We study the winners hoping to replicate their formula. But the problem with studying winners is that they often make it look easy. To truly understand how markets work, you shouldn't look at the rocket that went to the moon; you should look at the one that exploded on the launchpad.
If you want to sharpen your analytical skills, stop looking at success. Start looking at Quibi.
If you’ve forgotten Quibi, I don’t blame you. It lived and died in roughly six months during 2020. But on paper, it should have been the greatest success story of the decade.
It raised $1.75 billion in funding. It was led by Jeffrey Katzenberg (former Disney chairman) and Meg Whitman (former CEO of HP/eBay). It had A-list talent like Steven Spielberg and Jennifer Lopez making content.
The pitch was simple: "Quick Bites." High-quality, Hollywood-level shows chopped into 10-minute episodes, designed specifically for watching on your phone during your morning commute or coffee break.
So, why did it crash so hard that it became a punchline? It wasn't bad luck. It was a failure of fundamental business analysis.
A Business Analyst’s first job is to identify the user's pain point. Quibi solved a problem that didn’t exist.
They assumed that people wanted high-quality TV but didn't have time to watch it. The hypothesis was: "People have 10-minute gaps in their day, and they need premium content to fill it."
The reality? People already had ways to fill those gaps. They had Instagram, Twitter, and most importantly, TikTok. And those competitors were free. Quibi tried to charge $4.99 a month for content that was competing with "free and addictive." They bet against the behavior of the internet, and the internet won.
One of Quibi’s most fatal errors was a "feature" that users hated. To protect copyright, the app blocked users from taking screenshots or screen-recording clips.
From a boardroom perspective, this makes sense: "Protect the IP!" From a user perspective, it was suicide.
How do things go viral in 2020? Memes. People take screenshots, share clips on Twitter, and talk about the show. By blocking sharing, Quibi suffocated its own marketing. They prevented their own users from doing the advertising for them. A good analyst would have flagged that "social currency" is more valuable than copyright protection for a new platform.
