
Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films - mmoez
https://www.failory.com/interview/hubrif
======
yesplorer
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 culture, language and even payment systems means you have a
lot more work to do than a Westerner pursuing a similar project.

This project didn't really even kick off, I'm sure. With a curation of under
100 films, no one is really going to pay for it.

The founder would have been better off creating content for YouTube and
promote his channel on both Youtube and Facebook. That way, with the release
of any new content, you have an active subscriber base you may count on
because there is no way to charge for this really. And there is nothing wrong
with earning from YT ads till you figure your business model out.

If you choose a subscription model for your African video streaming site, you
either charge too low, which still makes losses or too high which matches the
likes of Netflix and even above irokotv.com, which is arguably the largest
video streaming site on the continent.

Building an true African startup is hard.

~~~
Shorel
> 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.

~~~
festivilia
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.

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vezycash
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 have dropped dramatically and they could have survived for much longer,
even become profitable with just sidebar ads.

If the founder is reading this, I recommend, trying again but this time, as a
community and curation service for short films. Experiment with membership
fees as a social network for film makers. And copy the Jiji model for
prominent placement of videos on the site.

Business is a marathon, a survival game until you figure out income.

~~~
selimthegrim
Doesn’t Flipkart still have pay on delivery too?

~~~
Grue3
I think anything in Japan has pay on delivery as well.

~~~
gambiting
In Poland pay on delivery is still insanely popular and every single delivery
company offers it as a payment method. Even international conglomerates like
DHL/DPD/UPS will happily accept payment on delivery.

------
mruts
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 the table besides his “revolutionary” idea.

I live in Tanzania and integrating with mobile payment networks is absolutely
critical. If there was one thing you needed to succeed in this business in
Africa is integration with Mpesa, Airtel Money, Tigo Money, Zantel Money, etc.
Without this integration, your business is dead in the water. His line about
how they could never figure it out is borderline ridiculous. Imagine if Amazon
never figured out how to charge credit cards: that is the magnitude of the
problem he decided not to solve.

~~~
festivilia
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.

------
primitivesuave
A good friend of mine was in this entrepreneur's situation, where his
technical cofounder had their own consulting firm which specialized in
building out infrastructure for payment processors, and his only client was my
friend's fledgling startup. Was it really worth X% of his company to validate
someone else's technology and ideas? Was everyone's incentives actually
aligned? My friend had a clear vision to build something to solve a specific
problem, but he was ironically cursed to have an expert technologist whose
vision was a system so generic that it could later be used to solve everyone's
problem.

One more than one occasion I have had to emphatically explain to a non-tech
founder that their "tech guy" has to be 100% in the company. I ask them to
name me one successful technology company where there were no technical
cofounders. There's a reason consultants are consultants and CTOs are CTOs.

In the end, scarcity of time and capital will prevail, so everyone being 100%
committed is absolutely essential. In these situations the business cofounder
is left with nothing, while the technical cofounder is still a couple lines of
code closer to where he wants to go.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Njoku](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 just Nigerians or Kenyans, your restaurant will fail
100%.

They are not enough of them and are often unappreciative and judgemental--
complaining it is not like their mother's cooking!

The African restaurants that succeed make it exotic and exciting enough to
appeal to Americans and the broader populace. They may invent dishes or create
a 'fusion' menu but who cares! After all, there is no "General Tso's" chicken
in China!

~~~
vmarsy
> By the way, I see this phenomenon a lot with African restaurants in the US.
> If you are targeting, say just Nigerians or Kenyans, your restaurant will
> fail 100%.

> They are not enough of them and are often unappreciative and judgemental--
> complaining it is not like their mother's cooking!

> The African restaurants that succeed make it exotic and exciting enough to
> appeal to Americans and the broader populace. They may invent dishes or
> create a 'fusion' menu but who cares! After all, there is no "General Tso's"
> chicken in China!

is Ethiopian cuisine special here? I see 100% Ethiopian restaurants on the
west coast, and they seem successful, without having to go the 'fusion' route.

------
dajohnson89
Too bad I never even heard of this.

I'd pay $10-15/month for a service which had world/indie/fringe cinema all in
one place.

edit: the closest i've found, is Kanopy[0]. which is free with a library card.
(with NYPL, i get 10 titles/month).

[0]: [https://www.kanopy.com/](https://www.kanopy.com/)

~~~
scrooched_moose
The Criterion Channel streaming service launches today. This will make all of
their library available again, after FilmStruck got shut down by the AT&T/Time
Warner purchase.

