Three years after its initial launch, ShowYou is making big moves, and in order to steer its rise, it has turned to a man with a wealth of online video experience. It has hired Andy Forssell, the former CEO of Hulu, as its own CEO.
Forssell, who first joined Hulu in 2007, became the company’s acting CEO in March 2013 after Jason Kilar left the company. Forssell led Hulu through a turbulent few months that saw it consider and ultimately decline several reported acquisition bids. In October, Hulu found its new CEO, former FOX executive Mike Hopkins. When Hopkins took over, Forssell parted ways with Hulu entirely.
That brings us to ShowYou. The app, founded by Mark Hall, began as a way to aggregate videos across social networks, but it has recently added in a new subscription-based service for video channels. This big step forward require an equally big presence, which led ShowYou to Forssell. “We set out on a quest to find someone with that rare combination of strategic vision, product savvy, operational excellence and deep knowledge of the entertainment,” wrote Hall in a post on ShowYou’s official blog. “Luckily for us, we met and have gotten to know one person who exceeded our high expectations: Andy Forssell.”
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As CEO, Forssell will oversee ShowYou as it continues to find its place in a crowded industry (Hall will stay on as President.) While there are a lot of companies that offer similar services to ShowYou’s subscription-based platform, Forssell believes there is still plenty of room for younger companies to grow into. “We’re convinced that, when we look back ten or fifteen years from now, it will be clear that a ton of innovation and new services were still ahead of us,” he wrote in a blog post of his own, “that many of what will then be the top brands that viewers love and respect had yet to make their mark in 2014.”
With Forssell on board, we’re expecting many new developments from ShowYou. As Hall wrote in an email to Tubefilter, another new announcement can be expected in the next couple of weeks.
