Hello, world.

It is with great pleasure that I introduce SCRN.co to the universe. SCRN is the onchain + sustainable platform for creative IP.

Together, with a few of the most talented individuals I’ve had the pleasure to work with, I’ve spent the past 9 months building the foundation of our company. Our mission is to build a place where artists can realize the full potential of their work, full stop. More on that soon.

I’m sharing some thoughts today to explain why we need to completely rethink product MVPs, using our own problem space as an example.

The concept of an MVP has been ingrained in my brain for a decade. My first taste of Silicon Valley was at LinkedIn, where Reid Hoffman hammered home the essence of the MVP in a memorable sound byte:

"If you aren't embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."

It’s some intentional hyperbole, but we all get the point. The first thing you ship to the world can’t be perfect. Perfect !enemy Good

Feeling “embarrassed” means you have more work to do and (hopefully) you know what work needs to get done. This is exactly how I feel right now about SCRN.co. I’m increasingly proud, somewhat embarrassed, yet ready to let people start seeing what we’re about. I know we can make this product 100x better. I’m eager to continue this process ad infinitum with this incredible team. 

I’m confident in shipping a product I know we can (easily) improve because an MVP doesn’t have to be a product at all. What lies above is infinitely more valuable.

In the traditional framework, an MVP needs to accomplish the following:

1. Prove you can take the first step in building toward a massive vision

2. Create the space to build relationships with future customers

I agree with this one hundred percent.

But I don’t believe you need to ship a full-fledged product to accomplish those things. Let’s use SCRN as an example.

Right now, SCRN.co is a news aggregator tool + marketing landing page. I had a blast building the news aggregator and I’m stoked to share more, in a follow up post, on how I conquered LLMs to build this tool.

But for now, SCRN.co is a website with one (very important) feature; distilled topical news. Yet we’re still accomplishing the two critical goals of an MVP:

1. Prove you can take the first step in building toward a massive vision

The problem we’re solving is the drastic devaluation of creative equity (e.g. Hollywood films) in the private markets. Our hypothesis revolves around increasing participation of consumers/fans engaging with, and valuing, IP in the entertainment space.

Proving we can take the first step towards our massive vision means proving we can create meaningful engagement with a consumer and industry audience.

That’s exactly what our website does right now — it solves the first step problem that is the beginning to the rest of our problem chain.

Our first step problem is that Hollywood suffers from information fragmentation. Unlike other entertainment verticals (e.g. sports, gaming), Hollywood does not have healthy, online information streams that are easily discoverable. 

We felt this firsthand when we began exploring the problem space. It is extremely difficult to feel like you have a good pulse on what’s going on in Hollywood. This makes it incredibly difficult to be a Hollywood operator (eg. manager, agent, publicist, producer).

It also makes it incredibly difficult to be a fan. This widespread consumer friction has contributed to declining box office performance, with the industry failing to get back to pre-pandemic levels.

Our news aggregator tool begins to solve this problem for fans and operators alike. I love using it and I think you will too.

1. Create the space to build relationships with future customers

To build our vision, we need to build relationships with consumers and businesses. Our news aggregator tool + studio marketing page provides the space to do so.

Because SCRN.co is built for fans and Hollywood operators alike, it brings both sides of our future marketplace to the table. Fans get more exposure to the new names, faces and projects in Hollywood while operators can consume more critical industry information faster. 

Once we add search capabilities with rich aggregated data sets on top of the newsfeed, Hollywood insiders will start using SCRN.co as their de-facto research tool for any artist or project.

Providing unique value to industry veterans is key in building the trust needed to manifest our full product vision. Hollywood (counter-intuitively) has become an extremely risk-averse industry. It’s because a talent brand can take years to build, only to be deflated with a couple of dud projects.

This evergreen risk puts the entire industry on red-alert when it comes to new ideas. It’s why the entertainment industry is very much a “show don’t tell” world, doing things the way they’ve always been done and stifling innovation in the process.

SCRN.co is the beginning of building long-lasting trust with industry players. And trust is the most important prerequisite in customer acquisition. Which leads us to the very top. Where we’ve seen others fail.

The MVP is dead, but long live the MVF. This is where most consumer businesses falter, building the MV Product with no MV Funnel in sight. 

Focusing on building a healthy top of funnel lets you start engaging with customers while you build the rest of your product. This feedback loop then accelerates your iterations on your revenue-generating product. It’s like getting free at bats before the game even starts.

In my next post, I’ll dive into feedback loops, LLMs and how powerful both are for companies at our stage.

There’s truly never been a better time to build things.

-ZR