Success Story: Simkl’s TV App
Founded in 2015, Simkl is a TV, anime, and movie tracker. We recently partnered with Andrew Masyk (Founder and CEO at Simkl) to feature Simkl as a public Betabound Exclusive to our community. With over 1,000 participants, our community provided Andrew and his team the feedback they needed to take their product to the next level. We interviewed Andrew to learn more about Simkl, and his unique experience collaborating with our Betabounders.
Q: How would you pitch your product to a new user?
A: Simkl is a TV, anime, and movie tracker that keeps a history of all the shows and movies you watch in one, central location. It’s a mobile app, a website and a Google Chrome extension (depending on your preference) that keeps track of everything you watch and tightly integrates with many TV apps and services like Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll. With Simkl, users can get access to their watch lists (including personalized statistics), find missed episodes, discover what’s airing next, learn which movies are currently playing in theaters, and more!
Q: What inspired you to create Simkl?
A: My business partner and I were frustrated sifting through the different options to watch our favorite TV shows and anime. Every time we wanted to watch something, we had to browse various streaming services and hundreds of pages. Then, finding what to watch next took even more time than watching a show to begin with.
We decided we wanted to change this system, so we combined all TV shows, anime, and movies into one place with a single, filtered list. Now, Simkl users can queue a show up in minutes rather than spending hours browsing for interesting content.
Q: How does Simkl enhance users’ current TV watching habits?
A: You’ll never miss new episodes again. Notifications about upcoming shows can be delivered to your email, Chrome, iOS and Android devices — even to your Facebook Messenger.
Also, when using Simkl’s Chrome extension for Netflix, users can get access to an enhanced Netflix interface with Simkl, IMDB, MAL, ratings, trailers — and lets you find secret Netflix categories. Any movies or shows you’ve watched will automatically appear grayed out on Netflix because the app imports your full watch history from Simkl to let you know what you’ve already watched, and recommends new Netflix shows based on your watch history.
Q: What’s your favorite feature about your product?
A: Simkl’s “What to watch next” dashboard on web and mobile is one of our most used features, and I use it daily too. I also like the friends section where my friends and I can compare the movies that we have not seen. This feature saves us time deciding what to do as a group, and helps us coordinate a night when we can all meet up to watch a new movie together.
Q: What were some of the goals you were hoping to achieve by hosting your beta test with Betabound?
A: Simkl Lists was the first mobile app we’ve ever publicly launched. We knew we needed lots of feedback on what’s missing in the app, where we can improve, which bugs are being experienced, etc. No other platform could provide as many dedicated beta testers as the Betabounders who gave their honest, unbiased feedback about our product.
Having installs is great, but having actual beta users processing every pixel of your app or product to help you get better was very valuable to us. Ultimately, Betabounders’ suggestions helped us zero in on which feature releases we should prioritize, which made our apps better and easier to use in the long run.
Q: Speaking of TV, what are a couple of your favorite shows to watch?
A: Binging Orange Is the New Black on Netflix is always fun. My second favorite TV show is the one that’s been running for decades — Doctor Who. The imagination of that show shines through in every episode, and is a testament to the ingenuity of their production teams over the last 50 years.
Q: How can Betabounders continue following along with your product’s progress?
A: Betabounders can join our Facebook Group if they’re interested in continuing the discussion with us directly. I’d also recommend testers keep regularly using our website, iOS and Android apps, and share any additional feedback with us that they encounter. Our blog on Medium is another great place to hear about our team’s latest happenings, as well as following us on Twitter and Facebook.
We enjoyed partnering with the Simkl team in hosting their product’s beta test within our platform. These public Betabound Exclusive partnerships are intended to give testers increased product developer engagement opportunities, as well as experience beta testing within the Betabound platform. If you have any feedback for the Betabound team regarding these public Betabound Exclusives, we’d love to hear from you! Comment below or shoot us a line at hello@betabound.com.