20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2020

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ben Rubin is the Founder & CEO @ /talk, the anti-meeting tool for fast, decentralised conversations. Prior to co-founding /talk, Ben was the Co-Founder & CEO @ Houseparty, where he scaled the product to millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from the likes of Sequoia, Greylock and Entree Capital to name a few. In addition over the last few years Ben has enjoyed roles at Sequoia as a Scout and then also at Benchmark as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Ben made his way into the world of startups and came to found Life on Air, later turning into Meerkat and Houseparty?

2.) What were Ben's key learnings from the Houseparty scaling experience? Why are the traditional metrics we use to measure startup success (DAU, MAU etc) insufficient? What is the nuance to metrics? How does Ben think about being first to market vs being the best to market?

3.) How does Ben believe the product principles differ when comparing the 0-1 stage vs 10-100 stage? How does Ben think about where to be rigorous on product? How does Ben advise founders to discover the key guiding product principle? What was it for Ben with Meerkat?

4.) Meerkat pivoted to Houseparty 3 months after having raised $40M, how did Ben communicate that to the board? How did they respond? How does Ben believe the best boards operate? What does Ben most look for in his board members? Where do many go wrong with board management?

5.) From the team side, when in hypergrowth, when do things start to break? What profiles are usually the first to break? Does that mean one should not hire those profiles? What can the leader do to create that intimacy and trust amongst the team?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Ben’s Fave Book: Seneca: The Shortness of Life

As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back. This is a 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I don't know about you, but I love discussions with truly world-class product people.
0:06.5	And today I'm joined by one of the best, Ben Rubin, founder and CEO at Slash Talk, the anti-meeting tool for the fast decentralized conversations that have to happen in successful workplaces.
0:16.6	Prior to co-founding Slash Talk, Ben was the co-founder and CEO at House Party, where he scaled
0:21.3	the product to millions of users and raised over $70 million in funding from the likes of
0:25.6	Greylock, Sequoia and Entree Capital, to name a few. In addition, over the last few years,
0:30.0	Ben has enjoyed roles at Sequoia as a scout, and then also at Benchmark as an entrepreneur
0:34.0	in residence. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Avi at Entree for some
0:37.5	fantastic question suggestions before this episode. I so appreciate that. But before we move into the show
0:42.6	today, digital hit in new gear in 2020 and companies need the tools that will allow them to flourish
0:47.7	in our ever-changing world. That's where Amplitude comes in. Amplitude helps the top product and growth
0:53.0	themes at companies like PayPal, Instacart,
0:55.7	Peloton and Atlassian, build product experiences that convert and retain customers. With their
1:00.7	product intelligence platform, you and your team will better understand user behavior,
1:04.7	ship great product experiences faster, and retain more customers. And they've become the gold
1:09.3	standard in analytics for teams asking what is happening in their digital products, why users are customers, and they've become the gold standard in analytics for teams asking
1:11.2	what is happening in their digital products, why users are converting, and what to build next.
1:16.2	See for yourself how companies like Twitter, DoorDash and Cisco, build for growth using Amplitude,
1:21.6	and visit Amplitude.com forward slash 20VC, and check this out, discounted scholarship plans
1:26.9	are available for qualifying startups. That's Amplitude.com forward slash 20VC and check this out discounted scholarship plans are available for qualifying startups.
1:28.9	That's amplitude.com forward slash 20VC. And speaking of incredible products there,
1:34.0	Harness is a truly modern digital wealth platform that leverages technology and best in class
1:38.9	advisory firms to give you access to the best experience of human advice to maximise your finances.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.