This Ankler feature is 13 minutes long
The trip to Ilya PozinThe house is dangerous. Driving up the main thoroughfare of Beverly Hills’ Coldwater Canyon involves negotiating several hairpin turns on a steep, winding road. Not knowing what awaits you around the next bend is nerve-wracking.
It’s a fitting location for Pozin, a serial entrepreneur who has demonstrated a keen sense for what’s going on behind the scenes in the media and entertainment industry.
Not long after Viacom acquired the last startup he co-founded, Pluto TV, for $340 million in cash in January 2019 (a smart move to buy cash rather than stock), Pozin plunked down $30 million for this hillside mansion. When I arrive for our interview, I’m met at the gate by an assistant who leads me through a massive car lot populated with a handful of Teslas. Once I enter the 900-square-foot, five-bedroom home, I’m led up a floating, elliptical staircase into the great room, which offers a jetliner-like view of the city thanks to floor-to-ceiling walls of automated glass. A motorized replica of the helmet Tony Stark wore in Iron Man stands on a table nearby and a waterfall splashes into a pond in the house.
Pozin, 41, is dressed casually in white sneakers and jeans, a look you might call “Silicon Valley Disruptor.” The son of Russian immigrants, he grew up in modest circumstances in Maryland and attended Florida State University, where he studied information technology. Today, he marvels at his self-made fortune and his new Bond-villain abode. “I moved in about a year and a half ago, so I’m literally a beta tester here,” he says. Then he tells me that even $30 million homeowners have problems just like us. “The roof is flat, which is great until water comes in,” Pozin says. “In my bedroom, the water comes in.”
I’m here to discuss Pozin’s latest and boldest project yet: Telly, a two-year-old startup that offers consumers a free 55-inch TV with just one catch—the TV has a second “smart screen” beneath the speakers that broadcasts a nonstop stream of advertisements (as well as the time, weather, news, and other data). Oh, and all of your viewing habits are tracked, and that data is used to optimize the ads shown by Telly.
In other words, television is the result of the long and winding road of surveillance capitalism, where technology companies offer “free” and “smart” products in exchange for information that was once private – including what you watch in the comfort of your own home.
Telly isn’t the first smart or “connected” TV on the market: Roku and Vizio are its biggest competitors, but their TVs cost real money (around $300). Pozin has previously claimed that if a Telly were on sale, it would retail for around $1,000, though it’s unclear how he arrived at that figure.
Pozin’s competitors still collect all your TV data, but the difference with Telly is the second screen cannot be turned offIf a television owner Disable trackingthey can do this… by returning the free TV. Remember the saying: If you don’t know what the product is, then Are the product.
