Vimeo to Tubi: Anjali Sud Leveraging Disruption to Build Billion-Dollar Companies

Sarah Chen-Spellings (Intro):

On today's show, I am talking with my friend Anjali Sud, who is the new CEO of Tubi, part of the Tubi Media Group, a division of Fox Corporation. Tubi is the most watched free TV and movie streaming service in the U.S., with the world's largest content library of over 200,000 movies and TV episodes, a growing collection of originals and nearly 250 Fox channels.

And notably, just before this point, Anjali led Vimeo to become a public company following the spin off from Barry Diller's IAC Internet Conglomerate. Now you still may think of Vimeo as a smaller competitor to YouTube, and frankly, that was what it was for most of the time. But when Anjali took over as CEO, she put a halt on all of that to reinvent Vimeo as a software company that serves a B2B market. And that market, as we know, is booming.

By the time Anjali left Vimeo, it was doing around $400 million in annual recurring revenue. Now, that's a remarkable success story, all because Anjali decided to stop competing with YouTube, Netflix and other consumer video companies to find a better market and strategy to play it.

Now, the question is this: will she take the same approach in her leadership of Tubi? Where is the white space in what feels like a revolution with streaming services and a competitive content economy?

I asked Anjali about all of that: her rise to leadership, the role of media and culture, and so much more. Anjali, CEO of TV. Here we go.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Daughter of physicians. And yet, your parents thought that entrepreneurship was the biggest lens of impact and that was how you got introduced to the idea of being an entrepreneur. Tell us more crucible moments, framing of Anjali Sud.

Anjali Sud:

Oh gosh, well, my parents are immigrants from India, very much came to the United States to realize their American dream, left all their family and friends and came here to build a life, and medicine was kind of the vehicle through which they could do that.

But from the time I can remember, like, being a kid, my dad's passion was entrepreneurship. And even though he's a physician, he also started a business, plastics recycling plant in Flint that's still there today.

So like, from the time I was a little kid, he just sort of had this kind of philosophy that, if you really want to influence people's lives at scale, you do it by providing jobs and a livelihood. And the context of Flint, Michigan is a sort of auto industry driven town that when the automakers left, it really impacted the city and the population. In a way that even decades since has still made an impact.

And so I think just growing up against that backdrop, I did from a very early age see that business can have the potential to impact your community and the people around you in ways that last a very long time. I think I got the bug pretty early, mostly from my dad.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, so give us a picture of Anjali when she was younger.

Was she already with the lemonade stand or what are we talking about here?

Anjali Sud:

I would say I was both like a super nerdy introvert who just read books by myself. And then there was a little bit of that, I remember when I was in elementary school, I convinced all my friends that we were gonna organize a neighborhood carnival, and we sold tickets.

There was always a part of me that liked to do things and organize things but truthfully, I was much more shy and introverted as a kid, and I think it definitely took me getting older and maturing to even consider the idea that I, I couldn't even have, I think at that time, imagined myself in a position of doing what you're doing now.

Influence or power. Yeah, like that would have felt very intimidating to me.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So how did the shift happen? I mean, take us, you know, very quickly and speed us up to investment banking, and then of course Vimeo is a big chapter, we want to spend some time on that, but bring us up to speed on how that shift happened for you.

Anjali Sud:

You asked about a crucible moment, everyone always has theirs, and for me, it was actually, I left Flint, I left the public school system in Flint, Michigan at 14. And I went to a boarding school,  called Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts, which is one of, like the best educations in the country.

I was 14, I was away from home, I was very homesick, I struggled a lot,  academically, it was a huge change for me. I was, like, coming from one of probably the worst public school systems in the country to one of the best. You know, most rigorous academic environments, and I was away from my family.

So, it was really hard, and I think even to this day, I still think that year when I was 14 was the hardest year of my life. It gave me confidence to overcome it. And I think it was only, sort of during those high school years where I sort of found that confidence in myself.

Because I went from feeling like I was failing and so overwhelmed in that environment to slowly feeling like I could belong to eventually feeling by the time I graduated like I really belonged and could, could kind of hack it in that kind of competitive intense environment.

So for me, it was great and I, I do think it gave me a confidence to go for things.  And that served me well because when I was in college I wanted to be an investment banker. I got rejected from every investment banking job.

