Ben Rubin
Co-Founder & CEO, Here Not There Labs. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
2shows
2appearances
17statements
2resolved
1supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Ben Rubin said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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…”
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.”
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…”
Rubin: Value of genuine human access will surge alongside AI clones
“So I actually think that actually having time with Greg one-on-one with Greg Geisenberg one-on-one or online, but with the real Greg, it's going to grow exponentially higher when the image and replication of Greg through AI is going, you know, thousand X.”
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.”
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.”
Rubin: AI will force online identity and credential verification within 10 years
“And with AI, like in 10 years from now, it's going to be really important to know, is this person on the other side really did what they do, or do they really have the same amount of, you know, podcast listeners? Do they actually live in Miami? Did they actual…”
Rubin: Proliferation of derivative assets increases original asset value
“I have this instinctive belief that all derivative assets eventually increase the value of the original asset. Meaning in a way pickleball just, the more pickleball is out there, the most, the more the value of 10 is going up. The more, you know, the more ther…”
Rubin: A solo developer can build an on-chain dating protocol
“For proof of concept, I would start with just a set of smart contracts that is on an On an L two, basically on, on, on a lay layer that is much cheaper on top of Ethereum, where you can actually create this protocol, like just exist on Ethereum and without sta…”
Rubin: Luxury watch marketplaces charge 10% to 20% transaction fees
“Right now all these marketplaces, they take arbitrage to create the illusion of trust, right? So they take their 20% or 10% of the transaction because they are, you know, Chrono or other places where people buy watches.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
Rubin: Prada embeds RFID tags in all clothing items
“Even, even Prada today have RFIDs on all the clothes, right? You can actually scan those things.”
Rubin: Luxury communities should admit verified owners free and charge observers
“And even if you take it further, you can even say like, Hey, if you already bought a Rolex and you have the details of the Rolex, you get in free. It's the people that are curious or people who couldn't prove that they already From an ethos perspective, believ…”
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”
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 across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 2
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 2
2020 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments
- 20VC: Howard Marks on How COVID-19 Impacts Our Economy, Liquidity and National Debt, Why The Theory of Falling Knives and Market Bottoms is Wrong & Why The Best Investors Are Fundamentally Unemotional
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ben's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Here Not There Labs | 1 | 10 | — | full record on 20VC → |
 STARTUP IDEASLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Here Not There Labs | 1 | 7 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the Startup Ideas Podcast → |