IPhone App Helps You Discover Upcoming Movies (YCS11)
mashable.com
mashable.com
Yet as someone who likes movies and watches a lot of them it's completely beyond me how something like this could ever be more than a minor feature of some movie site, one that is trivial to copy for anyone in the space with the advantage of an existing user base.
I have no reason whatsoever to trash this startup, quite the contrary, I'm in a completely different space and I wish only the best to any and all fellow startup founders. I'm just honestly puzzled, fully aware that it's probably me who is going to be wrong again.
I'm just wondering if anyone else is struggling to convince themselves to take something as simple as this and run with it in a crowded market. Even if I had the slightest interest in solving this problem, I just couldn't bring myself to believe in it and that might be why I will very likely never strike it rich.
What I will say is that people like watching trailers--our downloads and usage numbers prove that, as well as trailers.apple.com and other trailer websites which are very successful. However, nobody else does trailers on mobile as well as we do, and if they do better in some area we will iterate past them soon. Over the period of a few months to a year, we're going to have a respectable number of users using this simple app.
Additionally, we've built out our user experience so that virtually everyone rates the trailers that they see, telling our system whether they can't wait to see a movie, or if they're going to pass on it.
Finally, we are also building up our own social graph.
So, without going into too much detail, we think there is immense value in overlaying the graph of what people want to do in the future (which movies they want to see), with the graph of who their friends are.
Shop it to studios
Get exclusive trailers and snippets before other sites
Get larger more savvy userbase
Add in perhaps coupons and premiere ticket drives
Rinse, repeat
Remember that Microsoft started with Basic on the Altair. Just because a startup seems unimpressive when they release their first product doesn't mean that they're not building in an important space.
But of the startups which have gone on to do great things, many have had limited first products.
Therefore, it's not much of a commentary on a new startup to say their first product is limited, because you don't know where they're headed. It's better to focus on whether the first product is good at what it does and makes people happy.
Similar, but this hit the app store about a month before:
Its revenue model is simply selling the app. Which does make me wonder what's behind this particular YC startup. As another poster says, maybe there is a bigger plan?
* Disclosure: made by a friend.
Yet, is this really a "problem"? I've never had a problem with finding out when a movie comes out... EDIT: ...or finding out about a new movie. What's wrong with Flixster?
I would remove the 10,000 copies reference because anyone who has any experience on the app store would see that those numbers are very low. It's like bragging about a 3.0 GPA.
Also, we like the way our graphs are inflecting. In the first week we pushed way less than 700/day and in the second week we pushed way more. Dividing it out and saying 700/day is a bit simplistic.
In any case, I fail to see the purpose of your comments. What's the goal?
Microsoft BizSpark sponsoring a section highlighting an iPhone app.
:)
tl;dr: I'm actively working on it, but I don't want to promise a release date just yet.
http://pinoytutorial.com/techtorial/wp-content/uploads/2011/...
Maybe that's a factor over and above adoption numbers.