Last night when I noticed the breaking news that a company called Quibi had made public their intentions to shut the doors and fold, I looked at my wife and said, "Quibi? What is Quibi? What was Quibi?" She said it was some company that was trying to put a different kind of a spin on streaming video but she wasn't entirely sure of the details, so I started poking around on Google to see what I could find.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Quibi was a social media based streaming video startup that made headlines earlier this year because they had raised a whopping $1.75 billion in capital for their newborn venture. Also according to the WSJ, it began only a short six months ago, and the news of them throwing in the towel being released publicly sometime last night was the first I had heard about it, which did surprise me to some very minor degree.
Of course, all things considered, 2020 has been a year that will no doubt be referenced and studied for a long time to come because of everything that has transpired this year here in the U.S., and even globally. When I went to sleep for the last time in 2019 I had no reason to suspect that 2020 would be a year full of unprecedented and unfortunate events and natural disasters from sea to shining sea, and right now we are only in mid-October. I've heard people say many times in years and decades past that sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction, and I am hoping and praying that 2020 has finished producing unwanted and unwelcomed truths, but I will believe that is true at 12:00 a.m. on January 1 and not a moment sooner. I hate to be so pessimistic, but until then my guard will be up and expecting just about anything to happen, and hoping that nothing else does...
But after having seen so much of this year's fruits with my own eyes, the fact that a six month old tech startup I had never even heard of until publicly announcing that it was shutting its doors didn't come as much of a shock to me. I won't lie however, being a very tech savvy person myself for about three decades now, I was a bit puzzled as to how or why that was actually transpiring when they had raised almost two billion dollars in capital to begin their journey. That is billion with a "B", by the way; that is $999,999,999.00 with and additional $750,000,001.00 stacked on top of that and in one big pile in some bank somewhere.
Considering that most successful startups don't even reach anywhere near that amount of money for many years after they first launch, if ever they do, my immediate thought was that they obviously went into the wrong field. From my vantage point, the owners of Quibi obviously should be in the business of helping people raise venture capital for their small businesses and startups, because I've never seen anyone do quite as well in that aspect of their business endeavor as they did at the onset of opening Quibi.
I hate to say it, but I don't think they'll ever have what it takes to build a successful tech company and would highly encourage them to avoid this industry to the best of their ability. I believe they'd make a killing with a business helping to raise capital for other businesses though; call it a hunch, a gut feeling, or whatever you'd like, but I don't think it requires any clairvoyance to be comfortable with betting on them if they chose to pursue venture capital consultancy over tech in the future.
In all fairness in regard to Quibi biting the dust however, I should mention that an established competitor was already pursuing bringing Quibi to court alleging that their patent rights were being violated by the startup. According to the Wall Street Journal, the streaming video company EKO, in addition to already being established was also being backed by the Hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. who was/is financing the high-stakes patent lawsuit. This obviously played a huge part in Quibi's decision and yesterday's announcement to walk away rather than testing the legal validity of the claims of such formidable foes. This is likely especially true considering that the owners of Quibi were at such an early stage in their own company's development, and all things considered, it was probably the wise decision amongst the choices they had moving forward from where they were at the time the decision was made.
Again, the fact that they chose to do the prudent and conservative thing with so much investor capital at their disposal is just another tell-tale sign that a venture capital consultancy business would be a good fit for this pair. There are a couple of reasons why the tech industry probably isn't, however.
To begin with, to make a company such as Quibi successful in that market would require some things first, and when I say first, I mean that considering what you're up against in the world of social media giants like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube, and obviously EKO, NetFlix, Vemo, and we can't forget Amazon and Google, you need to be to the point where you are able to just know without any doubt that your plan isn't going to constitute a patent violation or result in any copyright issues. To do that, you'd have to do some serious research on the competition and if you were determined enough to proceed there is most likely a way to do it without having any such issues.
Once you had that figured out, you'd need to have your applications for the servers, terminals, workstations, smartphones, tablets, televisions, and desktop computers to a point where once you had your headquarters properly equipped and your sub-contractors squared away, meaning all of your required on-site and off-site equipment and storage procured and ready to go including having all of it properly configured and secured to the best of your ability, you could deploy immediately on the same day you made the announcement that you've launched your startup.
And ideally, from that day up until election day in November, making sure people see ads for your new product more than they do for people asking for their votes at the voting polls. And after election day, having those ad campaigns continue to some degree until next summer at minimum, making adjustments as needed based on advertising analytics and data, and being sure to watch that aspect vigilantly and with great precision. That way you could make the adjustments in the most effective places and ways to ensure the best results, the best bang for your money.
Television and radio ads could very well be the most critical for such a startup at this point in time, but I'd also have social media campaigns to the extent that would be possible, and I'd probably have people dressed up in pink smart phone outfits with the company's app and logo conspicuously displayed on the screen and the back of the costumes, and I've have them where I'd be sure that lots of teenagers and lots of women would see them. Even if they only get a glympse for a moment, that type of advertising would probably do quite well considering the market and its current state, and the giant companies that might or might not be so cooperative where your advertising priorities are concerned.
One thing that I'm confidently certain of though, is that a startup such as Quibi would probably have a fairly decent shot of making it in the market if they made sure to have all of that setup and ready to go on the same day they officially launched. I can tell you that I spend a great deal of time on my computers these days, as I'm constantly working on my servers here at the house, which by the way I just added another Linux box, CentOS this time which I'm loving by the way, and working on the software I'm developing. That said, I had never heard of Quibi prior to yesterday, so if they were dead set on launching this business, they certainly weren't ready on their advertising campaign end of the task at hand; they should have been blowing TV's up with their adds at least for a solid month or two, and gradually decreasing or even increasing over time based on analysis of the effectiveness of the ads.
I meant what I said about the venture capital consultancy thing earlier, it would be hard for a single person on the planet to deny that these two definitely have some serious potential in that field, for sure. And they even had some national advertisement, headlining from coast to coast on pretty much every form of media outlet medium that we have available to us as of now. That is very likely worth a great deal, so if I'm right then capitalists gonna capitalize I'm sure, it's what they do. I'll be watching to see if perhaps this has already crossed their minds. We shall see.
