Quick Pitch: Can't Wait pushes new movie trailers to your phone, helps you share your favorites and reminds you when they hit theaters.
Genius Idea: Social movie discovery and automatic reminders for movies you want to see.
Movie buffs and occasional film fans alike know the adrenaline rush associated with discovering a new movie that they just can't wait to see in theaters. Can't Wait!, a Y Combinator summer of 2011 class graduate, caters to this crowd with an iPhone application that promises to find them upcoming flicks to get excited about.
Connect to Facebook or Twitter to create an account, then you use the iPhone app to find and watch movie trailers for upcoming feature films. If something catches your eye, click the "Can't Wait" button to share the activity with your social network friends. The application will later follow up with a reminder when the movie premieres in theaters, and you can choose to purchase tickets in-app via Fandango.
"We want to send you new trailers … help show you what your friends are watching and remind you when movies come out," Can't Wait! co-founder Eric Florenzano says. "People want reminders for the movies they're excited about seeing," he adds.
The application may sound not all that dissimilar from Flixster or other movie-focused applications, but the difference, says Florenzano, is that Can't Wait! is all about building excitement.
"If you look at all apps out there, they're all about what's out right now," he says. "It's a useful thing … they're totally tailored for when you're in the mood to see a movie. What we're trying to do is be all about what's coming up … it's a fundamentally different experience."
Also different is the app's simple, slick and inviting user interface. The experience pivots around movie discovery in an elegant fashion that should appeal to even the most cynical moviegoers.
Can't Wait! sources its movie trailers from YouTube, a strategy that helps the startup avoid licensing costs but also keeps it dependent on YouTube's API. Sometimes that's a liability -- for instance, early Thursday a broken YouTube API led to app users being unable to watch trailers for several hours.
Released on the App Store in late August, Can't Wait! has been downloaded more than 10,000 times. The application has even received App Store promotional love from Apple.
Florenzano sees the startup expanding beyond movies and into video games and consumer electronics. Can't Wait! currently earns a percentage of the receipts from ticket sales sold through the application, and sees additional monetization opportunities in featuring studio trailers, offering group buying discounts and video game pre-orders.
Can't Wait! is funded by Y Combinator and has raised an additional undisclosed amount of seed funding.
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Image courtesy of Flickr, Anders Adermark
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
