Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Kortina: Venmo prioritized transaction notes to humanize peer-to-peer payments

Andrew Kortina · Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator · Nov 20, 2018 · at 14:57

Venmo co-founder Andrew Kortina explains the product philosophy behind Venmo's prominent transaction note feature.

0:00 / 0:20exact quote · 21.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Actually we wanted to kind of like humanize the money and make it less about the dollars and cents and more. That's why the note is like such a focal point of them. I was like, what is the thing that you're doing? What does the moment that you're sharing with somebody else? And get you thinking about that, and not about the money. And the money is just, hopefully, in the background.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Andrew Kortina

Opinion
Kortina: There is nothing morally wrong with doing heroin all day
“I don't want to go, like, sit around and do heroin all day. Like, I'm sure that would be, like, really fun, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But it would be very tough for me to, like, not feel bad about that, even though I don't think it's …”
Andrew Kortina Nov 20, 2018 ▶ 3:58 Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator
Opinion
Kortina: Buddhism does not motivate civilizations to attempt massive projects
“I had this thought once, like, you know, Buddhists are not gonna get us off this planet when the sun burns out. Like, it's a very From my sort of, you know, 50,000 foot view of it seems like a very like internal focused life is struggling. How do I cope with t…”
Andrew Kortina Nov 20, 2018 ▶ 5:38 Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator
Insight
Kortina: The singularity already happened, and money is the algorithm
“Thought about the singularity is that it already happened, and money is the algorithm that is already controlling all the people and telling them what to do. The machines have already taken over, I think.”
Andrew Kortina Nov 20, 2018 ▶ 13:41 Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator
Opinion
Kortina: Tech companies oversell moral meaning compared to Wall Street
“My problem with the way that Silicon Valley does it is they, they've always had this, like, Wall Street is the bad guys. They're all about making money. Silicon Valley is about, you know, building the future and, you know, like, achieving, like, the American d…”
Andrew Kortina Nov 20, 2018 ▶ 28:23 Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator
Insight
Kortina: Virtual assistants must be generalists to compete with humans
“With Finn, we're competing with a full-time human assistant and a full-time human assistant will just do whatever you ask them... If we built that, we just wouldn't be competitive with a human assistant. So we kind of took into this, we have to be able to do a…”
Andrew Kortina Nov 20, 2018 ▶ 51:02 Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator
Insight
Kortina: Cultures linked dignity to work to build survival surpluses
“Why would a culture connect dignity with the idea of work? And it's, I just think it's been a useful thing to do. If you live in a very uncertain world, Where there's things like, you know, a horde of locusts can take out the crops for the year, and then there…”
Andrew Kortina Nov 20, 2018 ▶ 2:43 Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.