Razmig Hovaghimian

Razmig Hovaghimian is an American entrepreneur. He is co-founder and CEO of the international online streaming video site Viki, and senior executive officer of global content, board observer and Entrepreneur in residence at Japanese ecommerce company Rakuten.[1] He is also a co-founder and board member of non-profit neonatal health company Embrace.[2] He also founded Hoodline, formerly Ripple News, a hyper-local, automated data newswire later acquired by social media neighborhood site Nextdoor.[3][4]

Razmig Hovaghimian
Born
Cairo, Egypt
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley (BA)
Stanford University (MBA)
Occupation(s)Entrepreneur and company executive
Known forCEO & co-founder, Viki
CEO & founder of Hoodline
Senior executive officer of global content, Rakuten
Co-founder, Embrace

Early life and education

Hovaghimian was born in Cairo, Egypt, to Armenian parents.[2] He moved to Los Angeles, California at the age of 16.[2] Hovaghimian attended the University of California at Berkeley, majoring in political economy and minoring in business administration.[2] After graduating, he spent time as a consultant in the US and Europe, before relocating to Japan to work as a management consultant at ad agency Dentsu.[2] He returned to the US to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received an MBA.[5]

Career

Embrace
Main article: Embrace

While attending Stanford, after a summer spent working with the United Nations in South Sudan, Hovaghimian and fellow Stanford classmates Jane Chen, Linus Liang, Naganand Murty and Rahul Panicker founded Embrace, a non-profit that designed and patented an affordable infant incubator for the developing world.[2][6] Embrace grew to a company based in 14 countries as of 2014.[2] Embrace received an INDEX People's Choice Award, and in 2010 was selected as an Innovative Technology for Public Health by the World Health Organization.[7]

NBC Universal

In 2007, Hovaghimian went to work at NBCUniversal in the strategic planning group.[2] By 2009, he was a senior vice president, working on the company's digital and international growth strategy.[2] Hovaghimian left NBC later that year to focus full-time on another company he founded, Viki, an international online video service.[2]

Viki
Main article: Viki (streaming service)

International online video service Viki also started as another class project while Hovaghimian was at Stanford. He met co-founders Changseong Ho, a fellow Stanford student, and his wife, Jiwon Moon, who was studying education technology at Harvard. Viki gets its name from combining the words video and wiki.[8] It was originally created as a language-learning tool, helping its users learn languages by creating subtitles on online videos.[2]

Hovaghimian served as the company's CEO.[9]

In 2010, Hovaghimian incorporated Viki and moved to Singapore, where he set up the company's headquarters and hired its first engineers.[10] He chose Singapore for the company's headquarters in part due to its proximity to key Asian markets.[10]

Viki eventually morphed into an international online video site, licensing content from countries across the globe, with subtitles crowd sourced from an international community of viewers and volunteer translators.[8] In September 2013, the company was acquired by Japanese e-commerce group Rakuten, for $200 million.[11] At the time, Viki had 22 million viewers per month, and over 200 different viewer countries in Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.[12] In August 2013, the World Economic Forum named Viki as one of its 2014 Technology Pioneers.[13]

Rakuten

In December 2013, following its acquisition of Viki, Rakuten announced that Hovaghimian would become its senior executive officer of global content.[2] He oversees Rakuten's entire video content business worldwide, including Viki.com and Wuaki.tv, which airs paid premium content in Europe.[11] He was also named an observer to Rakuten's board of directors, and became the company's first Entrepreneur in Residence.[11][1]

Hoodline

In 2016, Hovaghimian founded Ripple News, a city-focused news platform.[3] Later that year, Ripple acquired Hoodline, another local news site, and took the name Hoodline as the new combined company. In 2019, the Hoodline was acquired by neighborhood social media site Nextdoor. In 2020, publisher Impress3 Media acquired the Hoodline website and brand name from Nextdoor.[14]

Film producing

Hovaghimian was an executive co-producer, along with Adam McKay, Will Ferrell and Meileen Choo, of Oh Lucy!, a 2017 film starring Josh Hartnett and Shinobu Terajima, and based on a 2014 short film of the same name.[15]

Honors and awards

Personal life

Hovaghimian lives in San Francisco, California, with his wife and children.[1]

References
  1. "Viki Video Site Founder Leaves CEO Spot, Stays at Rakuten". Vox. January 30, 2015. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  2. "Razmig Hovaghimian: from failed pizza maker to founder of Viki". Tech in Asia. April 20, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  3. Kafka, Peter (August 18, 2014). "Ripple wants to deliver local news — and it wants your help writing it". Forbes. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  4. Lunden, Ingrid (September 10, 2018). "Hoodline raises $10M for its hyper-local, automated data newswire". Techcrunch. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  5. Blair, Gavin (December 4, 2013). "Crowd-Sourced Online Video Site Viki Breaks Down Language Barriers". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  6. Lee, Ellen (November 12, 2010). "Embrace may keep babies warm - and alive". SFGate. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  7. "Embrace". Stanford: Design for Extreme Affordability. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  8. Park, Madison (June 9, 2014). "Can fans unravel the Babel of the world's TV dramas?". CNN. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  9. "Is Viki Better Than Netflix and Roku?". Wall Street Journal. July 16, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  10. Weizhen, Tan (September 4, 2013). "S'pore-based start-up sold for rumoured S$255m". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  11. "Next Gen Innovators 2014". Forbes. August 18, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  12. Venkataramanan, Madhumita (September 3, 2014). "Infographic: Where local TV gets seen overseas". Wired. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  13. "Next Gen Innovators 2014" (PDF). WE Forum. August 22, 2013. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  14. Rinker, Brian (October 14, 2020). "Local media company that owns SFist acquires Hoodline from Nextdoor". Forbes. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
  15. McNary, Dave (December 16, 2016). "Josh Hartnett, Shinobu Terajima to Star in U.S.-Japan Drama-Comedy 'Oh Lucy!'". Variety. Retrieved March 19, 2022.
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