KunGao

not as much as i would regret not doing this AMA =)

all our deals with content partners are revenue share. we contribute a majority to content partners.

we are the only major streaming service to revenue share subscription revenue (in addition to ad revenue). when a viewer watches more of a show, more of their subscription dollars will go towards that publisher based on minutes viewed... so watching more of your favorite shows directly contributes to what Japanese studios receive.

we have contractual obligations with content partners wrt content security, which is not a capability provided by html5

when we started in 2008, CR was a platform where users were uploading a lot of anime content. We knew we needed to license everything but were incredible naive about how content and licensing works.

So we literally put on our backpacks and went to Japan and started knocking on doors.

At first, there was a lot of pushback. Some of the first meetings were frankly very challenging. But we stuck with it and showed our partners how persistent we were to licensing anime for simulcast.. they weren't going to get rid of us that easily!

Over time, we won't people over with how passionate our audience was, and how pesky we were. In the end, it also helped that we didn't really know how hard it was going to be when we started.

Nowadays, it is still a lot of persuading partners, since we always try to push for more rights to grow our global business, get more titles, expand our manga service, ecommerce, etc.

to clarify, we started in mid 2006 as a nights and weekends project to build a youtube clone. we shared it with our friends and they uploaded a bunch of shows they couldn't watch in the US, instead of cats hanging on shower curtains.

Beginning of 2008, we incorporated as CR, took investment from Venrock. At the time the site had already a lot of fans with other fans uploading to the site. We went to Japan all of 2008 to figure out licensing. By the end of 2008, we had secured partnerships with a number of content partners, including TV Tokyo. We had told them how we got to this point, and we were really passionate about bringing anime to the world.

Our content partners got behind us, and new years day 2009, we turned off the site, and rebooted it with only licensed content and official materials.

.. thats more or less the full timeline of our humble beginnings