Even if the insight is right, it's all in the execution: TikTok and Quibi

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I'm spending a lot more time on TikTok recently, and so found myself reflecting a little longer than usual after reading this great article by Ben Thompson on TikTok and Quibi.

I won't repeat all his insights, but the thing that stuck with me is his comment that Katzenberg's thesis that led to the founding of Quibi was right. It definitely was. I remember thinking at the time that he was definitely right on the trends. The thesis was roughly

  • There was a lot of entertainment consumption shifting to phones.
  • There was an opportunity to innovate there. 
  • Shorter content was probably part of the answer as people's attentions and habits 
However, the set of decisions and the execution the team decided on was informed by their backgrounds and assumptions. They innovated on format (vertical/horizontal) and on length (all content is under 10 mins) and then bet big on premium content (celebrities, high production value and great scripts) to attract users and a regular schedule to ensure retention. The business model required a paid subscription strategy.

The insights into consumers behavior are definitely all correct, but the execution they bet on is... well it's early and time will tell.

As Thompson points out, you could end up building TikTok off the same thesis and insight.

The execution would be completely different- short is much shorter (seconds, not minutes), and that with the right incentives, product affordances and early creators you could turn the entire planet into awesome creators and the right algorithms into amazing curators. You could build that short, mobile entertainment system in a completely different way.

The other execution challenge is that the stakes are a lot higher for Quibi (massive fundraise, hard to pivot the product to find product/market fit) vs. the opportunity Tiktok (and it's various predecessor apps) had to tweak and find what works and respond to users.

Insight is critical, but execution is everything.

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