Dec 6, 2017 · 1h 2m · y-combinator
There's an Art to Getting Brilliant People to Surprise Themselves - Kevin Slavin of The Shed · Y Combinator
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this Y Combinator podcast episode, host and guest Kevin Slavin explore the intersection of higher education, game design, and cultural institutions, focusing on how multidisciplinary collaboration and domain agnosticism drive creative breakthroughs. Slavin shares insights from his varied career—spanning sculpture, Area Code, the MIT Media Lab, and The Shed—to illustrate the art of drawing out extraordinary work from brilliant teams.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The partners as informed peer 2.0 Guest teaching 4.4 Guest disagreement 1.1 The partners pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is the partners, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 20:00 Dismissing VR games as lazy console ports
Kevin bluntly rejects prevailing hype around VR games, arguing that current developers merely treat the medium as a wraparound console rather than inventing new grammar.
Hardest push from the partners ▶ 9:19 Pressing on adding value vs imposter syndromeCraig challenges the dynamic of orchestrating geniuses by asking what tangible value someone actually contributes when they just fawn over brilliant talent.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 36:00 Explaining the gut biome of citiesKevin gives an in-depth lecture on urban metagenomics, explaining why people get sick when traveling because their internal microbiome clashes with a foreign city's collective biological organism.
The partners hold their own ▶ 3:53 Connecting institutional cohorts to YC batchesCraig demonstrates domain expertise by framing institutional continuity through the operational lens of Y Combinator batch cohorts.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The partners as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The partners pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reimagining Educational and Cultural Institutions | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Craig opens with a broad question on higher education for future generations. Kevin delivers an extended monologue analyzing university bankruptcy, tenure origins under McCarthyism, and the role of cultural institutions in fostering community. | |
| Comparing Institutional Continuity to Startup Cohorts | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Craig introduces the YC batch structure as an analog to educational cohorts. Kevin reflects on his network, his sculpture background, and his ability to orchestrate multidisciplinary talent across fields like CRISPR. | |
| The Art of Getting Brilliant People to Surprise Themselves | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Craig asks how non-technical orchestrators avoid imposter syndrome and provide real value to brilliant creators. Kevin explains his method of snowballing early concepts and leveraging advertising skills to sell ideas to funders. | |
| Bootstrapping Area Code | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Craig asks whether Kevin raised venture capital for Area Code. Kevin explains that bootstrapping freed them from growth-at-all-costs mandates that would have ruined early experimental game concepts. | |
| The Innovative Journey and Success of Area Code | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Craig prompts Kevin on Area Code's biggest successes. Kevin details the early 2000s technological transition from early GPS Boost Mobile handsets to viral Facebook games like Parking Wars. | |
| Critiquing the Current Landscape of Virtual Reality | 3 | 6 | 4 | 1 | Craig brings up enthusiasm for VR and asks how narrative translates. Kevin pushes back, dismissing current VR gaming as derivative console ports and rejecting the premise that games are narrative vehicles. | |
| Transitioning to MIT Media Lab and Urban Metagenomics | 1 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Craig inquires about the transition to the MIT Media Lab. Kevin delivers an extensive educational breakdown on hiring misfits, urban metagenomics, and viewing cities as biological superorganisms with distinct microbiomes. | |
| Joining The Shed: Blending Art, Culture, and Science | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Craig asks why Kevin moved back to NY to work at The Shed rather than expanding pure science worldwide. Kevin outlines the difference between transmitting information versus culture, alongside the architectural challenges of a moving building. | |
| Calculated Risks and Technological Innovation at The Shed | 2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Craig asks for concrete examples of institutional risks at The Shed. Kevin outlines commissioning scientists, eliminating paper tickets to reshape visitor queuing, and scrapping broadcast trucks in favor of global digital synchronization. | |
| Looking Ahead: Embracing Novelty and Domain Agnosticism | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Craig closes with a question about Kevin's personal trajectory over the next decade. Kevin reflects on embracing domain agnosticism and maintaining intellectual youth by tackling new challenges. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Slavin: Roughly 15 US Universities Go Bankrupt Each Year
“We talked about this a little bit earlier, but there, it's basically 15 universities a year that go bankrupt in the United States.”
