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Afrostream (YC S15) Is Netflix for African and African-American Movies
- Tonje 11y agoHi, I'm Tonjé BAKANG, founder and CEO I would be happy to answer all your questions. T.
- autarch 11y agoHi Tonjé, This is a great idea, but how do you protect yourself from Netflix and Amazon simply deciding to eat your category? It seems like as the 800 pound gorillas in the market, there's nothing preventing them from simply beefing up their catalogs and adding some categories to do the same thing. FWIW, Amazon does offer Middle of Nowhere (the film in the article screenshot) for rental (no free streaming with Prime) and the "Customers Who Watched This Item Also Watched" is all African-American films as well. That said, it's not clear how deep their catalog goes, and they don't actually have an African-(American) category one can browse. (Also, why did you write your last name in ALL CAPS? I've seen people do this before, but I've never understood what the convention is trying to achieve).
- sandslash 11y agoDon't mean to take away from the thread (I love what Tonjé and Ludovic are doing here and they're great guys!) but I also wondered about that last parenthetical question as well with some of my friends from France. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but in France, it is common, but not necessary, to write your last name before your first name in many situations. And secondly, many people also have last names that are also first names so to avoid confusion and awkwardness it's denoted in all caps.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoMy favorite is in some Latin American cultures where if you have the name A B C, then B is the last name (father's B) while C is the secondary last name (mother's B). Many who move to the US take up A B as their naming structure due to so many Americans treating B as the middle name. It makes me want to design all websites to have a single name field with 'Name as you want it to appear' (and a legal full name field if needed within the given domain). I've heard global addresses are even harder to account for.
- zyxley 11y agoAnd, of course, there's the niche but real case of people who only have a single name. For example, at a previous job, I once worked with a man whose legal name was just "Steel".
- mc32 11y agoAnd the majority of Indonesians, who if pressed just reuse their name as last name. At least traditionally, not sure if gov is requiring last names.
- adrianmsmith 11y agoYou've probably seen these lists, but in case you haven't, I think they're great: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/ https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
- lbostral 11y agoYou are right. And just in case, the full name of Tonjé is Tonjé Bakang Tonje, so he doesn't mean to have a CAP problem (And I know his computer is aging not well :) but I think it was just to be clear with his full name. Call him Tonjé (pronounce Tonjay), though, he will always answer you with a smile :)
- eonw 11y agoCrunchyRoll seems to be doing fine in their niche, despite the 800lb gorillas in the neighborhood. it might be easier for the gorillas to just let them grow, spend the time rounding up and acquiring all the rights, and then buying out the smaller company.
- mkagenius 11y agoHi! All the best for this! One small question, why is the website in french? I think this product can have global audience, even better no?
- S4M 11y agoI am not affiliated with Afrostream, but they currently serve only French speaking countries (France, Belgium, Switzerland in Europe and Senegal and Ivory in Africa). My guess is that the founders are from Senegal or Ivory and want to tackle their local market first.
- lbostral 11y agoHey, I am Ludovic and cofounder and CTO of Afrostream At first yes we are French (with baguette and beret and all that stuff), and we know very well the European and African Market in the french spoken countries in this area. So we will start with the market we know well first. But we have a tremendous demand from other countries which send us a lot of messages.
- geofft 11y agoFrench is the lingua franca, after all. :)
- lbostral 11y ago;)
- rodgerd 11y ago> One small question, why is the website in french? Have a look at how many French-speaking countries there are in Africa.
- monocasa 11y agoAre there any plans to get into content production? There are a lot of languages that really lack a lot of natively produced video content (Pulaar, Malinke, etc). IMO, that's the only way I can see for you to protect yourself from your niche being simply eaten by Netflix et al.
- lbostral 11y agoGreat feedback :) languages and dialects are a part of our strategy. We have other ways to protect yourself from Netflix, though, but we can't reveal all our moves at once :)
- seivan 11y agoThis is an amazing idea. My parents watch Korean (or Asian in general) drama shows all the time, that shit isn't available in Sweden or Netflix. Nothing that says they won't enjoy content from Africa! I hope you add subtitle support for multiple languages, and make it community driven.
