I see lot of comments along the lines of "silicon valley hubris", but how much of Quibi's $1.75B actually came from silicon valley?
> In 2018, the startup (then called “New TV”) announced that it had raised $1 billion in funding. Among the initial investors were a who’s who of Hollywood studios: Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom, AT&T’s WarnerMedia, Lionsgate, MGM, ITV and Entertainment One (now part of Hasbro). Tech investors include China’s Alibaba Group. That funding round was led by VC firm Madrone Capital Partners; other investors were Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and John Malone’s Liberty Global. The Katzenberg-founded WndrCo investment vehicle also is a Quibi investor.
It sounds like a bunch of old-school media companies and Hollywood studios trying to play Silicon Valley, and thinking they can build a Decacorn by spending lots of money and hiring famous celebrities, instead of doing small-scale MVPs and market-validation.
There's a lot of non-techies outside of SV who seem to think that developers/designers/product-managers are just doing the menial plumbing of building out other people's ideas, and that anyone can do the same thing if they just had access to capital. Maybe this debacle will convince them that there's more to building a successful business than just capital and "an idea".
I've been a tech consultant in LA for more or less 15 years at this point.
A very large portion of well funded, early stage startups that crash and burn in LA are typically because media people have a hard time conceptualizing lean startup, and rapid iteration etc. Over the years I've accepted it's not so much hubris as it is entertainment is just a different industry with a different way of doing business and people who found success in entertainment think that method they achieved translates to tech startups, when it unfortunately doesn't.
In Hollywood you put all this time and money into one big event like a film, or an album or a pilot and people scoop it up due to marketing. They consume it, then they are done. If they like it they ask for more. So if you have the money you spend all of the money at once to make the best thing possible, put as much marketing and PR against it as possible and people will consume it anyway. Usually you make some of your money back. If consumers ask for more, that's a bonus. Then you go out and raise more for the sequel or the next album or whatever.
Of course tech is different - you can't put all that money into the first iteration and expect it to pay off. You need to stretch it out over many experiments and control burn over years. It's just a totally different financial model and business plan. There are so so many Quibis out there that never got past private alpha / beta. The execs spend YEARS crafting that perfect alpha, open it up privately to friends and family, it flops and then they throw in the towel just like that. I've seen it more times than I can count now
A good friend was recruited by Meg in Quibi's early days (under 20 employees). Her report to me: 0 customer validation, experimentation, research, etc. She ran for the hills and predicted this outcome for years. They had a giant vision from the execs and set out to build it with huge piles of cash. Never stopped to see if consumers actually wanted it along the way. If people's jobs weren't at stake, I would say there is some kind of dark humor here. As a startup, they built the exact type of company startups are great at disrupting.
In their defense, this is how Hulu started. I initially dismissed based on that, but it proved to be a solid rival for Netflix.
But now the market is verrmy different. You are either going for niche ( educational, documentaries, animal planet.. you name it ) or attempt to compete with big boys, which invariably means heavy investment in licensing deals.
I personally think someone did not do their research.
>There's a lot of non-techies outside of SV who seem to think that developers/designers/product-managers are just doing the menial plumbing of building out other people's ideas, and that anyone can do the same thing if they just had access to capital. Maybe this debacle will convince them that there's more to building a successful business than just capital and "an idea".
The problems with Quibi had nothing to do with the developers, designers, or product managers. The only real app specific problems, such as forcing it to be mobile only, likely came directly from the executive team. The undertaking was flawed from the start and lots of people in the entertainment industry believed it was a monumental waste of cash well before the service launched and anyone had a look at the actual tech.
Thank you for clarifying that. That is interesting.
I think I first heard of Quibi from their superbowl ad. That right there is a red flag. There's a certain class of people who think the thing that they happen to do is the most important thing in the world. You have MBA types who argue "good managers can manage anything" (ie you don't need domain knowledge). You have marketers who think that any success is purely a function of the marketing put into it. Worse, any successful launch (eg Disney+) will be seen as a success for marketing.
