The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Cinemeet App & CEO/Founder John Corcoran Interview

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

Cinemeet.com Cinemeet App & CEO/Founder John Corcoran Interview What’s Cinemeet? Meeting new people should be as simple as a tap of a button! With Cinemeet we've made it super easy to meet new people who want to watch together. The 1-on-1 watch party: Start by discovering people. Once you find someone interesting suggest a movie! This starts a chat and you are on your way to having a 1-on-1 watch party! The video is streamed right in the chat. - CONNECT and watch with friends near you (or in other countries!) - SUGGEST something to watch together with your new friend - CHAT and get to know each other before you watch together - WATCH party time!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my gosh you just tuned in for another show of the Chris Voss Show podcast. Wow.

Lucky you. You have hit the lottery and gold mine. Your life will be changed forevermore just by listening to this episode. So thank you for coming by. To see the video version of the most amazing interview we're going to be doing today with a brilliant new app, you can go to YouTube.com for chess, Chris Voss. You can also see us and find us in various groups. And of course, our profiles, Chris Voss and Chris Voss show on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. We're all over those places. And we're also on

Clubhouse as well. So there you go. Check us out on all those different facets. Today, we have a most amazing guest on, and he's the creator of a brilliant new app. He's the co-founder, to see if I can get my titles right as I jumble my vocabulary. His name is John Kukorin. He is a guy who is building an insanely quick bonding app between new friends, and that is the passion that he loves. He's the co-founder and CEO of Sinmeet. Sinmeet. You can say it, Sinmeet, Sinmeet. I'll ask him in a second if I'm getting this right.

An app he thinks can become the highest grossing app on the app store. Welcome to the show, John. How are you? I'm very good. Thanks for having me, Chris. And I was having a little fun with the name. Is it Sinmeet or Sinameet? It's Sinameet, but I'm a Swede, so you can educate me on the exact pronunciation. I was actually having some fun with it because now people are thinking about it and everything.

They're like, so what is it? And they're hopefully Googling it right now. Give us the dot coms where people can go look you up on the interwebs and download the app, of course, as well. Sure. So the app is called Cinemate. It's spelled like cinema and meeting somebody. So Cinemate, you can search on App Store. It's only on iOS so so far you can also go to cinemete.com so that's c-i-n-e-m-e-t.com or search for the same on app store that's how you find it really cool it's got a nice beautiful red like a camera i guess a video camera sort of thing or old style video camera player you kind of kind of like a projector that's the idea some. Some people say it looks, you're talking about the icon. Some people say it looks to people hanging out. So I didn't know that.

You guys. So that was just kind of an accidental thing that happened with that. Yes. So give us an overview of the app, what it does and how it does it. And then we'll get into a little bit more about you. Sure. So, I mean, I'll start with the idea, where the idea comes from. I used to live in Stockholm. That's where I'm from, or Sweden at least. And I'd come home to an empty apartment every night after work. And it was because I didn't know too many people in town. I was new. And that sucks. So I started asking girls to meet me using various dating apps and I struggled to have a single meeting, then the idea popped up in mind that, Hey, I should ask these girls to meet me at the movies. And soon as I started doing that, I had girls responding. And frankly, like most of the girls that I asked to meet me at the movies, they, they said yes. So in a few weeks I'd met with probably a dozen different girls, very casual meetings.

It was zero romance of all these meetings. And I was already doing product design or working on mobile apps for other companies and as a consultant. And that's where the initial idea of creating the app Cinemate came about. That's pretty darn awesome. And this is a great way to meet people because there's like a rapport based upon what you have with your video app where people, you know, hey, you like The Godfather? I like The Godfather.

