I saw some chatter on Twitter this past week about Netflix and Disney in the wake of Disney’s announcement of Disney+:
I’m long $dis myself and no $nflx at the moment. That said will never not pay $nflx at current pricing https://t.co/aInOGQQFXZ
— Lindzon+ (@howardlindzon) April 12, 2019
Disney’s stock was up 11% on the week
And Netflix stock was down 5% on the week
Certainly getting into the streaming game will be good for Disney. But I am less sure that content matters that much when it comes to Netflix.
A friend of mine shared this with me earlier this week:
When I saw that data, I replied to him with this:
It is the frustrations of the prior model (interruptive advertising, by appointment consumption, etc) that open the opportunity for the next model
Given that the new model, streaming, is well entrenched now, I am not saying that functionality alone will save Netflix or anyone else.
But I do believe that the functionality of a service (no ads, binge watching, user interface, curation, notifications, price, etc) are just as important, or possibly more important, than whether or not you can watch The Incredibles on it.
And most importantly, it is the frustrations of the prior model, as I mentioned above, that creates the opening for the new model.
So if you are working on a new model, for anything (it could be crypto, health care, education, finance, etc, etc), you should look very closely at what are the most annoying and frustrating aspects of the current model and focus on leading with features that remove them.
