Hello and welcome to Web 3 with A16Z, a show about building the next generation of the

Internet.

Our featured guest today is serial entrepreneur Ben Rubin,

who previously built a viral live streaming app,

Meerkat, and then the group video chat app House Party,

acquired by Epic Games in 2019,

and who is now CEO and co-founder of Here Not Their Labs, which is

building a decentralized messaging protocol. Rubin spoke with Jason

Rosenthal, head of A16Z cryptoCryptos, CSX startup accelerator program, about paths to product market

fit given his journey in building breakout apps.

They also discuss his unique perspective on creating company culture and more.

This conversation first took place at our recent CSX program, which just concluded in London.

As a reminder, none of the following should be taken as investment, business, legal, or tax advice.

Please see A16Z.com slash disclosures for more important information including a link to a list of our investments.

Thank you. Thank you.

And so maybe we can just give us the thumbnail of your journey so far, Talk about some of the things that you've done.

I decided architecture at school, buildings architecture. I left at my third year. I had actually a great time in architecture. I really enjoyed it.

But at some point I realized that building digital spaces might be more exciting.

So I left school to be I guess an architect of digital spaces. I've

been doing that for since I'm in for 12 years now maybe 13 years and right off that third year I started a company called Life On Air and we

build mainly live-stream product. Most of them failed and then one got a breakthrough called Merekak.

Then after that another one that had a breakthrough called House Party,

...