I think it wasn't so much about MoviePass per se as it was about the idea that MoviePass symbolized something broken in the modern economy -- that what it rewards isn't productive entrepreneurship that creates value by making life better for people, but rather burning tons of cash to wedge yourself into a position from which you can then extract rents from other people. The valorization of unnecessary middlemen.
From an HN comment from today that I've added to my favorites:
"It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value."
I quote it because your comment made me think, "where have I recently heard that before?" :-)
The world has become this raging river of dumb money, and it’s a lot easier to simply find the biggest cup you can find and dip it in, than it is to actually create something of value and sell it to actual people.
How are the movie theaters supposed to undercut somebody who is deliberately losing money on every transaction, without driving themselves out of business?
This is the new VC-funded business model: you use cash as a kind of anti-gravity machine, letting you do things no competitor would do because they aren't economically rational. The bet is that, if by defying gravity you can reach a monopoly position, you'll end up making back all that cash and more. But as MoviePass demonstrated, once the cash dries up and gravity starts applying to you again, if you haven't reached that monopoly position, the fall is quick and painful.
> This is the new VC-funded business model: you use cash as a kind of anti-gravity machine, letting you do things no competitor would do because they aren't economically rational. The bet is that, if by defying gravity you can reach a monopoly position, you'll end up making back all that cash and more. But as MoviePass demonstrated, once the cash dries up and gravity starts applying to you again, if you haven't reached that monopoly position, the fall is quick and painful.
the next decade will be defined by the failure of these anti-gravity tricks
> How are the movie theaters supposed to undercut somebody who is deliberately losing money on every transaction, without driving themselves out of business?
Patience. Someone deliberately loosing money on every transaction will go out of business very quickly.
(And, apparently this is what happened to Moviepass.)
Remember, Moviepass bought the tickets from the theaters, so it's not like the theaters lost money waiting for Moviepass to go out of business.
But that's Levine's point, that there is a sense in which MoviePass didn't fail. Oh sure, it went out of business, but the fact that it flamed out spectacularly isn't hurting the careers of anybody who was involved with it. In fact it probably enhanced their careers, since being associated with a splashy, heavily-covered story turned them into a weird sort of business celebrity.
Anyone who can start a local pizzeria and make it consistently profitable is a better businessperson than any of the people associated with MoviePass are. But our culture rewards bigness, whether in success or in failure, much more lavishly than smallness, so the MoviePass alums find the doors of the VC world flung open to them, even though the only thing they're known for is failing.
The only guy who’s cited by Matt as being career-enhanced by MoviePass is the guy who started the company, not the guy who came up with the much-too-low 10 Dollar subscription later on.
