loading…
It's April 6, 2020. You're Head of Product at Quibi. The app launches in 24 hours with $1.75B raised and a $5/month ad-free tier. Two findings just hit your desk:
1. Beta users *only* watch on phones — your 10-minute episodes feel pointless on a laptop. There's no AirPlay, no cast, no web player. By design. 2. COVID lockdowns started 3 weeks ago. Phone-screen-time is *down* 16% week-over-week — laptops and TVs are up.
Launch is funded, marketing is live, content is locked. What do you do?
**Framework: product-market fit signals trump launch commitments.** The mobile-only restriction was a thesis bet ("vertical short-form will dominate commute time"). COVID killed the commute. The right move on April 6 was to delay launch one week, ship a web player and a cast button, and reframe the value prop as "premium short-form, anywhere." Sunk cost on marketing campaigns is gone either way; preserving the option to find PMF is what mattered. KEEP was Quibi's actual call. It killed them in six months.
Quibi launched as planned, mobile-only. Six months in, daily active users were ~10% of projections. The company shut down December 1, 2020. Investors got 27¢ on the dollar.