Netflix Co-CEO: You Probably Don’t Know What You Want to Watch When You Start the App

When media companies decided to go to war with Netflix by launching competing streaming services, they probably assumed it wouldn’t be hard to replicate Netflix’s success. How hard could it be? Just dump a bunch of movies and shows on a server and collect the money.

But it turns out Netflix has a secret sauce.

It’s not necessarily the library. Netflix has some of its own hits, but the company’s hit rate seems about equal to its peers. Streamers like HBO Max have more Emmy-winning shows, more Oscar winners, and more big-screen blockbusters.

What Netflix does better than every other streamer is discovery.

This was confirmed by Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters at the Goldman Sachs 2025 Communacopia and Technology Conference. As Peters explained, Netflix has mastered “unlocking intent” when the user may not know what he or she wants to watch.

“‘Squid Game’ is a good example of this,” Peters said. “If you had given the log line to ‘Squid Game’ to all of our members around the world and said, ‘This is the kind of show this is,’ how many of them said, ‘Oh, yeah, I definitely want to watch that’? Not as many as actually ended up watching that. That’s where I think the UI can really do some work, because it can find what are areas of interest on a member-by-member basis, then present the right information, the right visual assets, the right video assets in a way that’s unique and specific to that individual user to create that connection and have them watch it.”

This is evident if you have more than one user profile in your home. My wife’s Netflix home screen looks nothing like mine, even when it comes to the same movies or shows that may be recommended.

“We do more discovery when there isn’t an explicit intent than we do when there is,” Peters said. “We actually think of that explicit intent as a relatively subordinate use case to solve.”

Peters said Netflix has seen engagement grow over the first half of this year, in part because of the new user interface that began rolling out in May.

Peters also said Netflix is beta-testing an AI-powered “conversational discovery experience” for users.

“This is where you can sit down and you can say, ‘Hey, I had a hard day at work. I want something uplifting and funny.’ We give you a bunch of different possible recommendations. You say, ‘These look great, but I’m also feeling nostalgic. Give me something from the ’80s.’ You land on the thing that you actually want to watch.”

So it’s not just enough to have a great movie library or a compelling TV show, the trick is to deliver the right content to the user to suit their mood and circumstance. Movie night with the kids looks different from a sick-day binge watch or some background TV while you fold laundry. When you compare Netflix’s presentation to every other streamer, the difference is clear.

Because Netflix does such a good job meeting you where you are and presenting new content in a way that catches your eye, it’s running laps around its peers. Kinda explains why they have more than 300 million subscribers around the world.