Meet Pilotly

A question nobody could answer.

In 2013, James was building GroupFlix, an à la carte TV service that signed more than 1,000 users in eight days and landed content deals with two major studios. He asked those studios what they had learned from all the audience data their shows generated. The answer was very little. Creators had more ways than ever to reach viewers and almost no reliable way to hear from them.

Two builders, one introduction.

James and Hector were both building in video and had never met. A mutual investor saw how well their strengths fit and made the introduction. Hector brought deep engineering and a performer’s feel for the screen. James brought the product vision and the studio relationships.

They started by listening, sitting with researchers, producers and creative executives to learn where traditional testing fell short. Twenty people in a room in one city can’t represent a national audience. What they heard shaped Pilotly’s first product: secure streaming of unreleased content to targeted viewers on any device, with their reactions captured moment by moment. They brought it to market with NBCUniversal, joined 500 Startups, and kept building.

A decade on, same mission.

Pilotly is now the audience intelligence partner to studios, streamers and networks including NBCUniversal, Amazon, Paramount, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. Discovery. The platform spans AI-powered focus groups, concept testing, emotional tracking and narrative intelligence. What James and Hector set out to do hasn’t changed: help the people who make content hear from the people who watch it, so every creative decision lands better.