Time and time again we've seen throwing money at marketing fail to sell a bad product.
The whole focus on celebrities for Quibi I find interesting, particularly in light of this comment about where the money came from. I'm imagining people who are just horribly out of touch in that they come from an era when celebrity endorsements can sell anything. Or maybe it's people who just want to hang out with celebrities. What better way than to run a "studio"?
I mean, Reese Witherspoon getting paid $6m to do a voice over for a show about cheetahs? Wow.
The more I see about Meg Whitman the more I'm convinced she's just an idiot who happened to be in the right place at the right time (with HP). Like I'm honestly shocked eBay went anywhere with her at the helm. Because what else has she done? Tried to buy political office (and failed). Quibi. RIP.
It's hard for to believe that Quibi was anything other than a convoluted scam. There's lots of shortcomings and criticisms that could be lobbied Quibi's way but at the end of the day its weakness was that it hit the ground running with a miniscule content library that was a smattering of garbage in all directions. Mobile only was an okay idea even if a lot of folks are still rolling their eyes at it, but you don't get to then charge big kid subscription prices while releasing new content at a snail's pace. Quantity is king and it's baffling that a bunch of Hollywood types couldn't see that.
Completely agree with this. In fact, I'd say it is the same for a lot of massively overvauled "silicon valley" startups, which actually get little to no funding from the silicon valley ecosystem. A lot of these companies get a fancy-sounding HQ address, hire some engineers from established companies, then go attract investors from other, more traditional industries or foreign countries by selling themselves as the next big tech startup. Theranos is a very famous example of this as well. The company was a joke in the normal SV investment circles since day 1.
It's less hubris and more FOMO. The tech landscape is changing rapidly, execs (in many industries, not just entertainment) are increasingly disconnected with young, diverse customer bases, and therefore nobody knows for sure what will become the next big thing.
There's no downside for a CEO who invests in a failed new venture like Quibi. Very easy to explain away. All his peers did the same, it was an investment in the future, attempt to diversify, outside the box thinking, etc. There is MAJOR downside for NOT investing in a new idea that takes off like a rocket ship, that CEO will look like a fool and "the world passed him by" to investors, peers, employees, talent, etc.
Think in terms of "reputation expected value" of the various CEOs and the multitude of major investors makes total sense.
IF Youtube-style short form content ever fully "grows up" into something like Quibi, the existing Hollywood system has a lot at risk.
So trying to do it first isn't necessarily insane - try to beat the organic disruption there, so they can capture the result.
I'm just not convinced the market for "short [currently free] shit to watch while killing time on my phone" is ever really going to grow into a TV-and-movie-killing Netflix/Hollywood replacement, as compared to a smaller more casual market with smaller returns.
“There's a lot of non-techies outside of SV who seem to think that developers/designers/product-managers are just doing the menial plumbing of building out other people's ideas, and that anyone can do the same thing if they just had access to capital.”
That’s pretty much the idea of supply side and “trickle down“ economics. People with capital are the most important players. People who do the work are not important and replaceable.
> There's a lot of non-techies outside of SV who seem to think that developers/designers/product-managers are just doing the menial plumbing of building out other people's ideas, and that anyone can do the same thing if they just had access to capital. Maybe this debacle will convince them that there's more to building a successful business than just capital and "an idea".
This is interesting.
It's probably hard to distinguish companies w/ entirely different culture and talent from the outside, it might be easy to lump any new company into the same category of "disruptive" or something.
If you had to draw this distinction - which signs would you look for?
I keep thinking about all the philosophy of the Mythical Man Month and proverbial PM who thinks nine women can make a baby in one month, when it comes to this idea that entertainment scales linearly.
Though, interestingly enough, Disney just threw money at the problem and came up with Disney+. Though to be fair there were probably a lot of lessons learned and hiring of very experienced people.
Edit: my point is, yes, it's easy in hindsight to think it would be a success (and surely, a lot of things help). But HBO Go enjoys much less success (and has a lot of technical issues)
Tidal was built to compete with Spotify, see where it went.
