🌐 The Netflix’s success story, Startups Funding Rounds… The Seed #3

« Growing ideas through seeds of information »

Feb 26, 2021

🌱 Welcome to the third issue of the Seed and welcome to our new subscribers! 🌱
⚙️The Seed is a weekly newsletter with easy-to-read content focusing on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology.
Our slogan : “Growing ideas through seeds of information”.

💡 This week’s concept

The Different Funding Rounds

What most startups need is funding. The money raised is used to develop the product, hire associates or reach new markets, whether the company is at an early or late stage.

Let’s see the different stages of financing that a company can go through throughout its life.

🐣 Pre-seed: Bootstrapping stage.

The founding team raises funds with family or friends, the 'love money', or with Business Angels (BA). This is a crash test time for the startup as the team uses the money to test the feasibility of the idea. The fundraising generally goes up to $100K.

Soon, love money is no longer enough to further develop. Founders are then reaching out to Venture Capital (VCs) funds to get more money in exchange of ownership.

🌱 Seed: Product development stage.

The ticket goes from $100K to $3M. Money is mainly used for R&D. The startup receives money from BA, early-stage VCs and sometimes via crowdfunding action as Respire did in late 2018.

📈 Series A: Market penetration stage.

The startup started making revenues as the product fits the market. Money raised goes from $1M to $30M and will be often used to deeper penetrate the market. Take a look at Wingcopter that raised $22M.

🌎 Series B: Let's get international.

The company is looking for geographical expansion. This is basically a $15M to $60M round. Lydia recently raised $72M in extension of its Series B round to settle in other European countries.

🦄 Series C: The unicorn quest round.

The company tries to reach more markets and develop further products. Here, the company is clearly a leader of its niche. Money is raised from late-stage VCs, Private Equity firms or banks. The funding range is general $30M-$100M. Take a look at Quizlet that raised $30M in Series C, driven by the pandemic effect.

Sometimes, companies go through other stages until becoming public. These stages are Series D, Series E... no need to iterate that much, you got it.

👋 Do you want to know about the biggest fundraising ever, or be aware of the process to become a public company? Check out our latest Medium article.

📈 News and Trends

Some news

👶 A family tech platform?!

Maple’s mission is to ease the burden of parenting using a tech platform, where you can for example share parenting tasks with other members of your family. Only seven months after starting the company, its founder Michael Perry, former Shopify product director, has raised $3.5M in seed funding.

🐦 Paying for Twitter?

On February, 25th, Twitter announced the launch of its first paying product at an investor event. It's a feature that will allow users to subscribe to their favorite creators in exchange of a premium and exclusive content, a subscriber-only newsletters and a supporter badge.

Trends

🦾 Spotify and its vision for the future of work

🏠 Spotify now allows its 6,550 employees to choose how they want to work in the company: in the office, at home or in a coworking space for which the company will pay a subscription fee. Employees choose their formula for one year and only need the approval of their manager, their computer and internet access.

💸 The employee can therefore work from anywhere in the world with a salary at the SF or NY level.

🔮 Could this be the future model for companies? For Spotify executives this is the case.

For employees: Employees would have the flexibility to choose where and how they prefer to work. In addition, it would promote work-life balance.
For companies: And companies would no longer have fixed offices but would rent coworking space according to where their employees are located and their wishes. This would make it possible to attract talent regardless of where they come from.

We will talk more about the future of work in an upcoming newsletter.

❤️ Weekly Crush

The Netflix’s success story

🦑 How Netflix became a global entertainment giant and a key player in video streaming.

🏰 Its history:

1997: Founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph In its early days, Netflix rented and sold DVDs delivered by mail in the US with an unlimited monthly subscription.
2007: Netflix enters the video streaming market
2013: Shift from broadcaster to producer, with their first original series, House of Cards. Netflix attracts both well-known directors and actors. The company finds itself alongside traditional actors such as Warner Bros. etc.

