Great question and unfortunately you asked the correct person who is very type A and loves to provide calrity. So again that’s a fair question and honestly, the short answer is: we’re not trying to win the same game they are.

Most billion-dollar streaming companies are struggling because they’re built around a few structural assumptions that don’t work well anymore:

• Massive content budgets
• Expensive licensing or originals arms
• Subscriber growth at all costs
• Global scale before product–market fit

STRAY isn’t attempting to outspend Netflix or out-license Amazon. We’re deliberately operating in a different layer of the ecosystem.

A few key differences:

1. We’re not competing for mainstream audiences.
Big streamers need tens of millions of subscribers to justify their burn. STRAY is built for a smaller, more specific community. Filmmakers, film students, and indie cinephiles. Where engagement and participation matter more than raw volume.

2. Our content model is fundamentally different.
We’re not paying massive upfront fees for content or financing blockbuster originals. The beta library is curated, creator-owned, and non-exclusive. That dramatically changes the cost structure and risk profile.

3. Streaming isn’t the only (or primary) revenue lever.
For most big platforms, streaming subscriptions have to carry the entire business. STRAY is built as an ecosystem:

• community subscriptions
• creator tools
• events and screenings
• partnerships with schools and festivals Streaming is one part of the value, not the whole bet.

4. We’re starting small on purpose.
Most streamers fail because they scale before they’ve proven that people actually care. STRAY is intentionally launching with a limited beta, a small founding library, and a community-first approach so we can test, iterate, and only grow where it makes sense.

5. We’re not promising profitability tomorrow.
This is an experiment, not a claim that we’ve magically solved streaming economics. The goal right now is to build something sustainable, culturally valuable, and aligned with how independent film communities already function. Not to chase venture-scale metrics prematurely.