Snackdish CEO Kevin Hall
Snackdish CEO Kevin Hall

Anyone who’s attended a happy hour recognizes the inevitable “who’s watching what” conversation. Scandal viewers can’t believe the latest plot twist. Game of Thrones diehards commiserate over the latest untimely death. Doctor Who fans get lost in an endless debate over who made the best Doctor and parse subplots that seem impossibly convoluted for the rest of the crowd.

Now a Seattle startup wants to take this conversation online. Snackdish syncs with Facebook and allows TV and movie fans to “tune in” while watching their favorite programs.

“I love TV shows and movies and sharing them with friends,” said Snackdish CEO Kevin Hall. “I am that guy who points out mistakes and Easter eggs, and quotes various movies. I created Snackdish as an extension of that.”

Snackdish users can share insights, point out flaws, and participate in online communities centered around what they watch. Hall calls it “an online book club for TV shows and movies.”

We caught up with Hall for this installment of Startup Spotlight, a regular GeekWire feature.

Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: “Snackdish allows people who watch TV shows and movies to ‘tune-in’ to them creating a personal viewing profile. That allows their friends to see what they like, and start conversations about those TV shows and movies.”

Inspiration hit us when: “No matter what group of people I am out with, at some point people bring up what TV shows or movies they have been watching. Most of the time another person in the group has been watching the same show, and when this connection is made between those two, they intensely sync and catch up on the season or movie.

To me this was a missed opportunity that took chance to bring together, and I thought this problem could be solved with a better way for people to identify and see what their friends are watching — to make those natural connections.”

TopTuneinsTVVC, Angel or Bootstrap: “Bootstrapping has been good for Snackdish at this stage. It’s kept us truly focused on customers, and conscious of where we spend our effort. However, at the right time, it could be smart to bring outside resources to accelerate and scale.”

Our ‘secret sauce’ is: “We are just trying to solve for a few key scenarios, and do those really well. It helps that we are big TV and movie fans ourselves.”

The smartest move we’ve made so far: “Using things other people have built. Entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly says, “don’t focus on undifferentiated heavy lifting.” Instead of trying to re-create a social graph, we use Facebook. Instead of creating a TV and movie library we leverage an open source database. These choices let us focus on what Snackdish is good at.”

The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: “An early experiment was to see if users would want to watch programs together. What we saw from the response was “NO.” And while we set this up as an experiment where it is OK to fail and move on when we saw it didn’t work, I wish we could have figured out what to do about that answer faster.”

Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: “If I had a chance, I would listen to and query any of those four. Each would probably have their own viewpoints and thoughts, but in all cases I would need to be able to discern and filter their responses to fit what I am trying to do.”

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Our world domination strategy starts when: “When we see people having fun with Snackdish, and getting more from their viewing experiences — that is a signal we are on the right path. This task is never ending, but it means what we envisioned is clicking with people and works.”

Rivals should fear us because: “We don’t have to worry about Wall Street. We don’t have yearly commitments. We don’t have 40-slide PowerPoint roadmaps. We know what we want to do, and how we want to measure it, but we are flexible to adjust to changes as needed so we don’t get structurally locked in.”

snackdish_logoWe are truly unique because: “We are the only ones who are trying to make sense and organize people’s personal viewing activity in a way that brings value back to them and strengthen their relationships to their friends.”

 

The biggest hurdle we’ve overcome is: “Adoption. Let’s be honest. This is hard. Always is. And even if we have a great solution, we are fundamentally trying to get people to change their behavior even if just a little, and that is always a hurdle. However, we are prepared for this and are experimenting with what works, measuring, and iterating to get success.”

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: “Don’t just start coding because you can. The temptation is to get rolling with what you know how to do. And we all hear stories about how Facebook was coded over a weekend. But instead, go a little slower to go faster. Storyboard your ideas quickly and get even simple paper prototypes in front of potential users and measure their reaction and ability to use, navigate, and understand your idea.”

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