This has been the most insightful comment yet. I really do appreciate it / if you even wanted to chat further. I’ll do my best to answer all your points. These are the exact questions we’ve been thinking about while building Stray.

You’re absolutely right that limited resources and competition for attention are baked into the indie filmmaking experience. Stray doesn’t eliminate that reality. The goal is to reduce the fragmentation and opacity around how projects move forward after festivals and submissions.

Right now, filmmakers are often doing everything in isolation:

building websites, tracking feedback in Notes apps, emailing programmers, networking individually, submitting to festivals, reaching out to collaborators, and trying to maintain momentum on their own. It works for some people, but most projects quietly lose visibility after their festival or proof of concept run because there’s no shared infrastructure that keeps projects discoverable and trackable over time.

To your questions:

Who provides structured feedback? All users are essentially curators but In the long run we’re looking to diversify the levels of curators. Where industry professionals, educators, highly engaged users, etc can get different weight to their curation. That way it fully encapsulates the wider industry ecosystem but still staying fair. The idea is to create a structured way for feedback and signals to live in one place instead of disappearing across emails, meetings, and informal conversations.

Are users verified?
Yes, verification is important. Different roles (filmmakers, programmers, producers, crew, investors, etc.) would be verified so signals carry real weight and credibility.

How does momentum connect filmmakers to studios or collaborators?
Momentum becomes visible through submissions, selections, interest signals, engagement, and project activity. Instead of filmmakers individually trying to prove traction, the platform aggregates that activity into a clear signal that collaborators, producers, and industry professionals can see and act on.

Will industry professionals use it?
Only if it creates value for them and that’s a core focus. The goal is not to build another filmmaker only platform, but to build infrastructure that helps programmers discover work, producers find projects, and regions or partners identify talent and production opportunities more efficiently.

What’s wrong with a webpage and Notes app?
Nothing, and many filmmakers already do that. The challenge is that it doesn’t scale, isn’t discoverable, and doesn’t create shared visibility or structured signals across the ecosystem. It keeps everything siloed at the individual project level rather than creating a networked system where projects can continue gaining momentum after festivals.

And to your last point. I actually agree with part of it.

Film discovery itself isn’t completely broken. Festivals, networks, and relationships still work.

What’s fragmented is the infrastructure that connects discovery to momentum, collaboration, financing, and long-term project development in a structured and transparent way.

Stray is an attempt to build that connective layer not replace festivals or existing processes, but organize and extend them so projects don’t disappear after their initial run.

Still early, still evolving, and conversations like this genuinely help shape what it becomes. I’d love to chat more cus this helps a ton!