Joining the company are former Comedy Central general manager Dave Bernath in a new role as director of business development and content strategy; Former Vubiquity VP of sales Richard Cross as director of business development headquartered in London; former Mediagenix business development director Jose Maria Fregoso as director of business development, Latin America; former Vewd VP of sales and business development Michael Winneker as the company’s director of business development, and former Warner Bros. vice president of sales and strategic partnerships Deanne Lewis (pictured) as director of business development. All five executives will report to Wurl SVP worldwide business development Craig Heiting.

“During the first three months of 2021, we added about 30 new employees in engineering, operations and sales, including the stellar additions to our team of Bernath, Cross, Fregoso, Winneker, and Lewis,” commented Wurl CEO Sean Doherty. “We are looking to double our staff of full-time employees by the end of the year. As more countries and ‘streamers’ are added to the Wurl Network, our volume of new channel launches accelerates. We now distribute nearly 900 channels across our network. We expect channel growth to accelerate during the remainder of 2021.”

The company’s new hires come at a time of rapid growth, both within the streaming industry as well as for Wurl which has just claimed what it called “stellar” results in Q1.

The firm said that by the end of the first quarter of the year, active monthly viewers were up 45% compared with Q4 2020 and up 235% vs Q1 2020. First quarter 2021 hours of viewing (HOV) grew 55% on a sequential quarterly basis and 279% year-on-year. Ad impressions on the Wurl Network increased 428% from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021.