Justin Kan
Partner, Y Combinator
Discussion
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
Hi I'm Justin Kan, an internet entrepreneur and partner at seed fund Y Combinator. I have founded many companies including: Justin.tv, Twitch, and Exec. At Y Combinator I invest and advise startups, and in my my personal time I am working on some fun projects. Most recently I built an art car for Burningman called Titanic’s End and am working on a project related to my love for electronic music. I'm excited to talk to you guys, so feel free to ask me anything!
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Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
What's the biggest misconception people have about YC?
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@eriktorenberg
People always think they are either too early or too late for YC. Some of the best companies, like Dropbox and Zenefits, were very early stage when they joined YC (basically just starting to build product). Other companies, like Gigster, had millions in revenue already when they joined, but were able to grow that significantly during the course of YC.
This misconception has existed a long time: in 2008 my JTV cofounders and I had to convince Airbnb they could still apply to YC -- they thought they were too late because they had already launched.
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Justin! You've been working on The Drop, a community sharing and listening to the best new EDM. What sites/apps do you use to discover new music? (I'm a big fan of Spotify, Hype Machine, and SoundCloud).
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@justinkan I listen to Sirius XM's Chill station when I drive my mom's car when I'm visiting home. It's really good.
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Welcome Justin!
Knowing what you know now, If you were 22 in 2015, what would you do/pursue/work on?
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@eriktorenberg same thing I'd probably work on or invest in today at 32 ;). I think the big white spaces in tech are all over: synthetic biology, drone delivery, VR games and entertainment experiences, SAAS software for industries outside of tech, cannabis, mobile apps and services for the developing world.
But, you should probably work on things that solve your own problems or that you actually care about, instead of just picking something that seems lucrative.
Sydney Liu
@sydney_liu_sl · Co-Founder of Commaful
@justinkan
Hi Justin!
Thanks for doing this. You started Justin.tv and Twitch way before live streaming became the cool thing to do.
1) How did you convince the early streamers to come? Why did they do it, especially if you didn't have a huge audience on the site yet?
2) How did you solve the chicken and egg problems? Both require streamers and watchers.
Thanks!
Sydney
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@sydney_liu_sl Hi Sydney!
1) With Justin.tv, we got a lot of attention for what we were doing from the media attention around our own show. Because the idea of livestreaming my life was so outrageous, lots of people came to the site, and a few of them asked us how to launch their own broadcast.
Twitch was probably more instructive: we had a few users who streamed gaming content on Justin.tv, but Emmett really had the idea of reaching out to other gaming video creators on Youtube and competing live streaming sites, and asked them what it would take to get them on Justin.tv Gaming (later renamed Twitch). After enough interviews, he came back with a list of features, which the team built, and then eventually more and more broadcasters came over. We also offered early gaming casters promotion on our directory and front pages as an incentive to come over.
This kind of answers #2, because we focused on broadcasters who already had an audience, which they brought with them by marketing their stream on their social channels (facebook, gaming forums, twitter, youtube, etc). This is how we built viewership for the site.
Dudon Wai
@dudonwai
@justinkan
Hey Justin,
I have a few questions:
1 - As a young first-time entrepreneur, what is your advice on working on multiple startups at once?
2 - Do you use virtual assistants, and how should I use them as a first-time entrepreneur?
3 - As an investor in Trygigster, what do you think about creating a webdev marketplace for the middle market (new grad coders looking for experience + SMBs with smaller budget)?
Thanks!
Dudon
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@dudonwai
1) Don't work on multiple startups at once. Focus is 🔑
2) I used Zirtual, and now have hired that assistant directly. I also use Magic a lot. Zirtual has helped me a lot for basic research, flight booking and calendaring, but honestly when I was a first-time entrepreneur I just did all that myself and it wasn't a big deal.
3) The quality might suffer here, which would hurt the brand reputation, which I think is one of the big reasons people will come to a service like Gigster (strong brand reputation based on doing a lot of quality work). Also, I think Gigster will eventually drive the cost down for coding work and compete with you. But, you could try it!
Daniel Lee
@dleesta · Product Manager
@justinkan @dudonwai Great emoji usage. Khaled would be proud!
Danny Lowney
@dannylowney · Growth ⛏@ Sup
How has your passion for music influenced what you do in startup land?
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@dannylowney I always wanted to do something in music, specifically in electronic music. Last year I cofounded a company with my friends @ranidu and @jamesfzhang to work on building interesting stuff in music. We started off by building The Drop (a community for discovering electronic music), and recently released a tool called The Artist Union (http://theartistunion.com), which helps artists promote their music on social media. We're working on a new iOS app right now.
Ultimately, my goal here is just to build something cool that artists and listeners like to use. I also think many of the techniques we used at Twitch to make money for gamers should work for artists. I think music is historically a pretty difficult industry for tech entrepreneurs -- but I like hacking on it because I'm a super fan.
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@jordan_gonen the failures are legion.
Started my first startup, Kiko, with Emmett. It was an online calendar. We were college students and didn't use calendars. Consequently, ours wasn't very successful (we didn't really know what features to build and never asked any potential users).
Started a clothing company. Knew nothing about clothing. Didn't market it very well (turns out distribution channels are very important!).
Exec started off as Taskrabbit meets Uber. Most people didn't convert to regular users, because it was too difficult to think of things to use it for. (Simple, repetitive and scalable jobs are best -- i.e. Uber and Instacart).
Frank Denbow
@frank_denbow
@justinkan @jordan_gonen More on this clothing company :-)
Charles Kunene
@charles_kunene · Co-founder & Product Designer @Obaa
@justinkan With both Justin.tv and Twitch, what social/cultural trends did you observe that gave you faith that these would be a success?
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@charles_kunene
Justin.tv: honestly, there wasn't much social evidence that this was going to work. I think we were encouraged by the fact that a lot of people started streaming.
Twitch: it seemed like there was a wave of more and more esports content being produced (and gaming video content in general, on Youtube). Of course, Twitch Plays Pokemon was a cultural moment and was the first time the site really went mainstream.
Sajad Ghanizada
@therealsajad · Growth, Hurdlr
Hey Justin, what were some of your most used growth channels for the companies you've worked on in the past? Did you notice that some of your channels were relevant no matter the product?
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Justin Kan
@justinkan · Partner, Y Combinator
@therealsajad Depends on who you are targeting.
Twitch: direct outreach to video game content creators, sending our network development team to various events pro-gamers were at
Exec (home services on demand company): yelp, local press, contacting companies and having them email discounts to their team members, SEO
The channels really depend on what your customer base is.