[https://www.criterionchannel.com/browse](https://www.criterionchannel.com/browse)

Launch lineup and initial rollout plan here:

[https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6258-lusty-pre-
code-...](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6258-lusty-pre-code-
hollywood-in-tucson)

~~~
jschwartzi
Cool! I can watch Akira Kurosawa movies online again!

------
rando444
It doesn't seem this really even got off the ground, and I think the author
hadn't even gotten to the hard bits yet.

One of the bigger problems with trying to organize "african" content is the
diversity. There's no central language, and among the content that's
available, less than 20% will have subtitles, even for the production's native
language.. and that's being generous.

------
conception
Is the title of this post uptalking?
([https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-
logic/201010...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-
logic/201010/the-uptalk-epidemic)) Or is there a legitimate question as to if
money was lost? Doesn't seem so from the article.

I suppose there's always just the typo possibility as well.

------
Impossible
A similar startup called Afrostream was in YC years ago
([https://blog.ycombinator.com/afrostream-yc-s15-makes-it-
easy...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/afrostream-yc-s15-makes-it-easy-to-find-
and-watch-african-and-african-american-movies/)) looks like they shut down as
well.

~~~
mc32
That’s too bad. Looks like they had some emphasis on African ex-pat
communities. Wonder why the focus wasn’t more on Africa itself?

~~~
chillacy
Africa's a tough one to crack: slow internet speeds, old android hardware,
infrequent app updates, etc. On the flipside, one of the fastest growing
markets (if not the fastest) in the next century.

------
jameane
No shocker that this couldn't be monetized. It is really hard to make money in
the film business - even doing full length movies. Distribution is hard. And
short films aren't super popular with audiences.

------
ghgdynb1
It’s called YouTube for any market with GDP per capita below 10,000 USD

------
lawlessone
his other service [https://www.festivilia.com/](https://www.festivilia.com/)
is interesting.

I had no idea so many film festivals exist.

------
mtw
The main challenge in building an African Netflix is not technology, it's
having critical mass in terms of video content, as well as having at least a
couple anchor series that cannot be seen absolutely anywhere else. Netflix has
Stranger Things, Marvel series such as Daredevil that creates a lot of social
media noise. Once customers watch those, then they discover the smaller series
and get hooked on Netflix.

~~~
vezycash
The continent is still mostly cash based. Trust is low for online purchases.
Do not worry about content. It's being created on Instagram, Facebook and
YouTube for free - they monetize via ads and sponsorship deals.

There's just one success story for Nigeria iroko.ng - this however targets
foreign based Africans who are used to paying online and for whom - per movie
is nothing.

According to what I hear, Iroko is highly selective and only allows quality
movies on its site. Because of this, some producers upped their quality level
and sold exclusively via the site. They recently branched into original
content - 2 years ago.

~~~
1024core
> The continent is still mostly cash based.

Have you heard of MPESA ?

~~~
vezycash
Keyword is mostly. According to Google, M-Pesa is in 7 African countries -
Kenya, Tanzania, Lesotho, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mozambique
& Egypt.

I don't know about the other countries but I lived in Ghana for about 5 years
and I can assure you M-PESA's a shadow there. Vodafone and MTN are the kings
of Mobile money in Ghana.

But even in Ghana, cash is still the undisputed champion. The growth of mobile
money there has slowed down dramatically because of registration requirements
and operator fees.

------
blueboo
10k, so...a couple weeks of a single professional engineer?

~~~
gambiting
Don't forget that not everyone lives in the US. 10k USD would get you a
professional developer for about 3 months in Poland and more depending on how
far East you're willing to go. Hell, I'm a professional developer in the UK
and 10k USD is my salary for about 2 months(pre-tax).

------
azinman2
Title doesn’t make sense ending in a question mark.

How I imagine it in my head: Person A: “What should we call this submission to
HN?”

Person B: “I’m not sure. How I lost $10k building an African Netflix?”

Person A: Great! Let me copy that verbatim, including your question mark out
of context.

~~~
WA
I hate it too, but it could be like:

"How I lost $10K Building an African Netflix? [Glad you asked...]"

~~~
JadeNB
It could be, but, to be grammatical, it would have to be "You want to know how
I lost …?" or "How did I lose …?"

