#180 - Chris Pearcey: 250,000 Titles and Nothing to Watch, & The Intent Problem No One Is Solving

Chris Pearcey is the Founder and CEO of Decisio.media, the company behind Decisio, a free, ad-free entertainment recommendation app built around a patent-pending four-way swipe system that captures positive and negative viewing intent across movies, television shows, and books. Rising to prominence in the mid-2010s as a data engineering and analytics leader in enterprise product organizations, he became known for applying machine learning to forecast accuracy problems at scale inside some of the world’s largest consumer brands. Since launching Decisio on January 1, 2026, the app has grown to more than 5,000 users on minimal marketing spend, acquiring customers exclusively through Google Ads.

Previously, as Advanced Analytics Product Manager at Nike, he supported planning tools for the Asia and Latin America regions and drove forecast accuracy from 65% to 93% over six seasons by introducing consumer profile modeling — one of the more precisely measured single-initiative improvements in Nike’s planning systems during that period. He also held product and engineering roles at Amazon Web Services before founding Deci Media, building the enterprise-scale data infrastructure background that informs Decisio’s deterministic recommendation architecture.

His career highlights span 20 years split evenly between two disciplines: 10 years as a database engineer specializing in machine learning and advanced analytics, followed by 10 years in product management across enterprise software organizations. Headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, Deci Media is built on the conviction that streaming platforms’ 33% abandonment rate and 50% viewer dissatisfaction rate are not failures of recommendation algorithms — they are the predictable result of platforms optimized for engagement metrics rather than viewer satisfaction.

Hey, Thanks for reading this. I mean that. There's a lot of content out there competing for your attention, and you spent some of it here. I hope it was worth it. Even better, I hope it prompted you to think about something differently enough that you'd share it with someone who'd get something out of it too.I started this podcast because tactics never stuck with me. What stuck were stories — business biographies, autobiographies, the decisions people made and why they made them. The principle only clicks once you know the story behind it.

So I built the thing I wanted to read. Every week I have two conversations with people who build in technology and product. Then I write the essay I wish I could find — one that puts you inside the conversation, through my eyes. What caught me off guard. What I kept thinking about after we hung up. Where the principle actually lives once you strip away the jargon.

I make this for myself first. If you read the way I do, you’ll want it too.

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