Company
Zync is an innovative company specialising in bringing entertainment experiences into automobiles. Their technology integrates streaming entertainment services directly into vehicle infotainment systems, creating a seamless and immersive entertainment experience for passengers. Zync has achieved a significant milestone by launching their in-car entertainment platform in Mercedes-Benz vehicles for the first time. This partnership represents a major step forward in automotive entertainment technology, allowing Mercedes passengers to enjoy premium content while on the road.
Work
When I joined Zync, the vision was ambitious yet clear: revolutionise the in-car entertainment by seamlessly integrating streaming — and later also gaming — services into vehicle infotainment systems and positioning ourselves in the automotive industry.
There's something really exciting about being part of the early engineers at a startup. The company's future technical direction would be shaped by the decisions we were making on in a green field. Our goal was to create an application that would transform how passengers experience entertainment in vehicles, later specifically in Mercedes-Benz cars. This wasn't just about building another streaming app — it was about reimagining entertainment for an entirely different context with unique constraints and possibilities.
Architecting for the Automotive Environment
The automotive environment presents challenges that regular web or mobile applications simply don't face. The most significant hurdle was designing for offline scenarios. Unlike your living room, cars frequently pass through areas with poor or no connectivity. Our application needed to gracefully handle these transitions without disrupting the user experience.
I architected both frontend and backend systems with this reality in mind. Using NextJS, it gave us the foundation for a robust frontend, while AWS services provided the scalable backend infrastructure we needed. What made this project particularly exciting was seeing how we applied these technologies to solve automobile-specific challenges. Obviously, we needed to implement sophisticated caching strategies and offline-first design patterns that allowed content to remain accessible even when connectivity dropped. The concept of PWA came in very useful as it helped us to reduce the loading times of the application once specific parts were already downloaded locally and scenarios where we were off the network could be mitigated as we already held the applications state. This required careful consideration of data synchronisation, refetching mechanisms, and connectivity limitations.
In the automotive context, latency and performance is critical for creating a smooth user experience. Any lag or visual stuttering in the interface degrades quality and usability. This meant optimising our React components to render efficiently even on the surprisingly stable hardware found in vehicle infotainment systems. Also our backend services needed to be responsive and reliable.
The layout shows a sleek, modern design optimised for the automotive environment, featuring content tiles that allow passengers to browse and select streaming content with large touch targets and clear visual hierarchy to minimise driver distraction. The design follows Mercedes-Benz's aesthetic guidelines while incorporating Zync's functionality, creating a integration between the vehicle's native systems and the entertainment platform.
Content categories and recommendations are prominently displayed, allowing passengers to quickly find entertainment options, such as audio (podcasts and radio) and video content (news, movies and series). The layout demonstrates the balance between providing rich content access while maintaining an interface that meets automotive safety and usability standards.
Collaborating with Mercedes-Benz
One of the most rewarding aspects of my role was working directly with the Mercedes-Benz team. I was responsible for translating our vision into a reality that would integrate with their vehicles.
This collaboration required both technical expertise and communication skills. I needed to understand the abilities of their systems while advocating for the features that would make our product exceptional. Together, we worked through integration challenges, security requirements, and user experience considerations unique to the Mercedes ecosystem.
Building the Team
As we gained some initial traction, we began looking for more engineering power and grew our team. We were just starting to outline our engineering culture that would eventually scale with the company.
The hiring process was particularly meaningful to me. I had the opportunity to shape the culture from the ground up, conducting interviews and selecting talented engineers who shared our vision for transforming in-car entertainment. The hiring brought fresh perspectives and skills that strengthened our capability to deliver an exceptional product.
Learning
The journey from being Zync's first engineer to launching in Mercedes-Benz vehicles taught me invaluable lessons about building products for specialised environments. It reinforced my belief that great software isn't just about the code — it's about deeply understanding the context in which that code will run and the people who will use it.
As vehicles continue to evolve into increasingly connected and autonomous platforms, the entertainment experience will become even more central to how we experience travel. I'm proud to have played a foundational role in that transformation at Zync, helping to pioneer what in-car entertainment can be.
Result
Seeing our technology launch in Mercedes-Benz vehicles at CES Las Vegas 2023 was the culmination of countless late nights, technical challenges, and collaborative breakthroughs. When the first YouTube product review showcased our streaming platform in a Mercedes EQS, I fully grasped the enormous scope and impact of our work—the realization of a vision that began when I wrote the first lines of code for Zync.
The integration of Zync's entertainment platform with Mercedes-Benz vehicles marks a significant milestone in automotive entertainment technology. It transforms the passenger experience, allowing them to enjoy premium content while on the road in a way that feels natural and integrated with the vehicle itself.
Media
Update from 15.04.2025
I am thrilled to share that Mercedes-Benz has established a partnership with Joyn to further develop their in-car entertainment platform. This collaboration represents an exciting next step in the evolution of the technology we built at Zync. Seeing ProSiebenSat.1's streaming service Joyn now available in selected Mercedes-Benz models showcases how our foundational work continues to grow and expand.
My heartfelt congratulations to both Mercedes-Benz and Joyn on this significant partnership. It's incredibly rewarding to see how the vision we had for transforming in-car entertainment continues to flourish and evolve with new content partners. This development further validates the importance of creating seamless entertainment experiences for passengers in the automotive environment.
I'm grateful to have been part of the early team and I look forward to seeing how Mercedes-Benz and Joyn will continue to enhance the passenger experience with premium content offerings.
Joyn
