The Exchanges

Q I mean, speaking of kind of your own dimension story there, I am really interested, because I obviously spoke to Scott Belsky before the show also, and he asked me one really interesting one, and obviously Meerkat and Houseparty competed with Periscope, and his question was, how do you think about whether it's best to be first to market or best to market? How do you think about that there?

A Yeah, I think it's incredible to be first to market because Life on Air released live video products to the market since 2013. So we were able, two years before the Periscope team, or a Facebook Live team, to understand what are the metrics that actually make a live video work. What we realized very quickly with our second failed product that, you know, nobody knows about, EGM is Air. Is that it's all about the retention of the broadcasters. You can imagine that founders will say, I have a real time video platform. I'm optimizing for viewers retention. I'm optimizing for time spent, all of these things. But what I can tell you from my experience is that the only thing that matters, the only thing that is sustainable is broadcaster retention. Because if you can keep the broadcasters engaged, that means that whatever amount of watchers they have, they have perceived value from them. That is enough for them to be sustained on the platform. Whereas if you only have watchers, they are dependent on the broadcasters, and as soon as the broadcaster is not happy, you lose the watcher. So we knew it from the get-go that this is the most important thing, and this is because we were first to market with different product two years before that. So what's interesting, in the example Scott brings, he's talking about Meerkat versus Periscope. But what he's not taking into consideration is life…

AI assessment note: “I think it's incredible to be first to market because”

Q try something new. He also, like, and you touched on it there, but I'd love to hear more. How did you convince them that it was the right move? Because he still had something that had a lot of buzz, had a lot of attention. And so trying a house party is a little bit out there, Ben. Like, how did you convince them it was the right strategic move?

A It's funny. At that point, we didn't know that we're going to do a house party. We just know that we're going to go after what was our liability. We wanted to flip to be our strength, which is, okay, you have this insight. There's this 99% Who are not Celebs Media News, and we say we're going to build for them, because for the one percent Periscope and Facebook Live, people are going to reach out to them, they're going to try to have them, and they're going to have better chances on these platforms because those platforms have much better reach. The way I went about it with the board is showing them the amount of watchers that we have, and this was going up. It's like a beautiful graph that any CEO would love to vault into a board's room and show this Graph of users going up, the watchers going up, but then I flipped it, and I showed, but here are the broadcasters, which was not going up, not going up is like a curving up, but it was like, you know, not growing, not shrinking, and then I showed the broadcaster attention, and that's where they kind of see watcher go up, broadcaster steady, broadcaster attention goes down, and then I also broke down Type of broadcasters that we have based on the amount of following followers that we can get from the Twitter API. So I was able to identify which of the retained broadcasters are considered influencers, mean have certain ratio betwee…

AI assessment note: “The way I went about it with the board is showing them the amount”

Q When I spoke to Michael at Evelyn, he asked specifically, when you look at the process now with the benefit of hindsight, and it's a tough one to ask, but it was Michael, so I thought it was important. What were your key learnings from the house party experience?

A One of the things that I think is very important for people to take from this, as a product company, you measure your success on traditional, what is called, like, growth accounting. So there is, like, Pretty standardized way to understand your MEU, DAU, what are the cohorts, how different personas, different types of people behave over time, mapping user stories, understanding what are the levers in the story that makes those users successful and et cetera, et cetera. And it's kind of a playbook that, I don't know, 60 to 80% of that playbook is being played in different variation in most of the company and most of the tech companies. With Houseparty, we had this really interesting problem. Where the high schoolers, they had two key things that are going for them that made House Party successful for them. One is the idea of code of conduct. If you're a high schooler that uses House Party, you know about 80% of the graph, you know them, you see them in school, and basically when you walk into the school cafeteria, you know exactly what table you can sit at, and that kind of code of conduct, that mental model, Of what conversations I can be part of, and who I can sit next to, actually transferred very well into the product itself. So in Houseparty, you would open the product, you would see who talked to who, and you know exactly by reading quickly the names, what table you can si…

AI assessment note: “With Houseparty, we had this really interesting problem.”

Q I mean, speaking of kind of your own dimension story there, I am really interested, because I obviously spoke to Scott Belsky before the show also, and he asked me one really interesting one, and obviously Meerkat and Houseparty competed with Periscope, and his question was, how do you think about whether it's best to be first to market or best to market? How do you think about that there?

