StreamGuys Announces Key Personnel Promotions And Appointments

Pioneering streaming and podcast solutions provider StreamGuys announced a trio of leadership promotions and appointments, Eduardo Martinez and Jesse Orr have been promoted to VP of Technology and VP of Engineering, respectively, while Tara Strickwerda has taken on the role of Director of Customer Success.

Eduardo has been a key contributor and leader at StreamGuys for over 15 years, most recently leveraging his deep podcasting and streaming experience as the company’s Director of Technology. Always on the pulse of the rapidly evolving digital media landscape, he successfully guides StreamGuys in defining and developing their end-to-end SaaS delivery, analytics, management, and monetization products and services. As VP of Technology, he will continue to oversee the planning, architecture, and design of StreamGuys’ growing range of solutions.

As VP of Engineering, Jesse meticulously oversees the company’s extensive infrastructure. He is deeply intertwined with every aspect of StreamGuys’ platform, including deploying new technology stacks that support greater levels of automation; tuning and optimizing existing workflows to ensure “epic uptimes” for clients’ services; and writing scripts to support next-generation services. He continually pushes his boundaries, always finding new methods to solve many problems inherent in streaming media and sharing his findings with his skilled teammates.

As the director of Customer Success at StreamGuys, Tara is passionate about identifying and meeting the individual needs of the company’s diverse clients. She joined StreamGuys last year with over 25 years of experience delivering simple to complex solutions across multiple industries. A problem solver by nature and education, she applies her skills to addressing real-world problems faced by clients and organizations. Before joining StreamGuys in 2021, she helped turn a struggling aerospace company into a top-performing supplier for aviation component manufacturing.

“Our employees are the lifeblood of StreamGuys’ success, and it’s important to us that we provide career paths that enable them to continue developing and meeting their goals,” said Kiiriki Delaney, president, StreamGuys. “These appointments not only help position StreamGuys for the next stage of the company’s growth, but we are also intended to enable these exceptional individuals to continue their own personal advancement. We’re excited to see what they can achieve for our customers, our company, and themselves in their new roles.”

StreamGuys Expand Executive Team With Vice President of Sales and Marketing

StreamGuys continues to add to new talent throughout the company, with recent hires in sales, technical support and software engineering to align with its business growth. The company proudly welcomes Megan Killion as Vice President of Sales and Marketing – a newly created executive-level position that signals an evolution in sales philosophy. Reporting to StreamGuys President Kriki Delany, Megan will develop strategic initiatives that build a stronger sales culture across the organization, with an emphasis on driving new business and increasing close rates.

Megan brings 15 years of B2B technology sales and marketing experience to StreamGuys, with strong pedigree in global business development, lead generation, corporate partnerships and market expansion. She has worked closely with StreamGuys through previous executive positions at her own MKC Agency, there she worked with StreamGuys on branding and outbound marketing initiatives.

These experiences, along with previous similar positions Ericsson UDN and long-term consultancies with Mutable, Reblaze, and StackPath, provide Megan with a broad knowledge of the technology infrastructure that StreamGuys excels in across the CDN, cloud, edge computing and streaming universe. More importantly, she knows how to translate product and technology language into sales success for new and existing clients, and move successful companies like StreamGuys into lucrative new markets.

“StreamGuys has an innovative portfolio of technology with rich feature sets, and a technical and customer support team that is unmatched,” said Killion. “One of my goals is to help StreamGuys productize and market the existing features and services they offer, and develop a clear roadmap to mid-to-large enterprise businesses that aren’t yet familiar with the company.”

Megan adds that she is “hyper-focused on pipelines,” which helps to increase close rates by establishing a productive sales motion. That is only possible upon building a sales-oriented business culture. “My experience working in the technology space suggests that few companies really understand why they need both a strong sales culture and engineering vision. StreamGuys has both excellent sales and engineering teams in place, and they work very hard to service their customers and deliver on the technology promises they make. I am excited to bring these operations even closer together.”

Megan caught the attention of Kriki Delaney and other executives at StreamGuys while partnering with CacheFly on an ultra-low latency streaming technology, which she productized and took to market for CacheFly. They were also impressed with her strong sales acumen: Megan quadrupled revenue for CacheFly in the 18 months with the company.

“We recognized firsthand what Megan brought to CacheFly’s sales culture while the StreamGuys team implemented this technology,” said Delany. “We believe her expertise will introduce StreamGuys to a much wider base of customers, both inside the broadcast media space and within new markets including sports, worship and corporate enterprise. There is a largely untapped market for audio and video services in podcasting, live streaming and cloud distribution across these markets the we are poised to capitalize on with Megan’s vision in place.”

StreamGuys Upgrades Multimedia Player with Full-Page Experience

Pioneering streaming and podcast solutions provider StreamGuys has unveiled a major upgrade to its HTML-5-based SGplayer multimedia player. Complementing SGplayer’s existing embeddable configuration, version 3.2 offers a new full-page layout mode that provides additional ways for radio broadcasters and content producers to connect with their audiences and monetize their live streams and podcasts.

Hosted and managed by StreamGuys, SGplayer offers content providers a full-featured, multi-format media player that they can easily incorporate into their websites to present live streams and on-demand content. SGplayer 3.2’s newly-redesigned, responsive user interface delivers attractive, customizable listening experiences on desktop and mobile devices while making it even easier for consumers to find and access relevant content. Tight integration with StreamGuys’ SGrewind time-shifting technology allows listeners to pause, resume, and rewind live streams or jump back to the beginning of a recently-streamed show through a scrollable and searchable program guide.

New engagement buttons in SGplayer 3.2’s full-page layout allow radio stations and podcasters to establish ongoing connections with their audiences. Listeners can quickly subscribe to podcasts through RSS feeds or third-party platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts, while a new Share button lets listeners easily propagate player links for their favorite live streams and on-demand content on popular social media networks and community forums. Enhanced search functionality allows consumers to find podcast episodes of interest by matching keywords to descriptions. The new full-page podcast presentation design can also showcase other podcast series from the same producer alongside the current episode list, encouraging listeners to discover and engage with more of the producer’s content.

Two new monetization features in SGplayer 3.2 supplement its existing support for dynamic advertising insertion. Content providers with existing e-commerce destinations can add a “Buy” button or link to the iTunes Store to allow listeners to immediately purchase products such as individual songs or albums. Customizable, clickable links can be added to live stream and podcast descriptions to take listeners to sponsors’ websites, event ticket sales portals, or any other online destination the content provider wishes.

“Broadcasters and podcast publishers are constantly striving to deepen their relationships with their listeners and expand the monetization of their content beyond traditional advertising,” said Eduardo Martinez, director of technology, StreamGuys. “SGplayer 3.2’s new full-page layout is the result of extensive research we conducted with our customers to optimize how we help them achieve those goals. Its new interface design and features enable audio enterprises to deliver differentiated, engaging audience experiences that will keep their listeners coming back for more.”

Radio Free Entertainment Network, Ltd. (RFEN) was one of the beta testers for SGplayer 3.2, and agrees that the new version represents a significant step forward. “The new SGplayer enables scalable new opportunities for our marketing sales consultants and our clients,” said Christavus Dominic, CEO and founder of RFEN. “It will help them increase their productivity and profits through features like customizable text and clickable links for sponsorships and promotional events.”

SGplayer 3.2 is available immediately.