Friendster
6 statements across 6 episodes · 1 bullish · 4 bearish · 6 people on the record · first statement Mar 2, 2016 by Jim Scheinman · said 34 times in 21 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (8), Jonathan Abrams (6), Klaus Hommels (3), Victor Lazarte (2), Jeremy Liew (2), Ruchi Sanghvi (1), Paul Buchheit (1), Neeraj Agrawal (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- How to Build Your Own Data Center & Why Every Startup Should Do It
- Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- a16z, Anish Acharya: Is SaaS Dead? Do Margins Still Matter? Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 5 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- Benchmark GP, Victor Lazarte: The 3 Traits All the Best Founders Have · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- a16z GP, Martin Casado: Anthropic vs OpenAI & Why Open Source is a National Security Risk with China · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Airwallex CEO & Co-Founder, Jack Zhang: The Angel That Turned $1M into $1BN · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Hussein Kanji, Founder @Hoxton Ventures: Why AI Means London Can Compete with the US | E1248 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: The Snapchat Memo: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on The 4 Key Elements To Consider When Evaluating A Consumer Social Product, What is Good/Great/World Class For Retention, Usage and Downloads in Consumer Social Today & The Core Insight Development of Eva
- 20VC: Eugene Wei on "Status as a Service", Why Networks Grow and Stop Growing, The Worst Design Choices Social Media Incumbents Have Made & The Next 10 Years of Media and the Metaverse
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Y Combinator's Paul Buchheit on Creating Gmail Version 1.0 & Leadership Lessons from Working With Zuckerberg and Larry Paige
- 20VC: Nuzzel's Jonathan Abrams on Why The Top VCs Do Not Have A PlayBook For Startup Success, Why Most Boards Are Not Successful & Why He Is Bored Of Hearing "I Fell Into VC"
- 20VC: The 3 Forms Of Edge A Founder Can Have, Lessons From Being on A Board With Bill Gates & Why There Are A Lot Of Tourist VCs Who Are Going To Lose A Lot Of Money, with Josh Wolfe, Co-Founder @ Lux Capital
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 14 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: From Netscape To Friendster To Nuzzel: Jonathan Abrams on A Silicon Valley Adventure
- 20VC: Why The Whole Industry Is Backward Looking, The Best Funds Are Entrepreneur Led and Venture Is All About Access with Alex Bangash, Founder @ Trusted Insight
- 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures
- 20VC: Why Machine Intelligence Will Eat The World Of Software with Roy Bahat, Head of Bloomberg Beta
- Immediately's Branko Cerny on The Rise Of Bottoms Up Sales and The Importance of Branding For Enterprise SaaS Companies
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
Everything said about Friendster, oldest first
Mar 2, 2016 positive
Apr 15, 2016 negative
Abrams: Friendster Went Through Six CEOs In Six Years
“And selling the company six years later, we went through six CEOs in six years. I was, you know, sort of routinely excluded from board decisions and the, our software was rewritten into worse software. The website barely worked for a couple of years and a lot …”
Apr 18, 2016 negative
Nov 1, 2017 negative
Buchheit: Friendster failed by prioritizing an impossible six-degrees-of-separation feature
“Friendster, but they could have been maybe Facebook, but they got fixated on this idea that when you browse through profiles, it had to show you kind of the six degrees of separation between you and this person, and so that feature, it turns out, is sort of co…”
Nov 20, 2017
Apr 14, 2025 bearish
Lazarte: Character AI is merely the Friendster of AI companions
“In a few years, we're going to look back, and we're going to say that Character AI was Friendster. And what I mean by that is there's going to be a company that is going to be very important, and we'll look back and we'll say Character AI was the precursor of …”