Xavier Kochar has joined pocket.watch as the company’s first chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
Kochar will oversee pocket.watch’s major business units, including direct-to-consumer, content sales and distribution, advertising, consumer products, gaming and creator partnerships; he will also lead the corporate development, strategy, and finance divisions of the company.
“These last few years we have seen the major vertically integrated media companies take back much of their own content in order to stand up and grow their direct-to-consumer offerings. This has created a massive opportunity for those independent content platforms who have proven they can deliver young audiences who are drawn to creator-based content, to fill this void,” Kochar said. “Pocket.watch is one of only a few creator-economy companies in Kids & Family — a category that has shown to not only drive first-time streams, but also greatly reduce churn — to have proven this model. And perhaps the only one whose tremendous growth is largely ahead of it. I feel privileged to be working with the pocket.watch team to help them realize this growth.”
Kochar comes to pocket.watch from the AT&T family of companies, as the head of strategy and business development for HBO Max, and most recently working within the corporate strategy and development group of its parent company, AT&T Inc.
Prior to his role at WarnerMedia, he was the founder and CEO of the Video Genome Project (VGP), a video personalization engine company. The VGP was acquired by Hulu before it launched Hulu live and incorporated into the company’s discovery and recommendation engine.
Before founding the VGP, Kochar was managing director at advertising and media advisory firm Medialink, which was acquired by Ascential plc. Additionally he brings experience as a corporate executive at The Walt Disney Company and L.E.K. Consulting.
“Xavier’s vast experience in corporate strategy and development, operations, and finance in companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100s is precisely what pocket.watch needs as we consider all the opportunities in our next phase of growth,” said pocket.watch founder and CEO Chris M. Williams. “I am thrilled he has agreed to join pocket.watch and confident his extremely rare combination of entrepreneurial savvy and corporate intelligence will take the company to the next level.”