The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now • Hacker News Board

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#101

Post by pasbesoin » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #16

> The king of money-losers, of course, is Amazon, which went years without turning a profit. Instead, it plowed billions of dollars back into its business The key difference with Amazon is that Amazon could choose to be profitable at any time- just raise prices ever so slightly, reducing growth in customer demand, and the stop building out its enormous logistics empire and new businesses. Amazon could have had profit…

Amazon already is very profitable. For a certain group of people. And on the backs of other people.

It's a matter of how you define profit. Or rather, whose profit you're looking at. (And, ergo, what profit is actually driving the business forward.)

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#102

Post by supertrope » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

dalore wrote: post #65

Hmm you laugh, but if you could sell dollar bills at $0.75 but you limited the amount any person could buy. And you made them look at advertising, and collected all sorts of personal info on them. You could easily quite a bit of money off them. More then what you lose in selling the dollar bills at a loss.

My economics professor auctioned $1. Someone bought it above par.

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#103

Post by r00fus » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #77

Mindwipe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MoviePass doesn't have to raise prices ever so slightly to be a viable business. It has to raise prices by significant integer multiples. (And heck, Amazon don't even need to raise prices, they could be very profitable just by investing in growth less. But their investors are clearly happy with the current state of affairs).

Raising prices may even make things worse, as it will just narrow their customer base to those that are most expensive to service.

How are higher-paying customers more expensive to service?

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#104

Post by slackoverflower » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

jonbarker wrote: post #95

tribune wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus Amazon is Amazon. They've essentially been saying to investors for years "sure, we could make more money for YOU, or give YOU dividends, but WE can do better with your money than YOU could." It's worked, of course, enabling them to grow into the gargantuan enterprise they are today. A smaller company without that proven track record wouldn't get such a license from investors for long.

This argument is funny to me mainly because I hear it all the time, about how different they are because they don't want to be profitable. The other thing management is supposed to do is manage cash flow and profit in such a way as to reduce risk (by piling up cash, not too much of course, but just enough...). They also survived the dot com crash because they were thrifty and always kind of cash flow break even.

Amazon simply does not need to have cash on hand. They can attain massive profits at literally any point by just increasing their margins ever so slightly across whatever business lines they operate in. This is the benefit of the scale they operate at.

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#105

Post by slg » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #16

> The king of money-losers, of course, is Amazon, which went years without turning a profit. Instead, it plowed billions of dollars back into its business The key difference with Amazon is that Amazon could choose to be profitable at any time- just raise prices ever so slightly, reducing growth in customer demand, and the stop building out its enormous logistics empire and new businesses. Amazon could have had profit…

It is even more basic than that. Amazon, Uber, Netflix, and almost any other successful and established business creates value. MoviePass is not creating value and is simply trying to purchase its way into being a middleman between theaters and theater goers. If their pricing structure ends up showing the slightest chance of generating more revenue for the theater industry as a whole, there is nothing stopping the theaters themselves from adopting the pricing structure themselves and cutting MoviePass out.

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#106

Post by Operyl » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #105

mabbo wrote: post #16

> The king of money-losers, of course, is Amazon, which went years without turning a profit. Instead, it plowed billions of dollars back into its business The key difference with Amazon is that Amazon could choose to be profitable at any time- just raise prices ever so slightly, reducing growth in customer demand, and the stop building out its enormous logistics empire and new businesses. Amazon could have had profit…

It is even more basic than that. Amazon, Uber, Netflix, and almost any other successful and established business creates value. MoviePass is not creating value and is simply trying to purchase its way into being a middleman between theaters and theater goers. If their pricing structure ends up showing the slightest chance of generating more revenue for the theater industry as a whole, there is nothing stopping the th…

And some are even beginning to experiment as it is, such as Cinemark’s Movie Club.

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#107

Post by dylz » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

erentz wrote: post #10

austinl wrote: post #3

Reminds me of VC Fund My Life . It's an index of discounts offered by startups, which you more or less know they're taking a loss on. Clever name. http://www.vcfml.com/

That site seems like it’s all fake promotion - e.g. coinbase is on their and last I looked coinbase’s fees were monstrously high compared to Gemini and other exchanges. It’s definitley not saving you anything choosing them.

It is all fake promotion. Virtually every single link, if not every single link is an not-disclosed affiliate/referral link; half of them aren't VC or startups.

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#108

Post by Karrot_Kream » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:46 PM UTC

How do startups that don't network well with VCs survive in this kind of an ecosystem? Doesn't this make VC money the kingmaker to penetrating a market? I'm not sure having to be well-connected enough to be favored by VCs is a good thing in the long run for the economy, but maybe this isn't such a different situation from the pre-VC status quo.

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#109

Post by wmf » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:46 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #20

erentz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That site seems like it’s all fake promotion - e.g. coinbase is on their and last I looked coinbase’s fees were monstrously high compared to Gemini and other exchanges. It’s definitley not saving you anything choosing them.

Agreed, and Gemini is not well known enough... it's basically no fees for most users moving between USD and BTC, and it's legit, based in NYC and follows all of the NY state regulations on crypto.

Gemini recently increased fees to 1% so it's now far more expensive than GDAX.

Re: The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now

#110

Post by textmode » Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

"The fact that Google and Facebook were able to generate such enormous profits and growth does give hope to some companies," Mr. Ritter said. If start-ups can figure out to convert a large user base into paying customers, he added, "it can be enormously profitable."

Did Google or Facebook "convert a large user base into paying customers"?

Is that what enabled them to "generate such enormous profits"?