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Jon Dahl

Jon Dahl

Co-founder, CEO

Co-founder of Zencoder, acquired by Brightcove, where Jon served as VP Technology. Makes better BBQ than code these days.

Written by Jon:
On a grey background is an image representing a video camera, with a price tag with 3 dollar signs making up the shape of the lens.

Published on October 18, 2023 (5 months ago)

Video is too expensive

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readVideo education

We'll be the first to admit it: video is too expensive. Mux is working hard to solve that problem and give you the levers for affordable and flexible pricing.

Green bar graph in nested boxes with an green arrow pointing up and to the right from the corer of the smallest box. 6 miscellaneous icons sit below the boxes.

Published on September 1, 2023 (7 months ago)

The last 6 months for Mux Data: big events, big data, big updates

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readCompany

From record-setting scale to new metrics that make your analytics even more useful, Mux Data has been busy over the last few months.

Published on April 27, 2023 (11 months ago)

How to transcode video 100x faster; or, a Gordian knot cut

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl6 min readProduct

Five years ago, in a blog post titled “The fastest video publishing in the multiverse,” I made the following claim: Mux Video is the first video streaming platform that doesn’t make users wait for tra...

Published on December 20, 2022 (over 1 year ago)

2022 retro: what we shipped and what’s next

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl5 min readCompany & Product

At our first-ever Mux company conference in May (shout out to the team behind The Mux Informational), I shared our long-term roadmap and vision. TL;DR: We exist to democratize video, which is such a f...

Mux + Stream Club

Published on December 22, 2021 (over 2 years ago)

Stream Club is joining Mux!

Jon Dahl
Phil Cluff
By Jon and Phil4 min readCompany

We're excited to announce that Stream Club, a platform that makes it easy for customers to build live video broadcasts and create studio-like experiences, is joining Mux!

An illustration of Steve Ballmer saying "developers, developersl, developers"

Published on December 14, 2021 (over 2 years ago)

Being a great developer product company is more than building products for developers

Steve Heffernan
Matthew McClure
Jon Dahl
Adam Brown
By Steve and 3 others6 min readCompany

Developer product companies, despite massive success in some cases, are still early, and the playbooks aren’t as developed.

Published on April 30, 2021 (almost 3 years ago)

Online video is changing and Mux is growing

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readCompany

We raised some money! $100M Series D; Coatue, Accel, A16Z; several other great investors, like Cobalt, Dragoneer, and HubSpot Ventures; etc. This would have come as a bit of a surprise to me not too l...

Published on January 13, 2021 (about 3 years ago)

Why video is awesome

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl5 min readCompany

I'll admit it: I'm a video nerd. I’ve worked on video for a long time, since I first hacked together a Ruby library that wrapped ffmpeg into a basic transcoder, 12 (!) years ago. RIP, rvideo. Of cour...

Published on December 21, 2020 (over 3 years ago)

Mux in 2020: a (very strange) year-end review

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl3 min readCompany

I know it’s a cliche, but: wow, what a year. "Hope you're staying positive and testing negative," as we've all written in about 75,000 emails. A lot happened in 2020 at Mux. Here are some highlights. ...

Remote @ Mux

Published on August 17, 2020 (over 3 years ago)

Remote @ Mux

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl7 min readCompany

Here at Mux, we are implementing a remote-equal policy. This means that employees working in a core office aren't privileged over employees working from smaller offices or from home.

Secret Santa at Mux

Published on April 30, 2020 (almost 4 years ago)

Actually, now is the time to join Mux

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readCompany

A year ago, I wrote a blog post called Now is the right time to join Mux. I want to apologize for that blog post. In it, I asserted that April of 2019 was the right time to join Mux. It turns out I was...

Patterns and anti-patterns in company values

Published on November 6, 2019 (over 4 years ago)

Patterns and anti-patterns in company values

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl8 min readCompany

Company values can be exceedingly valuable, or they can be beyond worthless. You’ve probably rolled your eyes at company values at some point. Every time I see a list like “quality, integrity, and res...

What’s coming at Mux

Published on August 14, 2019 (over 4 years ago)

What’s coming at Mux

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl7 min readCompany

Mux announced this morning that we’ve raised $20M in Series B funding from Evolution, Accel, Y Combinator, and others. On one level, we’re really excited about this. Evolution, Accel, and YC are all g...

Now is the right time to join Mux

Published on April 3, 2019 (almost 5 years ago)

Now is the right time to join Mux

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl3 min readCompany

Mux is hiring for a number of positions right now - everything from engineering to sales to customer success. We're hiring because Mux is growing. We tripled the business in 2018, and think we might a...

Build better video in 4 simple steps

Published on January 31, 2019 (about 5 years ago)

Build better video in 4 simple steps

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl6 min readVideo education

Video is hard because software is difficult at scale, and video reaches scale much more quickly than other software. When facing hard problems, it's helpful to have a framework that turns hard problems...

Changes to the Mux Viewer Experience Score

Published on October 1, 2018 (over 5 years ago)

Changes to the Mux Viewer Experience Score

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl9 min readProduct

One of our goals with Mux Data is to provide meaningful data about video performance at a quick glance, while also providing the ability to drill deep when needed. We created the Viewer Experience Sco...