A Yeah, I think it's incredible to be first to market because Life on Air released live video products to the market since 2013. So we were able, two years before the Periscope team, or a Facebook Live team, to understand what are the metrics that actually make a live video work. What we realized very quickly with our second failed product that, you know, nobody knows about, EGM is Air. Is that it's all about the retention of the broadcasters. You can imagine that founders will say, I have a real time video platform. I'm optimizing for viewers retention. I'm optimizing for time spent, all of these things. But what I can tell you from my experience is that the only thing that matters, the only thing that is sustainable is broadcaster retention. Because if you can keep the broadcasters engaged, that means that whatever amount of watchers they have, they have perceived value from them. That is enough for them to be sustained on the platform. Whereas if you only have watchers, they are dependent on the broadcasters, and as soon as the broadcaster is not happy, you lose the watcher. So we knew it from the get-go that this is the most important thing, and this is because we were first to market with different product two years before that. So what's interesting, in the example Scott brings, he's talking about Meerkat versus Periscope. But what he's not taking into consideration is life…

AI assessment note: “I think it's incredible to be first to market because Life on Air released”

Q That is very, very kind of you, and Flashery will get you a long way, Ben, so thank you for that. But tell me, how did you make your way into the world of tech, come to found Houseparty and what was life on air before, and then come to make the most recent step with the founding of Slashdog?

A So I studied architecture, and what I really find interesting in architecture is the opportunity to create spaces that create new encounters and new opportunity for encounters between people, and these are the things that I got the most joy in school. Towards the end of year three of architecture school, I realized that physical space is the physical space, but if you want to push the boundaries more, in architecture you can either Try to develop new materials, or you can basically be a great marketer. So you can get really quirky, or what other people say, iconic buildings that are not necessarily create a new statement beyond, look at this cool thing that we did. And that got me into thinking the digital world, or presence in the digital world, is a really new space, pun intended, to craft as an architect. And I, I Thought maybe that's the kind of spaces I should build. Maybe this is the kind of spaces I should plan for. And I wanted to start building spaces that are presence based, meaning people are in these buildings, in these spaces, which is a definition of a building, but just online. So we started a company called Life on Air. The whole premise was mobile first live video experiences to bring people together in the most human way possible when they're physically apart. And in a way, I've been an architect since school. I just do different buildings. House Party is a bu…

AI assessment note: “So we started a company called Life on Air. The whole premise was mobile first”

Q My question to you is like, you have that in zero to one, and we have that initials team that's incredible, and we're very proud of them. And then we raised forty million say, ah, as a, as a nice number. And now you've got to build a big team and you've got to build it fast. Where does things start to break in your experience and what goes wrong?

A Well, one thing is the intention of the people that you hire when you're on a rocket ship and you grow really, really fast. And I've seen it twice. The intention of the people is different. These are people that usually come from some big company where they have a career. And they decided that they're going to take a chance on you and come and join your team. It's really a different DNA. No matter how you try, it's really a different DNA. And where I see it breaks is where things don't continue to grow. And then the people who took a bet on you are looking around and say, well, Mr. Rubin, what's your plan? That was a hard thing in house party. And this is a hard thing to answer. Especially as you're working through product and growth problems that are not easy. Like it's really easy when things go up. It's really easy when things go down because it's really easy to understand what's happening. But when things are kind of like not growing, not shrinking, even something a little bit growing over time, it's really hard to understand because what you're dealing is not pure black or pure white. And it doesn't matter what's good or bad. The gray, it's really hard to, like, how do you decouple gray into different colors? How do you take this mesh of things? And I think, ultimately, it's hard because half of the company, or at least the people that were from the start, will say, I know…

AI assessment note: “where I see it breaks is where things don't continue to grow”

Q try something new. He also, like, and you touched on it there, but I'd love to hear more. How did you convince them that it was the right move? Because he still had something that had a lot of buzz, had a lot of attention. And so trying a house party is a little bit out there, Ben. Like, how did you convince them it was the right strategic move?

