Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

failory.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–48 of 48 posts

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#41

Post by segmondy »

jkuria wrote: post #25

Hmmh, I though Jason Njoku's irokoTV was doing really well? Isn't it the same concept? 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 ju…

Not true, depends on location. There are such restaurants in Chicago, DC, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, NY. If you have the crowd you will do fine, it all depends on your market.

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#42

Post by Shorel »

yesplorer wrote: post #17

For the large majority of Africans, Internet = Social media + YouTube because telcos have hugely subsidized access to social media at the expense of expensive data rate for everything else. So building anything outside of this wall, is a herculean task. 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 c…

> The founder would have been better off creating content for YouTube

And being demonetized by DMCA strikes from random companies?

Youtube is hardly a suitable solution in the long term.

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#43

Post by festivilia »

yesplorer wrote: post #17

For the large majority of Africans, Internet = Social media + YouTube because telcos have hugely subsidized access to social media at the expense of expensive data rate for everything else. So building anything outside of this wall, is a herculean task. 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 c…

Hi! This is Tobi Cofounder of the now defunct Hubrif. Thank you for your critical analysis. When you said we would have been better off creating contents for YouTube and growing our subscriber base, well you are very right. we realised this too late. Thinking about it now, I usually ask myself what I was thinking then.. lol

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.

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#44

Post by festivilia »

Shorel wrote: post #42
yesplorer wrote: post #17

For the large majority of Africans, Internet = Social media + YouTube because telcos have hugely subsidized access to social media at the expense of expensive data rate for everything else. So building anything outside of this wall, is a herculean task. 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 c…

> The founder would have been better off creating content for YouTube And being demonetized by DMCA strikes from random companies? Youtube is hardly a suitable solution in the long term.

Hi. This is Tobi Cofounder of Hubrif. Well, you have a point but honestly, we think building the platform at the earliest stage using the already solid foundation of YouTube would have been a better business sense. This is because we would have saved a ton of our cash on other avenues as to how to grow the platform most especially marketing, instead, we spent all those money on independent cloud storage for the contents.

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.

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#45

Post by festivilia »

vezycash wrote: post #6

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…

You deserve a medal my friend! Thank you for the analysis and suggestion. You are right about the fact that YouTube would have been a life saver for us.

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.

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#46

Post by festivilia »

segmondy wrote: post #30
vezycash wrote: post #6

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…

This is already done and making money. www.irokotv.com 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.

I guess you were faster than time itself.. lol. All your challenges are almost non existence today. Our only challenge then was internet speed which is still a challenge Ironically but generally, it's a better environment today even though it's an over-saturated industry.

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#47

Post by festivilia »

mruts wrote: post #20

Being a non-technical founder seems like a huge disadvantage. You literally are unable to develop and maintain your product without paying other people or giving out equity. The number one most important thing with a fledgling startup is self-sufficiency. You need to be willing to do it all: development, marketing, sales, etc. Maybe I’m being harsh, but the founder didn’t really seem to bring any tangible skills to t…

Hi! Thank you for your comment. first of all, well it's easy to say I didn't bring any tangible skill to the table because I wasn't a developer. lol. Considering the fact that I was performing the all-suficiency role aside being the developer obviously. My number 1 job was to get contents which is technically the most important drive of the platform. I remember my CTO agreed to join me and work for free only if I could get him 100 premium short films in 2 weeks. You can imagine the level of convincing I had to do to fellow filmmakers to give a simmingly unknown video platform their precious contents for free! I met the target and 12 days and like they say, the rest is history.. lol

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.

Re: Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

#48

Post by festivilia »

jkuria wrote: post #25

Hmmh, I though Jason Njoku's irokoTV was doing really well? Isn't it the same concept? 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 ju…

Well technically, it's not the same thing. Irokotv is a VOD platform for Nollywood films with an already hungry potential customer base especially for Nigerians in diaspora.

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.

Post reply on HN