Re:Ask HN: Seeking a cofounder
by chrischen on Sunday January 03, 2010 @05:15PM
(#1029238)
Right and initially we're not focusing on providing a discovery platform.
We're simply providing a means to self-distribute, customized to the indie filmmaker's flavor.
The 90 minute low quality content is an extreme. I'm saying these guys have put effort into something and they will look for a way to distribute. They will try, even if they know their content doesn't have much of a market, and there will always be these films and people who make these films. These films will probably make up the majority of films produced. So this is simply one monetizable group.
This is in fact Lulu.com's business model. Lulu.com wants to sell a service to low quality content. Of course my ultimate goal is not just to cater to these people, but to target this service to content of all quality, and then create a marketplace later of higher quality content (once they come). I believe that with the internet, and with the speed of communication, managing marketing and distribution is accomplished much more easily.
So yes in a sense our immediate revenue model isn't too legit, because we don't really care if films succeed in making money, but our goal is to charge them very little, hope the volume makes up for the difference, and rely on the mass of new films that just don't make it to resort to our service.
Initially it will be do-it-yourself service for films that aren't good enough to be distributed otherwise, but the long term goal is to offer better films a more profitable distribution method.
And who knows, maybe one of these 90 minute low quality films that everyone ignores turns out to be a smash hit (http://www.theroommovie.com/).
We're simply providing a means to self-distribute, customized to the indie filmmaker's flavor.
The 90 minute low quality content is an extreme. I'm saying these guys have put effort into something and they will look for a way to distribute. They will try, even if they know their content doesn't have much of a market, and there will always be these films and people who make these films. These films will probably make up the majority of films produced. So this is simply one monetizable group.
This is in fact Lulu.com's business model. Lulu.com wants to sell a service to low quality content. Of course my ultimate goal is not just to cater to these people, but to target this service to content of all quality, and then create a marketplace later of higher quality content (once they come). I believe that with the internet, and with the speed of communication, managing marketing and distribution is accomplished much more easily.
So yes in a sense our immediate revenue model isn't too legit, because we don't really care if films succeed in making money, but our goal is to charge them very little, hope the volume makes up for the difference, and rely on the mass of new films that just don't make it to resort to our service.
Initially it will be do-it-yourself service for films that aren't good enough to be distributed otherwise, but the long term goal is to offer better films a more profitable distribution method.
And who knows, maybe one of these 90 minute low quality films that everyone ignores turns out to be a smash hit (http://www.theroommovie.com/).