Big Ideas for Netflix to Find Its Next Growth Engine

Netflix needs to find its next growth narrative. For a decade shifting viewers from TV to a subscription narrative worked. Looks like all the people that are likely to pay for Netflix have already subscribed. Even if there are some, they will slowly join the ark, but it will not drive the narrative, that number is not big enough to drive the narrative.

Here are some idea that could potentially drive the next big narrative for Netflix.

1. Acquire Spotify - Reduced duplicate spending on podcasts, one subscription for video and audio, allows for bundling, strong brand, creator friendly brand.
2. Launch an Instagram or YouTube Shorts competitor - Could play out in various ways. But they could launch one just focused on short form vertical content, or tune Netflix app to allow posting UGC content. Keep it to short form content only.
3. Acquire Snapchat - Cheap to acquire and gives an inside track to experiment in to UGC content generation, and their specs division could be leveraged to build great hardware purely focused on gaming or movie experience.
4. Acquire AMC or some other theatre chain - This is the most unlikely, since there are regulation limits around who can own theatre chains. Look it up.
5. Start Netflix's version of Universal Theme Part - This is most plausible but the market would not look to it as a big growth vector, I would still do it, to improve revenue mix of the company for next two decades.
6. Gaming Device - They have already started their gaming journey, the potential next step would be to launch a gaming hardware device to get more traction in the category. A steam like device makes more sense vs competing with the XBox or PlayStation.
7. Make or buy a Roku competitor. Just like Fox, this allows Netflix to reach new audience, and at the same time expand its ad business surface with moving from an App on the TV to an OS on the TV.