

My entire entrepreneurship story in 10 minutes - mjdipietro
http://justinkan.com/my-interview-with-interloper-films

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abbasmehdi
Though I've only talked to Justin a few times, he is one of my favorite people
to get advice from. Between his five startups and entire adult life spent
building them, he has not only seen most problems founders face, he has
actually experienced them multiple times. This means not only do you get
excellent advice, but also that he has a lot of compassion and empathy for
founders because he knows exactly what it feels like to go through them.

Here is a follow up email I sent to Justin after discussing a problem we were
struggling with at the time (his advice was great as always, even better was
how optimistic we felt after speaking with him - that IMO comes from him being
in the same place as you in the past and being able to relate to what you
might be going through).

 _Justin I know you're a busy guy and have no time for fluff emails, but I'm
gonna go out on a limb and tell you how awesome your advice was and how great
we feel after office hours with you today. As you know, startups run on morale
and I wanted to thank you for topping off our tank._

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iag
I have a lot of respect for this guy. Just talk to him for a bit and you sorta
get this feeling that he'll succeed no matter what he chooses to do in the
future. Keep it up buddy!

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147
What qualities does he have that make you think this? Could you please give
some examples?

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hellopat
Confidence being the one I've noticed throughout following his career.

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littlegiantcap
I loved this video. It seems like you guys have a really kick ass culture.

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justin
Thanks, we try! Generally my philosophy is that it is important to make a
place that people love to work, and in exchange people who work there take
responsibility for getting things done in their domain. Pretty simple.

Also you should check out Airbnb and ZeroCater for companies that have great
cultures. When you walk in those places you can tell that people love being
there.

~~~
makko1
Dude, how did you build up your programming skills enough to launch an app at
20-22 yrs old? It says on wikipedia you graduated with a degree in Physics and
Philosophy. I'm guessing hacking was a hobby built up from your early teens?

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justin
I had some limited programming exposure as a teen (and at Yale), but really I
owe most of my programming knowledge to Emmett. Throughout the entire period
of time we were working on Kiko, and then the first couple years of Justin.tv,
he mentored me on programming concepts, debugged my crappy code, etc.

It really isn't that hard to pick up enough programming to build a simple CRUD
app if you are dedicated enough. One great resource (although time-intensive)
is Dev Bootcamp, a program based in SF that will teach you how to program in
10 weeks. I can't speak highly enough about Dev Bootcamp -- my youngest
brother went through the last class with barely any programming knowledge
coming in and at the end of it landed a full time programming job at a
consultancy.

Alternatively, the classic method always works: just start trying to build
something and google until you figure out how to do it.

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bengl3rt
_Alternatively, the classic method always works: just start trying to build
something and google until you figure out how to do it._

Exactly how I learned as a 10-13 year old: I wasn't writing very much code
from scratch, but rather gluing together large swaths of copy/pasted example
code from the internet. It was messy and nasty, but by bending other peoples'
code to do what I needed I slowly came to understand it.

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dkroy
I didn't know they sold Kiko on Ebay. That is crazy, I didn't realize people
were in the market for that type of item on there.

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fatbat
Here is the Tucows winner.
[http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&...](http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=powerjoe1998&ftab=AllFeedback&iid=120024164593)

I guess eBay was the few option available back then (fees must hurt!).

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Pwnguinz
I believe pg mentioned somewhere that they didn't actually make anything out
of the whole ordeal after paying back their investors; fees were probably the
least of their concerns ;). Still, an interesting use case of eBay.

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justin
Actually we did make something like 40k a piece after taxes. So it wasn't bad
(we were 22 at the time, seemed like a lot then!).

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mehulkar
how is it not a lot at any age?

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tlrobinson
Compared to, say, SocialCam selling for $60M.

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shanev
I was working on an Ajax (remember that word?) calendar app called Caladabra
around the same time Justin was building Kiko. I also gave up after Google
Calendar was released. Wish I had the foresight to put it on eBay! Anyway,
congrats to Justin on all his ventures. Seems like a very down to earth guy.

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wia
Being cool was Justin's answer for starting up. While it may be honest, he
could have added other thoughtful answers. More details on his first YC
interview would also be interesting, instead of saying that he didn't say much
at the interview.

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justin
If I was going to answer more thoroughly, here are my answers on why to start
something:

1) you can work on what you like, and in a way that you like 2) it's higher
beta, meaning the top outcomes are higher than working for others. 3) it is a
chance to immediately start working on a high impact idea that could change
society. There are other ways to work on high impact ideas, but often times
you need to put in a lot of time paying dues to get to the point you can work
on them. 4) if you are successful, it can be a source of mainstream fame
(think Richard Branson) -- if you care about this at all.

Here's a summary I wrote of my YC interview that I did with Emmett back in
2005: <http://areallybadidea.com/34320844>

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jaequery
i always wondered why justin.tv was called justin.tv. i love seeing founders
explain their ordeal in this manner, i'd like to see more of these.

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mladenkovacevic
What's most inspiring about this dude and his team is the seemingly endless
drive to just create more stuff.

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kobs
Good luck with EXEC, Justin! It was a pleasure working with the entire
justin.tv team in 2008.

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cabbeer
Does anyone know of anymore services like Exec and taskrabbit?

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zinssmeister
I feel like <http://postmates.com/> is sorta in the same category.

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bryogenic
More camera angles!