They lost me at $4.99/ month with advertising and $6.99/ month without. Since I can't stand video advertising, this costs just as much as Disney+ for an absolutely unknown content library. Comparing them to Disney+ isn't remotely fair though because Disney+ contains a huge library of content and people know exactly what they are getting. Which leave's me scratching my head.
So lets look at another company trying to get into the media game at the ground floor. The Apple TV+ launch was similarly a bit starved for known media properties and went with a fairly similar buy the celebrity sort of route into the business. That's why they have Oprah and Steven Spielberg titles featured prominently. It's why they have Foundation coming on Apple TV+.
And Apple TV+ is $4.99/ month commercial free and (for many), a full year of free content. Even with comparable talent at launch, lower pricing and more generous terms, Apple's offering isn't exactly blowing the doors off the market either. (I kind of think it's doing Ok, just not making Netflix or DIS sweat too much).
If you want to get into media streaming right now, you need to either have a strong existing brand, or you need to be willing to lose a lot of money for a long time building up a catalog of trusted franchises.
It started in april 2020, ie 3 months ago. I think it's presumptuous to say that it "failed" already. It's just below its own target.
Lot ot things can still happen. They can release a show that'll become viral and bring them million of subscribers.
But of course there are some very strange decisions:
- Mobile-only is weird. Why not make mobile a priority, but people are used to watch shows on their TV or PC. And you cannot watch things with multiple other people. Even with one person, it's not really practical.
- Did not allow screenshot: for a mobile only, it's strange, they failed to understand something about the internet. Heck, they could have made a button to annotate and share a screenshot on social media in-app since they're in mobile-only. That would have been something people are used to. But at least allow people to share the content they like. You're just forbidding free advertisment.
They at least seem to be rethinking the “only on mobile” thing. You can now play on a TV using a Chromecast or AirPlay. Still no dedicated smart TV or streaming stick apps, though.
How can the show ever become viral? if no one talks about it on social media, can't take screens to make memes, gifs about it?
I know the sharing feature would have been so much better I assumed they would add this soon.
If I watch something and have no-one to share it with in my social circle it loses its buzz appeal.
Like the most un-entertaining crap (90day finance) is interesting because the people I know also watch it. It becomes a topic. Telling someone about a show they can't access or see even a clip of it online to find out if they are interested in paying $$$ for it seems like a failed business plan in our internet based world.
I'm (in theory) the target demographics for this app. I love short content (YouTube, podcast, web-comics, etc...) and always on the go.
The main problem (for me) was the lack of content, for some reason they didn't tap in the YouTube ecosystem where there is plentiful of talent that specialize in the short (10 minute or less) format, Minutephysics is the first example that come to mind.
Instead they went for the big-star tactics that really doesn't work.
I watched all the show and, while some of them are good, the vast majority is only "meh". This plus the low number of show and episode, doesn't allow me to justify speeding the money of the subscription.
It seem they tried to do Netflix "but short", instead of specializing in on-the-go entertainment.
They don't even have podcast!
However i really want a service with curated short content, but i want more than video! I'm also interested in podcast, articles (side note: can someone recommend summary "this-week-in-[argument]" site or channel?). I currently use YouTube, but a more curated multi-media platform (without ads) would be awesome and i would pay for it.
I don't mean to sound negative, but I thought from the original announcement that this model was absurd.
Yes, people like watching content on their phones, but the novelty of that (for me) was the freedom that came from being locked in to my TV or PC. Freedom was the thing that made me welcome YouTube to my phone.
When I read that Quibi was going to lock customers into a single format I literally laughed out loud. It seemed to me that maybe the founders consulted a handful of teenagers and got pranked in the process.
I installed Quibi a while back, got the 90 day trial, and uninstalled it in under an hour after realizing I couldn't cast it to my FireStick.
>...the company is in talks with Amazon Fire and Roku to bring the app to TV.
