There are a lot of wonderfully talented and wise leaders out there from all walks of life and I would really like to see more organizations come along that can help match those people up with those who could benefit most from their advice and mentoring. This is needed for people who have been climbing uphill their whole lives due to situations not of their own making. We need to all play a role in helping people get the kind of success that so many are capable of but haven’t been given the chance to achieve.

As part of my series about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ian Morris.

Ian is the cofounder and CEO of Likewise, an exciting start-up that helps users easily find the best personalized recommendations for Movies, TV shows, books, podcasts, and more. Before Likewise, he served as the president and CEO of Market Leader for more than a decade, establishing the company as the leading provider of SaaS solutions to the real estate industry with more than 150,000 enterprise and SMB customers. Under his leadership, Market Leader was ranked the fourth Fastest Growing Technology Company in North America from 1999–2004, leading to a successful IPO in 2004 and the sale of the company to Trulia in 2013 for $380 million. After receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School, Morris spent seven years at Microsoft where he led many of MSN’s early online marketing efforts and later served as the general manager of Microsoft HomeAdvisor, one of the nation’s first consumer real estate sites. He has also served as a board member and strategic advisor to a number of both public and private technology companies.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Business and technology have always been an interest of mine, so why not make a career out of it? After I received my MBA from Harvard Business School, I joined Microsoft for the opportunity to work on the Internet in its early days. It was a great opportunity and I loved my seven years there, first in marketing from the first days of MSN to serving as the general manager of Microsoft HomeAdvisor, one of the nation’s first consumer real estate sites.

Following my time at Microsoft, I served as CEO of Market Leader for 12 years where we established the company as the leading provider of SaaS for the real estate industry — this included more than 150,000 enterprise and SMB customers. Through my leadership, Market Leader was ranked as the fourth fastest growing technology company in North America from 1999–2004, which led to successful IPO in 2004 and the sale of the company to Trulia in 2013 for $380 million. I also spent time serving as a board member and strategic advisor to a variety of public and private technology companies.

After my tenure at Market Leader, I spent a very enjoyable 3 years working as a board member and strategic advisor to several technology companies. Then, in 2017, I co-founded Likewise with two friends with a goal of making it easier for everyone to discover, collect and share the things they really enjoy. It’s been incredibly fulfilling building this wonderful team, which launched the Likewise app in October of 2018. We are an exciting start-up with a smart, passionate team that is working on a problem that we can all relate to. It can’t get much better than helping people make the most of their recreational time by providing them with personalized recommendations for television shows, movies, books, and podcasts.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led you to think of the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

Our idea for Likewise was born out of Bill Gates’ private office. The office’s managing partner and my friend and co-founder, Larry Cohen, noticed how much time he spent trying to find the best of everything and was frustrated that no one had made it easy to share and discover great experiences in the digital world. He developed the idea with our other co-founder Michael Dix and the two of them brought me in to develop the concept and turn it into a company. Fortunately, Bill Gates also related to and was excited by the idea (tens of millions of people across the world follow Bill’s book picks) and funded the team to pursue it. Our collective efforts resulted in the creation of Likewise.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

Our first incarnation of Likewise was very social focused and we realized the difficulty in building a social platform from scratch. We invested in building a far more engaging single player mode that helped people get real-time value from our app in the form of personalized recommendations. That great experience leads to people wanting to share with their friends and family which greatly enhances the experience for everyone involved. As a result, we have seen tremendous growth in the number of people using Likewise.

So, how are things going today? How did your grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?

We’ve seen the world change drastically in the last few months and everyone has had to pivot and become resilient. Life has been disrupted at the social level with various restrictions seen throughout the country, so having a recommendation app that can keep people engaged with their family, friends and other users while at home has been helpful.

Through this, our team has been able to broaden our content and has quickly been able to provide new recommendations to our users. With students home due to school closures, we’ve created dozens of lists of the best content available to them in areas such as children’s education, fitness, cooking and more. In addition to hundreds of other lists focused on traditional movies, television shows, books and podcasts, Likewise provides a wealth of information about the wealth of content in the world. It’s our job to make sure we can provide users with this information based on what they will most likely be interested in.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I don’t know if it qualifies as a mistake, but it’s a funny story that jumps to mind.

Bill Gates is a supporter and user of Likewise and he occasionally uses one of our most popular features — The Ask — which lets users post a question and get input from the community. It’s a cool feature, because not only do you get a whole lot of ideas, but unlike posting a question in a text or social media app, the end result is a list of answers, sorted most popular to least, all done automatically for you.

Well, Bill asked the community what show he should watch next and also shared the Ask on his Twitter feed. That was great because it spread like wildfire and brought a lot of new users to the app, but what we didn’t see coming was different groups competing to get Bill’s attention.

We saw one group of people come together to keep recommending a documentary about a disease they were passionate about. Another large group were fans of the Netflix original The OA, a show that had been cancelled and that they were lobbying to get another season of (I agree with them by the way). They kept engaging on the original ask hoping Bill could have a hand in bringing the show back for a few more seasons. This went back and forth for a few days and it was fascinating to see. What we initially thought engagement would look like took a different turn, which is okay!

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

We are helping consumers solve their subscription fatigue and deal with what can only be called a content explosion. As major media and technology companies jump into the streaming revolution, dozens of new shows are being added every day. At the same time, as these companies compete for subscription dollars, content is often moving from one service to the other. No consumer can or should need to keep up with all this chaos and that’s where the Likewise app comes in.

