[mgadams3]

Wow, that honestly happened much sooner than I thought that it would.

Will be really interesting to see if anyone steps up to buy the content... but from what little I watched it was all pretty rough.

Seems like a lesson learned about raising money to solve something people don't care about... in this case a first-class mobile experience...

Who knows, maybe in 10 years we'll all be like "Quibi was really ahead of it's time"

[slg]

>Will be really interesting to see if anyone steps up to buy the content...

I would be surprised if anyone does. The reason why Quibi was able to get so many creators onboard is twofold. The first reason is they had a lot of money to spend. The second reason is that the deals they signed were very friendly to creators. Quibi got two years of exclusivity with the content, but they didn't own it outright. The creators could reedit the shows into more traditional formats and resell it after two years or even just give it away for free on Youtube and make whatever they can in ad revenue. So while the content will likely resurface eventually, I can't imagine many big players will want to pick up Quibi's side of those original deals.

[ViViDboarder]

I’m sure Quibi has debts. They may end up selling them for less given the limited terms or free the content back to creators sooner.

[dvt]

> Seems like a lesson learned about raising money to solve something people don't care about... in this case a first-class mobile experience...

People do want a first-class mobile experience (see TikTok), they just don't want to pay a premium for it. If you charge people for something, you better make damn sure it's way better than the free alternative.

[adrr]

YouTube premium has 20mm paying users. Educated guess most of users consume through a mobile device.

Biggest issue with Quibi was lack of app for TV. They cut their TAM by only focusing on Mobile. I don’t think YouTube premium would be as popular if it was only for 1 platform.

[scsilver]

I dont think anyone wants to watch 10-20 minute shorts made by professionals. They want 30+ or 30 seconds.

[mgadams3]

very true. I should have been more clear that I was referring to their whole seamless profile vs landscape thing that I personally thought was silly when I tried Quibi. Seems like a good idea in theory tho

[vhiremath4]

> Who knows, maybe in 10 years we'll all be like "Quibi was really ahead of it's time"

From what I've observed, this only happens in two cases:

* Where there was a fan base that loved the product but it just didn't work out.

* Where there was legitimate innovation behind the offering that can't be fully realized.

I don't think Quibi hits either of these points. There might be other signals I haven't thought through, but these are the 2 main ones I've been able to piece together for when people attribute a company being "ahead of its time".

[dogma1138]

It’s not that other video services don’t have a good mobile experience already.

People just care much more about content than the experience unless it’s really really terrible and even then in the case of shows and movies content comes first.

15 min episodes with lackluster content that are essentially only good for your short commute run isn’t and likely never will be what people are looking for.

I honestly didn’t even knew Quibi existed until this year or maybe late 2019 when they had a huge marketing push for their exclusive shows and those shows sucked. You got a disjointed experience akin to a hallmark movie split into short episodes.

We already tried that with “webisodes” in the past and they didn’t survive once streaming became a thing because they couldn’t match the quality of the content of Netflix and co.

Quibi failed because people don’t mind pausing and the few that do probably would rather watch a 20-30min episode of their favorite sitcoms during commute than 1 or 2 episodes of some Quibi show.

The format especially the portrait mode content was also annoying as fuck, this isn’t instagram.

[jere]

> I honestly didn’t even knew Quibi existed until this year or maybe late 2019

Uhh..so? It didn't even launch until April 2020.

[Jtsummers]

> I honestly didn’t even knew Quibi existed until this year or maybe late 2019 when they had a huge marketing push for their exclusive shows and those shows sucked.

You didn't know of it earlier because it was founded in 2018 with a product launch in 2020.

[vmception]

This is all overly verbose to pass the moderation filter

Quibi shutting down is met with a resounding lol from every demographic on the planet the end

[DennisAleynikov]

seems like this was a "oops wrong time" money overinvestment? like they made a serious play to enter the market and then, bam everyones back to TV only... great your market has just died essentially and the essential workers don't care for new age apps for content quite as much as the free time on the facebook shuttle crowd

[gk1]

> raising money to solve something people don't care about... in this case a first-class mobile experience...

It's easy to look back and say that. I wouldn't have guessed people cared about temporary video messages, but look at Snap.

[dogma1138]

Snap allowed you to have conversations like you would in the real world as in ones that aren’t automatically put into permanent record.

Quibi gave you portrait TV shows with low production value with actors trying to cash in on the remainder of their GoT fame.

[Nextgrid]

> I wouldn't have guessed people cared about temporary video messages, but look at Snap.

Nobody's paying for Snap either. The only reason they are (somewhat) alive is because advertisers still think burning money on annoying people is worth it based on inflated or misleading metrics. Once the adtech bubble pops they'll be down the toilet as well.

[redisman]

Also that initial 1 billion round is just dumb dumb money. Honestly one of the worst things you can do to a early stage startup. Just remove all the breaks and any chance for pivots, it's full steam ahead!

[smt88]

A single TV season on HBO often costs $50-100M.

The amount they raised is reasonable if the goal is to create a few flagship shows and dozens of less-expensive ones. They went for A+ film/TV talent and actually managed to close deals with some of them.

[majormajor]

"Paid Youtube alternative focused on mobile" has failed to become huge a couple times now (see Vessel as well).

I'm somewhat baffled by the "if we just raise a bunch more money to produce way more expensive content it'll work this time" logic, but if you're a Hollywood person I think it's probably easy to believe that more grassroots/independent youtube-creator productions wouldn't be able to compete with your A-Listers.