This is even funnier. If they had done this much, much earlier they would probably be in much better shape. The fact that they're doing it now indicates that this is the case.
Again, I cannot stress how funny it is that at some point in some meeting, somebody pitched something akin to "You know what people don't care about/hate? Choice." and that flew. It's like something from a Christopher Guest movie.
“With Katzenberg singularly blaming the pandemic”...
If this wasn’t the best time to launch an online entertainment platform - I don’t know what would. With everyone unable to travel and consuming so much media the pandemic should have been a boost to their launch in my opinion.
There’s a reason that the phrase, “Content is King” is so prevalent: it’s a fact.
Like many, I saw dozens of ads for Quibi (many of them on YouTube) and the entire campaign was centered around selling me on the concept of short-form content—-something I found hilarious on YouTube since anyone who frequents YouTube is probably already pretty sold on that concept. At no point was I given any indication of what I could watch. Every ad left me totally disengaged because I was either left to guess at what they might have or to assume that their library must be pretty shit if they aren’t going to talk about it.
I worked at Netflix when the company began the idea of a “Netflix Original.” Everyone points to House of Cards as the first (and, in terms of Netflix-produced content, it was) but there was a lesser known first original called “Lillyhammer.” You didn’t hear about it because it was literally dipping the toes into the water of what it meant to “own” content rather that just license it. It wasn’t a signature piece of content we could build a brand around.
House of Cards and Orange is the New Black were the big ones and they came 6 and 9 months later respectively. They were “signature” shows that set the tone of what Netflix originals were all about. I remember the lead Product Manager and I sitting together and discussing whether we should include a promotional photo of one of the characters from House of Cards giving the camera the middle finger in our main experience. We knew that parents and conservative groups might be upset by it being right there in our UI; but, we also knew the tone we wanted to set for our content. We put it in. The content drove our marketing.
It was important that people get on board with the idea of “Netflix Originals.” But it was more important that the content spoke for itself. In Quibi’s case, they need content they can showcase that speak for itself and gets people on the platform. No one will care if it’s “short form” or “long form” as long as it’s GOOD.
Their USP is anything but unique. There's nothing at all to stop Netflix, YouTube, Amazon etc putting out ten minute chunks of content. They seem to have mistaken content production for content distribution. If short videos are what people want, then act as a production studio and sell your content to one of the streaming services.
The thought that buying short content from celebrities I think fails to realize that content is not desired if from people who have status, but content that is interesting in and of itself. The fact that the two spearheads are in Hollywood shows this as a viable hypothesis why other avenues were not considered.
This is just another overly hyped "business" that wasn't meant to pan out.
I think hits the nail on the head, the shows were just boring.
It also plays into my hypothesis that writers in Hollywood are very underappreciated, because I don't know how else we get so much poorly written garbage, given the budgets involved.
Yeah, they miss the point. They can't compete against the virality of TikTok or YouTube on short video. People like streaming when they can binge. They are fine watching a show in chunks as they have time. But they want to be able to watch a bunch in a row if they have the time. Just not tested at all with users, a huge "build it and they will come" failure.
> Quibi’s signature “Turnstyle” technology, which allowed content to flow from portrait view to landscape and back again seamlessly on your phone, is tied up in a patent lawsuit with a deep-pocketed hedge fund.
Seems like this minimizes the seriousness a bit. The deep pocketed hedge fund is Elliott Management and they are basically gunning for the whole company. They're working with the original patent holder and bankrolling the law suit process.
Elliott (Paul Singer) are not stupid and they don't play nice. If they are stepping into bankroll this lawsuit then they obviously see something and the lawsuit should be considered an existential threat to Quibi. Singer strikes fear into sovereign nations so a couple media execs are going to be small potatoes.
It's easy: All of the hype was manufactured. No one was actually excited for it, there were just a ton of articles that made you think you others were.
I have another question: how did anyone buy into Quibi?
Extremely short film only works for the spontaneity of people’s individual creativity and not as a corporately produced product. See: vine, tiktok, etc. When it’s a corporate production it isn’t cool anymore.
