How many attempts are you willing to make to achieve success?

51 year old Anthony Wood has had so many attempts at trying to launch a successful business, after five ‘failures’ he named his 6th attempt “ROKU” - ‘Six’ in Japanese:

This week, that sixth company has became worth $2 billion.

Like the many TV series streaming on Roku, Anthony’s success story has been a six-part epic spanning 27 years. Can you imagine if he had quit before Episode 6?

Episode #1 - Sunrize to Sunset

In 1990 he launched his first business, Sunrize, making software for the Commodore Amiga while a student at Texas A&M University. He grew it to 14 employees but then almost failed his studies, saying “I would optimistically sign up for classes and then fail to attend them.” So Sunrize closed.

Episode #2 - A second Sunrize

Optimistic after his graduation, he moved to Silicon Valley and launched SunRize “Mark Two”. The only problem? No one was using Commodore computers anymore. So Sunrize Two closed too.

Episode #3 - When in doubt, apply Band Aid

Deciding to turn to the Internet, he launched his third company, iBand, in 1995. The company was bought by Macromedia the year after and he got a job there as VP of Internet Authoriing. 

Success at last? No. He was demoted out of authority and left a year later.

Episode #4 - Time for a Replay

Not one to give up, Anthony decided the future was in Internet TV, and he launched ReplayTV in 1997. This time he decided to get support from mentors, bringing in Netscape creator, Marc Andreessen. Marc described Repaly TV as “Just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Unfortunately Marc hadn't yet mastered the art of picking winners, and ReplayTV bombed too, with Anthony ending up selling the company for less than it raised from investors, to a company that itself went bust shortly after…

Episode #5 - Look on the Bright side

Anthony’s fifth attempt was a startup called BrightSign which he launched in 2002. The company produced digital signs. It wasn’t his passion, and so the company split in two, with Anthony focused on his sixth company, “Roku”, where he bet on the future of streaming TV.

Episode #6 - Sixth time lucky

Finally, 27 years after his first startup, at 51 years old, Anthony has tuned in to a winner with Roku. The company’s smart TV box became the first to directly stream Netflix to TV, and over the last 15 years Roku has grown to 15 million monthly users who collectively watched 7 billion hours of streamed TV in the first half of 2017.

Last week, Anthony raised $219 million in Roku’s IPO, the shares jumped from $14 to $23.50 in the first day, and today the company is worth $2 billion.

Do you, like Anthony, see your path as a multi-episode series?

Where success isn’t measured by any one episode, but by the overall story?

What’s your story? And which episode are you on today?

As for what gave Anthony the power to persevere, he says “I like solving problems, and businesses are like multidimensional puzzles.” It was never about achieving greater success, but solving bigger problems. With Roku, he finally found a billion dollar problem to solve.

“Your financial success is directly related to the size of the problem you solve.” ~ Brian Tracy