• The Future Of Netflix's Business Laid Bare — By Netflix

    Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

    MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple. Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in... → Learn More

    When it comes to slideshow presentations, few do them as well as Netflix. Last year, they released one that was sent around internally about their culture. If you read it, you probably wished you worked for Netflix afterwards. And now they’ve released one about the future of their business — it’s also fascinating.

    The 40-slide presentation is great because it gives direct insight into Netflix’s view of its competition, and why they think they’ll succeed in the end. Long story short, they’re transforming the company from a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming video service. Anyone who has followed the company over the past year or so will know this, but it’s pretty interesting to read about just how much they’ve thought the transition through.

    For example, they know there’s a demand for new release DVDs, but they’re giving up that market to competitors so that they can focus on building the biggest back catalog of movies available for streaming. They know that DVD-by-mail will continue to grow for a few more years (they think 2014), but after that, it will decline just as rapidly as it grew as streaming takes over.

    Netflix doesn’t want to be the end-all source for all video content, they just want to focus on the catalog streaming ability, and exist as a supplemental service to other video services such as pay-per-view. The key to this is to make the service ubiquitous (which is why they’re focused on signing device deals) and cheap (they’re targeting around $10 per user). Once DVD-by-mail starts going away, most of their costs will be related to paying the studios to get access to their back catalog films.

    So what are Netflix’s biggest concerns going forward? Hulu and piracy. Hulu, with it’s forthcoming subscription model “could be significant competitive threat for us,” notes one slide. Piracy could also be a major problem as it may become just as bad for video as it was for music, another slide notes. I’d argue that Netflix isn’t helping that by giving up on new release rentals, but it’s hard to argue with their logic about carving out a very specific, catalog-based streaming niche for themselves.

    Find the full presentation below:

    Company: Netflix
    Website: netflix.com
    Launch Date: 1997
    IPO: NASDAQ:NFLX

    With more than 23.3 million members in the United States and Canada, Netflix, Inc. is the world’s leading Internet subscription service for enjoying movies and TV shows. For $7.99 a month, Netflix members in the U.S. can instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streaming right to their TVs and computers and can receive unlimited DVDs delivered quickly to their homes. In Canada, streaming unlimited movies and TV shows from Netflix is available for $7.99 a month. There are...

    Learn more

    Tags:

    Sponsored Ads

    blog comments powered by Disqus

    Sponsored Ads

    Sponsored Ads

    Upcoming Events

    Disrupt SF 2012

    San Francisco, CA