Surviving in the market with so many competitors around is pretty tough. Many companies don't even run a month before they shut down! And among these, one of the biggest failures was Quibi. You may not even hear about this company. But this is of a very recent time- 2020.
In early 2020, the co-founder of Quibi- Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the directors of DreamWorks Animation studios announced that Quibi company is shutting down, within 7 months of its launch! Sounds scary, right?
Quibi was basically a video streaming service platform with its original environmental content of environmental, developed by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Meg Whitman, a former CEO of Hewlett Packard raised over $1.75 billion for the company- Quibi.
Similar to the original content created by Netflix and Amazon Prime, Quibi also took a step forward and produced its own category of shows and movies. Although Quibi made only five to ten minutes of episodes, it charged $4.99 per month.
With such a great mindset and planning, you might be wondering what went wrong with Quibi? Well, to clear this we have presented this article. Let's get started!
What went wrong with Quibi?
Reasons that led to the Failure of Quibi
FAQ
What went wrong with Quibi?
Katzenberg and Whitman are incredibly successful businessmen but when it comes to streaming services, they don't have the right instincts. This became clear with their ultimate creation- Quibi.
Quibi was launched in times of pandemic, 2020, with the concept of giving people good content of merely 10 mins which they can watch anytime and anywhere like a doctor's waiting hall, public transport, and others. But what they forgot was all these could not be possible in the pandemic.
Quibi entirely targeted the youth as they always find new content. But as the pandemic struck, people considered watching long-term content which was available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and others.
The biggest cause of failure of Quibi is considered the awfully smaller audience and very few numbers of downloads. Apart from this, Quibi made many more mistakes like low social media presence and others.
Also, Quibi had huge competition around in the market which caused it major losses.
We have discussed the key reason for the failure of Quibi. Let's get on with it!
Ipsita Acharya
Reasons that led to the Failure of Quibi
Awful Content Creation
Any video streaming platform requires content that keeps the users interested. Especially when it comes to the title, as that is what is going to convince the audience to watch the show and to subscribe to the platform. But, Quibi created a whole set of mediocre content that was not given any brief thought upon.
Although the developers spent a lot of money and effort but still could not pull out the standardized content. The shows on Quibi's were extremely ordinary and the audience did not find anything interesting.
High pricing
Being such a mediocre content provider, Quibi's pricing was pretty expensive. Its price was around $5 for a normal subscription and $8 for a non-advertising subscription. These were very very high for a terrible content provider such as Quibi.
Failed to Attract Audience
In today's time, there are tons of platforms that are incredibly interesting and user-friendly. People are spending great time at Netflix, scrolling TikTok and Instagram. That's why for any other similar company to gain an audience needs to provide such services that the users cannot refuse.
Quibi failed in providing such service and grew the users' count on platforms like YouTube and Twitch.
No-specific Goal
Competing with Netflix and other streaming platforms, Quibi did not have any specified goal. With such bad content in comparison with other streaming platforms, Quibi needed something to beat the opponents.
But unfortunately, Quibi failed in all aspects of a good video streaming platform and did not even provide any valid or reasonable reason to convince people to download it.
Internal Problems
Quibi had major internal problems between the two founders. According to The Wall Street Journal, Whitman even threatened to leave when found out that Katzenberg was dictatorial which weakened her authority and humiliated her.
Apart from this, Whitman and Katzenberg, both didn't have any idea on how people use their phones for streaming purposes. They did not actually understand the concept of Netflix and TikTok. In such wide competition in the market, one needs the proper strong strategies and planning so that it could thrive in the market. But Quibi failed on all grounds!
The Pandemic
The biggest drawback of Quibi was it came out in a pandemic. All the planning and strategies of Quibi were based on public places and gatherings. And these were highly restricted in the times of the Covid-19 crisis.
Quibi failed to adapt to such major changes and formulated a low social media presence and bad content without any effective marketing. The main reason behind all these failures was poor management, low insights on consumer behavior, needs, and wants.
Quibi was meant to be shut down even without the pandemic. The company did not have any proper functioning of management.
Tanusha Verma
Conclusion
The company with no proper planning and ideology, Quibi was implied to fail. And that's what happened! Quibi failed, basically from all aspects. With no adequate leadership, poor content, no customers preferences and extremely disturbed management Quibi was nothing but a disaster.
Although the founders invested a great sum of money but with no idea how a video streaming platform runs, it all became worthless.
FAQ
Who is the founder of Quibi?
Jeffrey Katzenberg founded Quibi in 2020.
How much money did Quibi lost?
Quibi lost over $1.75 billion in less than 6 months.
Why did Quibi failed?
The reasons why Quibi failed were vast. They included burning through too much cash, poor content, high prices, missing features, personal issues between the founders, as well as legal troubles.
Author: Pratyusha Srivastava
Source : https://startuptalky.com/quibi-failure-story/
Date : 2021-10-01T11:39:18.000Z