And I just, like, I had already gotten through a period where it felt impossible or felt like there were a lot of no's and I just kept going. And so I feel like that really helped me do that more and more as I kind of progressed in my career.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Right. So go back to that time when you were feeling like, gosh, the grades are not there. What was the mindset shift that? Look, I can do it, too. 

Anjali Sud:

Honestly, I think a lot of it was just I didn't really feel like I had a choice.

And by that, I just mean, of course, I could have just gone back home. But maybe because, for me, my parents had, like, left their family and friends to go pursue that American dream, to give me the opportunity for an education.

And I think also because I could see the difference, right? Again, coming from Flint, Michigan, public school to Andover, like, the privilege that I had was so, it just was like, you can't squander that.

You find a way. You just keep going. And I think,  it was almost just the inability to even consider that you had another option. That you just persevere and then what you usually find is that you can get pretty far if you just work really, really hard. You know? Like, all of your doubts about your innate abilities and talents.

If you kind of just say, okay, like, I'm just going to work harder than everybody else. I'm just going to try harder. Like, effort, if you believe effort can make up for a lot, I think that helps often power through. And that's when you then realize you do have innate talent and ability that maybe was hidden or that you didn't appreciate.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, so bring us up to speed in terms of your crucible moments in your career. Being rejected from investment banks, what happens next?

Anjali Sud:

Most of my 20s was a fairly kind of random career path, I did end up getting a job at investment banking at a start up investment bank. And that turned out to be a really great learning experience.

And then I actually found my way into media. I was at the old AOL Time Warner. In that job, I was in sort of a corporate M&A role. We're in house M&A. And that was probably the first time that I could see the difference between when you are sort of consulting and working on deals versus operating, right?

We would work with Warner Brothers and HBO and Time and AOL on deals and I would get to go deep with the teams and then the deal would close and then they'd move to integration. And my team would step out and go do something else. And I would find myself being like, I kind of wish I was staying and seeing that through, right?

I would get really invested in what that operating company was doing and its success and that was when I realized, like, I think I'm maybe more of an operator than an investor.

I went to business school. I was at Amazon and a bunch of different roles effectively trying to transition from more of a finance role into an operating role, which took me more steps than I thought. Because it's a different skill set. So that was a lot of my twenties. And then, ended up at Amazon having a bunch of different jobs, but getting really excited about marketing as a function.

I just liked that it was very creative and also analytical. And then that led me to Vimeo. Vimeo was obviously my big moment, crucible moment in my career. It was over a very short period of three years, kind of went from being very much like a middle manager, functional leader to the CEO.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, so and how that happened was exactly this phrase that I remember you saying on another interview, where if you can merge your personal goals and the business goals as one and the same, the better that would be for you and that's what you did by basically filling a gap. Tell us more about that.

Anjali Sud:

If I were to sum it up I think because people do often ask me like, how the heck does a 33 year old with no CEO experience ended up in that seat.

Like anything, so much is serendipity but so much of it is also decisions that you make along the way. And I think in Vimeo's case, it was like we were in an industry that was going through a lot of change. And that forced the business to be in a period of really needing to think of its new strategy for the future.

And there were some gaps. I just sort of got excited and passionate about one potential strategy. And became a little bit of like the de facto champion. And I think probably the biggest thing was I just was willing to bet.

I was willing to bet on myself and on the idea. And there were so many other people around me who obviously believed in the same idea and supported it.

But I think that one of the differences is like having the conviction that you're gonna bet on something. Cause if the person, the investor behind the… you're not gonna bet on a 33 year old if she's, if she's hedging. You know what I mean? If she's not willing to bet her career on an idea, you're not gonna give that person a chance.

And so, I think there was definitely, that was part of it. And then to your point, I mean this sincerely, like, it never occurred to me in a million years, up until literally the minute that I was offered the CO role, that was in my path. Not once.

The entire time I was working, it was because I really believed in the idea, I do think when you put the business first, it unlocks so much career opportunity. And I always say, you can spend so much energy and time. We all are ambitious. We absolutely should be.

Ambition is good, especially when it's channeled towards what is best for the business. I always give this advice to younger people who are ambitious in their careers, which is, like, take all of that ambition.

