Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films
failory.com
failory.com
Also when he says African, I'm sure he meant Nigerian. Building an African product would require millions of dollars to even get it off the ground. Fragmentation of culture, language and even payment systems means you have a lot more work to do than a Westerner pursuing a similar project.
This project didn't really even kick off, I'm sure. With a curation of under 100 films, no one is really going to pay for it.
The founder would have been better off creating content for YouTube and promote his channel on both Youtube and Facebook. That way, with the release of any new content, you have an active subscriber base you may count on because there is no way to charge for this really. And there is nothing wrong with earning from YT ads till you figure your business model out.
If you choose a subscription model for your African video streaming site, you either charge too low, which still makes losses or too high which matches the likes of Netflix and even above irokotv.com, which is arguably the largest video streaming site on the continent.
Building an true African startup is hard.
And being demonetized by DMCA strikes from random companies?
Youtube is hardly a suitable solution in the long term.
In the long run, you are right by saying it wasn't a suitable solution but in the short run, it would have worked out fine for us while we figure out our long term strategy. Considering the fact that this was the exact same strategy Irokotv used to become who they are now. They started with a YouTube channel and after gaining enough loyal subscriber base, they then built an independent platform today they are what they are.
my mentality then was that we never wanted to have anything to do with YouTube. So setting up a channel didn't even come to mind. We just wanted to build an independent platform from the ground up and we regretted too late.
As said in the article, if they'd used Youtube as their host for videos, cost would have dropped dramatically and they could have survived for much longer, even become profitable with just sidebar ads.
If the founder is reading this, I recommend, trying again but this time, as a community and curation service for short films. Experiment with membership fees as a social network for film makers. And copy the Jiji model for prominent placement of videos on the site.
Business is a marathon, a survival game until you figure out income.
I did try to build an African Netflix in 2004 before streaming when it was all about shipping discs. It didn't pan out for me back then because most movies were VCDs and not DVDs and most people outside of the US's DVD players didn't necessarily play VCD. There was also a supply issue in regards to acquiring non pirated and good quality movies.
Building a VOD platform is a very expensive venture indeed and I am most likely not going to try to build another one again.. lol but I will take your advice under consideration on building a community and Curation service for short filmmakers. As a matter of fact, because of the mild success of my current venture (festivilia.com) we are already thinking towards something similar. Perherps in the nearest future but right now, we are solely dedicated to helping filmmakers get the best from their films through effective festival distribution.
Thank you so much for your suggestion. Business is indeed a marathon. My advice to any wannapreneur is that, if your idea can't generate revenue from the word go, and you don't have a ton of ready cash in the bank, you better rethink and remodel before launching. This is what Hubrif taught me and I used that lesson to fastrack festivilia into a profit making venture today.
Maybe I’m being harsh, but the founder didn’t really seem to bring any tangible skills to the table besides his “revolutionary” idea.
I live in Tanzania and integrating with mobile payment networks is absolutely critical. If there was one thing you needed to succeed in this business in Africa is integration with Mpesa, Airtel Money, Tigo Money, Zantel Money, etc. Without this integration, your business is dead in the water. His line about how they could never figure it out is borderline ridiculous. Imagine if Amazon never figured out how to charge credit cards: that is the magnitude of the problem he decided not to solve.
I was also the marketing guy, making pitches and going for startup competitions, exhibitions, film festivals and every other thing you can think of for us to grow. When I had spent all my savings, I had to convince an investor to fund a startup that didn't have the desired traction and making zero profit. I was a desperate young entrepreneur.. Alas, it was a bad decision eventually but it was a life saver at that time.
About the mobile payment integration angle. Am sure you will understand how difficult it is to partner with a telco without the required numbers they want to see. Mobile money is popular in eastern Africa but not in the west where most of our customers were and a few from USA. our best bet was carrier billing but like I mentioned earlier, you don't just contact a telco and ask for partnership! I know a few friends whose startups are very successful and it had taken them almost a year to get a meeting with the right person in the telco company!!!
we eventually found fortumo but we closed shop before we could implement. It's really easy for you to criticize but you have no idea how hard it was for us to run a startup with less than 0.1 percent chance of survival for 2 years. lol.
Thanks for the comment again.
One more than one occasion I have had to emphatically explain to a non-tech founder that their "tech guy" has to be 100% in the company. I ask them to name me one successful technology company where there were no technical cofounders. There's a reason consultants are consultants and CTOs are CTOs.
In the end, scarcity of time and capital will prevail, so everyone being 100% committed is absolutely essential. In these situations the business cofounder is left with nothing, while the technical cofounder is still a couple lines of code closer to where he wants to go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Njoku
I guess they target Africans in the diaspora, who have much more disposable income.
It is very tough to succeed targeting Africans in Africa without first focusing on a specific country.
By the way, I see this phenomenon a lot with African restaurants in the US. If you are targeting, say just Nigerians or Kenyans, your restaurant will fail 100%.
They are not enough of them and are often unappreciative and judgemental--complaining it is not like their mother's cooking!
The African restaurants that succeed make it exotic and exciting enough to appeal to Americans and the broader populace. They may invent dishes or create a 'fusion' menu but who cares! After all, there is no "General Tso's" chicken in China!
> They are not enough of them and are often unappreciative and judgemental--complaining it is not like their mother's cooking!
> The African restaurants that succeed make it exotic and exciting enough to appeal to Americans and the broader populace. They may invent dishes or create a 'fusion' menu but who cares! After all, there is no "General Tso's" chicken in China!
is Ethiopian cuisine special here? I see 100% Ethiopian restaurants on the west coast, and they seem successful, without having to go the 'fusion' route.
90 percent of IrokoTv's diehard core customers don't even know what a short film is or have an interest in watching one. Except you are a filmmaker or have a deep interest in the film industry, you most likely don't know what a short film is, it's usefulness or why it's important.. lol
this was our mistake. we should have targeted countries with very active short film community.
I'd pay $10-15/month for a service which had world/indie/fringe cinema all in one place.
edit: the closest i've found, is Kanopy[0]. which is free with a library card. (with NYPL, i get 10 titles/month).
https://www.criterionchannel.com/browse
Launch lineup and initial rollout plan here:
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6258-lusty-pre-code-...
One of the bigger problems with trying to organize "african" content is the diversity. There's no central language, and among the content that's available, less than 20% will have subtitles, even for the production's native language.. and that's being generous.
I suppose there's always just the typo possibility as well.
I had no idea so many film festivals exist.
There's just one success story for Nigeria iroko.ng - this however targets foreign based Africans who are used to paying online and for whom - per movie is nothing.
According to what I hear, Iroko is highly selective and only allows quality movies on its site. Because of this, some producers upped their quality level and sold exclusively via the site. They recently branched into original content - 2 years ago.
Have you heard of MPESA ?
I don't know about the other countries but I lived in Ghana for about 5 years and I can assure you M-PESA's a shadow there. Vodafone and MTN are the kings of Mobile money in Ghana.
But even in Ghana, cash is still the undisputed champion. The growth of mobile money there has slowed down dramatically because of registration requirements and operator fees.
How I imagine it in my head: Person A: “What should we call this submission to HN?”
Person B: “I’m not sure. How I lost $10k building an African Netflix?”
Person A: Great! Let me copy that verbatim, including your question mark out of context.
"How I lost $10K Building an African Netflix? [Glad you asked...]"