Let's watch The Godfather together. I didn't know. Some people are into thrillers. Some people are into dramas. Some people are into comedies. And so you can kind of find that kind of uh nuance between each other where you're like hey we both like the same thing we like the same movies and that that probably makes for a better relationship because if i've been in relationships where if you hate each other's movies it's probably not going to work out right yeah that can be tough but yeah that's very much the premise uh it breaks barriers that's how i like to see it. You send something and all of a sudden, you don't care about the other person's Instagram photos

or what that person does for work. You're interested in the narrative of the story or the story of whatever has been shared. So on Cinemate, you can suggest movies or you can suggest shows off of YouTube. So that could be shows from YouTube personalities or anything on YouTube, basically. Yeah, that's pretty darn cool. So give us a rundown on how the app, you've got a swipe function, kind of like a Tinder.

What are some other aspects of the app that you have on there? Yeah, so the main content is sort of people. You want to meet somebody, then the content becomes kind of the vehicle for having an experience with someone. So using the app right now, it very much resembles a dating app. But as soon as you swipe somebody and you either match with that person or you send an instant movie suggestion, which is what we call it, you're asked to suggest something to watch.

So you get a vast selection of different content that you can, they can watch with that person. You hit that, you can see a trailer, read a blurb, and then you go on to suggesting that to that person and that creates a new chat and that person can respond to it. So you then have a conversation via chat and you get acquainted. Normally these conversations are about what's been shared and it'll be like, yeah, I've been meaning to watch this movie or I find this very interesting. And from there, a good organic conversation will spin off and eventually they'll find themselves watching it. And some, if you're suggesting a movie, it might actually be something that will take a while to watch. So there might be a bit of planning on when you're going to watch it. Whereas if it's something shorter, you can watch it right there and then. And this is one of the interesting things about this that I really like, because sometimes if you're dating, you're looking at people's profiles

and you're like, they're like, I like butterflies and rain and rainbows and you're just like what do i do with that there's not much to build on especially for like me a guy where i'm just like rainbows are cool too that's all i got and with a movie that's something that people are really passionate about it's really a depth where i mean you can talk about all the aspects of the movie the characters the the plot lines maybe easter eggs and stuff i remember one time i had a friend call me up and i'd recommend a fight club to him and he goes did you see all the subliminal fight club stuff that was in the movie and i'm like no i did not so i went back and watched it but there's i think this is really wonderful because half the time when you're meeting somebody at least when we used to meet in the old days the old time timey days, you'd take a girl to dinner.

And if things were going well, you'd take her to the movies. That was the thing. Go to the movies. I feel really old right now. And so during the movie, you have a good time. You're getting rapport. You're kind of feeling each other out, getting to know who this person is. Your whole beings or energy is kind of like,

what was this and are we compatible? But, you know, then you're enjoying the movie. You're finding a laugh at the same things. You like the same things. You're scared of the same things. And it's fun. It helps break down that ice of especially like a first date. So I thought it was really interesting how you're saying it worked out better

for dating that way than doing the tinder thing yeah and then too an interesting thing is we totally do not consider this a dating app we call it like casual dating and there's actually a lack of good words to describe it but it turns out if you read if you look into different research most of the people that are on dating apps they're actually looking for entertainment and what's more interesting than meeting with somebody new that's gonna it's it's a thrill ride so yeah i totally agree it's uh that's why i've spent a ton of money and a lot of time building this thing yeah i i really like the concept of it because it's if i if i can see hey, Google's relating to the movie and stuff. So when you open up the app, and is this available on Android as well?

It's only on iOS so far. Only on iOS so far. Yeah. So stay tuned. So you have, when you first enter in, you've got to enter three movies maybe that you want to see and you guys queue up some movies that I guess kind of get a correlation of what sort of movies you're into and you like to have is that correct yeah you select a number of movies when you first sign up with the app so that that gets added to your watch list and then you can add more things to your watch list as you as a robot using the app so you've got a questionnaire

of if i made a movie what would it be if i could be any movie snack in the world that it was be this was kind of interesting that i found too we ask a lot of stupid questions and and then you can actually apply a lot of stupid filters too when you're discovering people so you can you can you can filter people based on their snack preferences or their favorite drinks this is pretty cool you can search by movies you can have chats with people if you want to chat with them back and forth you can flip left or right through profiles there's even a map feature and see what else you can see what they like and if you like the same that they like you can do filters and there was something else I wanted to get to.