We put an end to the noise by helping consumers find what they want to watch and exactly where they can watch it. We do that by providing personalized recommendations that are based on their interests, what friends and other people they trust enjoy, what our editors think they will be interested in, and even what they read or listen to. We aren’t aware of anyone else that takes all of this into account when helping people find what they will enjoy next.

And we even take things one step further. We now deliver this information right to their television with Likewise TV. The Likewise TV app is now available for Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV. Likewise TV lets users see their entire watchlist, right on their television. Not only can they see all the things they want to watch, but they can see them in one place regardless of what streaming service its on. Basically we have created a home screen for the TV and from there, launching any show or movie is just a click away.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

This is a great question and I’m not sure there is a perfect answer given that everyone works differently. I personally recommend, in addition to being passionate about your company and how it serves a purpose, that collaboration is key. The best thing about being a CEO is that you get to pick the people you want to spend your time with, and through this, building a team of individuals that share your passion for the company and allowing those colleagues to bring new ideas is vital. Collaboration among colleagues has allowed us at Likewise to continue to grow our audience to the numbers we have today.

During my free time, I do like to avoid “burn out” by getting outside and playing tennis. It’s my favorite activity and the best way to start my day. It helps me say healthy mentally and physically!

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I have been incredibly fortunate. My parents have been a big part of my life every step of the way. My father worked as a Wall Street analyst while I was growing up and was always ready, willing and able to respond to the questions I peppered him with. With that type of coaching, how could someone not fall in love with the interesting opportunities that the business world presents? Additionally, my wife and family are always there for me. Every business has its ups and downs and CEO is the loneliest job in the world when things aren’t going your way. I honestly don’t think I could have made it through the tougher times in my career without my wife’s support and her willingness to be a sounding board, skeptic, and supporter.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. Approximately how many users or subscribers does your app or software currently have? Can you share with our readers three of the main steps you’ve taken to build such a large community?

Since we began in October of 2018, we’ve seen tremendous growth and engagement with Likewise. But, what’s more notable is our growth during the last four months — we’ve tripled the number of users on our platform. We have had more than one million people sign up for Likewise and those users have enriched our community with more than 25 million recommendations for television shows, movies, books and podcasts. It now takes us about three to four days to generate one million recommendations. This growth shows that consumers are relying on the app now more than ever to help feed their need for entertainment.

Here are some of the main steps we’ve taken to build out our community on Likewise.

Creating Lists in Real-Time

We stay up-to-date on current trends and what’s popular — what people talking about in terms of movies, television shows, books, and podcasts. From there, we can create aggregated lists that span streaming services and build out timely themed lists around holidays, anniversaries or major cultural moments.

Counting on Recommendations

Nielsen reports that 83 percent of people trust recommendations of friends and family over other channels. Consumer skepticism continued to grow due to ratings from anonymous, unverified biased sources. We wanted Likewise to be a unique platform to help people find and share recommendations more easily and have these recommendations come from family, friends and experts.

Understanding Streaming Service Users and Expanding Offerings

As we’ve seen over the past few years, the streaming wars are heating up. There seems to be more and more options each year, which leads to users struggling what to watch next. Did you know that on average, streamers are spending more than 15 minutes trying to decide what to watch before diving into their next television show or movie? With that in mind, we sought to understand how consumers are feeling about what is currently available.

Our research has shown that the explosion of content on the small screen has become a double-edged sword for viewers. And, our findings have suggested that frustrations are about to worsen as more and more platforms continue to be introduced. With our expansion to Likewise TV for Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Apple TV, we aim to put an end to these frustrations.

What is your monetization model? How do you monetize your community of users? Have you considered other monetization options? Why did you not use those?

Right now we are pre-revenue and we are focused on two things: building a great product and getting more people using it every day. The better we do with those goals, the easier monetization will be. After all, who doesn’t want to learn about great new content that they will truly enjoy? And, what media or publishing company doesn’t want to make sure those consumers know everything about its content? Once we choose to begin generating revenue, we are confident we can do it in a way that is win-win.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a very successful app or a SaaS? Please share a story or an example for each.

It all starts with the problem you are trying to solve. We don’t always get that right at first as is evident by the hundreds of highly successful companies that ended up in a place very different than where they started. But, what all of those companies have in common is that they listened to their customers and stayed opportunistic. If you do that, you will find plenty of opportunities. The next step is to approach each with a balance of optimism and great skepticism. After all, lots of great ideas make for very poor businesses. Once you have found your problem, and one you are confident can be a great business, then it just comes down to execution That’s where the real hard work kicks in! All of this is true whether you are building a consumer app, a SaaS business, or just about anything else.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I try to serve as a mentor to people who are early in their career whenever I can. I have done some of this with people from underprivileged backgrounds and look forward to continuing mentorship in my community and across the country.

There are a lot of wonderfully talented and wise leaders out there from all walks of life and I would really like to see more organizations come along that can help match those people up with those who could benefit most from their advice and mentoring. This is needed for people who have been climbing uphill their whole lives due to situations not of their own making. We need to all play a role in helping people get the kind of success that so many are capable of but haven’t been given the chance to achieve. Especially now, I’m confident we’ll see more and more leaders taking on the role of mentor to shape the future generations and I’m excited to continue to do my part to support others and help guide them in the right direction.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can follow Likewise on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for new updates on our platform and to see our latest and greatest lists and user recommendations.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!


Ian Morris of Likewise: 5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful App or SaaS was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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