“What is Mux Video?” and nine other questions, answered

Published on August 20, 2018 (over 5 years ago)

“What is Mux Video?” and nine other questions, answered

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl5 min readProduct

When you’re a startup, one of the most common questions you have to answer is: “What exactly do you do?” We’re answering this question all the time - on our website, on customer calls, at conferences. ...

Guide to Mobile Video Streaming with HLS

Published on July 20, 2018 (over 5 years ago)

Guide to Mobile Video Streaming with HLS

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl7 min readVideo education

HTTP Live Streaming, also known as HLS, is the most common format used today for streaming video. If you're building a video streaming application today, you should probably use HLS. Apple created the ...

Instant Per-Title Encoding

Published on April 17, 2018 (almost 6 years ago)

Instant Per-Title Encoding

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl11 min readVideo education

Updated 8/4/21: We hit pause on audience-adaptive and per-title encoding. Read the details on why after the section break below. "How did you decide on your bitrate ladder?" We've asked this question...

Build vs. buy: patterns and antipatterns

Published on March 13, 2018 (about 6 years ago)

Build vs. buy: patterns and antipatterns

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl7 min readCompany

Build or buy? This decision gets made dozens of times every year by engineering teams, small and large. It's an important decision, affecting roadmaps, productivity, team composition, and customer hap...

The fastest video publishing in the multiverse

Published on March 6, 2018 (about 6 years ago)

The fastest video publishing in the multiverse

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl3 min readProduct

Video publishing speed is a usability problem. When a user hits the "upload" button, they don't want to have to wait a few minutes (or longer) to see their video play. But that's what happens almost an...

An API to Video: Why Abstraction Matters

Published on February 21, 2018 (about 6 years ago)

An API to Video: Why Abstraction Matters

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readVideo education

This is the third in a series of blog posts about Mux Video. The first, Video is Too Hard, outlined the problem. The second, Announcing Mux Video, announced the new product. Abstractions are important...

Announcing Mux Video: a simple API to powerful video streaming

Published on November 14, 2017 (over 6 years ago)

Announcing Mux Video: a simple API to powerful video streaming

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readProduct

Online video is growing exponentially, but still it's too hard to stream video. Video is too hard (as we discussed last week). Every area of video infrastructure - encoding, playback, delivery, workfl...

Video is too hard.

Published on November 10, 2017 (over 6 years ago)

Video is too hard.

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl2 min readVideo education

Online video is growing quickly, but it's still way too hard to stream video. Video has actually gotten harder to work with, not easier, over the last seven years. It takes a video expert to publish v...

Announcing full data exports

Published on November 1, 2017 (over 6 years ago)

Announcing full data exports

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl2 min readProduct

A quality of experience analytics platform like Mux does three things. Accurately measure what happens when someone watches a video, across different platforms and devices. Collect those measurements...

Real-time CDN switching with Mux and Cedexis

Published on August 31, 2017 (over 6 years ago)

Real-time CDN switching with Mux and Cedexis

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl3 min readProduct

Video publishing sometimes feels like a Rube Goldberg machine. To get a single video to play back successfully, a dozen different systems need to play nicely together: websites, players, browsers, ISPs...

How do users feel about video streaming quality on their TVs?

Published on April 20, 2017 (almost 7 years ago)

How do users feel about video streaming quality on their TVs?

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl3 min readVideo news

We focused our survey on one type of content: video streamed to a television, using a service like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, or WatchESPN.

Video is exploding and Mux raises a Series A

Published on April 18, 2017 (almost 7 years ago)

Video is exploding and Mux raises a Series A

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl6 min readCompany

Mux has raised a $9M Series A funding round from Accel. We’ve created the most accurate and actionable analytics platform for video performance.

What's new: metric comparisons and global scores

Published on November 15, 2016 (over 7 years ago)

What's new: metric comparisons and global scores

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl2 min readProduct

We've shipped two new features at Mux over the last two weeks. The first is a tool to compare all metrics across two or more specific values. The second is a global benchmark that gives customers an id...

Six things you can do with Mux

Published on October 7, 2016 (over 7 years ago)

Six things you can do with Mux

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl3 min readProduct

Since starting Mux this year, we've talked with scores of video publishers. Almost everyone wants more data about their video streaming, and usually people have a couple of specific uses for this data ...

Buffering reduces video watch time by ~40%, according to research

Published on September 14, 2016 (over 7 years ago)

Buffering reduces video watch time by ~40%, according to research

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl6 min readVideo news

According to our data, just one short buffering interruption leads to 39% less time spent watching video on a site.

Why the creators of Zencoder and Video.js started Mux

Published on August 31, 2016 (over 7 years ago)

Why the creators of Zencoder and Video.js started Mux

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readCompany

For the last seven months, Mux has been hard at work on a performance analytics platform for online video publishers. Our product gives customers like PBS, IGN, and Funny or Die more information into t...

The four elements of video performance

Published on August 18, 2016 (over 7 years ago)

The four elements of video performance

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl4 min readVideo education

How do you quantify the performance of a video stream? What metrics should you use? Long after Andy Grove stressed the importance of metrics for decision-making, software companies are becoming more a...

Introducing Mux (the blog)

Published on August 17, 2016 (over 7 years ago)

Introducing Mux (the blog)

Jon Dahl
By Jon Dahl0 min readCompany

Welcome to the Mux blog! Stay tuned for company news, product updates, and articles about online video technology and performance. In the meantime, here are some helpful resources. Sign up for Mux ...