Stuck and looking for some advice... please and thx
TLDR; I started a SaaS in the indie filmmaker space and I’m having trouble gaining traction and am looking for some advice or nudges in the right direction.
Hello IH community. I’m a longtime podcast listener and sometimes lurker here on the forum, but this is my first post!
I’m not sure what I’m looking for, perhaps some advice or support regarding my SaaS product in the independent filmmaking space.
Essentially, I used to work in startups doing UI design and development, then made a career change and became a professional documentary filmmaker for my day job. About a year ago, after many years of mulling over the concept and talking to potential customers, I started building a product to help indie filmmakers get their films in front of film festivals, distributors, and art house cinemas. Essentially, it was a closed SVOD platform that only industry professionals could apply for an account and the filmmakers would pay a small fee to be on the platform for 12 months - about the length of a typical festival run -at the cost of a typical festival submission. It’s called The Cirquit (http://thecirquit.com).
The vision of The Circuit to be a library of all the films doing the festival circuit in a given year (more or less). The problem I’m trying to solve is that indie filmmakers typically only have enough money to submit to a handful of festivals through a direct submission, and they tend to submit to mostly the same film festivals (i.e. Sundance, Toronto, etc). Meanwhile, festivals usually mostly curate from other places, often by finding films via looking at what other festivals are programming and then requesting screeners from the filmmakers. Smaller festivals typically don’t have budgets to attend larger festivals to screen the films in-person to help curate their own festival.
Meanwhile, filmmakers may never know about 99% of the other festivals in the world, let alone have the budget to pay $50-$120 to submit to each of them, so The Cirquit provides the possibility that a festival or distributor will see their film on our SVOD platform and want to program it if they like it.
About a year ago, using some of the profits from my last film, I outsourced the development of our platform (built on Django/Vue) and got a decent, functioning MVP (http://thecirquit.com).
A couple of months ago we did a soft launch and started rolling out a few Facebook and Instagram ads to gauge traction. I also direct emailed about 50 film festivals to ask them to sign up for a free industry account.
To incentivize users, I’m offering a discount code for their first film free which we’ve been advertising on the pricing page and in our FB and Insta ads.
So far, I haven’t been able to get any industry people to sign up for free accounts, and I’ve only had 2 users sign up for accounts. Neither has submitted a film yet even though we sent them a discount code to make it free nor have they responded to my personal emails asking for feedback to learn.
The long and short of it is that I’m having trouble getting traction.
I admit that I haven’t tried everything I can try yet, and I think part of it is I might have a block around putting myself out there in an industry where reputation is everything and I worry about spill over into my filmmaking day job. There are a lot of scam services directed at indie filmmakers and perhaps I worry about people assuming that it’s one of those, -and to be honest, at the moment it kind of feels like it because I’m having trouble getting the industry people on board for the other side of the market place (though I’m planning on not charging anyone until I feel like the service actually offers values to customers - i.e. there are at least 20 or more festivals signed up).
Anyway, I'd like to either find a growth channel that works, pivot in a way that protects some of my investment, close it down while feeling good about my failure, or ….?
Anyway, I’m sorry about the length of the post and would welcome any thoughts, advice or criticisms.
I'm not in the film industry so take this comment with a grain of salt. I believe the issue is this is a two-sided marketplace which is notoriously hard to grow. Also from what I hear the film industry is it's "about who you know". How many connections do you have in the industry to get them on your platform? I'm sorry man. I know it sucks. I hope you gain traction with this. However, to do so you might need to be extra creative in convincing people to use your platform.
Thanks for the support! IT definitely is, and I think maybe that's part of my problem is that I've been reluctant to ask favors of my contacts, mostly because anyone successful in this industry gets hit up for things all the time and I think I've been scared to turn off my connections... but maybe I just need to suck it up and do it anyway! Something to think about. Thanks again.
TL;DR don’t charge filmmakers. Find another way to add value for festivals.
I appreciate you being so honest about where you’re at. Reaching out to others when you’re at that “has this failed?” point isn’t easy.
That being said, I don’t think it’s time to give up.
I don’t have experience in the film industry but I do have experience in the music industry and I think there is a bit of cross-over. Namely, artists/filmmakers who struggle financially and typically operate under the assumption that “the industry” is out to get them, to take advantage of them, or deceive them. It’s a sad reality. But ultimately, you want them to know you are genuinely trying to help.
