Entrepreneur Interview Series - A Sit-Down with Screenius genius co-founder Seth Cohen

Seth Cohen describes Screenius as an iPad app for personalized video discovery, like a Pandora for video. He says it learns a user’s tastes from choices and actions, and that the product is moving toward social video by learning friends’ tastes too.

The interview also traces Cohen’s path from film and television into programming, software engineering, product management, and entrepreneurship. He says his biggest startup challenge is clarity of purpose, his biggest mistake was not doing enough rapid prototyping and customer validation early, and he believes the right team matters more than the right market or product.

Reading notes

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• Screenius is presented as an iPad app for personalized video discovery that narrows video choice to two options.
• The app learns preferences from what users do and do not choose.
• Screenius is also moving toward social video, using friends’ tastes to help surface content for shared conversations.
• Cohen’s background begins in film and television, then shifts to programming, software engineering, product management, and entrepreneurship.
• He says the main entrepreneurial challenge is clarity of purpose that can guide how resources are found and used.
• He says his biggest mistake was not spending enough time on rapid prototyping and customer validation before building.
• He describes startup work as the fun part, but says planning ahead matters because assumptions need to be tested quickly.
• He says entrepreneurship requires patience because each step tends to take more time and energy than expected.
• He says the right team is more important than the right market or product.
• He says he wants to lead in a way that others want to follow, rather than one based on rank.