7 ms·

Hubrif: Lost $10K Building the Netflix for African Short Films

78 points by mmoez 8y ago

dajohnson89 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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-hollywood-in-tucson https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6258-lusty-pre-code-...
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    Cool! I can watch Akira Kurosawa movies online again!
- have_faith 8y ago
  Give Mubi a try: https://mubi.com/ https://mubi.com/
lawlessone 8y ago
his other service https://www.festivilia.com/ https://www.festivilia.com/ is interesting. I had no idea so many film festivals exist.
conception 8y ago
Is the title of this post uptalking? (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-logic/201010/the-uptalk-epidemic https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-logic/201010...) 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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
vezycash 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Doesn’t Flipkart still have pay on delivery too?
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    Amazon has pay on delivery in India, too.
  - Grue3 8y ago
    I think anything in Japan has pay on delivery as well.
    - gambiting 8y ago
      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.
- segmondy 8y ago
  This is already done and making money. www.irokotv.com I did try to build an African Netflix in 2004 before streaming when it was all about shipping discs. It didn't pan out for me back then because most movies were VCDs and not DVDs and most people outside of the US's DVD players didn't necessarily play VCD. There was also a supply issue in regards to acquiring non pirated and good quality movies.
Impossible 8y ago
A similar startup called Afrostream was in YC years ago (https://blog.ycombinator.com/afrostream-yc-s15-makes-it-easy-to-find-and-watch-african-and-african-american-movies/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/afrostream-yc-s15-makes-it-easy...) looks like they shut down as well.
- mc32 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
mtw 8y ago
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.
- mc32 8y ago
  I think you’re right with respect to catalogue size, but original/exclusive content helps them grow their business, but they started out way different while being successful at essentially distribution and ease of use.
- budu3 8y ago
  iRoku TV seems to have been successful in becoming the Netflix of Africa
- vezycash 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    > The continent is still mostly cash based. Have you heard of MPESA ?
    - vezycash 8y ago
      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.
rando444 8y ago
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.
azinman2 8y ago
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 8y ago
  I hate it too, but it could be like: "How I lost $10K Building an African Netflix? [Glad you asked...]"
  - JadeNB 8y ago
    It could be, but, to be grammatical, it would have to be "You want to know how I lost …?" or "How did I lose …?"
- JadeNB 8y ago
  The question mark isn't in the article title either, so it seems particularly inappropriate.
- sctb 8y ago
  Thanks, we've updated the headline?
yesplorer 8y ago
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 8y ago
  > 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 8y ago
    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.
primitivesuave 8y ago
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.
ghgdynb1 8y ago
It’s called YouTube for any market with GDP per capita below 10,000 USD
mruts 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
jkuria 8y ago
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!
- fecak 8y ago
  A few years ago I briefly had some business interactions with iRoko in New York, and when I saw the title of this article I immediately thought what you did. I think the biggest challenge they discussed with me at the time was a mobile first market, but it was a few years ago.
- vmarsy 8y ago
  > 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.
- segmondy 8y ago
  Not true, depends on location. There are such restaurants in Chicago, DC, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, NY. If you have the crowd you will do fine, it all depends on your market.
- 8y ago
blueboo 8y ago
10k, so...a couple weeks of a single professional engineer?
- gambiting 8y ago
  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).
jameane 8y ago
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.
charliebrownau 8y ago
Will the shows be about Black South Africans killing White south AFricans farmers and then blaming Western Society for cylons ?

78 points by mmoez 8y ago

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 8y ago
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-hollywood-in-tucson https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6258-lusty-pre-code-...
- jschwartzi 8y ago
  Cool! I can watch Akira Kurosawa movies online again!
have_faith 8y ago
Give Mubi a try: https://mubi.com/ https://mubi.com/

lawlessone 8y ago

his other service https://www.festivilia.com/ https://www.festivilia.com/ is interesting. I had no idea so many film festivals exist.

conception 8y ago

Is the title of this post uptalking? (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-logic/201010/the-uptalk-epidemic https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/caveman-logic/201010...) 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.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

vezycash 8y ago

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 8y ago
Doesn’t Flipkart still have pay on delivery too?
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  Amazon has pay on delivery in India, too.
- Grue3 8y ago
  I think anything in Japan has pay on delivery as well.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    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.
segmondy 8y ago
This is already done and making money. www.irokotv.com I did try to build an African Netflix in 2004 before streaming when it was all about shipping discs. It didn't pan out for me back then because most movies were VCDs and not DVDs and most people outside of the US's DVD players didn't necessarily play VCD. There was also a supply issue in regards to acquiring non pirated and good quality movies.

Impossible 8y ago

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

mc32 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.

mtw 8y ago

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.

mc32 8y ago
I think you’re right with respect to catalogue size, but original/exclusive content helps them grow their business, but they started out way different while being successful at essentially distribution and ease of use.
budu3 8y ago
iRoku TV seems to have been successful in becoming the Netflix of Africa
vezycash 8y ago
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 8y ago
  > The continent is still mostly cash based. Have you heard of MPESA ?
  - vezycash 8y ago
    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.

rando444 8y ago

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.

azinman2 8y ago

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 8y ago
I hate it too, but it could be like: "How I lost $10K Building an African Netflix? [Glad you asked...]"
- JadeNB 8y ago
  It could be, but, to be grammatical, it would have to be "You want to know how I lost …?" or "How did I lose …?"
JadeNB 8y ago
The question mark isn't in the article title either, so it seems particularly inappropriate.
sctb 8y ago
Thanks, we've updated the headline?

yesplorer 8y ago

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 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  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.

primitivesuave 8y ago

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.

ghgdynb1 8y ago

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

mruts 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

jkuria 8y ago

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!

fecak 8y ago
A few years ago I briefly had some business interactions with iRoko in New York, and when I saw the title of this article I immediately thought what you did. I think the biggest challenge they discussed with me at the time was a mobile first market, but it was a few years ago.
vmarsy 8y ago
> 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.
segmondy 8y ago
Not true, depends on location. There are such restaurants in Chicago, DC, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, NY. If you have the crowd you will do fine, it all depends on your market.
8y ago

blueboo 8y ago

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

gambiting 8y ago
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).

jameane 8y ago

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.

charliebrownau 8y ago

Will the shows be about Black South Africans killing White south AFricans farmers and then blaming Western Society for cylons ?