Cooler

WHILE YOU WERE WORKING THE WORLD HAS BECOME INSANELY COOL

Take a minute and consider how much TV has changed over the past ten years:
- You and everyone you know now carry a high-definition television around in your pocket all day.
- You can now choose to watch virtually any television show or movie ever made, instantaneously, for a few bucks or less
- You can watch that TV show or movie whenever you want

This is science f*cking fiction, people.

And we haven't even touched on the dramatically increased quality of the content itself. Watching television and online video is no longer considered a "brain rotting” activity; in fact, TV is now often hailed as our highest forms of storytelling. It’s not just the Golden Age of TV –- it’s the Golden Age of YouTube, Podcasts, Video Games and more.

BUT ALL THIS COOLNESS COMES AT A SIGNIFICANT COST

So here’s the problem: How do you and everyone you know talk about all this awesome TV (and movies, youtube, podcasts, etc.) you’re enjoying anytime and everywhere you want? Think about it. When we were all experiencing the same stuff at the same time, it was easy to talk about the shows we loved immediately afterwards or at the water cooler the next day. Now, due to the double-edged convenience of time-shifted consumption, it’s hard to know what are friends are watching or exactly how far they are into them. And the social networks where we share so much of what moves us are in many ways the worst places to discuss the TV and other media we love. Have you ever tried to discuss a plot twist on "Game of Thrones" on Facebook? It’s like a Lannister showing up at a Stark birthday party, only worse.

WE DECIDED THERE HAD TO BE A COOLER WAY

Cooler is a social messaging platform built to discuss and celebrate on-demand media. It enables fans to chat about content they love with friends and their favorite celebrities, even when they’re watching at completely different times.

Existing social networks are architected around real-time; their algorithms consider “recency” as a key factor in what to surface in your news feeds. Cooler is instead architected around context, or what we call “story time”, so that you are only exposed to reactions at the time they’re relevant to you — not at the time someone else posted. For instance, if your friend watched a "Game of Thrones” episode a few hours, days or weeks before you, her comments will be preserved in a visual timeline, with the precise story context, and only unlocked for you when you catch up to that same moment.

BASED IN VENICE, BUILT FOR THE FUTURE

Co-founded by two longtime friends and Stanford classmates (both conveniently named Jason), Cooler aims to be for media consumption what Pinterest is for designers or Twitch is for e-sports fans: a social platform built around and optimized for a specific activity. But in this case, an activity that people spend more time doing than anything other than sleeping and working. Given that the average American watches 5.5 hours of television and streaming content every single day — the majority of that time-shifted — we’re confident that Cooler can become the dominant platform for messaging about content on our phones, tablets, and TVs. Most importantly, Cooler will allow all of us to once again connect as friends and fans around the content that moves us.