent, also referred to as simply torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bram Cohen</span> American programmer and author of the BitTorrent protocol

Bram Cohen is an American computer programmer, best known as the author of the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol in 2001, as well as the first file sharing program to use the protocol, also known as BitTorrent. He is also the co-founder of CodeCon and organizer of the San Francisco Bay Area P2P-hackers meeting, was the co-author of Codeville and creator of the Chia cryptocurrency which implements the proof of space-time consensus algorithm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BitComet</span> BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP client

BitComet is a cross-protocol BitTorrent, HTTP and FTP client written in C++ for Microsoft Windows and available in 52 different languages. Its first public release was version 0.28. The current BitComet logo has been used since version 0.50.

BitTorrent is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client developed by Bram Cohen and Rainberry, Inc. used for uploading and downloading files via the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was the first client written for the protocol. It is often nicknamed Mainline by developers denoting its official origins. Since version 6.0 the BitTorrent client has been a rebranded version of μTorrent. As a result, it is no longer open source. It is currently available for Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. There are currently two versions of the software, "BitTorrent Classic" which inherits the historical version numbering, and "BitTorrent Web", which uses its own version numbering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xfinity</span> American cable provider

Comcast Cable Communications, LLC, doing business as Xfinity, is an American telecommunications business segment and division of Comcast Corporation. It is used to market consumer cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company. The brand was first introduced in 2010; prior to that, these services were marketed primarily under the Comcast name.

This is a timeline of events in the history of networked file sharing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roku, Inc.</span> American technology company

Roku, Inc. is a U.S. listed company founded by Anthony Wood in 2002. It runs a streaming service through Roku-branded streaming players and smart TVs, supporting both advertising and subscription models on its platform. Roku tops U.S. streaming TV distribution, reaching households with an estimated 120 million people. Outside the U.S., the company operates in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., and several Latin American countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

Rainberry, Inc., formerly known as BitTorrent, Inc., is an American company responsible for μTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline. The company was founded on September 22, 2004 by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin. It was successful during the Great Recession under the leadership of CEO Eric Klinker. In 2018, the company was acquired by cryptocurrency startup TRON, and Bram Cohen left the company. In March 2022, the SEC charged Rainberry with fraud for selling cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) as unregistered securities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribler</span> Peer-to-peer filesharing software and protocol

Tribler is an open source decentralized BitTorrent client which allows anonymous peer-to-peer by default. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching. Due to this overlay network, Tribler does not require an external website or indexing service to discover content. The user interface of Tribler is very basic and focused on ease of use instead of diversity of features. Tribler is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X.

Vizio Holding Corp. is an American publicly traded company that designs and sells televisions, sound bars, viewer data, and advertising. The company was founded in 2002 and is based in Irvine, California. In February 2024, it entered into an agreement to be acquired by Walmart, so Walmart can expand advertising sales in video content that streams for free on Vizio devices.

The following is a general comparison of BitTorrent clients, which are computer programs designed for peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol.

Xumo, LLC is an American internet television and consumer electronics company. It is a joint venture of Charter Communications and Comcast that operates the free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) and advertising video on demand (AVOD) service Xumo Play, and distributes Xumo Stream Box digital media players and Xumo TV smart TVs. The Xumo Play platform's service operations are based in the Greater Los Angeles suburb of Irvine, California. As of October 2020, Xumo Play has 24 million monthly active users.

Founded in 2004 in New York City, Pando Networks was a managed peer-to-peer (P2P) media distribution company backed by Intel Capital, BRM Capital and Wheatley Partners. The company specialized in cloud distribution of games, video and software for publishers and media distributors and also operated a freemium consumer business for sending large files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smart TV</span> TV set with integrated Internet features

A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features that allow users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a technological convergence of computers, televisions, and digital media players. Besides the traditional functions of television sets provided through traditional broadcasting media, these devices can provide access to over-the-top media services such as streaming television and internet radio, along with home networking access.

Samba TV is a television technology company that offers real-time insights and audience analytics. It was founded in 2008 by early employees of BitTorrent, including Samba TV's current chief executive officer, Ashwin Navin. The company develops software for televisions, set-top boxes, smart phones and tablets to enable interactive television through personalization. Through its portfolio of applications and TV platform technologies, Samba TV is built directly into the TV or set-top box and will recognize onscreen content—live or time-shifted—and make relevant information available to users at their request. The service is available only after a user activates it on a device, and is supported by interest-based advertising delivered on the television or on devices within the household. Through APIs and SDKs for mobile application software developers, Samba TV is usable on a second screen or the TV itself. Samba TV has a global addressable footprint of 46 million devices globally, 28 million of which are in the United States. Its devices are distributed in roughly 118 countries.

