Step into our startup time machine

It’s time to set the dial: The year is ____, Adam Neumann is leading a multi-billion-dollar startup, and an exciting company called MoviePass is about to launch a new subscription service.

If you said 2017, you’d be right – but that’s not the answer we’re looking for. Flow, Neumann’s new startup, secured funding at a $1+ billion valuation just last week. And then yesterday, the previously defunct MoviePass revealed plans to relaunch on or around this upcoming Labor Day.

📅 Don’t call it a comeback… MoviePass was founded in 2011, but struggled to stay afloat until it was bought in 2017 by Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY) – and that’s when the fun started. Under HMNY’s guidance, the company launched a service allowing moviegoers to see one film a day at any theater in the world for just $10 per month.

• Within the first 48 hours, MoviePass saw its subscriptions quintuple from 20,000 to 100,000. In less than a year, it had 3+ million subscribers.

🤔 Too good to be true?... You betcha. HMNY’s business plan centered around the assumption that most subs wouldn’t actually use MoviePass regularly – similar to gyms, which typically use no-shows to financially offset super users.

• But it turns out people like going to the movies more than the gym. MoviePass soon started losing money on virtually every subscriber, failed to *pivot* (Ross voice), then went bankrupt in 2019 before being sold to its original co-founder Stacy Spikes last November.

🍿 Looking ahead… This time, subscriptions will cost $10, $20, or $30, depending on where you live, in exchange for an unknown number of monthly credits to see movies in any theater that accepts Mastercard.