The advantage of technology is that it is perishable

In the startup environment, it is a habit to talk about successes to keep our hopes alive for the future, but it is a big mistake to forget the failures of the past and not benefit from the experiences of the past. For this purpose, the Ecomotive team has collected the experiences of a series of failed startups, so that reviewing their failed stories may be a basis for the success of new startups in Iran’s startup community. This collection will be published and made available to the audience in the form of the story of failure. We review the thirty-fourth part of this series, which deals with the story of the failure of the Move Networks startup.

Move Networks, a subsidiary of EchoStar, offered the next generation of live, multi-channel television over the Internet. By improving its adaptive streaming technology, the company integrated content management, subscription package, billing and digital rights management to deliver a rich multimedia experience over the Internet. The Move Networks platform enabled companies to monetize both through subscription-based services and advanced advertising solutions. The videos of this site were played with the highest quality and without interruption or delay.

In February 2009, when 30 percent of Move Networks’ employees were laid off, there were rumblings of trouble at the company. Meanwhile, in August 2008, Microsoft had participated in the third series of investment in order to expand its strategic relations with this company.

In April 2009, Move Networks bought Inuk to add PC TV streaming capabilities, and in July of that year, in an effort to transform from a video streaming company to an IPTV sales company to ISPs, it named Roxane Austin as CEO. In fact, it was at this point that the company, by changing its focus, failed to fulfill its promises and deprived the main customers of the media from its services.

Move Networks was chosen as the default video streaming technology for big-name broadcast sites like ABC and Fox, but within a year or two, with changes in technology, the widespread adoption of Adobe Flash, and contract parties withdrawing from the technology. Formerly, this company was surrounded and surrendered.
One of the most important reasons for the failure of this network’s product was having an additional cost compared to other video technologies due to the need for custom coding equipment, etc., which was not thought about. In fact, due to poor management, Move Networks did not take advantage of its technology advantage for two and a half years, and spent unnecessary expenses on its engineering personnel and advertising, which did not yield results.

In February 2010, 15% of the workforce was laid off and the number of employees was reduced to 107. In June of that year, after the resignation of the CEO, the news of the sale of Move Networks was announced on Twitter.