Comment by techjamie
6 months ago
Crunchyroll was originally an anime piracy site that went legit and started actually licensing content later. They started in mid-2006, got VC funding in 2008, then made their first licensing deal in 2009.
https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technol...
https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-ani...
Yep, they were huge too - virtually anyone who watched free anime back then would have known about them.
My theory is that once they saw how much traffic they were getting, they realized how big of a market (subbed/dubbed) anime was.
Good Old Games started out with the founders selling pirated games on disc at local markets.
Pirated games translated to Polish if possible, because game devs weren't catering to the market with translations, and Poland didn't respect foreign copyright.
And now Crunchyroll is owned by (through a lot of companies, like Aniplex of America, Aniplex, A1 Pictures) Sony, who produces a large amount of anime!