In the second part of our 50 VOD Professionals survey we interview Anthony Rose, the former head of the BBC iPlayer and now the co-founder and CTO of zeebox. Rose talks about his time at the BBC, building brilliant products and gives some great advice to would-be entrepreneurs.

KAUSER KANJI: Hi Anthony. I guess you're familiar with the 50 VOD Professionals survey we've been running on the site lately?

ANTHONY ROSE: I am, yes!

KANJI: And so we've been trying to work out who the most influential people are that work in the UK's new television sector. Now you have past influence in that you were one of the main driving forces behind the development of the BBC iPlayer but also current influence with your zeebox work. So, let's start by talking about your role at the BBC. What were you doing there?

ROSE: So back in 2007 the BBC had been developing the iPlayer concept for several years with varying degrees of success and they bought in Erik Huggers from Microsoft to lead the team. I'd met Eric a few times at conferences so we knew each other a little and he called me - I was living in Australia at the time working for Kazaa and Alt.net which were sister companies - and said how would you like to join the BBC? Over a couple of weeks we worked out what the job might be and I started having a play with iPlayer - the pre-release version - and it really wasn't a brilliant consumer proposition at the time.

KANJI: Right -  

ROSE: Essentially, there were many, many little issues with it which amounted to iPlayer being a difficult-to-use service. And my first thought was the developer team is terrible - they can't develop a product. But actually, when I got to the BBC I found that the dev team was actually brilliant - a number of them work for me now at zeebox - but the problem was that they'd been pulled in lots of different directions. For example, they'd been asked to build the product to comply with things like parental controls and editorial control and for portraying channel logos everywhere. And if you looked at all the things that were on the requirements list, none of them essentially was for consumers.  They all came from different parts of the business. There was no consumer advocate. So I said, right, I'm the consumer advocate and told the teams to stop talking to the rest of the business, just talk to me and we'll establish a direction. This is the challenge for any large organisation. What's important? Who tells you what to do? If you listen to too many people you won't get anywhere fast.

KANJI: So how did you change things?

On iPlayer: "I asked what do consumers actually want? Let's focus on them. Every week, we're going to go through the top 10 things that people are saying are a problem and we're going to fix as many of those things as we can."

ROSE: Well, I did two things. First, I said don't listen to anyone else but me! There's one voice that will filter all the business requirements and that's me. And second, I asked what do consumers actually want? Let's focus on them. Every week, we're going to go through the top 10 things that people are saying are a problem and we're going to fix as many of those things as we can. These were all minority edge cases: problems with Flash, with different browsers, with Macs etc. And each of them was only a few percent of people but collectively it didn't work for anyone. So we imposed a zero tolerance approach to the top 10 items, to being robust in how we dealt with them. And that got the product out the door.  

KANJI: You'd expect the early adopters to flag up technical issues but what about the mass market? Was there a new set of challenges once the iPlayer went into general release?

ROSE: Yes, your use cases definitely change. So instead of "does it work on Macs" we might ask, for example, how do we encourage more women to use the iPlayer at lunchtime? They're on an office computer, they're eating, they don't want to do much typing to find content so how can we help them? I guess my time at iPlayer was a combination of forming a larger vision as to how the product should evolve and big picture things - should it be on connected TV? Should it be on smartphones etc.? - and, at the same time, doing the minute stuff like working out bandwidth costs, making deals with CDNs, negotiating with third-party partners. The takeaway point is figure out what the product should be and then make sure all the pieces are in place to be able to deliver it.

KANJI: And how did your role evolve?

ROSE: My remit increased to be in charge of 250 people and it included things like search and the BBC homepage and programme pages and so on.

The BBC iPlayer launch film in 2007

KANJI: And so after the BBC you moved to Project Canvas?

ROSE: Which became YouView -  

KANJI: And how was your time there? You were only there for eight months…

ROSE: Some of the things that worked very successfully at the BBC were less successful at YouView. The ability to focus on a brilliant consumer proposition isn't so easy. For example, with the iPlayer we said there's a lot of stuff on TV, the audience want recommendations so let's build a recommendations engine. The only thing holding us back was the hours in the day. Whereas at YouView, when I said "there's a lot of great content here, we need a recommendations engine", six or seven shareholders looked at me and said "What if it recommends other people's content?" and I answered "That's what recommendations engines tend to do!" So, it was more difficult with multiple stakeholders.  Ultimately, I decided to go back to my dot com roots and form a new start-up.