Don't bottle it up, like use it, but the more you can use it to actually put the business first, I do think, there isn't a leader or investor on the planet that doesn't want to lean in when they see somebody doing that.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Of course, Vimeo has done a massive pivot under your leadership and now has, of course, been listed. Tell us a little bit more about, what that shift was, from what we all knew to be an ad free version of YouTube, to basically a B2B SaaS model.

Tell us a little bit about that thinking and basically that idea that was your conviction.

Anjali Sud:

Yeah, look, I think Vimeo started around the same time as YouTube and was sort of the ad free version, and there was definitely a period, you know, well before I got there where.

It was unclear which, you know, which platform might ultimately kind of win. And the end of the day, when you're totally free for viewers, you can scale in a very different way than when you're paid, and because Vimeo was ad free, the platform couldn't monetize with ads, so you had to charge the creators.

And so Vimeo sort of stumbled on a SaaS very early on, it put the platform in a different trajectory. When I took over, it was really just to double down on that, and to say, by that point it was like, YouTube was YouTube, it was a behemoth, and,  and social media platforms were really taking off, and it was pretty clear that, Vimeo wasn't going to be a social media platform that made money on ads. So the question was like, okay, well, then what do we do. And we toyed with everything, I started to see organically in the data and in talking to customers,  more and more businesses were starting to embrace video, and this seems obvious today.

Yeah. But that was not obvious at the time, we thought we were inventing the future when we would say things like, one day everyone's gonna live stream a town hall and distributed teams are going to like, tune in instead of attending in person. Like that was not a thing.

And most investors were very skeptical. So I think it was really more about just like seeing the signs, seeing the signals organically of what's already happening in a platform, connecting that to maybe what's happening in a market. And that's sort of what led to the transition.

In my sort of six plus years as CEO, it was very much about executing that transition and doing it in a way that would help us scale. I think when I left we were about $400 million of ARR, but also be a sustainable, efficient, and enduring business that would be around and self-funding for years to come. And that's probably the thing I'm most proud of.

Going public was amazing and then hard when the stock price was coming down. And I learned a lot. What I feel like the impact I could make the most on the business was just putting it in a position where it's profitable today, no debt, plenty of cash on the balance sheet, significant recurring high margin revenue, predictable, and in a market that Vimeo can continue to invest and innovate and bring video tools to the world.

And so I think for me, probably what I've learned is sometimes the things that you think are the markers of success over time, over sustained periods of time, you realize it's usually those much more fundamental things.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So getting to that point of a strong business case for this strategy, when, it sounds like, and you used the word battle tested, sounds like, of course, the journey to get to that point was definitely not easy.

What was the most challenging part in making that pivot, bringing people along, and sticking to it so it worked?

Anjali Sud:

Vimeo, before it went public, was owned by IAC, which is Barry Diller's internet conglomerate. And I think, they were really always willing to take calculated bets. And one of the things I think that was really smart is, for a year before I became CEO and we switched the business model, we actually ran almost two parallel strategies.

I was the GM of a small business unit within Vimeo that was basically running the strategy. So the benefit is we did have a year to kind of see some signals, right? Like, oh, we launched a product for businesses, we started to see some traction, we could see the market develop, and that helped give a little bit more conviction.

The hardest thing about that transition should, probably should have been bringing people along, managing change. There's always skeptics. Businesses don't have linear lines of success. You have a lot of, like, failure moments. And interestingly, Sarah, like, none of those were the challenges for me.

I was so fortunate. I had a team around me at Vimeo from the day I stepped into the role. They championed me. They championed the strategy. We had each other's backs. And so when things were hard, and there were skeptics, and it wasn't working, we just never flinched. Truthfully.

Now looking back, I realize that was, that's actually probably quite rare. I think you can do amazing things when you have that kind of environment. So, I was really fortunate. I think the hardest thing was just, you don't have great signals. Right?

Like, I'll give you an example. One of the first things that we did when I became CEO is we acquired a company called Livestream. That was at the time the number one, kind of player that did things like Livestream Town Halls. And,  this was pre pandemic.

And so we had this thesis. And I remember, like, we completely bombed the launch of Livestreaming on Vimeo. Under me. It was one of the first things that happened when, as CEO, we missed all of our numbers on live streaming.

We were so wrong. Like we thought people would live stream in business context and it just wasn't happening. And we would go to companies and be like, don't you want to do this? And they'd be like, yeah, like maybe in 10 years. And we were just like, we got this.

