Quibi
This is what happens when baby boomers with MBAs try to compete in the tech sphere…THEY LOSE!
Furthermore, this is what happens when Hollywood tries to compete with Silicon Valley…it compromises or it loses!
Meg Whitman knows how to make the trains run on time. At eBay and then HP. Come on, tell me about one innovation under her regime at HP… You can’t! You might not even know she ran the damn company.
As for Jeffrey Katzenberg…
Let’s never forget that DreamWorks SKG was a failure. The goal was to build a new studio. The record label failed, because there was no catalog, despite having Lenny and Mo who overspent not understanding the world was changing. Spielberg made movies, he still does. Sure, Katzenberg ended up with a cartoon studio, sold at a profit, but he was blown out! If he was so integral, wouldn’t they have kept him?
So, a brilliant idea… Millennials are addicted to their phones, they’ve got a short attention span, let’s feed them bite-sized series, since they’re UNDERSERVED!
Well, no! Ever hear of YouTube? Never mind stories on Snapchat and Instagram, all of which are FREE!
That’s the funny thing about Quibi… It’s $4.99 with ads and $7.99 without. You mean I’m gonna pay the same price as Apple or Disney?
Oh, it’s free with T-Mobile? Disney is with Verizon, Apple is with the purchase of a new product.
So the youngsters have the paradigm right. You build it and if they come you figure out how to monetize it. Can you say GOOGLE? Almost every successful internet story started with a free product. But NO! MBA boomers start out with a business plan, they work the numbers first!
The young techies know it’s about hit product. Something that people can’t resist. They addict them, and then they charge ’em. But oftentimes it feels free, because of ads…can you say Facebook, can you say SOCIAL MEDIA?
And Apple hasn’t come up with a hit show and streaming was an afterthought to DVDs by mail at Netflix first.
How can this inane project get ink? How can this inane project just raise another $400 million, after a billion already? This reminds me of people who invested in Neil Young’s Pono…because it was Neil Young it was gonna succeed. HUH?
As for adult supervision… That’s what killed Apple the first time around, the installation of John Sculley, who just like Whitman knew how to make the trains run on time, this time at Pepsi, but did not understand the soul of computing, just like Whitman knows nothing about entertainment.
Furthermore, entertainment online is not passive, but active! The stars come from the streets and the audience interacts with them!
How could they get it so wrong?
Quibi is a disaster, a complete waste of money as a pay service. Expect them to change the model, be free, or tie in with YouTube, Facebook and/or Instagram and Snapchat in an effort to succeed.
And after they pivot, they might declare victory, but really, this idea with this business model is DOA.
