Still trying to make a dent in the competitive ad-supported streaming business, Plex has hired former Facebook/Meta marketing executive Manish Gupta as its VP of growth.
Gupta served as director of strategy, operations and insights at Facebook since 2018, while also having similar prior marketing roles at Google, eBay and Yahoo.
He joins Silicon Valley-based Plex, 10 months after the company announced a $50 million funding round from its primary investor, Intercap.
Plex, which started off as a maker of a popular media management software solution, now boasts 200 free live TV channels, more than 50,000 free on-demand movies and TV episodes, as well as access to OTA broadcast channels and DVR, streaming music via Tidal.
Plex is trying to gain a foothold in an ad-supported streaming market dominated by Pluto TV, Tubi, Roku Channel, IMDb TV and other better known operators.
In addition to hiring Gupta, Plex also announced the addition of three new board members:
> Carl Sparks, managing partner at Interlock Partners, is a veteran venture capitalist who has also served as CMO at Expedia and President & CEO of Travelocity during key growth phases of each company.
> Kelly Battles, a veteran board member and audit committee chair for public and private companies, including Arista Networks, Genesys Software, and DataStax. She has also held CFO and senior finance roles for companies such as Quora, Cisco and HP.
> Rick Gibbs, an entrepreneur, founder and executive, who served as CEO and president of Dealer.com, president of Dealertrack Technologies, and chief product officer of Cox Automotive.
“Manish and our new board members are strong additions to the Plex family as we are driving toward our mission of being a one-stop-shop for streaming media, and scaling the company during a period of rapid growth,” said Keith Valory, CEO of Plex. “Delivering an amazing user experience has always been our number one priority, and Manish’s background in customer insights and growth marketing is exactly what we need to ensure we are not only appealing to new users, but bringing them back time and time again.”
