Bingie

The Problem

Streaming gave audiences unprecedented access to movies and television while creating a new problem: deciding what to watch. Content was fragmented across a growing number of services, recommendation engines were largely algorithmic, and conversations with the people whose opinions viewers actually trusted were happening separately in texts, group chats, and social media. Bingie was built around a different product thesis: make those trusted human recommendations the center of entertainment discovery.

Early consumer research reinforced the opportunity. A survey of more than 500 people found that 64% preferred entertainment recommendations from friends and family over recommendations from streaming services, social media, or advertising. Rather than building another algorithm for predicting taste, we set out to create what the company called the human algorithm, a social product connecting discovery, recommendations, conversation, and streaming access in one experience.

Product Leadership

I was deeply involved across the full product lifecycle, operating as Product Manager and Product Owner while leading a cross-functional team of approximately 15 people across iOS and backend engineering, UX/UI and product design, and QA. I participated in product and business planning, investor meetings, funding discussions, requirements definition, roadmap development, feature prioritization, design and technical decisions, Agile delivery, testing, release planning, and App Store submission decisions.

I worked alongside the founders and leadership as a product peer, helping translate the business opportunity into an executable roadmap while also operating at the level required to keep a startup product moving every day. I wrote and refined product tasks, planned Agile sprints, prioritized work across design and engineering, reviewed features, resolved delivery constraints, and helped make the tradeoffs required to move from concept toward a public consumer product.

That responsibility also extended into fundraising conversations. I participated in investor meetings and helped represent the product, roadmap, delivery strategy, and progress as the company pursued financing. Bingie ultimately raised a seed round from individual and friends-and-family investors, providing additional support as the team prepared the product for market.

From Concept to MVP

We spent roughly six months building toward the public release. The challenge was larger than creating a social feed around entertainment. Bingie needed to help users discover movies and television across fragmented streaming catalogs, capture recommendations from people they trusted, organize those recommendations, create conversations around individual titles, and then reduce the friction between discovering something and actually watching it.

The resulting Bingie app combined entertainment discovery with a purpose-built social layer. Users could search across streaming services, recommend titles to friends, discuss specific movies and shows, build a watchlist from recommendations, and use provider links to move from discovery into the appropriate streaming experience.

One of the important product principles was keeping entertainment conversations focused. Rather than competing with broad social networks filled with unrelated content, Bingie was designed as a dedicated environment for the conversations people were already having about what they loved, disliked, recommended, or wanted to watch next.

Launch & Go-to-Market

Bingie launched publicly for iOS on August 26, 2020, moving the product from a six-month concept-and-development cycle into the realities of operating a live consumer application. I helped lead launch readiness and App Store submission decisions while coordinating the design, engineering, QA, and product work required to get the application into users’ hands.

The launch generated substantial earned media across technology, entertainment, startup, and business publications. TechCrunch described Bingie’s approach as the human algorithm, while Forbes highlighted the product’s focus on word-of-mouth recommendations and conversations around shared entertainment. Coverage also appeared in Variety, the Los Angeles Business Journal, Built In LA, Broadcasting & Cable / NextTV, dot.LA, and other outlets.

From MVP to V2

Launch was the beginning of the product cycle rather than the end. I continued leading the product as we used testing, user behavior, technical learnings, and evolving business priorities to shape subsequent releases. I introduced and helped develop new product concepts including watch parties, expanded notification strategies, A/B testing, and mechanisms for managing required application updates while continuing to shape UX/UI decisions across the experience.

Operating a live iOS product also meant working through issues that rarely appear neatly on a roadmap. I worked closely with engineering to investigate difficult iOS behaviors and platform-specific edge cases, prioritize fixes against feature work, and determine when technical issues justified changes to the release plan or user experience. The product evolved through those cycles from MVP into its later versions rather than remaining fixed at its initial launch state.

Under the hood, the product combined a native iOS experience with backend services and AWS infrastructure supporting an application that needed to bring together entertainment metadata, social activity, recommendations, conversations, user state, and links into a growing ecosystem of streaming providers.

Impact & Validation

Bingie demonstrated that a familiar consumer behavior, asking people you trust what to watch, could become the foundation of a focused digital product. The experience brought social recommendation, entertainment discovery, conversation, watchlists, and streaming-provider access together at a moment when audiences were navigating an increasingly fragmented streaming landscape.

The product thesis received meaningful external validation at launch. Independent coverage highlighted both the scale of the discovery problem and Bingie’s decision to place trusted human recommendations ahead of conventional recommendation algorithms. The company secured seed funding, launched a functioning consumer product, and continued developing the platform beyond its MVP through subsequent feature and experience iterations.

Featured

• Download for iOS on the App Store
• TechCrunch: Bingie launches an app for all your streaming debates
• Forbes: Entertainment Sharing App Bingie Launches On iOS
• Broadcasting & Cable: Social App Bingie Lets Friends Share TV Recommendations
• Built In LA: Bingie App Launch

For me, Bingie represents one of the most complete product lifecycles in my work. I helped shape the strategy and business case, participated in investor conversations, acted as Product Manager and Product Owner, led a multidisciplinary team, translated the roadmap into Agile delivery, guided design and engineering decisions, helped take the application through the App Store, and continued evolving the live product through testing and subsequent releases. It required moving continuously between business strategy, user experience, technology, team leadership, and hands-on delivery. That combination of responsibilities was essential to turning an idea into an operating consumer product.