I just got it wrong. All the signals got it wrong. And then of course the pandemic happened, and everything changed overnight and it became a wild, wild success,  That powers actually a lot of the video you see in most companies today.

So I think that's the hard part. You have to trust your instincts, but you also have to be flexible based on the signals. And sometimes signals don't manifest in months or quarters. It takes years, and it's just having that ability to kind of know. when to stay the course and when not to.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What made you sort of decide then to go for, talking about funding and bringing in more cash on the books. You decided to go to the IPO route, right?

Which I know you've spoken of as just, it's not really a mark of success. It is a way to get funding, right?

Talk to us a little bit more about that decision, that executive decision making for which path to take.

Anjali Sud:

Yeah. Well, first I should say, in Vimeo's case, we went public through a spin out, which is more like a direct listing in that we actually didn't raise capital.

Here's what I would say I've learned from the experience, which is like, I don't think going public, I know we romanticized it, I did, and it's an amazing experience, and feeling I will treasure for my whole life.

But then you wake up the next day and you're like, okay, same business, same challenges, same opportunity. (SCS: Tons of reporting.) It doesn't change the fundamental task at hand.

What I have observed, many friends who, who also took companies public during this time. And I think, you know, it's a fundraising vehicle. It's a liquidity opportunity for your investors.

I think it can be an incredible,  it's a way to force a business to get really disciplined and rigorous, right? Because to be able to do the quarterly earnings and to be able to kind of, you have to operate at a certain level of rigor, which I do think is can be healthy for a business.

But I'll be honest. I think a lot of companies probably go public too early. They're too small and they're, they're too early.

I would say like, if you don't think of it as a goal in and of itself and you think of all the alternative ways you can access capital or get liquidity, there are many more options.

And I, you just have to be really ready for it because there are trade offs, I think the biggest trade off is just it's much harder to be long term oriented in your thinking. And it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter how supportive your board is, we're humans. And when you have a whole set of people, think of it as like, you need, we all want feedback, and when you're private, your feedback comes in the form of quarterly numbers, and a board meeting, and a fundraise; and when you're public, your feedback comes every second, from a stock, that moves every second.

And even if you have the blinders on and you stay focused, does your exec team stay focused, do your employees stay focused, do your shareholders stay focused? It's a wonderful environment for businesses that have reached a certain maturity in size. I don't think it's for every business, and I don't think it should be a market of success.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah. And what does that mean? Like, maturity? At what point, that's a subjective across verticals, across different types of businesses?

Anjali Sud:

I would say the things that I appreciate now, it's really predictability and visibility. At the end of the day, as a public company, you need to be able to manage expectations appropriately with your shareholders.

And that's, that's a huge part of your job. And I think for a lot of businesses that went public during a pre or immediately post pandemic period, it was very hard to parse what was pandemic versus not.

And it was very hard to, basically, you can't tell if you were lucky or you were right. You just don't know. And you're a little bit of both, but you can't really tell.

It doesn't matter what size of revenue you are. But I do think you want to be confident in the predictability of your revenue growth. Meaning, you know, that if you invest this, you put this into the machine, you're generally going to deliver this.

And you know that there's going to be ups and downs in variability, but it's within a range, and you have enough kind of ability to see that. To me, that is the optimal place to be, to be a public company.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And what were some of your, I guess, as you were thinking about what you had to do to get to that place, I know you had employee layoffs, you had to do some really hard cuts to get the numbers to where it should be.

Many CEOs today are thinking about it in a very different environment, right? For some of them, they're pushed for liquidity, frankly, as I know from the investors. And thinking even about secondary options and things like that right now.

For the CEO who's going through this time of getting ready to be listed or for an exit event. What would you say were some of your mistakes and your advice to them?

Anjali Sud:

Yeah, honestly it does still go back to me about predictability of revenue. The chairman of Vimeo, he got me a mug, he got me and the team a mug, this was like years ago from a public, we were being pushed to be profitable and we had to do hard things, but it was a mug that said, ‘Revenue Cures All’.

And I have that mug still, and it sticks with me because at the end of the day, the way to profitability to sustainable profitability is a never cost cutting. It's growing efficiently. That's what it is, right?

That's the thing. What you want to do is you want to know, I know how my investments, whether it's in people or marketing or product, I generally know that they will have an impact.

