#68 How Netflix Helps Us Decide | Netflix VP Product, Todd Yellin

I’m guessing that, like me, you have a Netflix account. And, like me, you may have wondered, how does it know what I will like? With more than 200 million households and over half a billion viewers in 190 countries, Netflix has become an international phenomenon. Part of the company's success has been its ability to advise us on what we will like by suggesting titles. And in this interview, you’ll hear that the company scraps traditional marketing and demographic information when making its predictions of what we will like. Instead, the company uses sophisticated, objective measures to determine what it will suggest and it doesn’t factor our age, gender or other typically-used data when rendering its recommendations.

And someone who knows how Netflix does what it does is the company’s Vice President of Product, Todd Yellin. Todd has played a significant role in Netflix’s success for the past 15 years and was part of the team that created the original algorithms to predict how we will rate a title we haven’t ever seen. Todd is one of the most compelling people I have known. In addition to being an executive, Todd is a great storyteller and filmmaker.  As a cinephile and TV geek who is fascinated by how people make decisions, I found talking with Todd and getting to know how Netflix operates to be a total delight.

So, listen in as Todd and I talk about how Netflix helps us decide.