4 ms·

To me it sounded like the guy had a good idea, it was slow growing but it was also not his main focus. He had paying customers, distributors, and producers usi

To me it sounded like the guy had a good idea, it was slow growing but it was also not his main focus. He had paying customers, distributors, and producers using his service, it had roots. It may not have been worthwhile in his eyes to keep up, but to me it seemed like he had a good idea, good people behind it, he just needed to keep going a little while longer. Did he give up too early right when things seemed to be at the end? I guess we'll never know. Startups are hard. If it was easy everyone would do it. Not to downplay this guys dedication, it seemed he had a lot, but 3 years of working full time and growing a startup, that seems like it would take a toll on anyone. I guess everyone can't just take a leap and quit their job, but something has to give I feel. When you're starting a company it absolutely needs at least one persons complete focus.

underwater 14y ago
I wonder if he tried to change how he operated before he shut up. It sounds like something that would be very easy to franchise. He sources the distributors and finds a passionate person in each city (lots of people love indie films; so this should be easy) to run the actual events. He can then take a percentage of their profits without having a massive workload he can't handle.
- bigiain 14y ago
  "He can then take a percentage of their profits"… I think that is likely to be the problem. I think this is a great idea too, _BUT_ I've seen a few attempts to start up "indie movies in bars" type things here (in Sydney .au), and you seem to either get reasonable attendance numbers at free (or "donation requested") nights, or almost nobody showing up to show charging admission (even if it's as low as $5). Between the film distributor, the venue, and the organiser - there's very little profit to be made anyway. Adding another person wanting a cut into the chain leaves even less money for each person's share, and I'm not sure a website (no matter how slick or well designed) adds enough value for the distributor/venue/organiser to want to give up some of their meager earnings. I think this is much more a hyper-local marketing/advertising problem than anything a national-scale website can offer. The bottleneck is the venues, and the venues are only going to be interested on nights they're not already busy (or busy enough), which means you're only going to get Monday or Tuesday nights (or possibly Sundays). From my experience - that means you mostly only get "locals" showing up - it seems nobody wants to drive halfway across town on a Monday night to go to a bar and see a movie - back when one of my local bars was doing this (Jay Katz and Miss Death doing Monday nights at The Annandale), I'd guess more people turned up on foot or by bicycle than in cars. When your target customer is defined by "lives within 15 minutes walk of the venue", multi-city focused websites seem a lot less useful - I'd be concentrating my efforts on social media and posters/flyers placed appropriately around the venue... (But maybe I'm wrong, I'd love it if somebody found a great angle, and make a huge success out of this idea… Once you reached critical mass with it, it'd be wonderful to expect to be able to hit the "cool indie movies in bars" website and find something interesting and fun to do on a Monday night in Melbourne or Portland or Vancouver or Berlin…)
  - underwater 14y ago
    His model reminded me more of the pub trivia scene rather than an alternative to brick and mortar cinemas. If his percentages were low enough then he could make this a decent business by having educated locals spend a few days a month promoting and running this in dozens of cities. That all assumes his fixed costs are low enough that he could let the business run like this while he continues he day job. This might not be the case though.
    - bigiain 14y ago
      I guess my question is - what are those "educated locals" getting in return for his cut?
      - underwater 14y ago
        Uh, I meant to type "motivated locals". Autocorrect strikes again. There are three parts to his business: the brand, his connections with indy film publishers, and the event organisation. From the sounds of it the later is what is taking most of his time and energy, but that's also the part that is has nothing to do with what makes his business unique. There are thousands of people who can organise an event. Many probably do it better than him. The value of his business is in the brand and connections. His business doesn't even support one person's wage with three cities so a single location franchisee would have to be a hobbyist. Such a person has no time to be organizing the rights for screenings, designing and printing flyers or maintaining a website. For the franchisee, the chance to make a bit of pocket money doing something they're passionate about as a socializing film-lover, and to have Lucas handle the rest of the organization.
  - samspot 14y ago
    I think it cuts down the potential audience quite a bit. I already am not very interested in going to a bar, and watching a movie in one sounds even less fun. Most of the people I know who refuse to go to the movies cite cleanliness, noisyness, rude people, etc. as the reasons. In my mind, going to a movie at a bar ramps up all the negative aspects of the experience. I'm expecting that many people will disagree with me on this, but I thought my view was worth putting out there.