A It's funny. At that point, we didn't know that we're going to do a house party. We just know that we're going to go after what was our liability. We wanted to flip to be our strength, which is, okay, you have this insight. There's this 99% Who are not Celebs Media News, and we say we're going to build for them, because for the one percent Periscope and Facebook Live, people are going to reach out to them, they're going to try to have them, and they're going to have better chances on these platforms because those platforms have much better reach. The way I went about it with the board is showing them the amount of watchers that we have, and this was going up. It's like a beautiful graph that any CEO would love to vault into a board's room and show this Graph of users going up, the watchers going up, but then I flipped it, and I showed, but here are the broadcasters, which was not going up, not going up is like a curving up, but it was like, you know, not growing, not shrinking, and then I showed the broadcaster attention, and that's where they kind of see watcher go up, broadcaster steady, broadcaster attention goes down, and then I also broke down Type of broadcasters that we have based on the amount of following followers that we can get from the Twitter API. So I was able to identify which of the retained broadcasters are considered influencers, mean have certain ratio betwee…

AI assessment note: “The way I went about it with the board is showing them the amount of watchers”

Q My question to you is like, you have that in zero to one, and we have that initials team that's incredible, and we're very proud of them. And then we raised forty million say, ah, as a, as a nice number. And now you've got to build a big team and you've got to build it fast. Where does things start to break in your experience and what goes wrong?

A Well, one thing is the intention of the people that you hire when you're on a rocket ship and you grow really, really fast. And I've seen it twice. The intention of the people is different. These are people that usually come from some big company where they have a career. And they decided that they're going to take a chance on you and come and join your team. It's really a different DNA. No matter how you try, it's really a different DNA. And where I see it breaks is where things don't continue to grow. And then the people who took a bet on you are looking around and say, well, Mr. Rubin, what's your plan? That was a hard thing in house party. And this is a hard thing to answer. Especially as you're working through product and growth problems that are not easy. Like it's really easy when things go up. It's really easy when things go down because it's really easy to understand what's happening. But when things are kind of like not growing, not shrinking, even something a little bit growing over time, it's really hard to understand because what you're dealing is not pure black or pure white. And it doesn't matter what's good or bad. The gray, it's really hard to, like, how do you decouple gray into different colors? How do you take this mesh of things? And I think, ultimately, it's hard because half of the company, or at least the people that were from the start, will say, I know…

AI assessment note: “where I see it breaks is where things don't continue to grow”

Q That is very, very kind of you, and Flashery will get you a long way, Ben, so thank you for that. But tell me, how did you make your way into the world of tech, come to found Houseparty and what was life on air before, and then come to make the most recent step with the founding of Slashdog?

A So I studied architecture, and what I really find interesting in architecture is the opportunity to create spaces that create new encounters and new opportunity for encounters between people, and these are the things that I got the most joy in school. Towards the end of year three of architecture school, I realized that physical space is the physical space, but if you want to push the boundaries more, in architecture you can either Try to develop new materials, or you can basically be a great marketer. So you can get really quirky, or what other people say, iconic buildings that are not necessarily create a new statement beyond, look at this cool thing that we did. And that got me into thinking the digital world, or presence in the digital world, is a really new space, pun intended, to craft as an architect. And I, I Thought maybe that's the kind of spaces I should build. Maybe this is the kind of spaces I should plan for. And I wanted to start building spaces that are presence based, meaning people are in these buildings, in these spaces, which is a definition of a building, but just online. So we started a company called Life on Air. The whole premise was mobile first live video experiences to bring people together in the most human way possible when they're physically apart. And in a way, I've been an architect since school. I just do different buildings. House Party is a bu…

AI assessment note: “So we started a company called Life on Air... House Party is a building”

Q like, Hey, I want these true blood believers who will Break shit up when something goes wrong and be a lieutenant beside me in all cases? Or do you go, actually, these guys from Facebook or Google, or you name your big incumbent, are incredible at what they do, and we just need to make sure that we stay within their kind of realms of comfort to make them happy?