Sometimes you don't have that luxury. Sometimes you're in a market that is moving and changing or you're taking a big swing and your investors are locking arms with you and all of those things.

But then you should understand and you should prepare culturally your team that you're taking a swing, you don't know if the ROI will be there. And if it doesn't materialize, you will have to adjust.

What I think many of us learned in this period was, you can do one or the other, but you can't do both. You can't take huge swings and but set a culture where everybody thinks it will know 100 percent work and always go up.

That's what made it hard, right? I think for a lot of folks, because again, it was so much was pandemic driven. We thought we were making more reliable bets than what we were. And that is the part that I know for me, hard learned lesson, but one that I'll never make again.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah. And you pointed out something that I think is really crucial in that in the world of technology changes, the only constant, right?

So signals change, the cost of marketing and growth. Today’s performance marketing, talk about Meta and all that is getting increasingly more expensive.

Talk to us a little bit about some of the growth strategies that worked for you in Vimeo.

Anjali Sud:

It's gonna sound, probably very, very obvious, but product driven organic growth all day long. If I could go back, I would say, if you have a great product that is in the right market, that is mission critical, that actually helps.

Find a way to take that customer happiness and satisfaction and turn it into word of mouth and make it organic. And find a way for your product to be your marketing. And that will feed you forever and ever and ever.

And you can always supplement with other things. But you never want to be in a place where you're relying on things like paid marketing as against that other piece.

And so, that's when things really hummed on our P& L and in our business, it's when we had that. And when I think there were things that required us to adjust, it's when we started to lose sight of that.

And it's so easy. It's so easy, and especially, I think, if you're a venture backed startup, especially if you were in the world where you were raising, times when expectations get really high, and then you've got the money.

So, you've got the money. Expectations are high, and here you go, put it all in digital advertising but you just have to be really, really careful.

It's funny, I sat in so many meetings where you talk about, like, LTV to CAC and LTV to CAC, but the reality is you can define LTV to CAC 100 different ways.

You have to actually be committed and intellectually honest about is this really organic, like, sustainable, enduring growth, and that for me is one of the biggest lessons I'll carry.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And so your virality was very much, would you say, word of mouth, when people really love the product. I think you talk about Dropbox.

Anjali Sud:

In some way, a business model. It depends on like, every business is different. In Vimeo's case, I think, the virality opportunity, I think some of which we realize, some of which has yet to be realized, is just that every time somebody watches a video in our world, in a business context, you're often sharing content.

Or you're engaging, chatting and engaging, and that's basically a viral loop. Because every time, you share a video with ten other people, you're basically exposing them to, in Vimeo's case, our video player, for the first time.

And so, we kind of really tried to think about how to bottoms up drive adoption,  from employees and organizations through that in the video. Enterprise SaaS world, I think the companies that have managed to get that, that motion right, are the ones that are succeeding.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So how many years do you spend in Vimeo in total?

Anjali Sud:

I was in Vimeo for nine years.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Nine years. Close to a decade. And then you decided to then make a big shift in your life. Yeah. To Tubi. Yeah. How did that come to be, you know, that decision and, you know, going deep into a different world? It,

Anjali Sud:

It surprised me, it's so funny because nine years is a long time. Six as CEO when you're not the founder. Some might say too long in tech. 

And yet I was never, I was just so, all in, on the job and it was so consuming. So consuming. Tubi sort of hit my radar and I did get really excited about it. For me part of the reason is, I've spent nine years on the creator side of video and trying to democratize professional quality video by making it easy for anyone to create content.

I had been attracted to Vimeo in the first place was because it was an industry going through disruption and Vimeo had a totally different business model.

I'm looking at Tubi and I'm like, wait, and I was looking at the same exact themes on the audience side.

Media is going through significant disruption. You have big tech entering and really kind of, in many ways, becoming the new platforms for entertainment. And you have a traditional sort of media and Hollywood ecosystem that has to adapt.

And I was really intrigued by the fact that Tubi was in many ways trying to democratize video storytelling for audiences with a 100 percent free platform. So when everybody else has subscription fees to consume movies and Tubi is 100 percent free and we're now the number one free TV and movie streaming service in the US.

I was just attracted to the idea of like market and disruption, business that's doing something different, that for me really aligns with what I think of, sort of, going where the future is going

And those are my kinds of opportunities, where I can be better, at my best. It's when it's in those types of markets, when it's more on the strategy, and evolution side. I reached a point where I was like, I'm really, I'm getting a lot of energy about this thing.