- lbostral 11y agoto add subtitles in many languages and dialect is definitely in our plans :)
- yummyfajitas 11y agoI don't get how Netflix-of-$NICHE can be a long term business. It seems that once $NICHE-stream demonstrates sufficient demand, Netflix can simply license the same content and provide customers with a superset of the content that $NICHE-stream provides. It's also unclear to me that Netflix is even lacking in this specific niche. My ex-girlfriend loved browsing my netflix over a VPN because it had so much of her african american comedy. (Admittedly, what she - an African woman - considered a good selection might be different from what westerners consider a good selection.) In a few cases, e.g. Parables ($NICHE=devout christians), I can see how they offer something different - they deliberately exclude content (e.g., movies that offend christian sensibilities) that their members don't want. But that doesn't seem to apply here.
- mkagenius 11y ago> Netflix can simply license the same content and provide customers with a superset of the content that $NICHE-stream provides "can" is always a problem with big companies, they have so many other works to do they rarely get time. Thats where small companies can win some niche market and do a better job.
- nostromo 11y agoNetflix isn't so much like "cable" anymore. It's more like HBO. It's a channel; one of many. My family, for example, subscribes to Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and CrunchyRoll. I suspect in the future there will be more and more niche channels like Afrostream (and CrunchyRoll).
- freyr 11y ago> It's more like HBO. Except that it airs orders-of-magnitude more content than HBO from a variety of sources. It's something between cable and a channel. It's not HBO, it's Netflix.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> I don't get how Netflix-of-$NICHE can be a long term business. It seems that once $NICHE-stream demonstrates sufficient demand, Netflix can simply license the same content and provide customers with a superset of the content that $NICHE-stream provides. The marginal value of content with a strong, dedicated, but niche following to Netflix -- whose branding is mainstream and not targeted to that niche -- may be less than it is to a provider specialized in targeting that niche, which means that the licensing fee Netflix could afford to pay is less. Further, your argument presupposes that all streaming licenses are non-exclusive. That is, rather decidedly, not the case. If someone else secures an exclusive license, Netflix cannot license the same content and provide customers with a superset of what the niche provider offers. > It's also unclear to me that Netflix is even lacking in this specific niche. It probably isn't compared to any major provider that a consumer is going to find today. OTOH, it could be in the future, especially if a more targeted competitor exists that starts outbidding Netflix for exclusive licenses for content in that niche.
- kposehn 11y agoSo, there are certainly valid questions about whether one can build a "Netflix-of-$NICHE", but I want to point to a lovely little example named Crunchyroll. You can definitely succeed in a niche, provided you have some factors in your favor: 1. An audience that is dedicated to the content you serve 2. The ability to focus on the niche provides you a greater library than broader competitors have 3. The ability to market yourself in such a way that you build reputation with the core audience The end result is you can create a product that other people will pass up competing offerings for that might have broader appeal - or will simply subscribe to both. Netflix used to be the go-to for Anime for a long period of time. However, Crunchyroll was able to provide a much more massive library of anime on-demand and catered to the dedicated fanbase.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- steve19 11y agoI wonder about the African part. African cultures, and languages, vary a lot. There is zero cultural crossover between Zulus, Marsai and Egyptians for example. (I worked in Africa for a number of years)
- lbostral 11y agoHello, I am Ludovic, cofounder and CTO of Afrostream. You are right the "African culture" in two words, doesn't exist in fact.There are a lot of different cultures in Africa. Do you know that Nigeria is the second or third producers of movies and series (behind India, and sometimes, USA :) ) Ghana is very productive too. West Africa (Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Ivroy Coast...) have some interested movies too. Our goal is to show the difference, and to spread the word about these cultures.
- steve19 11y agoInteresting, I did not know that about Nigeria. it sounds like you are focusing on importing West African cinema into the USA, which does make sense. Good luck. BTW, what is one Nigerian firm you would recommend?
