🍪 Netflix under promises and over delivers

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Bite Sized Beta
July 22, 2022

Happy Friday, friends! Did you think we forgot about ya this week???

The newsletter has been growing like crazy, and we ran into some email delivery issues yesterday. Don’t worry though. We bounce back like Big Sean, AND we brought the cookies.

It’s Friday, so I’ll make it a short one. Let’s get to it before it’s time to start drinking.

In the oven this week:

  • 📺 Netflix under promises and over delivers

  • 🧐 Is the bottom in?

  • 🍪 7 bite sized cookies

  • 😂 Snickerdoodles - Friday memes for ya

NETFLIX UNDER PROMISES AND OVER DELIVERS

Well, Netflix gets an “exceeds expectations” in its performance review this week, even though its latest earnings report showed a loss of over 970,000 subscribers.

Why?

It’s kinda like when you get a bad haircut and complain to all the homies about how bad it is. People are expecting you to look like chewbacca, so by the time they finally get to see you in real life, all you hear is, “it’s not thaaaaaat bad!”

Netflix previously warned shareholders that they were on track to lose 2 million subscribers, so when they only lost about half of that, the stock jumped up 6%.

Problem is, this is its second consecutive quarter of declining subscribers. (When Netflix first lost 200K subscribers in April, the stock plummeted 37% in a day.)

What’s going on? We got a few hints.

  • Poor content quality: Netflix has become known for churning out shows FAST. It’s got more than 5x the number of titles as Disney+ and 30% more titles than HBO Max. But it’s not making the award-worthy shows it used to. (Remember House of Cards, Orange is the New Black or The Queen's Gambit?) Production has gotten more formulaic and the content’s gotten a lot more mediocre.

  • It’s expensive: Netflix's plans range from $10-$20 a month, while you could get a Hulu, Disney+, ESPN+ bundle for $20. To fix this, Netflix is introducing an ad supported, lower price tier early next year.

  • Lack of focus: they’re splitting their focus by investing in games. (Real question: has anyone played a Netflix game?? What’s that like?)

  • Intense competition: let’s face it, there are a lot more players in the game now and they’re raising the bar. Disney+ is about to eat Netflix’s lunch in subscribers, even after launching a decade later.

Our take?

There’s still a ways to go, but Disney+ is gonna crush. World class storytelling machine with prime IP... just imagine what happens when they start bundling in Disneyland/world perks.

We've got our Mickey Mouse ears on.

IS THE BOTTOM IN?

The stock market rallied this week, and with gas prices falling and crypto up too, some investors have new hope that the worst is over.

This got us thinking about our bank accounts... and we love to speculate!

Do we think the bottom is in? Give us your prediction and we’ll feature the results. We got 8K smart people reading this newsletter, let’s see what y’all think 💪🏼

Vote 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

COOKIE CRUMBS

  • 🤮 Microsoft is bringing stories to its enterprise “employee experience” platform, Viva Engage. Ahh finally, somewhere to put all these videos of me, expressionless, on my laptop!!!!

  • 💸 Snapchat's stock is getting decimated after missing Q2 earnings numbers, plunging another 25%. In the last year, the stock’s been down ~80%. They even announced that they’re not giving earnings guidance for Q3 because “forward-looking visibility remains incredibly challenging.” They’re tired of getting beat up and they're pullin out of the game. Shoulda grabbed a page from Netflix's book.

  • 📅 Elon and Twitter set a date (for trial): it’ll be a 5 day trial in October. Elon wanted February and Twitter wanted yesterday, but in Delaware court, the judge ruled in Twitter’s favor. Twitter: 1, Elon: 0. We'll bring the popcorn.

  • 🏥 Amazon buys One Medical for $3.9 billion to expand its healthcare footprint. It's a subscription health care provider that also has health clinics in major cities across the U.S. Makes a lot of sense, especially with PillPack, an online pharmacy Amazon acquired in 2018.

  • 👓 Google's bringing back AR glasses. They're testing utility-based use cases like showing you real time translations as someone talks in different language, or overlaying mapping directions as you walk around. It's pretty cool. Plus, they've learned their lesson from the first Google Glass... these glasses will have cameras, but won't support photos/videos to reduce the creep factor.

  • 📈 Here are the early pitch decks from some of today’s most successful companies. #TBT to when Tinder was called Match Box, Facebook was still in college, and WeWork started their VC pitches with "do what you love" as the title slide. Love looking back at big brands pre-glow-up. Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.

  • 🤪 An extra one for the laughs: a company called Meta is suing Meta for naming itself Meta.

SNICKERDOODLES

Us yesterday, trying to figure out how to send this damn email

Review of the week:

We're not crying YOU'RE CRYING!

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