Anjali Sud Leaves Vimeo To Take On CEO Role At Tubi
Anjali Sud, Wikimedia Commons
September 23, 2023
On September 1, Anjali Sud took over as the Chief Executive of Tubi.TV, a free advertising-supported online entertainment streaming service. "We are witnessing a seismic shift in where and how content will be consumed, and I believe that Tubi can become the destination for the next generation of audiences," Sud announced in a statement.
Tubi, based in San Francisco, has a content library of 50,000 titles, more than 200 online channels and a growing collection of Tubi Originals. Competing with streaming services from other entertainment companies, including HBO Max and NBC’s Peacock, Tubi reaches 64 million monthly active users.
Tubi is part of the Tubi Media Group, which is owned by FOX, a TV, cable and digital news, sports and entertainment group run by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, which has a market value of $15 billion. The group includes FOX's digital business in news, sports, and entertainment.
Sud reports to Paul Cheesbrough, CEO of Tubi Media Group. Sud “is the perfect candidate to lead Tubi into a new era of creativity, growth and market leadership,." Cheesbrough said in a statement.
Previously, Sud was the CEO of New York based Vimeo, a platform to create and host videos. It has more than 300 million users, including more than 1.5 million paid subscribers in 190 countries. Users, from storytellers to globally distributed teams at the world's largest companies, have uploaded more than 650 million videos on the platform.
After becoming CEO in 2017, Sud focused Vimeo on serving creators of videos instead of trying to compete against Netflix. The company’s mission was “to enable professional-quality video for all,” Sud said.
Videos can cost thousands of dollars, including costs for a story board, renting cameras, editing, and licensing video footage and music. Vimeo’s digital platform and templates enable users to create videos quickly and cheaply. The company thereby tackled the biggest barrier to creating videos, namely cost, Sud, told CNBC.
Sud joined Vimeo in 2014, serving in various roles including Senior Vice President of Creator Platform, Head of Global Marketing and Director of Marketing. Prior to joining Vimeo, she held various management positions at Amazon and was a member of the mergers and acquisitions team at Time Warner.
After college, Sud sought jobs at major investment banks. “I got rejected by every big bank” including Goldman Sachs, she told Forbes. She took an analyst’s job at Sagent Advisors, a small New York-based mergers and acquisition advisory firm, with less than 200 employees, which was bought by Daiwa Securities in 2017.
Sud holds a B.Sc. from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She graduated from Phillips Andover, a private high school in suburban Boston.
In 2022, Sud earned $8 million in income, including $900,000 in salary and bonus and $7 million in stock awards. The previous year, she earned $19 million, including $18 million in stock awards and options.
Demand for Vimeo’s services grew rapidly during the pandemic lockdown. From March to October 2020, for instance, the platform added over 30 million new members, saw over 60 million new videos created and uploaded, and powered millions of live events that went digital for the first time. The surge in demand, during those eight months, was “more than the prior 3 years combined,” Sud stated in a blog post.
Use of Vimeo’s videos expanded beyond its traditional base of designers, musicians and artists who post videos online to promote their work. Its customers included small store owners like Helena Baja Larsen, producing videos to market their products on Instagram, as well as big companies - including Amazon, Starbucks, and Siemens – who used it to train their employees and sales force.
Vimeo is also used to broadcast live events. In May 2020, for instance, Columbia University, New York, used Vimeo for its virtual Class of 2020 commencement and graduation ceremony.
From 2020 to 2022 the company’s revenues rose by half to $433 million in 2022. However, during those three years, sales, marketing, and other operating expenses also rose sharply, by 75%, to $412 million in 2022. As a result, in 2022, Vimeo had an operating loss of $83 million, 19% of revenues; the loss in 2020 was $41 million – 15% on $283 million in sales.
Since the end of the pandemic, Vimeo’s subscriber growth has turned down sharply. The number of subscribers fell, month over month, from September 2022 to January 2023; it fell by 6% in both December 2022 and January 2023. Vimeo has not publicly disclosed its monthly metrics since January this year.
Vimeo’s revenue growth has also slowed, recently reversing into a decline. During the first half of 2023, revenue fell by 7% to $205 million, compared to the first half of 2022. Meanwhile, due to cost cuts and focus on profitable businesses, the company stopped losing money, showing an operating income of $2 million in the first half of 2023.
Due to the continuing operating losses, loss in subscribers and decline in revenues, investors have slashed Vimeo’s valuation. It now has a market value of $590 million, down more than 90% from its $8 billion valuation when it went public in 2021.
In July, Vimeo announced that Sud was leaving the company. Apparently, the decision was abrupt since the board did not announce a new permanent CEO, as is typical in the case of an orderly transition. Adam Goss, 52, board member, software executive, founder, and investor, took over “as interim CEO while the company initiates a search for a permanent replacement,” according to a statement by Vimeo.
Before joining Vimeo, Sud worked in investment banking, was a toy buyer and marketed baby diapers online. A “willingness to fail” she told Forbes in 2019 “and putting yourself in vulnerable positions can often be the fastest way to succeed.”
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