- Katarina is starting a podcast called "Should This Exist?"
- The podcast aims to explore whether certain products or technologies should exist based on their potential impact and ethical implications.
- It will feature conversations with inventors, scientists, and experts from various fields.
- The show seeks to involve people who are not typically part of these conversations, such as sociologists, historians, and psychologists.
- The first episode discusses a neuropriming headset that enhances learning and its ethical implications.
- The podcast focuses on future ideas and possibilities rather than criticizing existing products.

- The video discusses the importance of having conversations about new products and technologies at an early stage, rather than criticizing existing ones.
- The focus is on optimism and exploring possibilities rather than shutting down ideas.
- Millennials and Gen Z are more engaged and want to work on projects that have a positive impact.
- Employees have the power to influence and shape the trajectory of their work.
- The founders discuss the consequences of their past decisions, such as the impact of activity feeds on social media platforms.
- The conversation also touches on the ethical considerations of investing in certain products or companies.

- The speaker values ethics and integrity at a price of 25 million dollars
- They discuss the types of investments they avoid, including gaming, due to addictive properties
- They believe in having conversations about whether certain companies should exist
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of humanizing technology and setting ethical boundaries
- They question the traditional VC model and its impact on individuals' values and goals
- The speaker shares a personal experience working on Wall Street and realizing the negative changes it brought about in their personality, leading them to quit.

- The speaker quit their job because they felt like they had become a monster and the job was not worth it
- They discuss their experience as a student and their dislike for being taught
- They believe that many entrepreneurs have a similar tendency to reject existing frameworks and forge their own path
- They mention looking up to people like Spike Jones as a model for creativity and success
- They discuss the changing culture of rebellion and how what was once rebellious is now mainstream
- The speaker homeschools their children and believes that finding inspiration and role models is something that individuals have to do for themselves.

- The speaker discusses the importance of representation and seeing people from underrepresented groups succeed in various industries.
- They mention Lea Salonga, a Filipino artist and performer, as the only woman they looked up to as a child.
- The speaker expresses gratitude for the increase in representation of women from diverse backgrounds in all industries.
- They discuss their own experience starting companies and how their existing online community helped them gain their first users.
- The speaker highlights the importance of timing and cost savings in the success of their photo-sharing platform, Flickr.
- They mention the importance of personal branding and creating something that people want when attracting investors.

- Timing is the most important factor for the success of a company, more so than the founding team or business plan
- Examples of successful companies with perfect timing include Flickr, Etsy, Kickstarter, and Cloudera
- Recognizing cultural movements and aligning with them can lead to success
- Founders should constantly ask themselves if their product or feature should exist and consider potential negative outcomes
- It is important to listen to pessimistic voices and make necessary adjustments to avoid negative outcomes.

- "Should This Exist?" is a podcast hosted by Katarina that explores the potential impact and ethical implications of products and technologies.
- The podcast features conversations with inventors, scientists, and experts from various fields, including sociologists, historians, and psychologists.
- It focuses on future ideas and possibilities rather than criticizing existing products.
- The first episode discusses a neuropriming headset and its ethical implications for learning enhancement.
- The podcast emphasizes the importance of early-stage conversations about new products and technologies.
- It promotes optimism and exploring possibilities rather than shutting down ideas.
- Millennials and Gen Z are more engaged and interested in projects that have a positive impact.
- The podcast discusses the consequences of past decisions, such as the impact of activity feeds on social media platforms.
- It also touches on the ethical considerations of investing in certain products or companies.
- The speaker values ethics and integrity, even at a price of 25 million dollars.
- They question the traditional VC model and emphasize the importance of humanizing technology and setting ethical boundaries.
- The speaker shares personal experiences working on Wall Street and the negative changes it brought about in their personality.
- They believe in rejecting existing frameworks and forging their own path, similar to many entrepreneurs.
- The speaker discusses the changing culture of rebellion and the importance of finding inspiration and role models for oneself.
- They highlight the importance of representation and seeing people from underrepresented groups succeed in various industries.
- The speaker expresses gratitude for the increase in representation of women from diverse backgrounds in all industries.
- They discuss the importance of timing, cost savings, and personal branding in the success of their own companies.
- Timing is considered the most important factor for the success of a company.
- Founders should constantly question if their product or feature should exist and consider potential negative outcomes.
- It is important to listen to pessimistic voices and make necessary adjustments to avoid negative outcomes.

