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Ben Rubin

Co-Founder & CEO, Here Not There Labs · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@benrbn ↗towns.com ↗

Ben Rubin is a serial tech entrepreneur who co-founded and served as CEO of Houseparty and created the live-streaming app Meerkat. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Here Not There Labs, developing the decentralized messaging protocol Towns.

10statements → 0claims → 0claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 2.2/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 2said about them ↓

1 opinion · 5 insights · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. none of them is a claim the record can settle: opinions, insights and disclosures never carry an assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ben argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

219 words/min while actually speaking · 0.8 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Ben Rubin: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 20 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 6,323 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Ben Rubin is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 1/10
pushed back at the host 2/10
setup questions received 45%

Everything Ben Rubin said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Standard growth playbooks fail on company-specific retention issues
“The tools that you have are probably good to inform 80% of your decision, but there's going to be a situation in which only you can actually come up with the infrastructure And the tooling to understand your problem. You're not going to be able to solve that p…”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 9:14 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Insight
Live video is a feature, not a standalone product category
“And we know today that live video is not what we thought it's going to be three, five years ago. It's actually a great feature on top of existing platform that is being used by celebrity media news more often than the next person.”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 17:52 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Disclosure
Meerkat realized live video was unsustainable three months after raising $14M
“Within three months after raising fourteen million dollars from Greylock and other investors, we were like, guys, there's no broadcaster attention in the average person, in the 99% who are not celebs, media and news. And because of this, we cannot build an ind…”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 18:15 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Insight
Broadcaster retention is the only sustainable metric for live video platforms
“The only thing that matters, the only thing that is sustainable is broadcaster retention.”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 15:41 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Disclosure
Meerkat's broadcaster retention only existed among celebrities and media
“And one of the things that we saw that we had the privilege to see with millions of people using Meerkat is that the retention for broadcasters Only existed in the celebs, media, and news type of users.”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 16:43 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Insight
Synchronous social apps depend on concurrent graph availability
“In a presence product like House Party, the availability of the graph is really key for the successful of the use case. If people are busy when you're available, you can't match with them, you can't talk to them.”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 7:20 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Opinion
Twitch succeeded by focusing on broadcaster retention from day one
“There is one platform like this. It's called Twitch. Twitch from the get go focused on broadcaster attention.”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 18:46 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Insight
Board meetings should be discussion platforms, not decision-making arenas
“I think, obviously, you don't want to surprise your board in stuff like this during the board meeting. I think board meetings are not for, or rarely, or really when she'd hit the fanart to make decision, most of the time, board should be used as discussion pla…”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 21:38 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Disclosure
Peter Fenton gave Ben Rubin a Benchmark credit card to explore ideas
“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 go…”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 37:01 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
Disclosure
Ben Rubin failed to bridge early and late-stage cultures at Houseparty
“Bridging between those two cultures of the people you hire as you're iterating and pivoting a lot and to the people you hired after you started the immense growth, it's hard culture to bridge. And I don't think I've done a good job there”
Ben Rubin Aug 21, 2020 ▶ 33:14 20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty

The other half of the tape: Ben Rubin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 2

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Ar Aug 21, 2020 32m
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