VideoBlocks founder Joel Holland is handing off the CEO reins to TJ Leonard (above), who’s been VideoBlocks CMO for over two years. Joel’s new role will be executive chair, focusing on partnerships and cheerleading for the Reston-based stock media company.
The company hit impressive milestones in the last year; its marketplace, which allows content creators to sell their video clips, hit 1 million clips and doled out $1M in contributor commissions. It also hit 130,000 paying members. Joel says the growth of the video marketplace is far faster than competitor Shutterstock, by several years.
Joel (above) says he wants to tee up some new partnerships similar to deals struck in 2015 with Discovery Communications, YouTube, Vimeo and BuzzFeed. He’s looking at opportunities like Amazon Studio, which is developing an editing tool to create video footage. “We want to partner with anybody who has access to the mass market creator,” says Joel. “Our stock video and our music helps those projects look better.”
The 6-year-old company is at 60 employees, up from 35 a year ago. TJ says they’ll be hiring lots more people in 2016 in all divisions.
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