Everyone knows that Eindhoven has produced Philips, ASML and NXP. But did you know the foundation of YouTube and streaming video connects back to Eindhoven in the form of perpetually under-the-radar JW Player? Well, like so many Dutch innovations, JW Player has been an American tech company for years now, headquartered in New York City. But it’s now a bigger player (pun intended) via a merger.
JW Player, started here in Eindhoven in 2004 by Jeroen Wijering, just merged on 9 October with Connatix to form JWP Connatix, creating the “industry’s largest video technology and monetization platform,” according to the media release we got.
Jeroen, who we’ve interviewed many times, will remain as chief innovation officer for the combined companies. “It is a (merger) and our board stays,” wrote our source in an email. Apparently, Jeroen and his R&D team will remain in Eindhoven and actually expand.
This is very much an Eindhoven story, but it’s our experience that no one here knows or cares. Whenever we mention Jeroen to founders and major players in the startup and tech scenes, we’re met with blank stares:
“Who’s Jeroen Wijering, and what is JW Player?”
Which has always confounded us but speaks volumes about European business culture that reveres corporate kingpins while ignoring successful founders.
According to the info we could find, JW Player has had a great few months, raising $100 million in June from Philadelphia-based LLR Partners in a Series E funding round. This came just after JW Player acquired VUALTO, based in Bristol, United Kingdom. Back in 2018, we interviewed Jeroen as part of a Tech Sisters Cities event. He told us then that he hoped to take JW Player public.
Maybe all this is part of that journey to a listing on the American stock exchanges.
From the joint release:
JWP Connatix creates an indispensable partner in this rapidly changing video ecosystem, powering
streaming for over 2,000 blue-chip media companies, including 80% of the top 25 Comscore US
publishers. As the largest independent global video network across CTV and OLV, the company reaches
over 1 billion unique users and delivers 30 billion+ combined video plays and ad impressions every
month. Key benefits for customers include:
• Global reach and reliable scale: Streaming 7 billion minutes of VOD and live content to over 1 billion
unique users on any screen around the world
• Hybrid monetization models: Support for subscription, advertising and e-commerce business
models, leveraging insights from content and audiences to help maximize revenue
• Unique insights to optimize outcomes: Leverage AI to combine trillions of contextual, consumption,
and monetization data signals to match customers with content and ads, boosting engagement
Each month, 1 billion viewers – one third of all people on the Internet – consume video on JW Player’s technology across 2.7 billion devices, according to the JW Player website.
Interestingly, Jeroen – who started it all – is mentioned nowhere in the release. Current JW Player CEO Dave Otten, the American co-founder with Jeroen, will become CEO of the combined company, while former Connatix CEO David Kashak becomes chairman. JWP Connatix will be headquartered in NYC with offices in Eindhoven, London, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Skopje, Macedonia and Tel Aviv.
At its heart, this is a cautionary tale for Eindhoven. Jeroen told us that had he been able to find sufficient early stage capital here in the Netherlands, JW Player would have stayed a Dutch company. And his offices are still here. But American investors captured the company early on, which is why it’s been based in NYC for years. So, the Netherlands continues its role as an incubator for the American tech investors.
Manhattan-based private equity firm Court Square Capital apparently provided funding for the merger or whatever this is. Court Square has the controlling equity stake in Connatix, according to DigiDay. Actual mergers are extremely rare in business and rarely work out. See the TimeWarner/AOL disaster.
So, we’ll try to find out more about this deal.
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Read more about JW Player here in Dispatches’ archives.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
