Forum - View topicCrunchyroll Industry Panel
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
|
|||
The way it's put I'm starting to think you people consider the investors a bunch of retards. Did you really think they didn't foresee this before investing? There are plenty of examples out there, I'm sure they were aware of the hardships and consequences. Did you miss the latest news? How far they've grown for the past months, finally reaching a break even while launching new applications. Tell me about an Internet business that will start profiting from day one except for the ones dealing with illegal stuff, porn, and gambling. |
||||
|
||||
LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
|
|||
|
Now, now...
let's keep things in perspective, they had their first break even month not quarter or year, just a month. We have to wait and see as the potential is still there for ending with a loss. So a step forward but not the victory that some think it is. And more importantly time is not really on CR's side, more from the impatient fans more than anything. I'd say the usual 5 to 10 year mark isn't to far off but who knows they may buck that trend, hopefully they can convince investment to stay that long, as contrary to popular belief they are trying to build a new system and that takes a lot of time and a lot of money. |
||||
|
||||
|
egoist
Posts: 7762 |
|
|||
|
I have no idea to whom you're trying to deliver that message, LordRedhand, but in case that's directed at the post above yours, I'd like to inform you that it doesn't contain a drop of positiveness. I'm aware of the challenges such a company could face, but perhaps their unprofessionalism will appeal more to a wider audience, unlike places such as Anime Network.
Who mentioned victory, by the way? |
||||
|
||||
|
LordRedhand
Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
|
|||
|
PJ for starters, others are reading it a little greater than what it is in some of the other posts. They don't believe that failure is one of the possibilities of this gambit, and a feeling of needing to rush things doesn't help. So more directed at Aquila and Dragonxtc than anything has they have point that are correct put are not looking at the full picture that has been presented thus far.
There will always be investment capitalists it's a matter of convincing them that your idea can work long enough to sustain yourself so that they investors can see some returns, and right now it is a concerning thought if these online initiatives like Crunchy Roll and Funimation Online etc. fail as then we into a "Now What?" kind of thinking... |
||||
|
||||
agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
|
|||
What was I saying, two and a half years. Its November 2008 that they announced they were going legit, so its less than two years as a legitimate media distributor. More to the point, the month was May, and according to the publicly available rough guide at Alexa, Crunchyroll's audience (ranking, reach and pageviews) has been growing since they got Bleach. This season, they've already shown their first success outside of worldwide titles for streaming into Southern Europe and Southeast Asia with both titles into Portugal and one into Singapore. And they have the manga roll-out coming later this year. Two years of growth and improving financial performance are, of course, not enough to declare Crunchyroll an established success ... plenty of flash in the pan ventures looked good three years in then fell apart. But it would be absurd to declare them a failure based on ongoing revenue growth and hitting break even before opening up substantial new revenue streams. |
||||
|
||||
|
agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
|
|||
Ah, yes, using a misstatement by a staff writer as "proof". Blind cynicism is as cheap and easy as blind faith.
|
||||
|
||||
|
agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
|
|||
You need to get your mind-reading equipment fixed, I certainly believe that failure is one of the possibilities of the venture. The point is that there is no evidence that points toward failure. Many online commentators seem to be comparing Crunchyroll's visible performance against grossly inflated and unrealistic expectations about how much can be done how fast. Then if Crunchy falls short of a highly unlikely best case or, sometimes, better-than-possible scenario, that shortfall is "proof" for lazy sophomoric cynicism. Back in the real world, though, they earlier announced the revenue growth that they had achieved. This was against a background of falling internet rankings and reach, so clearly they have been successful in increasing their revenues per view. The skeptical question to pose was whether that revenue growth was from such a small base that the percentage growth rates were unimportant. Given the TV Tokyo and Bitway investments, that seemed unlikely, but still, the announcement that they hit break-even in May settled that particular doubt. The future is intrinsically uncertain, and any venture that requires continued audience and revenue growth is ever free from the risk that it will all come undone. That is built into any new venture, and why venture capitalists invest in multiple ventures rather than putting all their eggs in one basket. So obviously Crunchyroll could fail. The point I was making is that people trying to fabricate a story that Crunchyroll is presently failing are just spinning bullshit. |
||||
|
||||
|
LordRedhand
Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
|
|||
|
Nah I was reading your post where you said they broke even as a company, which isn't true or what they said, they had a month where they broke even, but as I've stated and you understand that doesn't negate the losses already incurred or future losses, they just had a "good" month and they hope it continues to grow to profit. So I was saying that it is not quite the failure that Dragonxtc was seeing but neither was it the big success that you are seeing, as I said this is a small step, we need to see this repeated a few more times.