⚡️ A disruptive culture:

In its early days, Netflix used the new technology of DVDs that could be delivered by mail in a simple envelope as opposed to VHS.
Innovation with streaming: a subscription makes it possible to watch films without advertising, unlimited and without obligation.
Compared to the conventional television sector Netflix offers direct access to an entire season rather than episode by episode

🙊 Anecdotes:

Netflix's DVD rental service is still active: 2.7 million subscribers.
Netflix is available in all countries of the world except China, North Korea, Syria and Crimea.

🎬 Interview of an actress on her feelings about Netflix

Introduction

Marie Cornillon is a 22 year old French actress. After high school she has been doing a lot of theatre, and professional cinema for 2 years now. She has acted in Martin Provost's La Bonne Épouse and appeared in the series Lupin on Netflix.

How does it work for an actress on a Netflix shoot compared to a classic shoot? How do you feel about it?

“I don't see any difference because whether it's for Netflix or traditional industries it's the same job. You just have to learn a script, stay on the set all day and do what the director asks. There's just a difference with TV where we get paid less. What has changed for actors is that we have more work: both work for films in theatres and for all platforms. As all the platforms compete with each other, this means that as actresses we have many different job offers, so that reassures me on the contrary.
One point that joins them: it's always the same teams with the same people. For example, a director employed for Netflix can also be employed for an independent film. The teams change a lot but no matter who the producer is, he reemploys the same people, so it's a bit of a confused world.”

How do you see the future of cinema with the arrival of the new platforms?

“I have the impression that cinema is on the right track. I don't think people will stop going to the theater. We have seen in recent years that it was possible to have on the one hand the theaters and on the other hand the platforms because people don't go to the theater just to see a movie but they also go for the experience (for the setting, for the big screen, to see friends, to go out). So I don't think that theaters will die because of the platforms.”

🔎 Focus

Web Development

What are the different programming languages used for web development? Let’s find out in our weekly Focus.

Infographic Recap

First, have a look at this infographic that recaps the essential information.

If you want to go a bit deeper, you can read the rest of the article (2 min read).

Programming languages: HTML, CSS and JavaScript

🔲 HTML

HTML, for Hypertext Markup Language, is a programming language used to render websites on your browser.

HTML is often compared to the skeleton of a webpage, as it is responsible for its content and structure.

An HTML document looks like that:

It contains:

A "head" element, containing important information about the page (it’s the "metadata", with for example the name of the page)
A "body" with the content and structures.
"Tags": Within the body, the different elements are placed using "tags", that all have the same structure: <name of the tag>Content </name of the tag>. Inside these tags, we can insert information that will specify how the content should be displayed (for example, a "class", see in the explanations of CSS).

👔 CSS

CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is used to modify the design and display of HTML elements. For example, it dictates the fonts and colors on a webpage.

A CSS code looks like that:

Inside a CSS file, you define "classes" that contain some instructions. For example, here, .main-menu and .main-menu-content are two "classes". For these instructions to be executed, you need to link them with the HTML file. You can do so by specifying a "class" name inside tags.

For example, within the following tag,<div>, is specified the class.main-menu-content, that will apply the design defined in the CSS file above.

🚶 Javascript

Javascript is a dynamic programming language responsible for the functionality of a webpage. Based on some actions from a user, it can for example modify the webpage.

Some examples of Javascript use:

❌ Sending an error message when you enter a wrong email address format on an online form.

🔍 Tracking user activity on a website (Google Analytics).

Front, Back-end and Full Stack

🌟 Front-end

What we call Front-end of a website is its visible part. So, basically it is a mix of HTML, CSS and Javascript.

The role of a Front-end developer is then to provide the users with the best possible experience on the website, and often works with designers and UX analysts.

🥷 Back-end

Conversely, the Back-end of a website is its invisible part. It is the infrastructure (servers, applications, and databases) that makes the Front-end possible.

☯️ Full stack

A Full Stack developer is someone who knows how to do both Front and Back-end programming. He is responsible both for the design of the website and its performances.

Conclusion

That’s it for this week! Hope you enjoyed it and see you next Friday 🙌

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