The mmhmm story and how it plans to spend its $100M

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex Chris had prior Equity guest Phil Libin back for a chat. Libin was first on our show a while back to chat about his startup studio. But since then, he's been a little busy. You may recall that mmhmm, Libin's project to build a better video communication service, raised $100 million the other week. And we here on the Equity pod made a little bit of fun at the number. It was just so very much money for a roughly one year old company. What was the company going to use it for? Well, Libin's folks got in touch and so we decided to just have him on to chat. And we wanted him back because he was one of the most memorable guests on the show, frankly, thanks to his candor the last time around. So, what did we get into? A refresh on the mmhmm story, and notes from Libin about what's ahead for his company. It certainly has the cash to pursue its vision. But as we learned, building software for a variety of platforms comes with challenges. Challenges that are ameliorated by having lots of smart staff. So, that's where the money is going. Regardless, it was good sporting of Libin to come back for another chat. Equity is back Friday morning with our news roundup. Make sure to follow the show on Twitter, as we're doing the odd Twitter space that you won't want to miss. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech Ranches Venture Capital focused
0:14.4	podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. My name is Alex
0:18.1	Wilhelme and I'm joined today by Natasha Moscarinus.
0:20.3	Natasha, how are you? I'm doing delightful Alex.
0:23.4	It actually feels wrong that we're on Zoom right now, though.
0:26.2	It does feel a little bit incorrect,
0:27.8	but we'll tell you why in just a moment,
0:29.2	but we have a repeat guest on today.
0:31.3	We have Phil Liben, he is back. Back then we were talking about a
0:34.2	thing called All Turtles, which was his kind of startup studio that was incubating all
0:38.3	sorts of ideas and we talked about the IPO market. And then last year, Phil, um-hmm, came to be and became almost like a cultural touchstone
0:47.0	inside of the startup world because it had a very, very start-upy name and cool products.
0:51.4	So one, welcome back. And two, I want to start by having you tell us how the
0:56.1	hell mm-hmm went from idea to product.
0:58.9	Well, thank you. It's good to be back. And you know, as a little kid growing up in the Soviet Union 80% of the people
1:04.4	I knew were named either Alex or Natasha so I just feel I feel right at home.
1:08.2	We did it just just for your comfort. Thank you. I appreciate it.
1:20.0	Yeah, m started as a joke a little over a year ago in May of 2020, so a couple of months into the pandemic. We all went fully distributed. We, as in All Turtles, the product studio that we talked about last time I was on your show.
1:27.2	And you know for the first couple of months of being locked down it wasn't that boring because it was, you know,
1:31.9	it was pretty terrifying.
1:32.8	We were all afraid that we were going to die.
1:35.4	But then we didn't and two months later it was just kind of tedious and boring.
	...

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