While I certainly don’t have the magic milkshake here to bring all the filmmakers to the yard, I think that you may need to consider a financially disruptive model. In other words, don’t charge the filmmakers. Shoot, if you can find a way to even pay them for joining... I’d do that. I know that’s way easier said than done but wanted to just share this perspective as it was a similar pivot I had to make in a lightly-related music booking idea I had pursued for a couple years. Just one side of it, here I know... the festivals themselves are another bit. I’d be thinking about how to add value to festivals beyond the core of your idea to see if there were attractive entry points for them.
Hi Bryce. Thanks for the thoughtful comment. That makes a lot of sense. I think you might be on to something. I'll have to think about it more and see if there is a more disruptive model I could pivot to. I did think about paying festivals to watch but didn't know how the economics would work for the business since it's being bootstrapped. But I think there's something here.... thanks!
If I were in your situation I would try a more hands-on approach at first. Target a few festivals, find some films on the circuit that are a good fit for them. Then get all the info they need about the films and send it to the contact you have at the festival. Open a dialog with them and find out if what you're doing for them is valuable, and get some feedback. Then work your way toward automating it with a website.
I think this is some good advice, except the MVP already is out there and works. I've tried some direct marketing and haven't been too successful, but maybe your approach of curating specific films will work better. Thanks!
Hi there, long reply incoming but I hope it’s valuable.
I was especially interested in your post because I come from the same general background (film school, 5 years of documentary filmmaking for NGOs, 25+ countries) but then midway through my twenties I had to grow up and get a real job. It sounds a bit harsh, but that’s because it is. I know it because I was in it: the filmmaking world isn’t real life. Filmmakers don’t operate within a normal economy, nobody makes money unless you’re in the .05% that start working for Warner Brothers, and they’re absolutely terrible with managing budgets, distribution, marketing, et al.
You’ve got what looks by all accounts an amazing platform. I can see a market need for it. But at the same time, you’ve chosen one of the most difficult niches to get anything done in.
I don’t think your struggles so far are your fault. You’re just working within an industry so rife with ego and so bad at marketing that it’s going to be the hardest sell of your life.
My honest suspicion is that, if you were able to get market adoption, you’d be really successful at this. However, doing that is another issue entirely. You might need to raise $50-100k of funding and throw it all at marketing: something like this platform only works at scale, and I don’t know how else to jumpstart it without an insane amount of advertising, promotion, and sponsorships.
If that level of launch isn’t possible for you, how about starting small? How about sponsoring a local mid-level film festival and getting 20-30 filmmakers on the platform that way? It’s a lot of work but might be the cheapest option.
I’d also like to follow this up with a note on pricing. You’re pricing it super cheap. Maybe too cheap. People might not believe you’re offering enough value cause it’s only $5/mo.
You think? I actually lowered it a little in hopes it would drive more adoption. Was that the wrong move?
I'm not sure. Have you considered making it free for filmmakers, and charge a higher price for festivals? It might be an easier sales process that way. For example $0 for filmmakers to host, but $500 for a festival to use it.
The problem is that the service is probably more valuable for filmmakers because festivals have to see that it'll save them time. In the short run, if there isn't good content yet, they won't adopt. So since I'm essentially selling access to them, I wanted to reduce all the barriers I could for the industry to sign up. But I'll mull on that idea for a bit. Thanks again!
Thanks for your replay and support. Always good to hear from a fellow doc filmmaker (I too worked in nonprofits and politics for a while). And thanks for the kind words on the platform. While I totally agree about your characterization of the film industry, I've been lucky to be making my own films and commercial work for a while, and have even screened films for festivals and served on festival juries, so I've been lucky enough to see both sides of the market. But your right! My biggest mistake was diving into a two-sided market place. haha. I had a plan to gain traction I thought would overcome the challenge but I guess it hasn't worked out quite yet.
I think you might be right about the marketing capital, but I'm worried about throwing good money after bad -particularly my own since I've already invested quite a bit in it -and my girlfriend might kill me. I like the idea of festival sponsorship, so maybe I'll look into that.
Thanks again for your support!
Hi. I would like to know what do you think about https://mubi.com/.
Also, please cut short the post. It is really long 😝
Mubi is a different service, it's a distribution SVOD platform like Netflix. My business is not for the general public to watch.