11 September, 2020

E95 – Olivia Humphrey, Kanopy

Olivia Humphrey is the founder, former CEO, and current executive chairman of Kanopy, the award-winning video streaming service for universities and libraries. She worked in media rights management at the BBC and Village Roadshow for 10 years before founding Kanopy in Perth back in 2008. After growing the business for a few years, Olivia and her young family packed up and moved to San Francisco in 2013 to help Kanopy’s overseas expansion. Today, millions of students at thousands of universities use Kanopy’s service. Olivia transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman in 2019 and moved back to Perth. She was recently appointed entrepreneur-in-residence at Curtin University.
In this conversation with Phaedon, Olivia talks about…

• How to think about growing beyond Australia from the start
• Scaling once landing in the US
• The pros and cons of bootstrapping
• The process of exiting Kanopy
• What’s next for her