Caterina Fake hosts the podcast Should This Exist? which is about how technology is impacting our humanity. It launches today on iTunes. She also cofounded Flickr, Hunch, and Findery and is an investor at Yes VC.

https://twitter.com/Caterina
http://applepodcasts.com/ShouldThisExist
https://yes.vc/

Kat Manalac is a partner at YC.

https://twitter.com/KatManalac

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

https://twitter.com/CraigCannon

***

Topics

00:00 - Caterina's new podcast, Should This Exist?

2:00 - Is there a process for considering if something should exist?

3:30 - Who should be part of these conversations?

4:45 - Wait But Why and the Human Colossus

6:50 - Episode 1 of Should This Exist?

9:45 - Having conversations before things exist

11:10 - How might employees think about their role in whether or not something should exist?

14:00 - Caterina reflecting on her creations and if they should exist

18:30 - Considering whether things should exist as investors

23:00 - Cofounder charter - What you will and won't do

25:30 - Questioning the VC model

26:50 - Working on Wall St, feeling herself change, and quitting

30:50 - Caterina as a student

33:30 - Peculiarity and entrepreneurship

34:50 - "Don't fight to win prizes that aren't worth winning"

38:00 - What was once fringe is now mainstream

40:20 - Kat looking up to Lea Salonga

42:10 - Evgeny asks - How did she get her first 100 paying users?

48:55 - How does she advise founders to find investors?

54:15 - What questions should founders ask themselves while making something?

It's been in development for several months now and we've been working on it.

It will be 10 episodes starting on the 21st, which I think was when this will go live.

And basically, it's about so much of what we do as entrepreneurs and as Y Combinator knows better than pretty much anybody, is basically making the business case for your product service startup.

And I think that we found in recent years, especially that the conversation has turned to not, can this exist?

And I think that a lot of the things that we've seen kind of come out in the world in the past several decades, sometimes they may not have been not necessarily what the founders intended, right?

It may not have been what society wanted or needed, or even individuals wanted or needed.

And if there were a slight course correction, or if the founders had just been kind of asking themselves that question, should this exist?

Should we plan this company a little bit differently to address underrepresented groups?

This has potential for increasing bias or inequality or a thousand things that we can look at that are kind of these outcomes of our paths.

And if you, as we all know, when you're doing a startup, you've already been in existence for 5 years, it's much more difficult to change your course than it is at the very outset.

So those are the questions that we are hoping to introduce into the conversation, should this exist.

So is there a process that you go through when you're trying to take apart an idea and figure out whether or not it should exist?

Well, most of it comes out in conversation.

And I think that a lot of it comes out in the conversational process that you engage in, not only with your team, right, as a founder and, you know, as a creator, inventor.

Actually, a lot of the people that we have on the show are inventors and scientists and people who are, you know, kind of just taking maybe some research or some new technology and bringing it out into the world and productizing it.

And a lot of the time, I mean, there's a lot of questions out there.

You know, there's a ton of, for example, like groups that are like kind of asking ourselves, you know, what are AI ethics?

What, like, what do we do with, how do we manage the, you know, the potential very great downsides of say CRISPR?

I mean, there's a lot going on right now.

Crypto, I mean, it's like a very, we're kind of going into realms in which we just don't have a good ethical framework to discuss them even.

And so just making the kind of question the part of the conversation very important.

I think about this a lot because I read thousands of YC applications and some of them are for really incredible technology that I'm like, wow, this could have a huge impact.

