Good news two days ago: Netflix expanded to the world.

But if you watch the events closely, you see that Netflix did what we can now call “creating wealth, startup edition“: permited users from all over the world to register and will work out the details later.

The move is dumb and briliant at the same time:

  • It tests the market for demand and early numbers. Maybe its not enough demand. Maybe people don’t watch too much TV. And if the numbers are not good, no point in bothering going legit in that country.
  • But there’s also a catch. What happened is they removed some (a lot of) shows they sold to local stations (House of Cards) or are being shown by local stations (Ray Donovan). If this content is missing, people don’t want to subscribe, so we are back to basics.

It took them 4 years to make it in America, probably will make it in two in other countries, but it requires a lot of management and local approach.

 

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