I knew as soon as I heard about Quibi that it would fail. A few reasons:
- Mobile first short content has already been tried multiple times by the big players and failed to find a market fit. The only one who has succeeded is YouTube, and they're free.
- Original content only. You can't start a streaming service with just original content. You need a library of content, which means licensing existing content, or having a library already (HBOMax, CBS All Access, Peacock, etc. all have back catalogs from their parent companies).
- Meg Whitman. I worked for Meg at eBay/PayPal. She was brilliant. But her expertise is growing a successful enterprise, not coming from behind. Look at her two main gigs -- eBay/PayPal, where she came into an already profitable enterprise and made it explode, and HPE, where she came into a failing enterprise and made it worse.
There are a lot of startups which make you question your sanity, but they end up working out because your initial assumptions or understanding of the market are completely wrong. I've been caught enough times over the years to give the benefit of the doubt to new companies.
That said, this is not one of those times.
Quibi's business model as it stands now is batshit insane. The fact that it hasn't taken off has given me a deep sense of relief that the guy in the mirror is not the one who is barking mad.
Personally, my guess is that it's some sort of Russian oligarch money laundering scheme. Or something akin to a modern day equivalent of The Producers where they make money from total failure.
The name sounds like some chinese app that I see spammed on YouTube ads all the timed and a paid subscription at this time for a vine-like TV streaming service? HULU was free for ages. Disney+ just came out. Fail.
> while it’s too soon to declare the end of Quibi, it’s still worth asking: is the promise of the quick bite already over? And what went so wrong?
it doesn't say "it failed" it says their adoption has collapsed. "it has simply not met early (and very ambitious) targets" is just another way of saying their numbers are bad, which is ... all the article is saying. Doesn't seem even remotely close to warranting a flag.
[+] [-] whack|5 years ago|reply
> In 2018, the startup (then called “New TV”) announced that it had raised $1 billion in funding. Among the initial investors were a who’s who of Hollywood studios: Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom, AT&T’s WarnerMedia, Lionsgate, MGM, ITV and Entertainment One (now part of Hasbro). Tech investors include China’s Alibaba Group. That funding round was led by VC firm Madrone Capital Partners; other investors were Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and John Malone’s Liberty Global. The Katzenberg-founded WndrCo investment vehicle also is a Quibi investor.
It sounds like a bunch of old-school media companies and Hollywood studios trying to play Silicon Valley, and thinking they can build a Decacorn by spending lots of money and hiring famous celebrities, instead of doing small-scale MVPs and market-validation.
There's a lot of non-techies outside of SV who seem to think that developers/designers/product-managers are just doing the menial plumbing of building out other people's ideas, and that anyone can do the same thing if they just had access to capital. Maybe this debacle will convince them that there's more to building a successful business than just capital and "an idea".
[+] [-] rwhitman|5 years ago|reply
A very large portion of well funded, early stage startups that crash and burn in LA are typically because media people have a hard time conceptualizing lean startup, and rapid iteration etc. Over the years I've accepted it's not so much hubris as it is entertainment is just a different industry with a different way of doing business and people who found success in entertainment think that method they achieved translates to tech startups, when it unfortunately doesn't.
In Hollywood you put all this time and money into one big event like a film, or an album or a pilot and people scoop it up due to marketing. They consume it, then they are done. If they like it they ask for more. So if you have the money you spend all of the money at once to make the best thing possible, put as much marketing and PR against it as possible and people will consume it anyway. Usually you make some of your money back. If consumers ask for more, that's a bonus. Then you go out and raise more for the sequel or the next album or whatever.
Of course tech is different - you can't put all that money into the first iteration and expect it to pay off. You need to stretch it out over many experiments and control burn over years. It's just a totally different financial model and business plan. There are so so many Quibis out there that never got past private alpha / beta. The execs spend YEARS crafting that perfect alpha, open it up privately to friends and family, it flops and then they throw in the towel just like that. I've seen it more times than I can count now
[+] [-] kevc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|5 years ago|reply
But now the market is verrmy different. You are either going for niche ( educational, documentaries, animal planet.. you name it ) or attempt to compete with big boys, which invariably means heavy investment in licensing deals.
