The pilot episode of a new television series can send it rocketing toward ratings success, renewal, and eventual syndication, or plummeting toward cancellation. But in the world of Internet TV, says Netflix, “don’t expect overnight results.”

That’s the message the company sent yesterday while announcing its quarterly financial results. On Monday, the company released its first-quarter financial earnings, and beyond the immediate results (26 million global streaming users, $870 million in revenue, a $0.08 loss per share), Netflix spent time qualifying the benefits of its original programming efforts. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells acknowledged the company is making a big bet on originals, but attempted to manage expectations regarding how and when it envisions that bet to pay off–a strategy that’s far more tortoise than hare, and one that might frustrate investors eager to see a company turnaround sooner rather than later.

Hastings and Wells made clear original programming was far from a short-term goal. The two said it’s moved from a “strategic experiment” to a “strategic expansion” that is now part of its “long-term ambitions.” Netflix will “take it year by year” to measure the effort’s success. One central benefit, the company said, would be the “brand halo” effect, the idea that if its original series are a critical success, they will drive up brand perception and incremental subscriptions. However, “that took HBO nearly a decade to accomplish, so we don’t expect overnight results,” Hastings and Wells wrote.

In other words, after years of investing in its own content, HBO has become a powerhouse of original TV series, which has led to network acclaim, big ratings, Emmys dominance, and boosted engagement online. Can Netflix mimic that success with shows like Lilyhammer and House of Cards?

On the one hand, Netflix doesn’t really have a choice but to try to. The company suggests thinking about original programming as a “hedge” against other networks in case they decide to follow HBO’s strategy. Imagine if FX someday launches “FX Go” to exclusively show new seasons of Sons of Anarchy, or AMC launches “AMC Go” for future episodes of Mad Men. Netflix would be in a terrible position without its own original content.

On the other hand, the company has a very long way to go before it catches up to HBO, which as Hastings and Wells write, “is strategically motivated to impede [Netflix’s] growth.” HBO has been in the original programming game for not one but two decades. After popular series in the early to mid-1990s like The Larry Sanders Show and Arliss, the network produced critically acclaimed miniseries (Band of Brothers, John Adams, Generation Kills), TV shows cemented in pop culture (Sex and the CIty, The Sopranos, The Wire), and movies that dominated entire press cycles (Game Change).