Joost gets new CEO and eyes SetTop future

After gaining 45 million in funding from a bunch of companies Joost has hired a big name hardware industry hot shot to pave a gold brick road for the future of IPTV.

The Joost blog announced earlier this week that they had signed a new CEO: Mike Volpi has been appointed chief executive officer. Volpi succeeds the company's founding CEO, Fredrik de Wahl, who remains at Joost as chief strategy officer.

"Volpi joins Joost from Cisco Systems, Inc., where he spent 13 years in a variety of strategic management roles. Most recently, he managed a US$11 billion business as senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's Routing and Service Provider Technology Group, which included Scientific Atlanta."

At first thought I was curious how a hardware guy would be a good fit for a web based new media start-up. Is it possible Joost is trying to build a strategic alliance with the hardware guys to ensure their technology is supported at the lowest possible level? We all know they've had some technical hicups that left them red in the face (bandwidth, server issues etc.). Is building these strategic partnerships an upmost necessity for Joost's success? Volpi is certainly connected in the industry selling Cisco switches to the big media giants like Comcast and Time Warner and people often say it is not about what you know, but who you know!

In his first interview at Joost Volpi stated to a New York Times reporter that:

"Joost is a piece of software and it can reside on a variety of platforms,”
he said. “It could be on a television set-top box. Or potentially it could be
imbedded in a TV set with an Ethernet connection, or on a mobile phone, or in
some alternative device that might come out in the future. The flexibility is
really high.”

It wouldn't be the first time I've suggested that IPTV will take over the traditional television market. It's just hard to predict when that would be. Apple is there with their AppleTV SetTop box (which I hate) many other companies are either already in the market (HP/Microsoft) or looking to enter (Joost).

It only makes sense to eliminate the PC from the Television delivery channel. I've blogged about this too many times to count so I won't do it again.

Can't wait for the Joost SetTop!

Over And Out