- s_q_b 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nollywood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nollywood
- liotier 11y agoHow will you deal with language variety ? Original soundtrack in Xhosa ? Wolof with French subtitles ? How would anyone even subtitle Nouchi in English ? Dubbed with more care than your average Nollywood cookie-cutter family drama ? Or dubbed like a cheap telenovella ? Multiple audio & sub options ? You contract the post-production yourself ? Je wanda grave !
- lbostral 11y agoWe are working with some people all over the world for subtitling and dubbing. We will not dub massively, we prefer people discover contents in their original format, with subtitles in their languages. we will dub in certain cases, though, with the good people.
- fijal 11y agoThe african channel that does not work in most of africa :-) No, I know it's hard to secure rights everywhere, but no streaming service works in my parts of africa.
- lbostral 11y agoHey, I am Ludovic, Cofounder and CTO of Afrostream, You are right, there are some technical challenges here. I don't know where you live exactly. We will not launch in all the continents now, there is no sense here. We are working with some Internet and mobile providers to facilitate access to Afrostream. Mobile is the key word here : people have access to cheap android smartphones, and there will be a lot of deployment of 3G and 4G Networks in the months to come. Where do you live in Africa exactly ?
- fijal 11y agoSouth Africa. I know the whatever organization is licensing content here is hostile enough that most people just don't bother.
- eonw 11y agois this related to insufficient infrastructure or the services are just blocking you by IP/region?
- lbostral 11y agoIn part we have acquired rights for a group of countries in Africa, so there will be a blocking by IP. Other part is yes, some regions are under-equipped, and we will be there with some Internet providers which are deploying their networks to have some interesting contents at the start.
- eonw 11y agosounds like a very cool project.
- personlurking 11y agoI did an Ask HN over 500 days ago wondering why there weren't any specialized Netflix sites. It didn't get a lot of traction though there were a few answers. I'm still waiting for a foreign film 'Netflix'...one day. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6972071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6972071
- lbostral 11y agothere are some yey, and now, there is Afrostream :)
- maximmcnair 11y agotry mubi.com, it has a good selection of foreign films. It 'stocks' 30 films with one being taken up/down everyday, so there anyways something new to watch.
- nofeels 11y agoLets be real here. Given how obviously unsustainable this is given the other comments in here, this company exists in the YC portfolio so they can say, 'hey look how much diversity we have!' Aftrostream creators, I'm sure you're all great people and doing something great, but you've gotten funding to be the diversity pawn. Good luck on your ventures and enslavement mates.
- lbostral 11y agoHey, I am Ludovic, cofounder and CTO of Afrostream. And I am black too, and French :) (yes I certainly have many other flaws too) To answer to your question : Yes absolutely, we are here in part of diversity. I thought 1à secondes about why I am here, and that certainly played a part, But the second thought I have was this : even if am here because I am "from diversity", that's ok. I know who I am by myself. I want Afrostream to be big, that's my only goal. And I am at Y Combinator, is that not the place to be big ?
- garry 11y agoI was one of the YC partners who interviewed and funded Afrostream. We made the call to fund because we fundamentally believe in this team and market. We accept companies not because they are flawless. No companies are, and none of the startups that succeed have been. They all have specific challenges. But we ask ourselves, is this a talented team, and is this something people want? Is there a path for this to be a big business? In both cases, yes.
- peteridah 11y agoCongratulations Ludovic! I just want to echo that this is absolutely an underserved market. Yes there are definitely challenges, but also great opportunities. African content is just really beginning to emerge; Nollywood and the like are just scratching the surface and yet to unearth the richness of 1000's of years of heritage. Kudos also to YC buying in :)
- themoonbus 11y ago"Given how obviously unsustainable this is given the other comments in here" Huh... I didn't realize HN comments dictated the sustainability of a startup. Who knew we had such power! Funny thing is, many of the comments pointed out that a streaming service specialized in one culture / genre can be successful (crunchyroll).
