BuildFire founder Ian Blair reflects with Acquire.com founder Andrew Gazdecki on the early 2010s mobile app hype cycle.
Opinion
Ian Blair: College is increasingly irrelevant due to AI and YouTube
“I think, you know, college is just less and less relevant today. You know, I don't think it's getting any better with you know, AI and just how much you know, the knowledge is essentially just democratized on the internet. You can learn anything on YouTube at …”
Insight
Ian Blair: Continuous feature addition creates an endless treadmill for scaling
“One thing that I've learned is like simple system scale. And, you know, when you have to add tons and tons of new features, it just becomes like this endless treadmill that you're on.”
Insight
Ian Blair: Venture-backed founders must provide shareholder liquidity by year ten
“When you raise capital, I mean, at a certain point, you have to return capital to shareholders. So You know, kind of around the 10 year mark, you know, they're looking for liquidity.”
Disclosure
Ian Blair closed the acquisition of BuildFire with zero escrow holdback
“Yeah, we did no escrow.”
Insight
Ian Blair regrets not selling BuildFire when markets were hot and frothy
“When things are like really hot and frothy and, you know, the future's looking bright, I mean, that's really the time that you want to sell. So I wish, you know, we had made those moves at the time.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ian Blair's next venture Laundry Sauce hit eight figures in 18 months
“There's kind of this, like, wide open market, and you know, it's scaled at, you know, eight figures in the first, like, year and a half, so it's,”