20VC: YC's Justin Kan on The 3 Qualities All Successful Investors Have & Why 'VCs Don't Really Do Any Real Work'?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2016
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Justin Kan is a Partner @ world renowned, Y Combinator. The birthplace of the likes of Airbnb, Reddit, Dropbox, Stripe, Zenefits and many more incredible companies. Prior to YC, Justin co-founded SocialCam, acquired by Autodesk for $60m and Twitch.tv, the world's leading video platform and community for gamers, acquired by Amazon for $970m in 2014.
In Today’s Episode with Justin You Will Learn:
- How Justin came to found Twitch.tv and then later made the transition into VC with YC?
- Having been a YC alum, how has Justin seen YC as an institution change over time? How have the interviews, demo days, mentoring arrangements altered? How can YC keep the same quality of startup treatment with the mass scaling taking place?
- YC always positions itself as an accompaniment to the VC industry, does the new $700m YC growth fund not directly compete against VCs?
- What 3 qualities does Justin believes all good investors must have? How has Justin looked to establish his own personal brand? What has worked and what has not?
- Justin is very bullish on Snapchat, why so? What makes Justin so excited for the platform? How does Justin use it to such success? What would Justin like to see change in the platform?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Justin’s Fave Book: Shogun
Justin’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: Nuzzel & The Information
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Justin on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The weekend is over, but what better way to start the week than with the 20 minute VC and your host |
| 0:04.3 | Harry Stebbings at H. Stebbings on Snapchat? And today, we have a very special show for you, |
| 0:09.4 | although I'm not sure whether he should be on Founders Friday or the regular VC show on 20 minute VC, |
| 0:14.8 | but we took his current position and went for VC. So joining me today is Justin Khan at Justin |
| 0:20.1 | Khan on Snapchat, and Justin is a partner |
| 0:22.7 | at the world-renowned Y Combinator, the birthplace of the lights of Dropbox, Airbnb, Scribd, and Reddit, |
| 0:29.9 | just to name a few. And prior to YC, Justin was the founder at Twitch.tv, the world's leading |
| 0:35.3 | video platform and community for gamers, which was ultimately |
| 0:38.4 | acquired by Amazon for $970 million. Previously, we've had Mike Siebel on the show. He's another |
| 0:44.4 | partner at YC, and he was also part of that amazing journey with Justin. And if you haven't |
| 0:48.8 | checked out that episode, that really is a must, number 16 back in the old days of the show. |
| 0:53.5 | But before we meet the |
| 0:54.3 | main man, Justin, everyone knows that UI and aesthetics are a key element of will someone or |
| 0:58.9 | won't someone check out your business cards, site, logo, it's all down to design. And that's |
| 1:04.4 | where Design Crowd come in. Design Crowd is an online marketplace for custom graphic, logo and |
| 1:09.6 | web design that helps startups entrepreneurs, |
| 1:12.5 | web developers and agencies outsource design projects to over 500,000 registered designers |
| 1:18.3 | who can bring their creativity and flair to your project and allow you to go from launching a project |
| 1:23.6 | to design completion in just three days whilst also avoiding the usual exorbitant agency |
| 1:28.8 | fees that we all hate. Perfect for entrepreneurs and small businesses using Design Crowd to outsource |
| 1:33.7 | logo, site and print design. So check them out at designcrowd.com forward slash VC and enter the |
| 1:39.9 | promo code VC100 for an incredible $100 off. However, it's now time for me to shut up and to hand over |
... |
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