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

20VC: Why Decentralisation is Key For Digital Media Distribution, Why Gradual Decentralisation Is The Most Practical Approach and Why Incumbents Are The Biggest Barrier To The Rise of Crypto with Adi Sideman, Founder & CEO @ YouNow

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

🗓️ 27 October 2017

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Adi Sideman is the Founder & CEO @ YouNow. Since founding the company in 2011, Adi has grown YouNow to be a global social network with more than 100 million user sessions a month, and creators now producing more than 50,000 hours of original live content each day. They recently released PROPS (Telegram available here), the next generation platform that leverages the power of crypto economics & participation in digital media. To fund this growth, they have raised over $25m in funding from some of the greats of the investing world including Andy Weissman @ USV, David Pakman @ Venrock and future guest Oren Zeev. Due to this incredible progress, YouNow has been named one of the most innovative companies of 2016 by Fast Company and was a finalist for Fastest Rising Startup of 2016 at the Crunchies Awards.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Adi made his way into the world of participatory digital content, came to found the world's first online karaoke company and then found YouNow?

2.) Setting the scene now, where are we at with TV? What platform does Adi believe will rise formidably in it's place? How does that affect the age-old industry of advertising? Why does Adi believe after so many years, now is the time for micro-payment content creation?

3.) Why does the digital media content landscape need to be decentralized? What is fundamentally broken with the current centralised networks? What are the benefits of such decentralization?

4.) How does Adi envision this decentralization to be? Does Adi believe we will build new decentralized protocols and exact the decentralized network through them or does he believe we will integrate new protocols into existing services?

5.) Why does this decentralized network be crypto-based? With centralized networks the value largely accrues to investors and founders, how does Adi sell the value of a decentralized network to an investor base with fiduciary responsibilities?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Adi’s Favourite Book: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill 

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

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

Lattice is the #1 performance management solution for growing companies. With Lattice, it’s easy to launch 360 performance review cycles as often as you want. And you also get a continuous feedback system with OKR goal tracking, real-time feedback, and 1-on-1 meetings to make sure employees get feedback between reviews. Find out why the likes of CoinBase, PlanGrid, Birchbox and WePay trust Lattice as their performance management solution by heading over to lattice.com to start investing in your people. That’s Lattice.com.

Recurly, the company powering subscription success, with Recurly’s enterprise-class subscription management platform providing rapid time-to-value without requiring massive integration effort and expense and they have the ability to not only increase revenue by 7% but also reduce the all-important churn rate. That is why thousands of customers from Twitch to HubSpot to CBS Interactive trust Recurly as their subscription management platform. Check them out on recurly.com that really is a must.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

We are back in the room with the 20-minute VC and me, Harry Stebbings, at H-Stebings, with two Bs on Snapchat,

0:05.4

for all things behind the scenes from us at the 20-minute VC.

0:08.4

However, to the show today, and I'm thrilled to welcome the incredible founder to the hot seat in the form of Addy Seidman,

0:13.4

found and CEO at You Now.

0:15.3

Since founding the company in 2011, Adi has grown you now to be a global social network with more than 100 million user sessions a month, and creators now producing more than 50,000 hours of original live content each day.

0:27.0

They recently released props, the next generation platform that leverages the power of crypto economics, which we'll be spending a lot of time on in our interview today, I'm very pleased to say.

0:35.8

And to fund this immense growth, they've raised over $25 million in funding from some of the greats of the investing world,

0:41.2

including Andy Weissman at USV, David Patman at Venrock, and a future guest on the show. I'm very

0:46.0

excited to say in the form of Oran Zeve. Due to this incredible progress, Hugh now's been named

0:50.4

one of the most innovative companies of 2016 by Fast Company and was a finalist

0:54.5

for fastest-rising startup of 2016 at the Crunchies Awards. I'd also want to give a big hand

1:00.0

to previous guest on the show Andy Weissman for the intro to Addie today, without which this

1:04.1

episode would not have happened. But before we move into the show state, if you're a founder or

1:08.1

operator, your most important job is people operations,

1:16.2

whether that be hiring execs, developing managers, or retaining top talent. And that's why you need lattice. Latus is the number one performance management solution for growing companies. With

1:20.6

lattice, it's easy to launch 360 performance review cycles as often as you want. And you also get an

1:25.8

incredible continuous feedback system with

1:27.9

OKR goal tracking, real-time feedback and one-on-one meetings to ensure employees get feedback between

1:33.4

reviews. So find out why the likes of Coinbase, PlanGrid, Birchbox and WePay, trust Latis as their

1:38.9

performance management solution by heading over to lattice.com to start investing in your people. That's

1:43.8

lattice.com, the number one performance management solution for growing companies.

1:47.8

And speaking of number one there, you must check out Recurley, the company powering subscription

...

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