Henry Soong tries to create a series of vertical microdrama that is not fun. That makes it Watch club The founder is quite unique in this billion dollar industry from apps that create formulaic, cringe-worthy content and use aggressive tactics to maximize in-app purchases.
“Ninety percent of the story is, ‘I’m a poor girl! I fell in love with a secret billionaire! He’s a werewolf, and his mother is a vampire, and he doesn’t agree with me!'” Soong told TechCrunch. “There’s a market for that, and we shouldn’t laugh at it, but I think it could be bigger than a romantic soap opera that’s close to AI.”
Soong’s comment was a bit aggressive, but not wrong. Competitors ReelShort made $1.2 billion in in-app purchases last year, while DramaBox made $276 million. That quality, he says, is milquetoast that can be created using AI-generated scripts.
Will it be a potential gain for microdrama applications that make shows that are really good and worth talking about?
Soong is trying to answer that question with Watch Club, an app with microdrama stories created by SAG and WGA actors and writers (major apps like DramaBox and ReelShort don’t use union talent).
Soong, a former Meta product manager who describes herself as a “fangirl, through and through,” thinks that what makes TV special is the community that surrounds it. Because of his experience working with social products, he also sought to differentiate Watch Club from existing microdrama apps by adding social networks inside.
“I think you can create a more interesting business if you take what makes TV the most fun,” he said, pointing to “Rivarly Heated” as an example of what he was talking about. “You watch it, and then you just want to gossip with your three best friends about it, or see what 100,000 funny, smart young women or gay men on the internet have to say.”
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Now, people are talking about “Severance” theories on Reddit, or reacting to the “Stranger Things” finale on Tumblr. Before Twitter was cesspool that X, you have to work hard to avoid “Succession” or “White Lotus” spoilers. Soong sees the potential to house events and fan forums in one place.
How will the app make money? As with most early-stage, venture-funded companies, this is a question that needs to be addressed now, once it’s clear how users engage with the app. The answer might be advertising, but the idea was interesting enough to secure seed funding led by GV. Watch Club also received checks from individuals like Patreon founder and CEO Jack Conte, as well as current and former executives from Hulu, HBO Max, and Meta. Upside Ventures, a company run by major UK YouTubers Sidementalso participate.
Soong had no background in film, so he was brought in Devon Albert-Stone as a founding producer. He said he would hire a WGA writer to produce ten shows.
“We work with great talent when we have a few months free to work on something that may not be a big budget because we give a big creative star to do something that Amazon will not do quickly and quickly which is more exciting than the speed of the television industry,” said Soong.
He added: “I really know how to monetize a business that is almost impossible to monetize.”
At Meta, his mission from 2016 to 2019 was to figure out how to make money in China, a country where no one could use Meta’s products. By 2019, Soong said, Meta generated $5 billion in ad sales annually for companies in China that want to advertise to audiences outside the country.
Chinese ad sales may not be as glamorous as movies and TV, but the project provides additional context to understand the business model behind microdrama apps, which flourished in China at the end of the last decade.
“Around the time I left Meta (in 2019) was when this Chinese micro drama app started spending all this money buying ads on Instagram so Americans and Germans would download ReelShort and DramaBox,” he said. “I know the playbook of this business. I know how expensive and capital intensive it is, and I think you can build a better way of micro drama business if you are not 100% dependent on paying for user acquisition.”
Club Watch will have the first opportunity to test the concept when it launches its first show, “Return Offer,” which it plans to distribute on the app with daily episodes. On Tuesday, the company shared the first trailer for the show — which is about a group of tech interns in San Francisco who compete for a return offer.
“My goal is to prove that high-quality stories can give birth to something that changes streaming television, and part of doing that is by building a welcoming, creative set with talented professionals, where people have fun, even with a small budget, making something really good,” said Soong.