A That's a great question. No, I totally don't think that the right answer is not to hire. I think that for every stage you have different hires, and I think there's incredible people in big companies That know how to scale shit up, and given a product that they can market, or they can grow, they will grow it. Ultimately, it's the job of the CEO, it's the job of me, for this example, it was my job to create the expectation setting, and create the kind of conversations that actually lead for productive outcomes for the company, and productive outcomes are not necessarily a Productive by money, not necessarily. Productive means a lot of things. And I think that if you don't pay attention to the kind of different cultures that as your company growing size, if you don't pay attention to different intentions, and you don't create a structure of conversation and expectation setting early on, then when your company stopped growing, you're going to have different people looking at this problem from different angles. And it's going to bring a lot of contention because you didn't create the environment to address that early enough.

AI assessment note: “I think that for every stage you have different hires”

Q When I spoke to Michael at Evelyn, he asked specifically, when you look at the process now with the benefit of hindsight, and it's a tough one to ask, but it was Michael, so I thought it was important. What were your key learnings from the house party experience?

A One of the things that I think is very important for people to take from this, as a product company, you measure your success on traditional, what is called, like, growth accounting. So there is, like, Pretty standardized way to understand your MEU, DAU, what are the cohorts, how different personas, different types of people behave over time, mapping user stories, understanding what are the levers in the story that makes those users successful and et cetera, et cetera. And it's kind of a playbook that, I don't know, 60 to 80% of that playbook is being played in different variation in most of the company and most of the tech companies. With Houseparty, we had this really interesting problem. Where the high schoolers, they had two key things that are going for them that made House Party successful for them. One is the idea of code of conduct. If you're a high schooler that uses House Party, you know about 80% of the graph, you know them, you see them in school, and basically when you walk into the school cafeteria, you know exactly what table you can sit at, and that kind of code of conduct, that mental model, Of what conversations I can be part of, and who I can sit next to, actually transferred very well into the product itself. So in Houseparty, you would open the product, you would see who talked to who, and you know exactly by reading quickly the names, what table you can si…

AI assessment note: “With Houseparty, we had this really interesting problem. Where the high schoolers, they had two key things”

Q What do you mean by thought process tools? Is that the customer discovery process? Is that how you think about product Principles. Like, what do you mean by the thought process from that standpoint?

A Thought processes are basically mental model tools in which to count and account the metrics or the data that your user has. And there's different way. There is like, what is the aha moment? How do people get to that aha moment? What are the steps that they're doing? Show me all these cohorts on this versions that are moving on this funnel versus this users. Or looking at likelihood of things. There is a set of tools in the thought process of how do I get a customer to activate more or activate better and be better engaged. And there is also a set of tools that how do I get the customers that are not yet convinced that this is the right product for them to actually convert into a customer that falls in love with the product. And both of these approaches, and by the way, you should kind of Try to figure out what are the things you want to do for the people that are very much engaged? And what are the things that you should do to convert people to engage users? But these together, there's a set of tools, thought process tools of how we actually thinking about the problem, because it's not enough to just throw metrics on a dashboard. And this is one of my biggest feedback to analysts or young analysts or even professional analysts. That is experiencing a two-dimensional way of looking at metrics. Metrics, unfortunately, are in all our dashboards are two-dimensional, and there's so…

AI assessment note: “Thought processes are basically mental model tools in which to count and account the metrics”

Q Well, I mean, speaking of that, what do you believe is the biggest misconception about the future of work?

A There's a couple of things. I think people think that it's all going to be remote from now on. I actually, I'm a, I'm a big Hegelist, the philosopher, and one of the frameworks that I use is evolution is always happen We're in the union of opposing forces. So you got the thesis, and then you got the antithesis, and then the synthesis of them is actually where evolution always happened, and it happened, and you can look at it in music, you can actually look at it about the differences between Gen Z to Millennials, how every time as humans we are reacting to something, it's poetic, it's almost like physics, right? We're always reacting to something, but actually the truth Will be in what is the synthesis of things, and a lot of the time when I say this, people think, oh, synthesis is the average of both, but no, it's what are the right things that you pick from one side, and the right things that you pick from the other side, and the evolution will come from the middle, so I think this is a misconception. I think another misconception is that from the world that we're at in our company is the idea that there's going to be pure presence, large-scale product that are only based on presence. I think that's Also a reaction to the culture of meaning, but I'm not sure that this is the evolution. I think that there is a synthesis that will be the evolution. So, I don't know. I think the…

AI assessment note: “I think people think that it's all going to be remote from now on.”