And I was looking around, I stopped feeling like I was the only person who could lead Vimeo, which, by the way, is a ridiculous thing to think because obviously many people can lead Vimeo, but when I was in it for so long, I really felt like I was needed.

And as we scaled and after we went public, you bring in the right executive team, you scale the right processes, and like I said, we got to profitability, we got to a place where I really felt like this company will be around.

For decades to come and I just kind of felt like okay, it's my time and it's probably Vimeo also should have fresh leadership.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So tell us a little bit about the future of media, the future of content, now your lens of being there for what, eight months? What are we up against? I mean, this is this feels like a red ocean yet again.

Anjali Sud:

I think more broadly, I think there's going to be a lot of change in media.

I think there's going to be structural change. I think there will be consolidation. I think there will be hard kind of adjustments. But I also think it's really exciting and there's so much room for innovation and forward thinking.

My general perspective is, if you think about entertainment, our job is to entertain. We almost do ourselves a disservice when we think of things like television, streaming, social media, gaming. We're all in the attention business.

And what's happening is the younger generation is forcing us to break these walls. Because the younger generation is gonna say, okay, maybe I'll go to the movies and pay for a movie ticket. Or maybe I'll subscribe to Netflix. Or maybe I'll just go on TikTok.

And so I think what we're seeing is a real, it's been happening for some time but I think you've got YouTube and Amazon in particular sort of entering the more traditional sort of media world and it is forcing a true convergence between Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

And I'm coming from the world of short form video at Vimeo and this is obviously more of a long form movies, TV, I'm really interested in like what is that gonna look like for younger generations?

Because they want to watch TV series and movies, but they're not gonna pay a bunch of money, to have six different streaming services in the future. And the kinds of stories they want to hear, see, told, the kinds of creators, the storytellers behind that, the formats, the platforms, they're evolving.

And so that's where Tubi is looking to play. We see ourselves as free entertainment for the cordless generation. And we're sort of designing our content, our brand, our product to really serve that group.

and I'm super excited and energized about the future of entertainment. Because, even just from what I see from the team there's tons of room. To build better experiences, and tell more stories, and just evolve with what our audiences are demanding of us.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So when you think of yourself, going back to your point about being product led, right? Now taking that product led mindset into Tubi, what does that look like?

I mean, ad free is no longer a theme these days on even Amazon Prime, which is paid, and you have tons of ads. Everyone is annoyed by that. And yet you're taking that model essentially.

How are you captivating your audience? And what does that look like? What ages are you targeting? Like, what's the strategy here?

Anjali Sud:

So we are definitely targeting more Gen Z audiences. And just more broadly, like, younger, more diverse, even more female forward audiences, and that's because those are the audiences of the future. But also, those are the audiences advertisers care about reaching and can't reach often.

But it's also the audience that we think has more unique needs and tastes, and think about willingness to pay and willingness to watch ads differently. I'll give you the big distinction between Tubi and Amazon is, Amazon, you're paying for prime video and you're watching ads. So to be clear, you are paying to watch ads. In Tubi's case, it's free. You never ever pay anything.

And so, what we're finding is that younger people, they do care about that. That lack of friction is important to them. They're totally fine watching ads if the content speaks to them, if it reflects culture, if it reflects culture, tells the kind of stories that they think speak to them.

Our formula is very much like free and frictionless. And then content that you can't find anywhere else. And some of it is nostalgia and like, fandom based, we have like horror and thriller, we have a lot of like random, we call them rabbit holes, that you wouldn't ever expect.

Just like what YouTube did with the short form with their long tail. It's a little bit of that. It's like just recognizing we have a multidimensional taste and people want to binge and they want to go down their rabbit holes.

When you go to TikTok, it resonates is because it's basically, it tells you what's relevant, what's happening in culture, right? There is a long form version of that. There is a way for the next breed of originals or, you know, TV series and movies to just really reflect that audience, their lived experience, their vibes, their culture.

I think that's what we're trying to figure out how to do.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

It's interesting that you talk about, we're all sort of competing for attention, right? And as you know more than most, although Gen Z, our generation, millennials and beyond are thinking that, a lot of the older generation think that the younger generation are short on attention.

