When naming streaming platforms and Spain, Filmin usually comes to mind right away. But that, at least, will not be the story told here, but that of GuideDoca brand that has managed to carve out a niche for itself on the table of video-on-demand applications without making too much noiseand being profitable without receiving external financing.
When Víctor Correal came up with the idea of what would become GuideDoc, Netflix had been experimenting with streaming for less than five years and had not yet reached some markets such as Spain; HBO was still predominantly a cable TV company, and Disney was a long way from moving even minimally its business away from the movie screen.
It was the year 2013 and after brand new Mon Petit (Small world), a documentary he had produced, Correal realized that there was a huge gap in the documentary film circuit.
“Our documentary had a more or less important success within the industry, we won several international awards and, however, the exhibition in theaters once it had passed the usual circuits was very complex. And that happened with dozens or hundreds of documentary films a year, many of them excellent, but it’s not that they didn’t have a commercial run; it is that they were very difficult to see after only a few months after their premiere ”.
Victor Correal, founder of GuideDoc.tv
Solving that problem was the germ of GuideDoc, a documentary film platform that would end up being available in 2016 and that, at present, it has almost 1,500 different films and has managed to carve out a niche for itself in the competitive world of streaming.
No external investment, but profitable from almost the beginning
In GuideDoc you can find quite well-known documentaries —for example, sins of my father, on the figure of Pablo Escobar from the perspective of his son— to others produced from countries such as Afghanistan, Uganda or Myanmar. Films from all over the world, with subtitles in several languages, which have a common denominator: “They are all documentary films, we do not have disclosure documentaries about, for example, animals or history”, explains Correal who, together with his team, have been adding a new film a day since the platform was founded.
As such, this specialization has made them stand out from the big ones and from other more informative documentary platforms. “Whoever likes a documentary with Netflix and HBO Max from time to time has enough. Those who really like documentary cinema end up coming to GuideDoc… Or that is our intention”, says its founder.
Today the majority of GuideDoc’s audience is in the United States by more than 50%followed by Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom, and maintains alliances with other platforms such as Rakuten to display part of its content.
“Barely 5% of our public is in Spain, or perhaps less”, explains Correal. And that despite the fact that he told part of the back room of how he was starting up GuideDoc through a podcast he called It’s none of your business. “People in Spain listened to the podcast but they did it more for the history of entrepreneurship and business than for the documentaries. I thought I was going to see a major move of listeners to GuideDoc when it became available and…nothing,” he explains.
Because the beginnings, as on most occasions, were not easy. Correal, a journalist by training, came from a career in radio and as a screenwriter in Catalonia and Spain before launching his own documentary film production company, intermediate point until linking with the idea of GuideDoc. “Suddenly, I found myself going from creating content to trying to get a tech company off the ground,” she reflects.
At the beginning, “users came by the dribble because they had made a huge mistake seen today”. The mistake: investing the initial money in preparing and developing apps for mobile phones, iPads and other tablets. “I thought that people would consume it from there, and it could be true, but first they had to discover us.” And then, they developed the web, which by pure organic weight due to the catalog they already had, began to arrive, now in a more massive way, subscribers.
During this time, GuideDoc has grown without external investment. It currently has a remote team that moves between 8 and 15 people, fluctuating depending on the specialized developers needed to advance each of the TV apps or other devices.
The decision not to seek “or want”, according to Correal, investment from a fund is “to maintain control of the business as much as possible and have more chances of having a good time along the way”. “In itself it is a business where few things depend on us: a director or producer can ask us to withdraw their documentary, any company can ask us for new requirements for our smart TV applications… It is a complicated business and where I think responding to some investors they would complicate it even more”, says Correal.
And how has it managed to subsist for now 6 years without external financing? Being profitable. Correal openly says that during the first years of GuideDoc he spent “most of the savings I had available after earning a very good living a few years before and that, in addition, I had the support of my wife to embark on something like this.” He estimates that, during the initial phase until GuideDoc became a profitable company, he invested about 250,000 euros.
Copying from Netflix what works, but changing other things
GuideDoc does not share its number of subscribers due to a business decision, taking advantage of being a private company in a sector where acquisitions of large platforms from smaller ones are common to gain clients and catalogue.
The GuideDoc case is a rare bird in a world in which the streaming giants are far from being profitable and rely on movements with their cash flowto finance their investments. Despite this, its founder values that “surely such a model would not be recommended for many, where they may have said that having accepted external investment now GuideDoc would have many more investments, but in the end we know that we operate within a niche, and we are comfortable like that.”
During these years, Correal and his team have had to grow their company by looking at the biggest. They admit to having copied almost everything from Netflix and others when it comes to calls to action from visitors and how to present their catalog. But, in the management of their catalogue, they have varied.
“At GuideDoc no exclusivity is required of any creator. They can be on as many platforms as you want. In fact, we encourage them; and the way of distributing benefits we try to make it as simple as possible: 50% of the gross income goes to the creators of the documentaries, who share that part based on an algorithm that makes a calculation based on the views that have had every title. With the other 50% payroll, developments and all GuideDoc expenses are paid”, he explains.
The future: “to continue growing and, something that would make us very excited, to produce our own documentaries under the GuideDoc label”.