Slavin: Academic Tenure Arose Under McCarthyism to Protect Free Thought
“Tenure, which there's, there are very good reasons for tenure, and it arose under McCarthyism to protect free thought essentially, which is great.”
Cannon: Accelerator batch structures create distinct founder cohort identities
“I think that, that batch structure, even though they're so close together, you know, it's like three months apart between the winter and the summer batch, but still, you're like, you know, I'm winter 17, you're summer 17, like, we're in the same alumni cohort,…”
Slavin Is Developing a Large-Scale Artwork at MIT Using CRISPR
“I'm working on a project. This is the last project that I have at MIT that I can't exactly, I can't talk about what it is, but it's I'll just say it's a very large scale Artwork that is that's using CRISPR.”
Slavin: Leadership is enabling brilliant people to surprise themselves, not management
“There's a difference between managing people and actually drawing things out, you know, and I think learning how to, learning what brilliant people There's an art to getting brilliant people to surprise themselves.”
Slavin: Deep domain experts often struggle to pitch work to funders
“I think people who are really, really good at whatever they do are often Not in a good position to be able to do that because it requires a level, a certain level of detachment from what you care about to be able to look at it from somebody else's point of vie…”
Slavin: Fundraising fundamentally requires telling a story of scale and growth
“People might argue with this, and I don't even know if I believe what I'm saying, but I think probably I would say that the essential story that you have to tell when you're fundraising is a story of scale, right? Like, because the premise of fundraising is, i…”
Slavin: Early growth focus would have forced Area Code into an all-in Pokémon bet
“And if we'd had to think about growth from the very beginning, man, we would never have done Anything we did, you know, we would, you know, we would have bet it all on, on this idea that we had in 2004 that we went and talked to the Nintendo corporation. We ha…”
Slavin: Game studios must specialize in specific platforms to survive
“Normally, if you want to make money in games, if you even want to make a living in games, you say, like, I'm going to build a shop that's optimized for you know, AAA console development, you know, which has nothing to do with the shop that you would build if y…”
Slavin: Most VR Developers Are Applying Console Game Mindsets
“Broadly speaking, everything that I'm seeing in VR games is basically done by people who made console games and where their essential mode is thinking in console games.”
Slavin: The Creator Who Solves VR Won't Come from AAA Studios
“Instinctively, and from my experience, I don't think that that person is going to come from one of the big AAA studios because they're going to have to be thinking in a different way.”
Slavin: Games are not narrative vehicles in general
“Games aren't narrative vehicles in general, right? I mean, they're, I, there's a whole very nerdy set of ideas around games and narratology, which we're not going to get into”
Slavin: VR games should embrace headset wearing and local asymmetric information
“Maybe what the materiality of the medium of VR should include the fact that you're wearing a fucking helmet, right? Like, you know, and you're in a room with other people, right? Like maybe that's not like maybe that's not something to write off. Like maybe th…”
Slavin: MIT Media Lab hires 'misfits' inventing non-existent disciplines
“One of the most interesting things about hiring new faculty at the media lab is like the primary criterion is, is that they're a misfit, right? And it's like, we're looking for misfits who are thinking about how to ensure the heritability of CRISPR engineering…”
Slavin: Travelers get sick because their microbiome is tied to origin cities
“You are effectively in exchange with that city. This is why, it's why you get sick when you travel, right? You know, it's like, it's why you eat the food That, you know, in some city that you've never been to, you eat the food that everybody else there can eat…”
Slavin: The Shed is NYC's first major cultural center since Lincoln Center
“The Shed is the first cultural center to be, at scale, to be built in New York City since Lincoln Center.”