What was funny was you guys even have in here. I can't find it. I'm still learning it. You guys even have in here like your favorite snacks. So if you're a buttered popcorn person like I am, you can see the people who like buttered popcorn. Yep. I can, you can see the people who like buttered popcorn. That's, uh, yep. No, I can guarantee you there's no other app where you can filter people from 62 different countries based on buttery popcorn. There you go. You even have vegan snacks, which are good. So if someone's a vegan, they can find a fellow vegan and do that. Like if I,

if I meet someone on the app and I'm like oh i like butter popcorn and then they have like fruits and nuts i'm like it's not gonna work out honey it's just not gonna work out the funny the funny thing is some people seriously feel that way i'm sure yeah and then there's something to it too i mean it's not not super scientific but you it gives you cues yeah and even ask you are you a soda water juice or smoothie person, beer, cocktails or coffee and tea? So you can really dial in what you like. You can even dial in the streaming service that you prefer. So if Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, Amazon Prime Video or other.

So that kind of helps too. If you want to watch with somebody, maybe you're both in quarantine with the coronavirus, you can find people that have the same channel because nothing sucks when you're like, hey, you want to watch that Netflix show with me? And they're like, I don't have a subscription. I'm on HBO. So you can find and correlate all that. So I like how this all maps up.

And you guys ask really good questions. One of the best, weirdest, funniest scenes I ever ever saw these are really good questions that draw people out they're descriptive and you can you can kind of if you're if you're using this to find someone to watch movies with hang out or get to know better you can go oh man they like the same thing i did they like the favorite scene that i liked as well i like that that's uh you can bring up some old uh old scenes old memories my favorite i mean one of the scenes i love to think about is anchorman too when he's like in that fast food restaurant and he's talking about the the chicken wings being made out of bats and and yeah it, it's just a hilarious scene.

Yeah. And so you can find somebody who likes the same things you do. And a lot of couples, I mean, they watch movies together. That used to be... That's a big thing. Yeah, your girlfriend's like, hey, man, I want to watch Fifty Shades of Grey or something romantic or whatever action movie

or something like that. You can sit down, program it out. And so this is a good core block because, like I say, I've been in relationships where she likes Lifetime TV dramas and I want to claw my face off if I have to watch them. So, and I'm just, I'm not judging. I'm just saying that's my personal thing. I'd rather watch Die Hard, that sort of thing. So the relationship won't work out. So I need to go find some women who like Die Hard, that sort of thing. So the relationship won't work out. So I need to go find some women who like Die Hard. That's clearly it. And I can do that through your

app. And what else? What are some of the things that you hope come from what you guys are developing here and what you guys are building? The finest thing I think is connecting people. So in our world, the past 200 years, we've just been more and more kind of clammed into these small living boxes, call it apartments. And now things are just like rapidly, we're moving online and we're not really bonding. So if we can, I don't, I don't think it's a fix all, but if we can have people genuinely bond around movies or bond around shows, I think that's a beautiful thing. And that's pretty much the, yeah, that's the highest goal or the best value we can create for people. That's awesome. That's awesome. So what are your goals to do with

the app store? What do you, how far are you hoping to go with this and what do you want to attain? No, we're pitching investors and then you're asking yourself too, as a founder, like how far can I take it? And because we are kind of in the intersection between putting people together. So another social app, and we're also dealing with premium content. I think we're in a very good position to rival some of the highest grossing apps on App Store. And our goal is to become the highest grossing apps on App Store. And our goal is to become the highest grossing app on App Store. There you go. Go for it, guys. Download it, check it out. I think this is brilliant. And a lot of people that are young nowadays, they really have trouble figuring out how to meet someone, how to gain rapport. There's a lot of people who struggle

