Lovefilm - The Subscription King You Won’t Have Heard Of
William Reeve, serial entrepreneur and angel investor, best known for creating Lovefilm and being an early investor in Secret Escapes, talks about his experience with subscription businesses. Key takeaways:What William’s best investment wasHow he sold his first business and made almost £10m in the processWhy he chose to go down the DVD subscription routeHow they handled the slow business start by buying out the competitionWhat it’s like negotiating with AmazonHow to measure user churn
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Show Notes
Serial tech entrepreneur William Reeve realised early on that he wasn’t quite techy enough to be a techy, and so focused on the business side of tech businesses. And without this early enlightenment, we might not have seen the likes of Zoopla, Dunelm, Secret Escapes, Lovefilm or Graze, to name but a few of the businesses that have benefitted from William’s involvement.
At the tender age of 23, having recently graduated from Oxford University with a degree in engineering and having just started his own company, William was told by a family member that he was ‘too young’ to start his own business. Four years later that business sold and netted William £10m.
Listen today as we find out what it took to bring Lovefilm to market and how it beat Amazon. Join us as we chat to William about:
- Other than marriage, what William’s best investment to date was
- How, aged 27, he sold his first business and made almost £10m in the process
- Why he chose to go down the DVD subscription route
- How Lovefilm handled the slow business start by buying out the competition
- What it’s like negotiating with a behemoth like Amazon
- How to measure user churn
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