KANJI: And that was zeebox?

On zeebox: "Within weeks we had a team of eight people, working for no money. I paid for our first offices in Old Street myself. We then raised about $6 million, grew the team to thirty, Sky invested before Xmas and we're now about sixty people."

ROSE: Well, initially, I had no idea what it would be! I started talking to venture capitalists around town trying to figure it out. At the same time Ernesto Schmitt, who had been at EMI [Schmitt was on the Executive Board and was also President of Marketing and President, Global Catalogue] had left the company and he was also looking for something to do. A bunch of mutual friends and acquaintances said we should get together so we met and set up a few meetings to look for a great proposition. What could we build that had a good business model, that was fundable, of its time and that wasn't reliant on complicated business partnerships? Eventually we hit upon zeebox and started putting the team together.

And since then it's been a rocket ship! Within weeks we had a team of eight people, working for no money. I paid for our first offices in Old Street myself. We then raised about $6 million, grew the team to thirty, Sky invested before Xmas and we're now about sixty people. We hope to be live in the US in the next eight weeks with other territories to follow. So far, it's been a fantastic ride.

KANJI: And what's your motivation? What do you want to achieve?

"Changing the world - it's nice to say we played a small part in doing that - but for me the great driver is building a great product that lots of people will use."

ROSE: It's not so much a desire to change things but rather looking at the direction of technology and consumer behaviour and working out what is it that people want that others aren't doing? And then, being ballsy, ignoring the naysayers on things I suppose. Whenever there's something new there's always 27 reasons not to do it: what if no-one uses it, what if synchronisation won't work, what if the system can't deal with the load? There's a suspension of disbelief that you have to cross. That's the key thing for entrepreneurs - to take a risk and a gamble. How futuristic should your proposition be? If it's too ahead of its time you get lots of good press and great awards but no-one uses it; it it's not adventurous enough then lots of people can copy you. Changing the world - it's nice to say we played a small part in doing that - but for me the great driver is building a great product that lots of people will use.

KANJI: Sounds like what Steve Jobs said about the audience not always knowing what they want… [The actual quote was from BusinessWeek, 25 May 1998: "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."]

ROSE: It's a tricky question and I don't profess to know the answer by any means. If you have some sort of revelation, if you say "I had a dream!" it might be only you that actually enjoys the product. On the other hand, you can do a survey of 10,000 people and they might only tell you what's in the depth of their experience right now. For example, years ago, had you said to people that you'll be walking around with a phone stuck to your ear they'd think what a ridiculous thing to do! People only tell you what's already possible. It's like the Indiana Jones movie where sometimes you have to take a leap of faith [Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]. The most interesting bit is when do you listen to yourself and when do you listen to others.

KANJI: It's fascinating that when you and Ernesto got together you didn't know what the product would be. What ideas did you reject before hitting upon zeebox?

"Eventually, we thought of zeebox and thought "Yes! This is it! It's a tech play, it's new, it's fundable, there's a great revenue model" and we got excited about it."

ROSE: Well I won't go into specifics but we looked at a whole range. One we rejected because it was going to be too late into the market, another was super-cool but we'd have to buy content rights and that might take years and lots of money. It was a fantastic time because in many ways the only thing between you and finding the thing you want to do is your imagination. It's a strange and slightly scary thing because you might think you need to sort out a whole range of other factors but often it's YOU that is the biggest factor. Assuming we could get funding, assuming we could get the technology working the only thing stopping us was us. Eventually, we thought of zeebox and thought "Yes! This is it! It's a tech play, it's new, it's fundable, there's a great revenue model" and we got excited about it.

KANJI: So finally, what's next for zeebox?

ROSE: Well, as I said, we're hitting the US now - I think it's key for any dot com to get a handle over there - and it's going to be tough and interesting but also a fun ride over the coming months.