with dating because they don't have some of the skills that I had. We started dating and chasing girls when we were like 10 and 16. And we get on the party chat and be like hey girls and we're like we don't know what we do with them but they're kind of interesting the but i started dating i think when i was 16 or 17 something like that but but generally a lot of a lot of people nowadays they have a hard time because those apps are just so are just so what's the word i'm looking for like kind of disconnected you go through uh crowded yeah yeah crowded too yeah disconnected it's a good word there yeah one of the problems i have is like you say i there's nothing sometimes in their profiles to work from you're like i like blueberries flowers and rainbows you're like're like, I don't, I don't, I got nothing. And then, then

too, what's the, what's, what's the end objective? It's with take any app where you're supposed to meet people and there's no clear objective. It's you, you get this brain efforts. What am I going to do now? So we take that out. That's a, that's a huge part. Yeah. I love this. I think it's brilliant and it gives you a way to meet people. I used to love to go to movies with dates. In fact, sometimes if I wanted to go see a movie, I'd go find a date. And I really didn't. I was like, if something works out, it works out. But, you know, I really want to go see this movie.

And I don't want to do it alone because that's sad and pathetic. But at least that's the way I thought. So I'm like, I'm going to go do this. But I think this is brilliant because it really gives people a tool they can use. You guys have much better questions and answers than most dating apps. Like I say, they're really awful, some of the descriptions that people put in dating apps. They're like, if you could go someplace and do something, I like to go on farm rides. You're like, give me something to work with here.

And everybody's passionate about a movie. They can get into it. They can talk about their favorite characters. Everyone's got their favorite movie stars, their favorite plot line. Hey, did you did you see this? Oh, yeah. Do you like this about the movie? I mean, I can see how this can become a really easy topic to segue into that really strange first meeting when you're meeting someone. You like how are you good i'm fine you know what i mean it just can warm you right up and so you can swipe right you can swipe left people that interest you do you find that some people are using you can also send instant suggestions so you get you get some of those for free and then you can upgrade for more but you get new new free instant suggestions every day now what are the instance suggestions do how do they how do they operate basically you don't have to match with someone you can just hit the instance suggestion button that's on the profile card and you immediately

get to choose something to suggest and you just send that off and the other person gets a notification and they can immediately respond they can be like i love that movie i hate that movie maybe they can send you back another suggestion i don't know yeah yeah they can do that absolutely yeah you can just fight over which video which movie you want to watch basically exactly how it works so this is pretty awesome i love this i i this is something everyone should use especially movies hopefully should be coming back of course in big theaters but you guys got all the different online services stuff like that there is i mean there's one thing most of the people i go to the physical theaters are gen c young people 16 to 24 so the way i see play out

is and that that would be another beautiful thing is you might watch some stuff on on cinema together and then you actually because you can filter people based on how, if they live close by or if they're in other countries. But if you have people that are nearby that you're watching stuff with, you can actually, if you get to know the person, you can meet them in person and go see a movie. So hopefully once theaters are open, the people that are using a lot of people that will be using Cinemate and all of us love going to the movies. So that's totally an option. Who doesn't love to the movies?

I mean, if I ever meet somebody who doesn't like movies, I'm just like, it's never going to work out. But, you know, I mean, movies are the great stories that are alive. And so you can find people that like the stories that you like, the movies that you like. And plus you get to know people better because stories that you like the movies that you like and plus you get to know people better because it gives you a conversational piece too so you can be like oh you liked when harry met sally and remember that funny scene and it gives me something to ask questions on a date and get to know people better it gives me some cues that i can take and fall back on like i said instead of those awkward, sometimes on a date where you're like,

so you and nice shoe. Well, definitely. We're excited to see what's going to come out of it. And so it's worldwide available to all countries currently? Yep. Yeah. We've had people in 62 countries use it so far, which is kind of crazy.

There are a lot of countries out there. But that's a nice thing. With movies, you can, because normally there's no reason, like there's no reason why you would write to somebody in Israel or Afghanistan. What would you write to these people? But on Cinemate, you can swipe and all of a sudden in minutes, you can go, you can find people from 15 different countries. And then movies are, they're kind of like an international language. So it's very interesting how we can break barriers there. Do you want to tell us about any future features you guys are working on? I know some things people like to keep secret, but do you see any future build outs that you guys are working on?