- erikb 11y agoWould pay for Netflix for Asian movies. They have some quite incredible flicks there, but without the language knowledge it's often hard to get access to them.
- lbostral 11y agoDrama Fever and Viki.com could be your weekend friends
- gcb0 11y agoisn't it racist to clump Egyptian, south african, etc culture in the same genre just because of a continent or skin colour? also, will it feature "zulu (1964)"? Or are we going to have random values besides the continent-culture-clumping thing?
- robwilliams 11y agoWhy is it racist to showcase African media? The founders readily admit in this thread that they are trying to get more exposure for all African cultures, not some African monoculture.
- Baghard 11y agoIt is not racism. It is (positive) discrimination. If we keep everything the same, but target a different demographic this service could be called: WhiteStream, a Netflix for whites and white-culture movies. "The persuit of happiness" is classified as an Afro-American movie. Why is that? Does it portray black culture? Or is it because one or more actors have a black skin? I think it is the latter, because the theme from the movie is universal and transcends race. James Bond is a hero, not because he is white, but because of his actions. Asking why there is no black James Bond is forcing race on an old fictitious English character (why do you care about the skin color of your heroes?). How to classify Morgan Freeman movies on the Afro-American scale? Add "Driving Miss Daisy" to the catalog, but leave out "Evan Almighty"? "I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And, I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace and you know me as Morgan Freeman. You don’t say, "Well, ahem! This white guy named Mike Wallace." You don’t say it."
- lbostral 11y agoI love Morgan Freeman by the way. A man who played a president of the USA, and God multiple times, is exactly what you need to show everywhere, not only on Afrostream Is it positive discrimination ? Since there is a political implication there, I don't think so, but I will try to answer. Do you know the movie "Ride Along" ? It did more than 100M$ in the American market for a budget of 25M$. This movie has one of the best start of any movie all time in January. Do you know how we could see this movie outside USA. Not in a movie theater in France, though. Piracy is the first channel to see african-american movies in Europe and Africa. Some movies are not well distributed and it appears so that a lot of these movies are from or with an African descent castings. That's not fair. We will correct this fact. And if you want to call this positive discrimination, why not. Afrostream is a service which will permit to show movies which are not shown in a lot of countries in a legal way. That's our political statement.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoBET worked. CrunchyRoll worked. I think the service has a good chance of making it if there's demand in this niche and they focus on delivering where it's strongest. If they stream to U.S., too, we might also see some interesting movies and culture we'd otherwise not be exposed to. Regarding Netflix, they might compete but I doubt it given what the co-founder has said. More likely, a company like Netflix would acquire them to inherit and exploit the market they created. That's just my guess. Good luck, Ludovic.
- lbostral 11y agoThank you for your great feedback, Seems Netflix is a big concern for a lot of people here. Since I am a subscriber to Netflix too, I think my first action is to unsubscribe soon to help us. Just kidding. Netflix has some flaws too. And we intend to exploit them :) , let the fight begin
- nickpsecurity 11y agoHaha. Stay a subscriber to Netflix so you can spot the strengths to copy and problems to avoid. Competitive intelligence for $7 a month is hard to beat. ;) I think the biggest thing for you company, though, is to just put all your effort into getting operational where demand and connectivity are strongest. Don't worry about the others too much: you'll just get overstretched. Many projects have made that mistake. Just add them gradually over time.
- lbostral 11y agoGreat advice I will keep in mind all the time, thank you :)
- mc32 11y agoI think one great thing about this is exposing non Africans to African content. It will allow Americans (and others in the world) to learn more about actual modern African cultures. People might be surprised, hopefully not, how middle class Africans are not that different from middle classes of other ethnicities. Sure, there will be some cultural difference and there will be an accusation of Nigerian cultural imperialism, as their programming dominates, but so does Mexican culture on the rest of LatAm. The programming may even prove to offer more authentic and aspirational programing to blacks everywhere bypassing hollywoods imprimatur --which can only be good.
