Houseparty’s Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani: “An epidemic of loneliness”

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2018

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani, founders of video chat app Houseparty, to talk about trying and failing multiple times (3:00), why live streaming didn’t work (5:50), telling investors that their company was a bust - three months after raising $14m (8:50), focussing on the 99% (10:45), how Sima and Ben teamed up (14:15), building an alternative to “performative” social media (17:35), Sima’s background in banking (21:00), countering the loneliness epidemic (22:40), launching Houseparty (26:00), reengineering the app after it took off (29:30), raising $50m from Sequoia Capital (32:10), on everyone copying everyone in Silicon Valley (33:10), how Houseparty works (37:30), how both being immigrants influenced how they built the product (39:05), on not having a plan to make money (46:10), and their worst days of work (47:30).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Charlotte Ivers from the Sunday Times Wine Times podcast. This week we're sponsored by
0:05.2	Celebrity Cruises. Each week, myself and Will Lyons share three wines and one dish to discover
0:10.7	the remarkable ways wines can make any meal special, from picnics to pick me ups with the cheese
0:16.0	course. So pour yourself a glass, sit back for a grape-inspired podcast full of laughter, insights and interesting wine.
0:23.6	This podcast is in association with the Sunday Times Wine Club. Listen to Wine Times, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:32.9	Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.
0:40.6	Before we get to today's show, I would like to issue an apology.
0:45.1	As you may have noticed, this is showing up in your feet a bit later than it normally does each week,
0:50.4	but I do have very good reason.
0:52.9	I have a new son. He's all of two days old,
0:56.5	and he arrived a bit earlier than we were expecting in a very dramatic fashion. He's actually
1:02.1	born in our hallway. There was a bit there where I thought I was going to have to deliver him
1:07.7	myself. So it all ended up fine. He's great.
1:11.0	My wife is great.
1:11.9	Everybody is doing well.
1:14.0	But he's kind of thrown my best laid plans up in the air as kids tend to do.
1:19.3	But I have managed to carve out a few hours to go through the tape and get this out to you.
1:23.5	So I hope you do enjoy it.
1:24.9	And thank you for your understanding.
1:26.7	Now, let's get to today's
1:28.6	show. Yo, technology. What is it all about? What we're seeing is now, I don't think it's too
1:37.1	crazy to call it a loneliness epidemic. I think everybody sort of feels it, but particularly
	...

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