Q I love it. That's hilarious. Tell me, what are the pros and cons of being an entrepreneur in residence?

A Look, I had a really interesting experience with Benchmark, which was, you can call it an EIR, and I think that's the kind of a vehicle we used, but it wasn't really an EIR. Basically, Peter Fenton was, hire who you need to hire, start hacking around, there is Benchmark credit card, and I trust you, and like, obviously, this sounds a little bit unfair, because it sounds super casual, but we had a plan of This is the space we're going to go after. This is the problems that we believe we see, and we're going to use this time to explore and understand what is the kind of action we can do in the market, and what are the motivations around that, and we actually had it pretty detailed out, but what was nice about it, it was almost like incubating for free, and it was great, because you get to enjoy smart people in Benchmark to give you feedback, and you also enjoy the fact that they have a great network, and they could put you in touch with Back then, this was before COVID, they put me with all the most successful remote companies, and I was able to interview a bunch of the engineers and ICs there and inform my hypothesis before starting this company.

AI assessment note: “what was nice about it, it was almost like incubating for free”

Q like, Hey, I want these true blood believers who will Break shit up when something goes wrong and be a lieutenant beside me in all cases? Or do you go, actually, these guys from Facebook or Google, or you name your big incumbent, are incredible at what they do, and we just need to make sure that we stay within their kind of realms of comfort to make them happy?

A That's a great question. No, I totally don't think that the right answer is not to hire. I think that for every stage you have different hires, and I think there's incredible people in big companies That know how to scale shit up, and given a product that they can market, or they can grow, they will grow it. Ultimately, it's the job of the CEO, it's the job of me, for this example, it was my job to create the expectation setting, and create the kind of conversations that actually lead for productive outcomes for the company, and productive outcomes are not necessarily a Productive by money, not necessarily. Productive means a lot of things. And I think that if you don't pay attention to the kind of different cultures that as your company growing size, if you don't pay attention to different intentions, and you don't create a structure of conversation and expectation setting early on, then when your company stopped growing, you're going to have different people looking at this problem from different angles. And it's going to bring a lot of contention because you didn't create the environment to address that early enough.

AI assessment note: “for every stage you have different hires, and I think there's incredible people in big companies”

Q What do you mean by thought process tools? Is that the customer discovery process? Is that how you think about product Principles. Like, what do you mean by the thought process from that standpoint?

A Thought processes are basically mental model tools in which to count and account the metrics or the data that your user has. And there's different way. There is like, what is the aha moment? How do people get to that aha moment? What are the steps that they're doing? Show me all these cohorts on this versions that are moving on this funnel versus this users. Or looking at likelihood of things. There is a set of tools in the thought process of how do I get a customer to activate more or activate better and be better engaged. And there is also a set of tools that how do I get the customers that are not yet convinced that this is the right product for them to actually convert into a customer that falls in love with the product. And both of these approaches, and by the way, you should kind of Try to figure out what are the things you want to do for the people that are very much engaged? And what are the things that you should do to convert people to engage users? But these together, there's a set of tools, thought process tools of how we actually thinking about the problem, because it's not enough to just throw metrics on a dashboard. And this is one of my biggest feedback to analysts or young analysts or even professional analysts. That is experiencing a two-dimensional way of looking at metrics. Metrics, unfortunately, are in all our dashboards are two-dimensional, and there's so…

AI assessment note: “Thought processes are basically mental model tools in which to count and account the metrics”

Q strength. I guess my question is, how do you determine whether to spend time and get good at something versus appreciate that, you know what, I'm not going to be as fast as them at swimming, or I'm not going to be as good as her on process or him on legal docs or whatever, and I'm going to spend my energy elsewhere. How do you determine between the two?

