251–260 of 275 posts
MoviePass can predict: Who(subscribers) What(movies) When(what movie showing subscribers will attend) Where(which theatre) Why(Netflix like recommendations) How(um, non tech cliche use of “algorithm”)
And then MoviePass can bulk pre-purchase tickets at steep discounts to solve movie theatre excess capacity problem(if it is a problem).
With how tenuous things are now, I suspect MoviePass is NOT Netflix circa 2002.
My wife and I are so frustrated by the movie going experience in the US. In Taiwan, everyone is permitted to bring food and drinks to the theater and that's pretty common. In the US I'm forced to pay an absurd amount of money for awful junk food. No thanks, I want to drink tea while I watch a movie. We always have to smuggle in drinks because the theater just doesn't provide any good options. None of the movies is th…
Movie theater food is expensive because theaters in the US make almost all of their profits from the food. The movies are just a vehicle to get you to buy the popcorn and soda. On big blockbuster releases, like Star Wars or Mission Impossible, the movie theater may only get 10% of the gross ticket price on opening weekend, with the remainder going to the distributor. Overseas distributors Asia have less leverage beca…
If I am a traditional 'tech' company - I can afford to lose money when I am investing it in my platform or technology. It's like borrowing money to invest in your assets. For MoviePass, they are losing money and passing it off to theaters - it's like borrowing money to buy more ingredients for a failing restaurant. You can't charge less than the marginal cost, it doesn't make sense! I am trying to wrap my head around…
>You can't charge less than the marginal cost, it doesn't make sense! The old joke is "Sure we have marginal losses, but we'll make up for it with volume!"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d imagine even a moderately engaged gym user would lose the gym money on every visit, in staffing costs alone. The marginal cost of each user rises too, as people that are unable to get on machine are more likely to churn. It is however usually outweighed by the huge numbers of people who simply do nothing with their subscription.
I go to the gym and I interact with 1, sometimes 2 staff members. The people at the front who check my card and sometimes the guy who works in the locker room if I can't get mine open. They are on staff anyways. It costs them nothing extra. What is true is that they can understaff (and have less equipment) than if they had 100% regular participation.
If I am a traditional 'tech' company - I can afford to lose money when I am investing it in my platform or technology. It's like borrowing money to invest in your assets. For MoviePass, they are losing money and passing it off to theaters - it's like borrowing money to buy more ingredients for a failing restaurant. You can't charge less than the marginal cost, it doesn't make sense! I am trying to wrap my head around…
I assume HN knows that most Hollywood movies are deliberately made for export to Chinese and Indian audiences.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Movie theater food is expensive because theaters in the US make almost all of their profits from the food. The movies are just a vehicle to get you to buy the popcorn and soda. On big blockbuster releases, like Star Wars or Mission Impossible, the movie theater may only get 10% of the gross ticket price on opening weekend, with the remainder going to the distributor. Overseas distributors Asia have less leverage beca…
I sometimes fear that, like bookstores and Toys R' Us, if you don't patronize these businesses, they will go away. As a kid I couldn't imagine a world without bookstores, now there aren't any. Same with Toys R' Us. Kids will never have that experience again. Yes, movies are expensive, but would you rather them not be there at all?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I think their general conceit is that people enjoy the movie-going experience, but they are put off by the price. There is truth to this. That said, they really botched the strategy - they could have bootstrapped the whole thing and slowly come down in price.
I’m not sure how you could bootstrap this idea. The only way to undercut the theatres is to lose money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An emergency loan with no change to the service whatsoever? They are really having a deer in the headlights moment. Reminds me of a startup I worked with once. The goal wasn't to make a viable product. It was to make a big splash and get bought. 10 Start a product/service 20 Make a big hype and get lots of publicity 30 Get bought by some larger company that sees you as a threat/opportunity 40 Founders get big cash pa…
This unfortunately is probably the untold goal of 80% of startups around the Bay area that have unsustainable business models. What I find ethically borderline is that no founders will admit this, they will all pretend their goal is to make it a super successful sustainable company. As you said, the issue is that founders will usually get a moderate payout (a couple Million$), while even early employees will get almo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean the plan seems to be that except the marginal losses are supposed to go down as they reach higher volumes. Attract the heavy movie goers first and lose money on them till you can attract enough light movie goers that will buy this and forget about so you can afford the people seeing more than 2 movies a month. There's other ways to drop that marginal cost like getting deals from theaters on tickets for bringin…
That might have worked before Netflix and Amazon Prime and other online movie services. The light movie goers are all online now. Only the heavy duty die-hards are still going to theaters to see first-run films. I haven't gone to a theater movie in over three years.