Unsplash/Dario
The following is one story you’ll find in today’s edition of The Water Coolest’s free daily email newsletter. The Water Coolest is a daily business news and professional advice email newsletter geared towards bros (read: expect a hearty helping of unfiltered commentary and advice on how to suck less at work).
You can sign up now to get the latest news and commentary delivered to your inbox every weekday at 6 AM EST.
No one:
Nobody:
Literally, not a single soul:
Jeffery Katzenberg: “You know what the world needs? Another streaming service.”
Quibi just closed on its second round of funding, bringing its total amount raised to $1.75B. It initially planned on raising $500M to $600M in round deux, but ended up with $750M. What a nice surprise.
But let’s take a step back for a second…
What’s Quibi?
Quibi is a short-form streaming service, co-founded by one of the founding fathers of DreamWorks, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and headed by former CEO of Hewlett Packard, Meg Whitman. It’ll offer dramas, thrillers, comedies, and news programs that you’ve never heard of with two price tiers ($4.99 and $7.99 per month). The new service will launch on April 6.
Early investors include Alibaba Group and Hollywood studios, which ponied up $1B in the first round of funding. And while the company didn’t state which specific companies contributed to the latest round, it’s been reported that existing investors and Jeffrey K’s investment firm, WndrCo were involved. #nonewfriends
So, what’s different?
Quibi is intended to be mobile-only, allowing users to watch shows via an app on the go. Episodes will be released on a daily basis, compared to a weekly release like on TV (what’s that?), or all at once like most other streaming services. Oh, and the episodes will only last ten minutes… which is 10x longer than most of the guys reading this.
The Q (mind if we call you that?) will launch with 50 shows, but expects to have 175 shows, totaling 8,500 episodes within the first year. Or, essentially the equivalent of one season of the West Wing.
The bottom line
There are questions as to whether this new service will catch on or not, considering users won’t be able to binge episodes right away (like Netflix) and there are no big name shows (also, like Netflix).
But this small fish might not survive in the big streaming pond, considering it’s going up against a school of Bonita (are Bonita fish big?), such as Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, and Prime just to name a few.
Even with all this doubt, the Q-tip managed to sell out of its $150M in available ad units for its first year, units that were bought by the likes of Walmart, Pepsi, and Google … ever heard of ’em?
Water Cooler Talking Point(s)
💧 “If the episodes are shorter, maybe nobody will realize they suck until they’re over…” (Nick, The Water Coolest HQ)
Like what you see? There’s more where that came from. Sign up now to get the latest news and commentary delivered to your inbox every weekday at 6 AM EST.