I personally think someone did not do their research.
[+] [-] slg|5 years ago|reply
The problems with Quibi had nothing to do with the developers, designers, or product managers. The only real app specific problems, such as forcing it to be mobile only, likely came directly from the executive team. The undertaking was flawed from the start and lots of people in the entertainment industry believed it was a monumental waste of cash well before the service launched and anyone had a look at the actual tech.
[+] [-] cletus|5 years ago|reply
I think I first heard of Quibi from their superbowl ad. That right there is a red flag. There's a certain class of people who think the thing that they happen to do is the most important thing in the world. You have MBA types who argue "good managers can manage anything" (ie you don't need domain knowledge). You have marketers who think that any success is purely a function of the marketing put into it. Worse, any successful launch (eg Disney+) will be seen as a success for marketing.
Time and time again we've seen throwing money at marketing fail to sell a bad product.
The whole focus on celebrities for Quibi I find interesting, particularly in light of this comment about where the money came from. I'm imagining people who are just horribly out of touch in that they come from an era when celebrity endorsements can sell anything. Or maybe it's people who just want to hang out with celebrities. What better way than to run a "studio"?
I mean, Reese Witherspoon getting paid $6m to do a voice over for a show about cheetahs? Wow.
The more I see about Meg Whitman the more I'm convinced she's just an idiot who happened to be in the right place at the right time (with HP). Like I'm honestly shocked eBay went anywhere with her at the helm. Because what else has she done? Tried to buy political office (and failed). Quibi. RIP.
[+] [-] jdxcode|5 years ago|reply
If I had run eBay and HP I think I’d be trying to hide that from my resume.
[+] [-] ir7rrhrh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] listenallyall|5 years ago|reply
There's no downside for a CEO who invests in a failed new venture like Quibi. Very easy to explain away. All his peers did the same, it was an investment in the future, attempt to diversify, outside the box thinking, etc. There is MAJOR downside for NOT investing in a new idea that takes off like a rocket ship, that CEO will look like a fool and "the world passed him by" to investors, peers, employees, talent, etc.
Think in terms of "reputation expected value" of the various CEOs and the multitude of major investors makes total sense.
[+] [-] majormajor|5 years ago|reply
So trying to do it first isn't necessarily insane - try to beat the organic disruption there, so they can capture the result.
I'm just not convinced the market for "short [currently free] shit to watch while killing time on my phone" is ever really going to grow into a TV-and-movie-killing Netflix/Hollywood replacement, as compared to a smaller more casual market with smaller returns.
[+] [-] spaetzleesser|5 years ago|reply
That’s pretty much the idea of supply side and “trickle down“ economics. People with capital are the most important players. People who do the work are not important and replaceable.
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|5 years ago|reply
This is interesting.
It's probably hard to distinguish companies w/ entirely different culture and talent from the outside, it might be easy to lump any new company into the same category of "disruptive" or something.
If you had to draw this distinction - which signs would you look for?
[+] [-] artsyca|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zantana|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|5 years ago|reply
Edit: my point is, yes, it's easy in hindsight to think it would be a success (and surely, a lot of things help). But HBO Go enjoys much less success (and has a lot of technical issues)
Tidal was built to compete with Spotify, see where it went.
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
So lets look at another company trying to get into the media game at the ground floor. The Apple TV+ launch was similarly a bit starved for known media properties and went with a fairly similar buy the celebrity sort of route into the business. That's why they have Oprah and Steven Spielberg titles featured prominently. It's why they have Foundation coming on Apple TV+.
And Apple TV+ is $4.99/ month commercial free and (for many), a full year of free content. Even with comparable talent at launch, lower pricing and more generous terms, Apple's offering isn't exactly blowing the doors off the market either. (I kind of think it's doing Ok, just not making Netflix or DIS sweat too much).
