21–30 of 48 posts
Summary: Hosting videos is expensive. Especially when there is no revenue. The founder is Nigerian and I'm assuming the initial market was Nigeria where most people still prefer cash, face to face payment to credit/debit card payments. The fact that the largest eCommerce site in the country still has pay on delivery speaks volumes. As said in the article, if they'd used Youtube as their host for videos, cost would ha…
The main challenge in building an African Netflix is not technology, it's having critical mass in terms of video content, as well as having at least a couple anchor series that cannot be seen absolutely anywhere else. Netflix has Stranger Things, Marvel series such as Daredevil that creates a lot of social media noise. Once customers watch those, then they discover the smaller series and get hooked on Netflix.
The continent is still mostly cash based. Trust is low for online purchases. Do not worry about content. It's being created on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube for free - they monetize via ads and sponsorship deals. 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 highl…
Have you heard of MPESA ?
Is the title of this post uptalking? ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-logic/201010... ) Or is there a legitimate question as to if money was lost? Doesn't seem so from the article. I suppose there's always just the typo possibility as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The continent is still mostly cash based. Trust is low for online purchases. Do not worry about content. It's being created on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube for free - they monetize via ads and sponsorship deals. 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 highl…
> The continent is still mostly cash based. 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.
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!
Title doesn’t make sense ending in a question mark. 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...]"
Title doesn’t make sense ending in a question mark. 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.
Title doesn’t make sense ending in a question mark. 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.
I hate it too, but it could be like: "How I lost $10K Building an African Netflix? [Glad you asked...]"
Summary: Hosting videos is expensive. Especially when there is no revenue. The founder is Nigerian and I'm assuming the initial market was Nigeria where most people still prefer cash, face to face payment to credit/debit card payments. The fact that the largest eCommerce site in the country still has pay on delivery speaks volumes. As said in the article, if they'd used Youtube as their host for videos, cost would ha…
Doesn’t Flipkart still have pay on delivery too?
Summary: Hosting videos is expensive. Especially when there is no revenue. The founder is Nigerian and I'm assuming the initial market was Nigeria where most people still prefer cash, face to face payment to credit/debit card payments. The fact that the largest eCommerce site in the country still has pay on delivery speaks volumes. As said in the article, if they'd used Youtube as their host for videos, cost would ha…
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.