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Comment by seattle_spring | Hacker News Reader

> Why Laugh at Quibi's Failure?

I'm laughing because it was an obviously stupid idea. I first heard about it pre-launch on an NPR spot, where the CEO was interviewed about their proprietary technology that'd allow videos to be watched in both landscape and, get this, portrait mode. That means all shows had to be filmed with multiple cameras for a feature that no one in the world wanted or asked for. It reminded me of Tommy Wiseau from "The Room" insisting it be filmed in both digital and 35mm [1]. It was an obvious waste-of-money gimmick from the get-go.

but I guess according to PG, I'm "just a hater." [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Room#Development

[2] http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html

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Or maybe we're just disappointed and with this funeral we've got some kind of closure? After all this was hubris and arrogance all the way down. Founders failed to perform any kind of validation - after all you can't find a problem if you don't look after one, innit? - and the list of "investors" is rather a list of self sufficient rich boys with more money than sense.

PG is dishonest: these guys took no risk; their product did not have a hair of innovation on it; they had a $2Bn safety net.

This summer they had 72k paying users [1]; mix in the $2Bn investment; they could have distributed $27k to each of these paying users and would have still had some money in the bank. But no, they managed to burn their resources and the product with it. No pivot, no sign of adaptability whatsoever.

Let's be honest - it was just an expensive project that failed despite having the best resources at hand.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/8/21318060/quibi-subscriber-...

I don't think they had to be filmed in both modes since several of their shows were simply movies that were bought and recut as mini shows.

I personally loved that. I could hold the phone comfortably without being worried that I'd miss a key part of the scene, since it was edited to handle both modes. Sure, more work, but it was a really cool feature.

How many times have “obviously stupid” ideas turned into tremendous success stories? Uber and Amazon spending untold billions subsidizing sales while building tech to be market leaders. At one point it was obviously stupid for Zuckerberg to not sell his company for $1B. It was obviously stupid for Musk to start a brand new car company in America. The list goes on.

By mocking people for trying, yes that does make one a hater. Quibi tried, and yes it turned out they were wrong about the product or execution or timing. But that’s the point of startups. They start with an “obviously stupid” idea and sometimes it works spectacularly. Usually not, but sometimes you get surprises.

Correction: Musk didn’t start a new car company in America. He’s not even a founder.

Amazon spent billions on infrastructure and kept pouring money back into the business. At most points, Amazon could have been profitable.

But AWS is where the real margins are.

> That means all shows had to be filmed with multiple cameras

From what I understand, most shows handled it by simply cropping the landscape frame to make the portrait frame.

The best ideas are ones that sound stupid to most people at first. Can you honestly say that you didn't think Airbnb or Uber sounded like a stupid idea?

> Can you honestly say that you didn't think Airbnb or Uber sounded like a stupid idea?

Oh my God, Yes I definitely can say that I didn't think Airbnb or Uber were stupid. I had been hosting on Couchsurfing.org since 2004, 5 years before Airbnb first launched. I thought Airbnb was an amazing idea from day 1, and felt stupid for not thinking of it myself.

As for Uber, I had regularly been fucked by taxi drivers up until Uber came out. I used it the first day I could, and remember fondly how amazing the experience was when it first came out. That was when tipping was explicitly not required and the only option were the Black towncars.

I think the majority of people would say that those two weren't stupid ideas. Uber didn't become a 'stupid' idea until it's business idea shifted to "sell everything at half cost and hope we never run out of money". Airbnb still isn't a stupid idea, to my knowledge. Particularly if you're wealthy enough to afford spare property.

Those ideas didn't require raising over a billion dollars just to try.

And they were also much more of an actual "new idea" than just "somewhere between youtube and netflix, with both subscription revenue AND ad revenue despite another new subscription (that still has ads at the entry tier!) being a hard sell to users." Which is an idea that has failed before, Quibi thought they could just buy their way to popularity by raising more money.

The more money you need to raise, the higher the burden of evidence for "non-stupid" needs to be.

"I'm laughing because it was an obviously stupid idea."

It's absolutely not a stupid idea, frankly, it's a great idea.

The execution was completely screwed up - were they to have done it smartly, organically, they could have won massively.

TikTok is not just an 'app' - it's a new form of content.

There is a lot of room there.

Quibi was a smart, timely concept - and would have made a perfect YCombinator type bet.

But Quibi was an old form of content. Standard Hollywood studio production type stuff, just sliced differently to awkwardly try to present it as something more like Youtube or TikTok.

But then still using an old-model business model (cable-style subscription+ads) that makes growth difficult without extraordinarily compelling content.

What was the smart idea? Short videos? Limited only to phone? I'm really trying to see the good idea and I just can't.

Help me out here: In what way was Quibi a smart, timely concept?

Hate is good to wash down with some Juicero(TM).

"How dare you say Juicero was a stupid idea!"

I still can't say that's an obviously stupid idea.

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