If you want to get into media streaming right now, you need to either have a strong existing brand, or you need to be willing to lose a lot of money for a long time building up a catalog of trusted franchises.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] elcomet|5 years ago|reply
Lot ot things can still happen. They can release a show that'll become viral and bring them million of subscribers.
But of course there are some very strange decisions:
- Mobile-only is weird. Why not make mobile a priority, but people are used to watch shows on their TV or PC. And you cannot watch things with multiple other people. Even with one person, it's not really practical.
- Did not allow screenshot: for a mobile only, it's strange, they failed to understand something about the internet. Heck, they could have made a button to annotate and share a screenshot on social media in-app since they're in mobile-only. That would have been something people are used to. But at least allow people to share the content they like. You're just forbidding free advertisment.
[+] [-] perardi|5 years ago|reply
https://help.quibi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042455452-Can-I-...
[+] [-] unpopdancetrio|5 years ago|reply
I know the sharing feature would have been so much better I assumed they would add this soon. If I watch something and have no-one to share it with in my social circle it loses its buzz appeal. Like the most un-entertaining crap (90day finance) is interesting because the people I know also watch it. It becomes a topic. Telling someone about a show they can't access or see even a clip of it online to find out if they are interested in paying $$$ for it seems like a failed business plan in our internet based world.
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|5 years ago|reply
Whereas success means "exceeded expectations."
Even if an objective measure (revenue, users etc...) is higher for the "failure" than the "success."
[+] [-] hexmiles|5 years ago|reply
The main problem (for me) was the lack of content, for some reason they didn't tap in the YouTube ecosystem where there is plentiful of talent that specialize in the short (10 minute or less) format, Minutephysics is the first example that come to mind. Instead they went for the big-star tactics that really doesn't work.
I watched all the show and, while some of them are good, the vast majority is only "meh". This plus the low number of show and episode, doesn't allow me to justify speeding the money of the subscription.
It seem they tried to do Netflix "but short", instead of specializing in on-the-go entertainment. They don't even have podcast!
However i really want a service with curated short content, but i want more than video! I'm also interested in podcast, articles (side note: can someone recommend summary "this-week-in-[argument]" site or channel?). I currently use YouTube, but a more curated multi-media platform (without ads) would be awesome and i would pay for it.
[+] [-] newbie789|5 years ago|reply
Yes, people like watching content on their phones, but the novelty of that (for me) was the freedom that came from being locked in to my TV or PC. Freedom was the thing that made me welcome YouTube to my phone.
When I read that Quibi was going to lock customers into a single format I literally laughed out loud. It seemed to me that maybe the founders consulted a handful of teenagers and got pranked in the process.
I installed Quibi a while back, got the 90 day trial, and uninstalled it in under an hour after realizing I couldn't cast it to my FireStick.
>...the company is in talks with Amazon Fire and Roku to bring the app to TV.
This is even funnier. If they had done this much, much earlier they would probably be in much better shape. The fact that they're doing it now indicates that this is the case.
Again, I cannot stress how funny it is that at some point in some meeting, somebody pitched something akin to "You know what people don't care about/hate? Choice." and that flew. It's like something from a Christopher Guest movie.
[+] [-] erikig|5 years ago|reply
If this wasn’t the best time to launch an online entertainment platform - I don’t know what would. With everyone unable to travel and consuming so much media the pandemic should have been a boost to their launch in my opinion.
[+] [-] bcrescimanno|5 years ago|reply
Like many, I saw dozens of ads for Quibi (many of them on YouTube) and the entire campaign was centered around selling me on the concept of short-form content—-something I found hilarious on YouTube since anyone who frequents YouTube is probably already pretty sold on that concept. At no point was I given any indication of what I could watch. Every ad left me totally disengaged because I was either left to guess at what they might have or to assume that their library must be pretty shit if they aren’t going to talk about it.
