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Comment by jermaustin1 | Hacker News Reader

MoviePass could have survived longer if they had more money, and a different business model. The problem is they were letting you go to movies at AMC and Cinemark for less than they bought the tickets, and both AMC and Cinemark said they wouldn't negotiate lower prices for them.

They could have had a small but cult business contracting with smaller theater chains, but they didn't.

They could have also bought tickets in bulk, and sold them through the app, but they didn't.

They could have reserved tickets at premiers and sold them at a markup, but they didn't.

They could have done a LOT of things to make money, but they didn't.

I say this as a onetime holder of more than 1% of publicly available shares. And I think at the time, one of the largest non-institutional shareholders.

Lost a lot of money on wanting a dumb "title".

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AMC and Cinemark would have negotiated if the moat was properly fortified is my thesis. They didn't have enough runway to determine the feasibility.

Anyone could've looked at MoviePass' public filings and determined they would be no problem to AMC.

What if Uber and Lyft didn't subsidize ridesharing for years? Yellow cab service would still be the market leader today.

> What if Uber and Lyft didn't subsidize ridesharing for years?

That is different. Uber and Lyft were paying drivers to drive.

MoviePass was giving people basically free tickets, but paying FULL FARE at AMC and Cinemark.

AMC and Cinemark have no reason to negotiate because what would happen if MoviePass stopped giving away tickets to AMC and Cinemark? Users would leave MoviePass and continue going to AMC and Cinemark at full price.

Not at nearly the same volume.

Uber and Lyft created new supply by attracting new drivers to the market. MoviePass was not creating any new supply or any value at all. It simply inserted itself as a middleman between theaters and consumers and pulled in subscribers by literally paying for their movie tickets with VC funding.

Thanks for the free tickets! Just curious, what was your motivation for investing so heavily if you knew the business model was dumb?

Not the guy you asked, but he just listed a half-dozen or so things he probably expected them to expand into that were promising/could have worked out, so I'm guessing he invested hoping they'd do those things, and was pissed when they didn't.

For the bragging rights.

It was already about to be delisted and I think it was sub $1/share. So I looked up how much I'd need to own to match the largest individual investor, and decided.

I could have invested the paltry amount (I actually cannot remember how much, but it was < $10k in my IRA) in something worth while, or... burn it all to own more more than any other individual investor at the time that I did it.

I only held for a couple of days, before selling it at a ~70% loss - or vanguard liquidating when it delisted - I cannot remember now.

But it was a fun ride and brag I got to have. People at the office cheered for me. People in my house berated me.

Haha is "the office" WallSteetBets?

I had never even used reddit before just a few months ago, so no, it was an actual office lol.

>The problem is they were letting you go to movies at AMC and Cinemark for less than they bought the tickets, and both AMC and Cinemark said they wouldn't negotiate lower prices for them.

Considering the Cinemark near me is a $1.50 per ticket second run place...

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