We're the generation that are binging series, hour long series. So in total, you're watching a six hour movie.

So that speaks to quality that you're talking about content that speaks to them that's culturally relevant. What will we see when you say culturally relevant?

Give us an example of something you can speak about today.

Anjali Sud:

Yeah, I mean, I'll give you, I'll give you some examples.

Even just in the last month, some of the original content that launched on Tubi, a show called Borders, which is about five inner city black kids who got scholarships to go to boarding school. A very preppy boarding school and kind of become the poster children for diversity and what is their actual experience and struggles.

That's an example. Another series that we just premiered, I think it was last week, is called, Big Mood. It stars Nicola Coughlin, she's the Bridgerton star. And it's basically a little bit of a younger Fleabag, but it's about the friendship of two young women and covers the themes of mental health.

These are the types of examples where it's the stories, it's the lived realities that are reflected, it's the cast. All of those decisions, I think, you'd make them differently through the lens of what does the younger audience want. And what I have learned in the last eight months is, the sort of traditional Hollywood ecosystem is still very much prestige oriented, right?

It's oriented towards content that will resonate in awards season. And it's a little bit different from what I think a lot of younger audiences want to watch. And that, I think, is the opportunity for Tubi.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So, question to you. I mean, this is something that Netflix has been criticized about, right? And sort of, of leading the woke generation and deciding for culture because the reality is media informs culture.

As the CEO of a company that is focused on being culturally relevant, influencing in the future, how do you think about that?

Anjali Sud:

It's a great question, something we actually talked about a lot internally. I'm very intentional and choiceful about the words reflecting culture. Versus amplifying or defining culture. I don't think Tubi's job is to do the latter.  

And so what we see ourselves as is more of a mirror. We want to listen to our viewers. We have over 75 million monthly active viewers. And we have tons of scale between viewership and, and content.

We have the world's largest library of movies and TV series. Multiples more than Netflix because of that long tail. So we have an opportunity to listen and understand what are the themes, what are the stories, what are the fandoms, what are the communities, what do they care about? We have an opportunity to better reflect that in our choices around content.

And so I don't think we should be the arbiters. TikTok can do that because TikTok chooses, the algorithm chooses to promote something that many like, so many people see it.

I think for us, we actually like the diversity of viewing and viewership on Tubi. We celebrate that. And we use ML and personalization so that each person can go down their own path. By the way, that model is what has led to be thus far to grow, actually one of the fastest growing streamers and continues to kind of move up in viewership rankings because I think it's working.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Well, a lot more rabbit holes that we could go to, but we are short on time. So I'm going to shift very quickly with one last question and then a rapid fire.

So one last question. Of course, I have to bring this up because I'm here because of TIME100 and I tune into Eric Schmidt's concerns about the use of AI in AI generated content.

And of course, we can't leave here without talking about AI today. That would be weird. It is 2024. So quick thoughts here on where this will take content.

Anjali Sud:

Of course, it can be scary and we need like some serious regulation. However, I am in the optimist camp, for one very specific reason.

I spent a decade at Vimeo trying to make it easier for people to create and produce content. The amount of time and people who built tools to make it easier, and the fact that you now, through generative AI, can take an idea that's in your head and type it, and very soon you can see it as a video asset, is amazing.

Dramatically accelerates creativity. That is my belief. We have to do that responsibly because there are many pitfalls to AI. But the ability, the potential to accelerate creativity so that every single one of us can be a creator, for me, that was the dream.

I think about what's possible right now and how it felt impossible five years ago. It's really remarkable and I think quite exciting.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

How do you think, very quickly, it will impact the way you are running your business for Tubi?

Anjali Sud:

I think over time you will see more great stories being told. Because again, we're lowering the barriers, right? Because before, for you to even, like, today you read a script and then you green light it and then you have to do the, and then, so many steps, it's so expensive and time consuming.

And I think there is an opportunity over time. I think it's gonna take time on, like, sort of more professional quality storytelling, but for shorter form content, if you're a marketer, I think if you're a marketer right now, think about your ability to create an ad, it's just amazing.

And you don't have to work with a super expensive agency and spend millions of dollars to have something good, and to have your idea show up in an actual tangible thing. I just think that's amazing.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

All right billion dollar questions. Are you ready for the billion dollar question billion dollar questions?

All right, we got to start with an easy one. Quick hack, a habit that changed your life for good significantly.