A But that's what's great about the ability of having a team. If you are thoughtful, if you're self-aware, if you're reflective, you're probably going to be able to understand with some sort of good directionality, what are the things that you're good at, and what are the things that you need help, and what are the things that you're actually bad. And if you are honest with yourself and true with yourself, you write them down without being emotional and say, oh, I suck at this. And you actually double down on the things that you're great at. And you hire for the people that you're not good at. And sometimes you even have conversations depends on the kind of hire it is like about what is the right fit for you and what is the right fit for them. And you use that as a way of building their relationship and building the trust together. So I think that the only thing that's worth perfecting is that process is the process of self-reflection and thoughtfulness in yourself, in your product, in your product process. In your team. In coaching your team to have that. In your company. In your relationship with investors. How do you keep iterating those relationships? And how do you keep iterating the process that ultimately create a product? And the idea that product is not something that is defined. I hate, hate the word V-one, or V-two, or V-three, because the product will never be perfect…

AI assessment note: “write them down without being emotional and say, oh, I suck at this”

Q Well, I mean, speaking of that, what do you believe is the biggest misconception about the future of work?

A There's a couple of things. I think people think that it's all going to be remote from now on. I actually, I'm a, I'm a big Hegelist, the philosopher, and one of the frameworks that I use is evolution is always happen We're in the union of opposing forces. So you got the thesis, and then you got the antithesis, and then the synthesis of them is actually where evolution always happened, and it happened, and you can look at it in music, you can actually look at it about the differences between Gen Z to Millennials, how every time as humans we are reacting to something, it's poetic, it's almost like physics, right? We're always reacting to something, but actually the truth Will be in what is the synthesis of things, and a lot of the time when I say this, people think, oh, synthesis is the average of both, but no, it's what are the right things that you pick from one side, and the right things that you pick from the other side, and the evolution will come from the middle, so I think this is a misconception. I think another misconception is that from the world that we're at in our company is the idea that there's going to be pure presence, large-scale product that are only based on presence. I think that's Also a reaction to the culture of meaning, but I'm not sure that this is the evolution. I think that there is a synthesis that will be the evolution. So, I don't know. I think the…

AI assessment note: “I think people think that it's all going to be remote from now on.”

Q Two very big misconceptions. Ben, I do want to finish on probably the most important of all. Tell me, paint the picture. What do the next five years hold for you and for Slashdog?

A Well, for me, it's going to be building this and learning to better myself in all the other works that I do. With myself for Slash Talk, look in Slash Talk, we're trying to understand what is the unit value of a conversation or a meeting in an organization. And then we actually map it as a funnel and we walk back from what is the value to what are the building blocks, the atomic building blocks that make that value. And then we try to separate them and reorganize them in a whole different way for conducting conversations. So we're focused on quick and scheduled calls. Anything that is a conversation, internal conversation that is not on the calendar. And the nice thing about it, and the nice thing about what I talked to you about, the swimming metaphor, is that I don't know how the end result is going to be. The end result is always going to change and be better, and we're constantly going to improve, but I don't know how it looks like. But what I can tell you is that right now, as we're swimming, we have strong conviction about what kind of movement and what kind of way to put the energy in the water and the Flow to do, and we're rethinking how we get from A to B, and we also are okay that as we're iterating on our movement, we might find ourselves in a different, in a different place. So I guess this is a long way of saying, I'm looking to continue to invest in the, in the mo…

AI assessment note: “I have no idea where we're going to be in five years”

Q strength. I guess my question is, how do you determine whether to spend time and get good at something versus appreciate that, you know what, I'm not going to be as fast as them at swimming, or I'm not going to be as good as her on process or him on legal docs or whatever, and I'm going to spend my energy elsewhere. How do you determine between the two?

A But that's what's great about the ability of having a team. If you are thoughtful, if you're self-aware, if you're reflective, you're probably going to be able to understand with some sort of good directionality, what are the things that you're good at, and what are the things that you need help, and what are the things that you're actually bad. And if you are honest with yourself and true with yourself, you write them down without being emotional and say, oh, I suck at this. And you actually double down on the things that you're great at. And you hire for the people that you're not good at. And sometimes you even have conversations depends on the kind of hire it is like about what is the right fit for you and what is the right fit for them. And you use that as a way of building their relationship and building the trust together. So I think that the only thing that's worth perfecting is that process is the process of self-reflection and thoughtfulness in yourself, in your product, in your product process. In your team. In coaching your team to have that. In your company. In your relationship with investors. How do you keep iterating those relationships? And how do you keep iterating the process that ultimately create a product? And the idea that product is not something that is defined. I hate, hate the word V-one, or V-two, or V-three, because the product will never be perfect…

AI assessment note: “if you are honest with yourself and true with yourself, you write them down”