Yeah. So we're curious to try out small group views. I don't think like big rooms or like large crowds of people, I don't think that's going to be our thing, but small intimate groups of say four, we can do that. And so it'd be pretty nice. So you could basically bring on a friend and start watching something and open it up for that baby maybe be more applicable applicable for a say a youtube show where you can kind of jump in but that's one of the things that we're excited to to add to the app we're going to be adding a feed eventually and you'll be you'll be able to see a lot of interesting things pop up in that feed. So yeah, think of any, any feed on Facebook or Instagram, but here it's all movie or show related. So it should be pretty,

pretty interesting. And there's probably some times you guys can end up doing with the movies, like where they can buy sponsors or suggestions. I know there's some movies I hadn't seen or heard about that were suggested in the series. And so there's probably a lot of different things you can do that way, maybe some premieres or some other. One crazy thing is, guess how many feature movies come out every year? How many?

That are produced every year. I don't know how many. There's a bunch of them. In the year 2000, it was 2,000 produced every's 2000 20 000 so it's 10x from 20 years back man i gotta go check my dvr yeah so it's it's kind of crazy the the stuff that we're that all of us have top of mind is uh it's very much curated by a few players and there's a lot of content out there and a lot of people interested in also seeing more of the indie stuff so hopefully we can become an avenue for for people

to discover more content that they wouldn't otherwise discover that is awesome i like the way it's set up man it just matches you with all your stuff you can go through a whole list of movies you can go through all the genres of action horror and mix it all together and find your your movie soulmate as it would maybe you guys should use that line find your movie soulmate it sounds too much like a serious dating app when you put it okay yeah it's just casual meetings you know casual watch meetings yeah so i mean have you is this your first app you've ever built and been involved in i've worked on 14 different mobile and web app product product so far so i've been doing it's called product design for for the past 10 years and i have worked on several projects before

this where okay if we go way back I did a lot of really bad. My first kind of my, my, my first ventures, they were very, I had big visions, but I knew nothing and they crashed and burned and I didn't have the finances. I didn't have, I didn't, yeah, I crashed and burned. It was very painful, but I learned a lot and I got an itch for it. So I'm sticking to it. Yeah. And gentlemen like you that I meet or women in the business of making apps and stuff, sometimes it's just a matter of time until they hit that perfect ball.

They just find that one thing that just hits and people go, this is it. I love this. And you guys are built on a great concept of movies. The Clubhouse app that I was trying to broadcast here, will go this is it i love this and you guys are built on a great concept of movies the i i the the clubhouse app that i was trying to broadcast here but it looks like we're having some audio issues the i remember seeing pictures of them back they were serving ice cream at south by southwest years and years ago so now they've got a hot app and stuff and of course the tiny things you guys can do with seeing what facebook likes are and stuff like that. There's a whole, there's just so much

that you guys can do with the movie app. It's crazy. Yeah, and there's so many people to serve too. It's crazy when you open up apps there are so many thousands of apps. But I think that if you really invest heavy into building a really amazing product and you listen to the customers and you try to do

everything, go above and beyond to serve them with something really valuable. Yeah, there's room for, there's always a room for whoever does something better than somebody else. There you go. And it's got a great UI. It works really well, really smooth, watches you through the thing. It shows you where everything's at. I really like that because sometimes I'm like, what's going on in here? And so anything that can walk me through that

can save me a lot of time. Anything more we need to know about the app that we haven't covered? Well, no, I'm not sure what that would be. I think we've gone over a pretty, we've covered it pretty well. Trying to think what more could be could be said about it but no i think you asked me a lot of a lot of the important questions yeah i

gotten a chance to play with it so i was just falling in love with it just banging on the buttons and stuff and and i just think it's brilliant i mean the questions are great they can really open up people like i said the hardest thing that I have to do on a dating app is when somebody just gives these blanket answers. So what do you like? I like walks in the park. I can't build a conversation off of that. So you like walks in the park?

