In an insightful interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Gatsby Frimpong, the co-founder and CEO of Gatsby TV, delves into the origins and the unique offerings of his groundbreaking app. Motivated by his personal experiences and a desire to solve the common dilemma of finding something to watch, Gatsby, with a background in engineering at Google, set out to create a solution that would make content discovery enjoyable and efficient. Gatsby TV distinguishes itself by being an all-encompassing platform for searching, reviewing, and recommending TV shows and movies across all streaming services. The app’s emphasis on real recommendations from friends and family over impersonal algorithms is revolutionizing how users decide what to watch. Gatsby also highlights the app’s potential to save users time and money by navigating them directly to their desired content, regardless of the platform, showcasing free viewing options to cut down on subscription costs. Looking ahead, Gatsby discusses the expansion of Gatsby TV to desktop PCs and Apple TV, hinting at further innovations and potential partnerships that promise to reshape not only content discovery but also targeted advertising within the streaming landscape.
Gatsby Frimpong is the co-founder and CEO of Gatsby TV, the tech company that developed this ingenious app offering a fast and fun new way to discover television shows and movies. The platform brings all your streaming services into one place where they can be easily searched with detailed info including ratings from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. The Gatsby TV app can also quickly tell you where to rent, stream, or buy your favorite films or television titles.. According to their user surveys, most people spend up to 30 minutes trying to find something to watch.
The Gatsby TV app is seamlessly bridging the gap between our screens and social lives. Launched just a few months ago and with 100,0000 users the application lets you see what individuals you follow have watched recently and allows you to send recommendations of shows or movies to friends. The company is taking those offline conversations we always have with each other about what we’re watching and bringing them together for you on any device.
Gatsby’s extensive experience before creating this startup and app includes engineering jobs at Apple, Microsoft, and Google. He believes the Gatsby TV app is solving some universal problems for people using streaming TV platforms and feels it can end the frustration of scrolling through shows to find something you like by relying on recommendations from real people. To learn more visit: https://www.gatsby.tv/
Gatsby, with your rich background in engineering at top tech companies and personal experiences with the common dilemma of what to watch, what was the moment of inspiration that led you to develop Gatsby TV?
I think it’s a similar story to a lot of families out there. I was actually working as an engineer for Google at the time, I’d come home from a long day at work and be sitting there with my partner, and I always felt like trying to find something for us to watch would become this kind of contentious situation because I’d want to watch something and she wouldn’t or visa versa. Then we’d spend way too much time looking through movies and shows to find something we’d both agree on to watch before settling on The Office for the 1,000th time. Since I was spending my entire day working on solutions for other people, it got me thinking that I could try to solve this problem for us and everyone else out there so that we could sit down and find something to watch in 5 minutes and actually get to enjoy our time together.
Could you highlight some of the key features of Gatsby TV that set it apart from other streaming and discovery platforms?
The Gatsby TV app is an all in one platform which allows you to search, review, and recommend TV shows and movies to friends and family. So let’s say you’re interested in searching for a show, you can search for any TV program or film in the English speaking world. If you’re looking specifically to find a movie on Netflix, you can filter search results into just those categories. Now, let’s say you’re looking for a specific movie, like the Avengers, and you search avengers you’ll be able to see the IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings for the film, you can also recommend it to a friend from there, and they’ll get a notification about that. Scrolling down, you’ll be able to see where you can watch the movie for free, rent it or if you’d have to subscribe to access it. Digging a little deeper, you’re able to see the cast information, biographies for those actors, and hot links to their social media profiles. If you want to watch that show or movie you can click on it and it’ll take you directly to the streaming service where you can view it. So, we have this all in one platform that allows us to search for, review, and watch the movies or TV shows we’re looking for.
Gatsby TV promises to end the frustration of endless scrolling and reliance on impersonal algorithms for show recommendations. Can you share insights on how the app’s focus on real people’s recommendations over algorithms is changing viewing habits and decision-making for your users?
Right now, the TV experience today is, you go in and out of different streaming networks like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, searching for things to watch and to me that was really frustrating and tiresome. You’d scroll through each platform’s suggestions for what you should watch and then exit that streaming service to check out another one. Within the Gatsby TV app you have all the streaming networks together and that allows you to have a watchlist from multiple networks all in one place. The problem with the algorithms for these shows is that they base their idea of what you like around something you’ve watched recently but they don’t account for the fact that someone you know probably suggested that show or movie. So, they’ll give you a ton of similar content from one genre when in reality maybe you only watched this type of show or movie because someone told you about it. Additionally, these streaming platforms are obviously only showing you what’s available to you of their shows and movies when there’s much more out there because many of us have multiple subscriptions. What the Gatsby TV app is doing is taking those offline conversations we all have with friends, coworkers, and family about what we’re watching and bringing them together for you on your phone or device. Within the Gatsby TV app you have a watchlist where you can add suggestions from any streaming service that you’ve received from someone offline. Or if that person is also on the Gatsby TV app you or them can send each other TV show and movie recommendations directly. We believe this is a much more reliable source of suggestions on what to watch next as they’re coming from real people who know you, your personality, and interests.
In an era where streaming service subscriptions can quickly add up, how does Gatsby TV help users save time and potentially money? Could you elaborate on the app’s ability to navigate users directly to their desired content across multiple platforms?
That’s another really great part of The Gatsby TV app, that besides saving you time and frustration in trying to find a show or movie you’d like to watch, we have all that info for you on where you can watch for free, rent, or buy these titles. So many streaming services are adding commercials anyway and increasing their subscription fees on a regular basis that we feel this can really save you some money. Instead of having to rent a movie from Amazon or wherever, the Gatsby TV app tells you about other streaming platforms you can download where you may be able to watch the movie or show for free. There’s a bunch of non-subscription based streaming services now that have come out where you can watch content for free with some commercials. Whether it’s Tubi, or Pluto TV, Roku, or Sling TV, there’s a lot of quality platforms you might not be familiar with that could have what you’re looking for to watch for free.
With Gatsby TV’s upcoming availability on desktop PCs, what are your future plans for expanding and enhancing the app’s capabilities? Are there any new features or partnerships on the horizon that users can look forward to?
Currently, Gatsby TV can be found in the google app store and the apple store for you to download on your phone or mobile device. It will be available, hopefully, later this year on desktop PCs, we’re also working on a version for Apple TV. As far as the future for expanding the app’s capabilities, the sky’s the limit, I’ve got some big ideas for it as far as other things people can review or recommend to each other, like possibly restaurants and things like that. Also, how it can help companies target advertising that is for things people are actually interested in. Making a more personal advertising experience for people, a platform where individuals can have streaming commercials that are more directly related to their personal interests. We plan to not only change how people find media but the advertising industry within TV and streaming as a whole.
