MoviePass CEO: The sooner you learn to embrace failure, ‘the faster you get to what works'

Stacy Spikes knows it's rare to get a second chance like the one he got.

The CEO and founder of moviegoing subscription service MoviePass was ousted from his company in 2017 as its $9.95 all-you-can-watch plan became a cultural phenomenon, but regained ownership in 2021 after that same plan drove the business into the ground.

He says it has been "remarkable to have the opportunity" to build the company back up.

"It's almost biblical, it doesn't happen," Spikes tells CNBC Make It. "There's a few folkloric experiences like Steve Jobs returning to Apple or Michael Dell returning to Dell Computers when the companies were in trouble. I think MoviePass is the first time where the company had shut its doors and went down to zero, operationally."

Fresh off its first profitable year ever and having recently received an investment from Comcast's Forecast Labs, Spikes calls it "reaffirming" to see the business he founded be successful.

"It shows you you weren't crazy for what you were trying to build," he tells Make It. "Now 60% of theaters have some form of [subscription] product when earlier they were saying 'why would people do a subscription to go to the movies?'"

Though the journey hasn't played out the way he would've planned it, Spikes doesn't mind the long and winding road he took to get where he is today. If he had to give one piece of advice to young entrepreneurs, it's simply to not be afraid to fail.

"We teach young people that there's this boogeyman called failure," he says. "When you look at Edison and the lightbulb or the Wright brothers, there's the frequency at which you fail. The faster you can do that, the faster you get to what works."

Spikes says that the "myth" of the billionaire twenty-something startup founder has made entrepreneurs feel like failure is an end result rather than a step along the journey.

"The myth is that success looks like dropping out of an Ivy League school, starting something in your dorm, your first business idea catching traction and you're now a billionaire," he says. "When actually, most successful entrepreneurs are in their 40s or 50s, they've had three businesses go out of business."

As he looks to grow MoviePass' reach into more theaters and premium formats, Spikes hopes other entrepreneurs choose to "believe in the power of your dreams."

"There's no such thing as failure," he says. "It's all learning."

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

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