underwater 14y ago

I wonder if he tried to change how he operated before he shut up. It sounds like something that would be very easy to franchise. He sources the distributors and finds a passionate person in each city (lots of people love indie films; so this should be easy) to run the actual events. He can then take a percentage of their profits without having a massive workload he can't handle.

bigiain 14y ago
"He can then take a percentage of their profits"… I think that is likely to be the problem. I think this is a great idea too, _BUT_ I've seen a few attempts to start up "indie movies in bars" type things here (in Sydney .au), and you seem to either get reasonable attendance numbers at free (or "donation requested") nights, or almost nobody showing up to show charging admission (even if it's as low as $5). Between the film distributor, the venue, and the organiser - there's very little profit to be made anyway. Adding another person wanting a cut into the chain leaves even less money for each person's share, and I'm not sure a website (no matter how slick or well designed) adds enough value for the distributor/venue/organiser to want to give up some of their meager earnings. I think this is much more a hyper-local marketing/advertising problem than anything a national-scale website can offer. The bottleneck is the venues, and the venues are only going to be interested on nights they're not already busy (or busy enough), which means you're only going to get Monday or Tuesday nights (or possibly Sundays). From my experience - that means you mostly only get "locals" showing up - it seems nobody wants to drive halfway across town on a Monday night to go to a bar and see a movie - back when one of my local bars was doing this (Jay Katz and Miss Death doing Monday nights at The Annandale), I'd guess more people turned up on foot or by bicycle than in cars. When your target customer is defined by "lives within 15 minutes walk of the venue", multi-city focused websites seem a lot less useful - I'd be concentrating my efforts on social media and posters/flyers placed appropriately around the venue... (But maybe I'm wrong, I'd love it if somebody found a great angle, and make a huge success out of this idea… Once you reached critical mass with it, it'd be wonderful to expect to be able to hit the "cool indie movies in bars" website and find something interesting and fun to do on a Monday night in Melbourne or Portland or Vancouver or Berlin…)
- underwater 14y ago
  His model reminded me more of the pub trivia scene rather than an alternative to brick and mortar cinemas. If his percentages were low enough then he could make this a decent business by having educated locals spend a few days a month promoting and running this in dozens of cities. That all assumes his fixed costs are low enough that he could let the business run like this while he continues he day job. This might not be the case though.
  - bigiain 14y ago
    I guess my question is - what are those "educated locals" getting in return for his cut?
    - underwater 14y ago
      Uh, I meant to type "motivated locals". Autocorrect strikes again. There are three parts to his business: the brand, his connections with indy film publishers, and the event organisation. From the sounds of it the later is what is taking most of his time and energy, but that's also the part that is has nothing to do with what makes his business unique. There are thousands of people who can organise an event. Many probably do it better than him. The value of his business is in the brand and connections. His business doesn't even support one person's wage with three cities so a single location franchisee would have to be a hobbyist. Such a person has no time to be organizing the rights for screenings, designing and printing flyers or maintaining a website. For the franchisee, the chance to make a bit of pocket money doing something they're passionate about as a socializing film-lover, and to have Lucas handle the rest of the organization.
- samspot 14y ago
  I think it cuts down the potential audience quite a bit. I already am not very interested in going to a bar, and watching a movie in one sounds even less fun. Most of the people I know who refuse to go to the movies cite cleanliness, noisyness, rude people, etc. as the reasons. In my mind, going to a movie at a bar ramps up all the negative aspects of the experience. I'm expecting that many people will disagree with me on this, but I thought my view was worth putting out there.