Kyle
If you’re a tv-a-holic or just too busy to keep up with the ever changing prime time schedule for your favorite shows you are probably well aware of sidereel. The site keeps up with the episodes of each popular TV show and can deliver customized email alerts to tell you what’s going on and when you’re favorite shows are back from break.
ShowDates, a startup based in the Netherlands says that they can do this better with their cleaner more appealing UI. Everything on ShowDates is focused around their dashboard which they call “the couch”.
Now we’re well aware that SideReel isn’t as popular as say Facebook but for the past few years it’s been the standard among those that want to keep up with TV shows, so we asked ShowDates co-founder Rick Pastoor how they’re different than SideReel:
“We really try to keep the amount of functionality to the absolute minimum to just do what users want: track their progress on shows. Our focus is on designing a beautiful interface which tells you directly which way to go. We don’t want to craft just another web application, but a friend that helps you what show to pick next and reminds you where you left off last time. Next to this, we are just two guys that love programming. We have experience in both “normal” web development and iOS / Android applications.” Pastoor replied.
He had time for a few more questions, check out the interview below:
Showdates is a website where you can track the progress on TV shows you are following. People are watching more on-demand television these days and we take care of reminding where you left off previously. The selected shows are combined to the central page on Showdates we call the ‘Couch’. This page displays the next episode for every show you follow but haven’t seen yet. Next to this, you can use Showdates to find new and interesting shows in your favorite genres.
Showdates is founded by Rick Pastoor. He runs a business building webapplications and iOS Apps for clients together with Mathijs Kadijk. The company is called Wrep (http://wrep.nl/). Wrep was founded in 2007, and from the summer of 2010 they started to work fulltime for themselves. They are both skilled programmers and are always looking for new and interesting stuff to learn.Next to working on projects for clients, they both love to work on pet projects. This is how Showdates started. Rick and Mathijs both enjoy a good TV show from time to time, but when watching multiple shows, it is hard to know where you left off and it is difficult to find out when new episodes are airing exactly.
Showdates is based in Zwolle, the Netherlands. It’s a small(er) town in the northern part of the Netherlands.
What is the startup culture like in the Netherlands?
This is hard to say. There are a lot of initiatives in and around Zwolle, but (as far as I can see) not a lot of internet startups. We have a couple of clients that we consider a startup as well, but I think that if you want to find a lot of people that are building startups and in need of investors, you should go to one of the big cities, like Amsterdam or Rotterdam. People are very supportive, but Dutch people are not eager to spend money on software.
This really is a ‘scratch your own itch’ idea, because I had this problem for a long time and wanted to do something about it. It seems that a lot of people have the same issue, as the number of users is on the rise.
We put a lot of time into our user interface, because we think this is more important than adding feature after feature. Our users love the simplicity and cleanliness of our app.
Because we are two skilled developers, this was not the hard part of the process. We find that once we tell people personally of Showdates, they are almost directly interested. The hardest part so far is to get the word out there, so people know that Showdates exists. This is going in the right direction at this moment.
We think we’ve nailed the ‘keeping track’ part. Right now we are focussing on creating a better environment to discover new shows. Also, a lot of users are asking for an iPhone App. There is a lot on our list, but the bottomline is this: we love TV shows and want Showdates to be the number 1 app to go to for TV show related tasks on the web. We do like social interaction between uses on the site, but we have not added this (features like making friends, commenting, etc.) because it takes time to do it right and we want it to add value to the overall experience.