|
||||
|
||||
|
agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
|
|||
Go ahead and rephrase what I said to make it sound as different as possible from what they said, which is that they hit break even in May. But as you do, it also starts sounding different from what I said, which is that they hit break even.
This reads as if you want to put the words "permanent long-term viability" into my mouth when I point out that hitting break even in under two years of operation is a notable success for a new media enterprise. Those losses you are talking about are normal for a new venture. That's how venture capitalists make their money - identifying ventures that they expect to lose money for a number of years but that have a prospect of generating substantial capital gains once they have become established. The way they are offset is by the venture, benchmark A, achieving revenue growth, benchmark B, growing revenue faster than costs until, benchmark C, it hits break even, and then, benchmark D, keeping the trend going, until, benchmark E, hitting a normal rate of return, generating profits to be reinvested in growth until, hopefully, benchmark F, hitting economic ("excess") profits. That's a growth path that allows earning back the initial investment, benchmark G ... and of course, even before the venture hits benchmark G in terms of realized gains, it normally has a capitalized value that will return the initial investment back with substantial capital gains, which is the time when the venture capitalists have the luxury of deciding whether to stay in for the long haul as a private enterprise or to do a private sale or public offering. "Earning back their investment in their first two years of operations" ... hitting benchmark G above ... would be an absurd expectation to set. Any venture that did that would be called not merely a success, but an explosive, runaway success. It seems you are quibbling about calling Crunchyroll's performance to date a success because, although Crunchyroll is doing unusually well for the first few years of a new media venture, it is not an explosive, runaway success. Its hit benchmark C unusually quickly, so the complaint is that its not at benchmark D, or E, or F, or G. OK, granted, they are not an explosive runaway success. That does not change the fact that they are doing better than normal. And I will continue to call "doing better than normal" as success, even if you want to set the hurdle at some arbitrary higher level. Hitting break even is a benchmark because if it can be repeated, that's the point where the new venture stops consuming capital for operating costs, so that any new capital invested into the venture can go entirely into investment in new capacity. And you can't repeat something until you do it the first time. Based on the increase in total traffic they seem to have experienced in June, we can be fairly confident that they will have been at break even or close to it in June. Of course we can't say for certain without information about their subscription revenue base, but subscription revenue is likely to be roughly correlated with total traffic. So, for instance, given the time that Bitway investment was announced, there's every reason to expect all that money to go into setting up the new manga operation, with none of it needed to cover ongoing operations. |
||||
|
||||
|
LordRedhand
Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
|
|||
|
Excuse me you need to slow down and read, I'm not putting words in your mouth, so when I say there needs to be more months/quarters of breaking even/profit, I am saying it, so please don't take my voice.
And besides if such an event were to occur (more months of breaking even or profit) you would think that it would be a good thing, than maybe a success, than maybe those who are watching to see if it works will be on board, maybe than more investors will see this idea to work. Right now there is still the possibility of this crashing and burning, as you can get investors but they will only stay with you for so long before they say "It's not worth it." and back out and go somewhere else. So yes long term sustainability is the goal, which is why I'm critiquing the people taking this has a huge success (where you initially sounded) because they are not out of the woods yet, this break even month doesn't change much, more exciting changes would be on the manga side of things but even than that is more of diversification to a very small degree and add more and different risks and challenges. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group