Let’s talk about startups. These innovative companies that we hear so much about. So, what is this important concept for those of us working with contemporary communication?
Startups are new business models, and they are linked to innovation. They are scalable companies. What does this mean?
Different from a restaurant, where you need a certain number of waiters and tables, which requires a very high investment, and in order to double your service capacity, you need to create a new restaurant, a startup can grow a lot with the same initial resources and investment. It can expand its scale and become bigger and bigger. We see this a lot in apps.
Not only cell phone apps. Startups are companies that involve new technologies. An example that I use a lot to talk about startups, which I believe it was at the time, is the telephone.
The creation of the telephone is attributed to Antonio Meucci, but Alexander Graham Bell was the one who later patented it, and became famous for it. So, what did he do? He didn’t necessarily invent a telephone device, he had the Bell telephone company and was able to make it scalable.
He took a device that communicated from one floor to another, and scaled it across an entire town, creating a telephone company. This was a new technology at the time when no one used the term startup. Continuing, startups are lean and flexible companies.
They are adaptable to change. Let’s think about how Netflix can change. It has the potential to change.
It could become a platform for courses in the future. Maybe even by the time you are taking this course, Netflix might already be a platform for courses. At the time that I'm recording this class I’m giving now, Netflix is not yet a platform for courses.
It is not one of the biggest universities in the world. But who knows, it has potential, it’s flexible, and it could become this. It works with exponential production.
That is, its capacity for growth, and to be followed by other companies that will try to do the same, is very big. So, Netflix, as I said, has the potential to reach new markets. Let’s take Uber, Uber appeared as a transportation outsourcing company, as competition to taxis.
Afterwards, it got into the logistics of food delivery. And I don’t know if it’s going to enter other markets, but it has the potential to do so. To conclude, I’m going to compare three types of companies to look at how their streaming services functioned as startups, and how in fact they’ve changed, they’re not the same thing.
We have Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video. These are three video streaming companies. Netflix is a company that profits from entertainment.
From its Ads Placements, and from its subscribers. That’s the basis of their business. On the other hand, Disney+ doesn’t focus on client subscriptions, although they make a lot of money with that.
In fact, it’s a channel to expand the brand’s mythology. It places the Disney characters making people’s eyes shine and become fans who will buy dolls, games, trips to the theme parks, and various other products. In fact, it’s a channel that sells the brand’s mythology.
And it profits from this. That is, Disney+ is an advertising channel for the brand. Now, Amazon Prime has the cheapest streaming service.
Why? Because they’re not interested in profiting from the streaming subscriptions. It’s a pretext for the subscribers to shop on their sales platform.
It’s a large retail industry that uses its streaming platform as a plus, as a promotional action to expand this retail by offering their subscribers the video platform. So, they look like they are the same thing, but they’re not. Why am I describing this as a concept?
Because it’s helpful to understand that sometimes companies seem to be the same thing, but they use their strategies in many different ways to achieve many different goals. Here, I’m talking large scale, but we can think small scale as well. See you, next class.