Torrent poisoning is intentionally sharing corrupt data or data with misleading file names using the BitTorrent protocol. This practice of uploading fake torrents is sometimes carried out by anti-infringement organisations as an attempt to prevent the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of copyrighted content, and to gather the IP addresses of downloaders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of Comcast</span>

A number of different controversies and criticisms have surrounded Comcast for various reasons over its recent history. Customers of the telecommunications company report low levels of customer satisfaction on both service and cost. Comcast has also had several customer service scandals, the most notorious of which featured a representative not allowing a customer to cancel his service. This clip went viral. Comcast has also been widely criticized, most publicly by Netflix, for its position against net neutrality, the principle that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Android TV</span> Android operating system version for television sets and digital media players

Android TV is a smart TV operating system based on Android and developed by Google. It is available on television sets, soundbars, set-top boxes and digital media players. A successor to Google TV, it features a user interface designed around content discovery and voice search, content aggregation from various media apps and services, and integration with other recent Google technologies such as Assistant, Cast, and Knowledge Graph.

Automatic content recognition (ACR) is a technology used to identify content played on a media device or presented within a media file. Devices with ACR can allow for the collection of content consumption information automatically at the screen level itself, without any user-based input or search efforts. This information may be collected for purposes such as personalized advertising, content recommendations, sale to customer data aggregators and other applications.

Andrew Norton is a British roboticist, politician and researcher. He is a former Coordinator of Pirate Parties International, a previous Chairman of the United States Pirate Party and a previous Chairman of the Board for Pirate Party UK.

References

  1. ↑ "Samba TV Takes on Nielsen With Promise of Real-Time Trend Ratings". TheWrap. 22 October 2014.
  2. ↑ "MarTech Interview with Ashwin Navin, CEO and Co-Founder, Samba TV". MarTech. 20 April 2019. Archived from the original on 21 April 2019. Retrieved 21 April 2019.
  3. ↑ Leadership, Senate Democratic (13 October 2010). "Inside i/o Ventures: Tour The Central Perk For Code (TCTV)". TechCrunch.
  4. ↑ "Ashwin Navin on LinkedIn". Archived from the original on 2007-10-30.
  5. 1 2 "Ashwin Navin | VMA Media". vmamedia.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-07. Retrieved 2017-05-18.
  6. ↑ Schofield, Jack (8 December 2006). "BitTorrent buys uTorrent". Guardian technology blog . The Guardian . Retrieved May 25, 2012.
  7. ↑ Andre Yoskowitz (15 August 2009). "uTorrent remains top BitTorrent client". AfterDawn. Retrieved May 25, 2012.
  8. ↑ Ernesto (December 4, 2009). "Thunder Blasts uTorrent's Market Share Away". TorrentFreak . Retrieved May 25, 2012.
  9. ↑ "About Us – Partners – BitTorrent". 24 November 2007. Archived from the original on 24 November 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  10. ↑ "Today @ PC World BitTorrent Cuts Movie Deals". 22 May 2007. Archived from the original on 22 May 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  11. ↑ "Comcast's P2P Conversion: I'll Believe It When I See Results – BusinessWeek". 16 January 2010. Archived from the original on 16 January 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  12. ↑ Edelsburg, Natan (November 30, 2011). "Flingo dives into social TV with synchronized TV apps". Archived from the original on 2012-07-09.
  13. ↑ Swedlow, Tracy (July 7, 2011). "Interactive TV News Round-Up (II): Flingo, Hulu, ITU". Archived from the original on 2011-07-09.
  14. ↑ "Flingo Gains Funding from Mark Cuban and Gary Lauder". Streaming Media Magazine. 2012-05-02. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
  15. ↑ White, Peter (November 13, 2013). "Samba TV takes connected TVs by storm". Archived from the original on 2017-08-30.
  16. ↑ "Samba TV Acquires Screen6, Forming First Global OTT Measurement Solution". Benzinga. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
  17. ↑ Lafayette, Jon (2020-12-15). "Samba TV Gets Additional Viewer Data TiVo Households". Broadcasting Cable. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
  18. ↑ "Samba TV Begins $75 Million IPO Rollout". SeekingAlpha. 19 November 2021.
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