Hooq offers stark lessons for remaining video-streaming players

Dear readers,

At the Tech in Asia conference in October, Hooq’s ex-CEO Peter Bithos spoke on the record for the first time about the lessons he’s learned from running the failed Singtel-backed video-streaming startup.

His openness is a testament to how we’ve pursued tough but balanced journalism (see our piece on Singtel’s misfirings): CEOs can expect fair treatment when speaking to our reporters. Indeed, it’s why they often agree to do our interviews.

More importantly, Bithos dished out some food for thought related to the ongoing video-streaming wars. It seems that the dust has settled in Southeast Asia, and giants like Disney, Tencent, and Netflix are well on their way to dominating.

Photo credit: Hooq

The battle in India, meanwhile, is just beginning – look out for our story on that this week. (We also got word that one of the leading players in India is looking to raise US$200 million.)

One thing Bithos said stood out to me: If a video-streaming platform doesn’t have a minimum investment of US$1 billion at the beginning of it’s journey, it’s going to struggle.

There’s truth to that, but as Quibi’s demise has shown, spending a billion dollars on a product with poor market fit would be a colossal waste.

It’s better to spend a small amount of money to build a working car first before getting it to jump off a ramp.

Speaking of cars, we also published a story about how fast-growing used car marketplace Carro has been profitable for nine months.

It’s an interesting business that doesn’t seem scalable at first glance, since it takes possession of cars from sellers first before shipping them to the buyers.

But Carro hopes to build a range of services that can piggyback on its main business to become what it calls the “Alibaba of cars.”

Photo credit: Founder and CEO Aaron Tan