I worked at Netflix when the company began the idea of a “Netflix Original.” Everyone points to House of Cards as the first (and, in terms of Netflix-produced content, it was) but there was a lesser known first original called “Lillyhammer.” You didn’t hear about it because it was literally dipping the toes into the water of what it meant to “own” content rather that just license it. It wasn’t a signature piece of content we could build a brand around.
House of Cards and Orange is the New Black were the big ones and they came 6 and 9 months later respectively. They were “signature” shows that set the tone of what Netflix originals were all about. I remember the lead Product Manager and I sitting together and discussing whether we should include a promotional photo of one of the characters from House of Cards giving the camera the middle finger in our main experience. We knew that parents and conservative groups might be upset by it being right there in our UI; but, we also knew the tone we wanted to set for our content. We put it in. The content drove our marketing.
It was important that people get on board with the idea of “Netflix Originals.” But it was more important that the content spoke for itself. In Quibi’s case, they need content they can showcase that speak for itself and gets people on the platform. No one will care if it’s “short form” or “long form” as long as it’s GOOD.
[+] [-] sgt101|5 years ago|reply
You find out by trying.
The thing is not to use $1bn to try.
[+] [-] dawg-|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spzb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobblywobbles|5 years ago|reply
This is just another overly hyped "business" that wasn't meant to pan out.
[+] [-] Eridrus|5 years ago|reply
It also plays into my hypothesis that writers in Hollywood are very underappreciated, because I don't know how else we get so much poorly written garbage, given the budgets involved.
[+] [-] snarf21|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mason55|5 years ago|reply
Seems like this minimizes the seriousness a bit. The deep pocketed hedge fund is Elliott Management and they are basically gunning for the whole company. They're working with the original patent holder and bankrolling the law suit process.
Elliott (Paul Singer) are not stupid and they don't play nice. If they are stepping into bankroll this lawsuit then they obviously see something and the lawsuit should be considered an existential threat to Quibi. Singer strikes fear into sovereign nations so a couple media execs are going to be small potatoes.
[+] [-] iwasakabukiman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wahlrus|5 years ago|reply
Classic silicon valley-style hubris.
[+] [-] TeaDrunk|5 years ago|reply
Extremely short film only works for the spontaneity of people’s individual creativity and not as a corporately produced product. See: vine, tiktok, etc. When it’s a corporate production it isn’t cool anymore.
[+] [-] jedberg|5 years ago|reply
- Mobile first short content has already been tried multiple times by the big players and failed to find a market fit. The only one who has succeeded is YouTube, and they're free.
- Original content only. You can't start a streaming service with just original content. You need a library of content, which means licensing existing content, or having a library already (HBOMax, CBS All Access, Peacock, etc. all have back catalogs from their parent companies).
- Meg Whitman. I worked for Meg at eBay/PayPal. She was brilliant. But her expertise is growing a successful enterprise, not coming from behind. Look at her two main gigs -- eBay/PayPal, where she came into an already profitable enterprise and made it explode, and HPE, where she came into a failing enterprise and made it worse.
[+] [-] russellbeattie|5 years ago|reply
That said, this is not one of those times.
Quibi's business model as it stands now is batshit insane. The fact that it hasn't taken off has given me a deep sense of relief that the guy in the mirror is not the one who is barking mad.
Personally, my guess is that it's some sort of Russian oligarch money laundering scheme. Or something akin to a modern day equivalent of The Producers where they make money from total failure.
[+] [-] Apofis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerdickey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zemo|5 years ago|reply
> while it’s too soon to declare the end of Quibi, it’s still worth asking: is the promise of the quick bite already over? And what went so wrong?
it doesn't say "it failed" it says their adoption has collapsed. "it has simply not met early (and very ambitious) targets" is just another way of saying their numbers are bad, which is ... all the article is saying. Doesn't seem even remotely close to warranting a flag.
[+] [-] mellosouls|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cududa|5 years ago|reply
I know they recently enabled AirPlay, but seriously, if they would’ve just launched with a smart TV app they might’ve been better off