Quibi is the anti-TikTok (that's a bad thing)

Instead, I think Quibi’s failures can be mainly attributed to flawed executions in its technology building, marketing, and content acquisition. Basically, in attempting to create a juggernaut video app, Katzenberg and his cohorts failed to incorporate many of the strategies that other streaming giants pioneered. Here are four ways I would have appr... See more

The consensus view, then as now, is that the content was not good, it was not shareable (no screenshots!), and that Quibi blew through too much money too fast, before they could figure out what they were doing. But also, they spent too little money to effectively compete with Netflix, HBO, Apple, Disney, etc.

One is this idea that Quibi thought it was designing something for commuters, but went ahead with its launch plans even as everyone stopped commuting. That deserves a sympathetic sigh, but that’s reality now. The only path forward is to iterate toward what will work, which is more of a content and distribution problem than a messaging problem.

Unlike Netflix, Quibi is explicitly focused on one format - mobile - and one content type - well-produced short-form. They solve for one Job to be Done: something to watch while commuting or waiting in line.

In yesterday’s Daily Update I described how Jeffrey Katzenberg, the founder of Quibi, mistakenly assumed that mobile was simply the next step in the evolution from motion pictures to television, each of which created new possibilities for, in Katzenberg’s words, “the creativity of storytellers [to use] these tools in ways that their inventors had n... See more