You don't really have to have a conversation if you don't want to either. You can just relax and and watch no i mean i can i can i can share some interesting stuff so we have people filling out their profiles it's like what's your favorite place or how do you prefer to watch a movie and a lot of them especially a lot of the kids nowadays they want to watch it in bed so that's pretty interesting whereas people that are not 18 anymore like they have smart TV and maybe even a recliner couch. But a lot of the kids nowadays, they like to just kick back into bed. It's an interesting part.

So in a lot of cases like that, is somebody watching at their house and you're watching on theirs and you're sharing that experience together? Say again, what was the question so in that in that sort of case do they do they come together at the house or do they no i mean i'm saying yeah yeah i mean one person in in one button yeah so this works this works great for quarantine yeah yeah exactly 100 there you go and it's a great way to get to know somebody it's an icebreaker warm it up yeah i'm one of those people i actually have we review a lot of products in the chris foss show and so i have these reaching arm posts that hold my galaxy tab pad that's one thing i'm thinking about because we we don't want to cause neck injuries or wrist injuries. So thinking about maybe even giving some sort of like shipping option for, we will get into building smart TV apps.

It's still, you can already cast stuff to Apple TV, but we haven't gotten into other smart TV apps. But yeah, in the meantime i guess people just have to stack up pillows and they'll figure it out people are already spending yeah they're already doing it so they they've already got the arm muscles and the shoulder muscles but i love mine because like when i'm going to bed i'm usually like trying to maybe answer a couple emails maybe watch some rachel maddow youtube videos or something catch up on my news as i'm drifting off and and so i have it and it's it's nice you don't have to hold it you can just lay there and go and then flip through something but and then usually i fall

asleep but which is it's a great way to go to bed but i like this idea well people can that if they if you want to warm up to somebody, you can have fun with them, get to know them. You don't have to be person to person if you don't want to be. And so you can kind of just game report with people. It's funny how, I mean, I used to, that was what I always did, take a girl to dinner, talk to her for a little bit, get to know her, go to a movie. And there's something weird about just kind of sitting with

someone through a movie and laughing at the same things and seeing the similarity there's kind of like some unconscious simpatico that you get from that yeah you you walk out of it a different slightly different person because you've uh now gone through a new experience yeah but some movies or documentaries can really uh alter, change your whole life trajectory. So it can be pretty powerful. Definitely. Definitely. So check it out, guys.

Cinemete. Give us the plugs of where people can order that on the internet. Yeah. So it's Cinemete, like cinema and meeting somebody. Cinemete. C-I-N-E-M-E-E-T. And you can search for that on App Store or you can go to cinemeet.com.

There you go. Do you guys see it coming out on Android anytime soon or are you going to wait for it to scale? We're going to wait for scale when you build things. It's important to just keep things to one platform until you have what's called product market fit. So in our case we're still ironing out a few things so we we but we can't wait to get it out on android that's

that's for sure definitely android is so hard because it has so many different variations and versions and it's uh mostly about just uh getting the the product to a place where we feel like we can scale the team without worrying about dealing with two platforms. So it's just a bit out. Most definitely. Well, guys, check it out. I really like it. The UI is beautiful.

I think this is brilliant. I think it's a brilliant idea. It might be the it idea. I guess we'll see as people adopt it and check it out. Download it off of iTunes and all that good stuff. Make sure if you see me on there, you swipe right. But as long as of iTunes and all that good stuff. Make sure if you see me on there, you swipe right. But as long as you like the movies that I like, no, I'm just kidding. You don't have to do that. Thanks to John for spending some time with us, John. We certainly

appreciate you coming in and sitting down with us. Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys. To see the video version of this, go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. There'll be a link on the post where you can click on it it will take you to the app store so if you want to find it there you can as well you can also go to any of the groups that we have on facebook linkedin instagram all those different places and check it out thanks for tuning in be sure to wear your mask stay safe and we'll see you guys next time