New Trends With Friends Episode: Streaming Wars: Why YouTube Wins & Netflix Might Be Making a Mistake

Good afternoon everyone,

I sat down with my good friend Farhad Massoudi, founder of Tubi.TV , an ad-supported streaming service he started in 2011, launched in 2014, and acquired by FOX for $500 million. Today, Tubi has 100M+ MAUs, $1B+ in revenue, and is profitable… not bad for a service I do not use!

Farhad walks through how Tubi really worked, why and how he bet on the tail of the library, how Tubi was always a data & AI company, and why fragmentation in news, music, and now TV makes the YouTube-style model the inevitable winner of streaming.

Farhad knows the whole Lindzon family. He and I have cycled all over Italy as well. I am fascinated by media and comedy, passions Farhad shares and I have so many fun conversations with him about the streaming industry, content, startups and technology that it was time to have one we could share.

I asked Farhad to help me go deep into the $NFLX ( ▲ 0.23% ) /Warner Bros/Paramount/Ellison/Qatar?Kushner (since bowed out) circus and handicap the bidding war outcome. Farhad thinks Netflix paying a premium for Warner is a huge mistake and we both think Google’s YouTube becomes the ultimate showdown. We chat about my own shift from “Netflix first” to “Youtube first”, and why platforms + algorithms + data will always beat pure curation.

If you care about: Streaming wars, platforms vs curation, AI’s impact on media, and how real operators see this space then this is a masterclass in how the next decade of media might actually play out.

JUMP TO THE GOOD STUFF:

• (0:00) Meet Farhad and Kickoff

• (4:04) Farhad’s Streaming Credentials & Tubi’s Origin

• (7:32) Tubi's Growth and Industry Insights

• (12:00) The Streaming Landscape Today

• (17:17) $NFLX ( ▲ 0.23% ) , Warner Bros & The Bidding War

• (25:24) Why the Warner Deal May Fail

• (33:15) Distractions, Egos & The Paramount Dilemma

• (39:39) Future of Media: AI, Platforms & Content

• (46:02) Curation vs. Platforms & Recommendation Algorithms

• (50:00) Reflections, Founders, & Final Stories