Kiko > Justin.tv > Twitch > SocialCam > Exec > YC
Very few people have had such a wild ride in their entrepreneurship life. Is someone wants to describe building startups I think you just need to mention Justin Kan. He has helped create and build some of the most valuable and interesting companies in the last decade.
One of the drives Justin describes is the passion to enjoy working in what you do every hour without thinking about the monetary outcome. As he expressed in his video.
“I tell myself it doesn’t matter (paycheck), external things of how much money you have are not important. The important is if you are enjoying every day, every hour of what you are doing. I think that is something more people don’t get the opportunity to do.”
The team at YouPlus had the privilege of talking to Justin and learn from some of his experiences and stories. We have compressed some of this knowledge into this video.
This are the main lessons learned:
1-I want to fund people that are resourceful and won’t give up, that’s all I care about.
From Justin’s companies you can see how he and his team have been resourceful and wouldn't give up. The first startup was sold in eBay for $258k and the second raise money because the investor just “wanted to see him make a fool of himself.” They wouldn't give up and work towards making something people love (Twitch).
2-When you have your own startup there is like, No rules. You just have to figure it out.
Probably the best way to describe that there is no rules on how to create content (“sitting around in our coach using our laptops”) is when Justin.tv had to deal with creating content: “Someone called a stubbing to our apartment. The cops came in and the door was open. They kick the door, guns draw, expecting to see a stubbing victim in our apartment but really it was just us sitting in our laptops. It was kind of a weird situation.” They pivot into being a platform for people to upload their content. “No rules, you just have to figure it out.”
3-The cool thing is that you get to control your own destiny. Its scary and it’s fun
From cops coming into the apartment to actually being arrested by cops for recording inside a bar, they have had to go through scary moments.
4-The best thing that anyone told me was: Make something that people want
Probably the person that mention this to Justin was Paul Graham (previous president of YC) and you can read it here in his essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html) or in his video at Stanford “How to Start a Startup”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii1jcLg-eIQ
5-I love being at YC, because I love that window at what is coming next
You can read more about YCombinator here https://www.ycombinator.com/about/ but as Marc Andreessen (partner at A16Z) mentioned: “Y Combinator is the best program for creating top-end entrepreneurs that has ever existed.”
6-Our job is not done yet. We are still sending out partners around the world to find great companies
Here is where the mystery comes to play. What does YC and Justin Kan have been working on? Where are the next big changes in technology? I guess we should just wait and see.
If you want your own cool good quality video, contact Michael at michael@youplus.biz Thanks for reading!
PS: I’m an advisor at YouPlus.biz If you want to check more videos go here.