Anjali Sud:

I try and get nine hours of sleep a night. Sleep is my hack I have lots of small other things, but like literally nothing matters more.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Who is the most famous person you ever met, and did they live up to your expectations?

Anjali Sud:

I've actually met a decent number of famous people. I'm not gonna do the celebrity thing.

I've met Bill Clinton and George W., so presidents on both sides of the aisle,  and, oh, here's what I thought was really interesting. I was really surprised at how much more warm and human a president can be. I think it's very hard for that to translate on a debate or a TV screen, the warmth and humanity and I suspect that probably most politicians have more of that than we all realize.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

So they did live up, they did live up to your expectations.

Anjali Sud:

Yes, I think I was sufficiently charmed in every interaction, which is probably not surprising for someone to become president.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Where do you feel most at home or at peace?

Anjali Sud:

In my New York City apartment, with my two boys, I have a little robe, I have my coffee, and we sit in the mornings and it is my, it is my happy time and anything is possible.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What's a contrarian view you hold?

Anjali Sud:

I don't know if it's contrarian, it's something I say a lot. I tend to believe that,  both can be true. So I'm more of an and thinker than an or thinker. Meaning, and this happens to me all the time at work, where, you know, it's like, well, we can do this or that.

Or, you know, this thing is happening, therefore this must be true. And I tend to, you know, think that actually, many, many times, it's not an or, it's an and.

And I really force myself to think that way, because sometimes it's not possible to defy gravity. But many times, that's when you stumble upon creative solutions. A lot of times people are like, no, but this is a trade off.

And I'm like, but is it? Is it a trade off?

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Give me a specific view that may be out of this world.

Anjali Sud:

I'm kind of skeptical about dentistry. Is it real? Do we need it? I've never said that publicly.

Now I'm like really, I'm like concerned about what repercussions this is going to have with my dentist.

Yeah. Which is not the intention. But I'm like always like, really? Like is this necessary? Like sometimes I'm like, mmm, I'm not sure.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What do you know for sure though?

Anjali Sud: 

No one ever builds anything of value on their own. It's a team effort.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What will your legacy be?

Anjali Sud:

I hope that through the work, on the businesses that I've been part of, that, it sounds super cheesy, but like I do hope that through video and through stories, like we can be a more connected, the world can be a more connected place, and we can be a more empathetic and human group of global citizens.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

You know, I'm going to ask this question because of the work that I do, what needs to change for women to really lead forward and to get the investment that they deserve?

Anjali Sud:

So many things, but I'll give sort of maybe two angles I think, my thinking has evolved a little bit on this.

One is, I've always thought women need to support each other more and embrace a community and lift each other up because I think men do that. But I also think we need more proactive support from men. I think that is another, it's an and, an and instead of an or. And I think that that is really important.

If I look back at the people that made bets on me, that changed my life and my career, is women as much as men. And so that's, that's kind of one angle.

The other one is one that I, from a personal perspective, have gotten more,  interested in, which is, I think, for younger women, girls, Gen Z, and younger girls who are gonna be entering the workforce, I think confidence is gonna be an area that we need to do a better job on because I think younger girls today, like imagine growing up in social media.

It's a different environment and I always think back to like that initial, like my 14 year old self, and what gaining confidence enabled me to do now. And I just worry about how are we going to offset the intense kind of insecurities that can come from some of the other things happening in the world around us?

So I would love to, I'd love to help figure that out over time.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Advice, mantra, one liner to the next generation of funders and builders tuning in.

Anjali Sud:

I will share the advice,  from my time at IAC that I still find so true, which is, patience on vision, impatience on execution. That is my advice.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Love it. And you mentioned your two young boys that we've seen a lot of. What would you want to tell them today, as they're tuning into this years later and growing up.

Anjali Sud:

Oh, so cheesy, which is just believe in yourself. Anything is possible. I genuinely pinch myself every day and can't believe what the world has given me.

I want my boys and, and anyone who's young and ambitious and excited to believe, you gotta believe.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And Anjali, we believe in you and thank you for believing in yourself because our world has benefited from your leadership.

Alright, well, high five on making your Billion Dollar Moves!

Alright, it's a wrap! And we did it, 419.

Anjali Sud:

Wow, you nailed it! Amazing! You're so good, you're such a pro! Oh my god!