- lbostral 11y agoThat's exactly our point :) I would keep this answer and use it every day, thank you :)
- s_q_b 11y agoHow good is your non-Nigerian selection? Having had a Nigerian girlfriend I'm familiar with Nigerian cinema and shows, but I'm completely ignorant about the rest of African films.
- notNow 11y agoDoes this mean content will be sourced exclusively from sub-Saharan countries with no room for North African drama on the screen? We're after all Africans :)
- yemi 11y agoI must point out that such a service exist, and it's one of the most successful startups out of Africa. It's called Irokotv, and at best afrosteam is a clone of this service. I was quite surprised the techcrunch article nor anyone else didn't mention them, here's a 2013 article from techcrunch after Irokotv closed $8 million in another round of funding- http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/the-scramble-for-africa-continues-irokotv-closes-8m-to-be-the-netflix-of-africa/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/the-scramble-for-africa-con... Quite frankly, I am tired of the tag, Netflix of "insert region where Netflix doesn't operate" I would like to know if the founders of Afrostream will deny to being a clone of Irokotv
- lbostral 11y agoWe know very well Jason, the founder of Irokotv, we had some discussions with him just a few days ago. Irokotv is very centered on movies from Nollywood, and has started to have some movies from Hollywood. We have another point of view : We are not the Netflix of a specific region, or the Netflix for certain people. We are the Netflix of the African Diaspora powered contents. We want to show what Afro descendants are capable of, and we want to solve the distribution problem of theses movies all over the world. Irokotv was here first, and yes we will have Nigerian contents. But we have other goals. We want to distribute, create and show to the world how some contents you couldn't see are incredible. We want to show that we could have our black Superman, or our black James Bond. We want to expose all of the richness of all the African cultures (in USA, Brazil, France, UK, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Angola, Nigeria and more), all over the world
- dopamean 11y agoYou're surprised that TC isn't plugged in to whats going on in Africa?
- scott_karana 11y agoTC wrote about this other product in 2013, and didn't bother looking at their own past articles before writing this one.
- yemi 11y agoI must point out that such a service exist, and it's one of the most successful startups out of Africa. It's called Irokotv, and at best afrosteam is a clone of this service. I was quite surprised the techcrunch article nor anyone else didn't mention them. Here's a 2013 article from techcrunch after Irokotv closed $8 million in another round of funding- http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/the-scramble-for-africa-continues-irokotv-closes-8m-to-be-the-netflix-of-africa/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/the-scramble-for-africa-con... Quite frankly, I am tired of the tag, Netflix of "insert region where Netflix doesn't operate". I would like to know if the founders of Afrostream will deny to being a clone of Irokotv
- HilaryNews 11y agoIdentity-based content is helpful for when marketers get incredibly lazy. I firmly suspect that African and African-American movies will put a much needed spotlight on the consumption differences between the two cultures. Any word on content for Colonial African culture?
- jcr 11y agoI'm absolutely certain you're just buried with the existing work of just getting your new startup rolling with its original idea (African centric movies), so put this (somewhat obvious) suggestion on your "possible expansion ideas for maybe someday" list. Something I find lacking on broadcast TV is news coverage of Africa. In the US, the only place where you'll find regular English language broadcast TV news coverage of Africa is, oddly enough, through CCTV ("China Central Television" via the Chinese government). Though it is already possible to get _some_ African news coverage over the web, news as a content source for your service might be a worthwhile addition. According to CCTV coverage, African radio broadcasting is (supposedly) extremely popular and far more widespread than TV. The pervasive use of radio is (supposedly) due to radio being less expensive than TV and far more widely adopted by the general populace. The part I found the most interesting is how both pre-recorded and live serial drama, niche, and educational shows are still being broadcast in Africa over radio (along with the expected music, news, and talk shows). Though it's audio rather than video and there a many companies in the "African Internet Radio" business, radio might (eventually) be another appealing content source for you. Good Luck!