So when I write an article, I collect my thoughts over many days and write the article in my head before sitting down and just offloading (that’s why I usually write best when I am angry). It’s literally a stream of consciousness. It’s an expression of how I feel exactly at that point. And rage is one of the most expressive emotions there is. At least to me. Right now, I am in a more sombre than bullish mood. Reflective would best describe it. Because I am rarely out in the wild (I rarely attend social events and keep a tight circle) most folks don’t realise how truly emotional a person I am. Some folks have corporate experience and know how to act in her settings. Know the etiquette. I don’t. I have screamed in board meetings. Used profanities (this one is standard). Cried in board meetings (yes, I said it. I’m a human being and certain things, on certain occasions, have overcome me). That, my friends, is what it has taken to drag my little creation, IROKOtv, to where it is today. What a journey it has been. We have been overfunded (I miss those days) and largely underfunded over the last few years. But here we remain. Still in the game. Still pushing along. Still redefining what Nollywood is supposed to be.
I tried something different this year as my thoughts were so scrambled, I went back to remind myself how I felt about the future around this time in former years. Before you continue, I strongly suggest you read | irokotv 4 | irokotv 5 | irokotv 6
All read up? Great. No really. Read.
I feel happy reading back. I think at the minimum I have been consistent in my communication and leadership, whilst having forged this path ahead to where we are today. I have always shared my view of how the market was, aside all the hype. My reality. Popular or not. It’s difficult. When the billionaires (both individuals and corporates) came with their shiny toys and mountains of cash to play in my garden? I smiled. This business looks easy from the outside. It looks glitzy and glamorous. It looks fun. It’s definitely sexy. We look like we don’t know what we are doing as we are still relatively small. People view us as these young folks (although I believe us to be veterans). Paid content is a unique and brutally inefficient business until you get to scale. But getting to scale is like trench warfare of the WW1 variety. Fucking demoralising at best. Soul destroying is more the standard. If, as a successful corporate organisation, your fancy budget and planning folks modelled and predicted 500,000 subscribers in year 1 and the reality is you ended up somewhere closer to 9,000, it requires true organisational grit to keep pouring good money after ‘bad’, as scale becomes your only saviour. You really need to understand and embrace the finer arts of how to burn money. Bleed money, in fact. And still maintain and exude the confidence to smile on. You need deep, deep conviction that you are right and the numbers are wrong (the numbers are always right, you need stamina and ‘big balls’ to be able to ignore them in the short term). You need belief. You need to be an evangelist. If you doubt yourself. Even a little. You’re finished.
A few months ago I had a little crisis of confidence. I started to second guess myself. I needed to sense check myself, you know, not entirely fall victim to drinking my own kool-aid. The doubt was just a little at first then it completely overwhelmed me. So many people have flamed out of paid video content in Africa this year. So many smart groups of people who have run successful companies outside this space were falling by the wayside. Yes they all made the same mistakes that I made once upon a time; over ambition, over optimistic forecasting, grow like cancer mentality etc. How (and why) were we at irokotv able to keep on believing and they were unable or unwilling, they allowed the collapse or simply exited the African paid content market. I went around for 2 weeks doubting myself. Completely paralysed by fear that I was charging like the light brigade.
Mrs. Njoku helped coax me out of this state. It’s simply easier to be a completely dedicated, biased believer; there to just focus on building. So moment of weakness aside, here we remain. Invest, invest invest. IROKOtv continues to invest (read — lose millions millions of dollars) for the a brighter future, for the scale we so desperately need to ensure our dreams are not turned to dust. And we will duly receive our honourable place in history. A place atop the mountain in the promised land. Or something like that
Scale sounds really simple. But not really at the same time. 1m paid subscribers is the exit velocity of paid content startups globally. So no time for descent, we must be like the earlier missionaries. Going out to far away foreign lands to win the souls and convert the non-believers, knowing we are doing the Lord’s work (or something like that). We are evangelists in every sense of the word.
I feel my biggest regret is I have had to pick my battles. Whereas 3 years ago, we were incredibly strong internationally, the argument was whether we could build “Africa”; get people to pay in Africa. We focused on Android and I believe we are world class with unique consumer facing and internal management technology to support (outbound operations / Dealer network etc). We have answered that. The numbers above show that. On the back of Android, we have grown more this year than any other time in our history. But in order to achieve that on limited funds, we have had to tune out the cries of our international users whom have long expected product and pricing improvements to reflect their reality. Ignoring customers isn’t a great thing and definitely not something they teach you in business101. In the short term, our ~10 engineers had to brutally prioritise what we could do. And that was focus on Android. (iOS TVOS users, Smart TV apps, Chromecast, ROKU integration, player improvements etc. all had to be reprioritised). And, in the last 2 years we have spent $0.00 on marketing and growing our international audience. Zero, zilch, nada. All the amazing content we have? They haven’t an idea. Our content marketing has been big in Africa. Very little beyond YouTube and social media for our international folks. As we have finally figured out Nigeria, our plan is to address that in H1 2019. We are ready to go to the mat in order to win back our global community. Whereas before, all customer support has been centralised in Lagos, Nigeria we are now bringing that closer to the communities they are serving with NY (hub for North America) and London (hub for Europe and RoW) Accra (for Ghana) and Nairobi for (East Africa), recruiting staff to improve our customer support. I know we do a fair job but feel we can do so much better.
We are introducing new product features for the first time to make IROKOtv more accessible and much more affordable to the masses and drive towards scale. We still believe there is a 50m-strong global community of folks who love Nollywood. Already millions of them watch our content across ROK1–3, we just need to bring them into our IROKOtv community. That will take a bunch of time.
1-Movie
For our Android users globally (but 90% are in Africa), we have a new way for them to enjoy IROKOtv on a limited basis. It’s our 1-Movie feature. Tens of thousands of non-paying members open the app weekly and without a subscription, they can do nothing. So to this end, our ambition is to remove the friction of them moving from non paying to paying membership. This is our version of basic / trial option. You get to watch an advertiser-subsidized movie weekly.
1-movie a week plan
Below is our weekly ratings on the Android store for the last couple of quarters. IROKOtv has been known to be pretty buggy at times as we push new releases and squash bugs on an almost monthly basis. But alas we are inching towards becoming a top rated app on the Play Store.
Android ratings.
And considering the limited marketing budget we have had over the last year, 520.9k downloads isn’t too bad. Will definitely push those numbers hard over the next year.
Android Downloads over the last year
Not forgetting our international users, we created a movie-only basic tier of subscription. This is currently web only, restricted to our movies library. We have reduced the 3 month price by 33% in order to give people the flexibility to move between plans and experience the content they want.
USA + USD ROW: $9.99 basic. $14.99 premium.
GBP: £8.99 basic. £11.99 premium.
EUR: €9.99 basic. €14.99 premium.
Canada: $12.99 basic. $17.99 premium
We remain fixed on building long term value in and across our global communities. We are 7 years into what we hope will be a 20 year odyssey
I’d like to end on this graph. We executed the shift to Africa at the expense of our global business. We expect to reverse that and grow globally in 2019 and beyond. The biggest revenue growth driver has actually been our linear businesses. ROK channels and her supporting advertising. These have been a real revelation in their support for the IROKOtv community growth now, and the years to come.
As always. We end with thanking God. We thank Mrs Njoku & Kids. We thank the executive team and employees. We thank our investors. We continue to build this thing called IROKOtv. May her days be long. Because she has somehow managed to survive this long.
Impose ta chance, serre ton bonheur et va vers ton risque. A te regarder, ils s’habitueront — René Char
Create your luck, seize your good fortune and embrace risk: they’ll get used to you.