So who should be part of that conversation when you're trying to decide whether something should exist?

There's a lot of people that should be involved in that conversation.

And I do think that 1 of the benefits of this show, And 1 of the things that we're hoping to do with this show is to bring people in that are not necessarily normally part of the conversation.

You want to bring in sociologists, you want to bring in historians, you want to bring in psychologists, people who actually study a lot of the different processes, and not all of us computer scientists, user experience designers.

I mean, you know, like, I mean, I think everybody starts off with the best of intentions.

Nobody thinks that they're going to do something destructive when they start off.

And as you know, you kind of read in the poetry of like Baudelaire, that the descent to hell is by small steps, right?

Just don't, you just kind of see that happen over and over again.

And so you want to prevent the, you know, that kind of a Theranos outcome, you want to put it like all of these, these things that, you know, you kind of, you kind of get there.

Have you ever read the blog, Wait, But Why?

So Tim talks about this idea in the context of what he calls the human colossus.

And basically he says we have this divine destiny and that humans will just build.

The market doesn't necessarily push a product to a certain place.

I think that it's 1 of the great things about humankind.

And we honestly just can't help ourselves.

And I honestly think it's 1 of the best things about us, is that we're just endlessly curious.

We are kind of full of possibility and vision.

And we see something that can be changed, and we want to change it.

I think it's 1 of the best parts of our nature, but when we do that without a sense of some of the possible outcomes or even being aware of them, and nobody knows, I mean, that's why they're called unintended consequences, right?

Because they're not intended and yet, you know, but sometimes if you sit down and you really look at it, you can see them, you can see, like, if you had just kind of like taken the time, made this part of your conversation, that you could put things on a completely different trajectory if you stopped to think.

And, you know, it's actually amazing how hard that is to do.

I mean, without exception, The entrepreneurs that we've interviewed so far for the show have been, they've all said, we are so grateful for the opportunity to ask these questions and to have these conversations because in our daily work, we never have.

We aren't asked these questions by our investors.

And it puts them on much firmer ground themselves, and sometimes even exposes or kind of shows them possibilities for their products that they hadn't previously seen.

And that's super exciting when that happens.

Well, so maybe we should be more concrete.

The first episode is about, it's coming out today, if today is February 21st.

And it's about a neuropriming headset that makes you learn faster.

And it was invented by Daniel Chow, who is a neuroscientist, and he had actually done devices that were implanted in your brain that required literally opening up your head.

I mean, he's like, I mean, he's a real deal, right?

And he realized that this was an extremely frightening procedure for obvious reasons.

His prior product had been called NeuroPace and it was addressing epileptics, the kind of the medical treatment of epileptics using the electricity in your brain, right?

And which makes sense, but had been, it has been very difficult to get people over that hump of putting, literally like cutting your skull open and implanting a device in your brain.

And so he decided to go with a new product that, you know, you can still affect the brain, right?

So super interesting, a lot of ethical implications.

It's specifically designed around sports.

And if it works, so much learning could happen.

You put up, like there's this movie from the 70s called Fantastic Planet.

And literally, the people in it, in the science fiction movie, put on a headset and boom, learn everything,

And so It's kind of sci-fi in that way, right?

And so part of the reason that I love, frankly, these conversations is because they're all about that kind of possibility.

Whatever, science fiction also has a very strong utopian and dystopian kind of interest.

Like it focuses on those 2 potential outcomes frequently.

That's 1 of the things that I've learned recently that has been so interesting is that big companies are starting to hire science fiction writers.

Exactly, because that is what they have been doing.

I mean, that's kind of what their job is as science fiction writers.

They're just kind of future scenario planners.

OK, so this is kind of reframing the show to me.

I had previously thought it was more about criticizing things that currently exist.

So is that happening or is it more about future ideas?

Bennett No, no, it's more about taking something that's actually leading edge and is something that is coming soon.

Sometimes they're in market, sometimes they're still on the early development stage.

But having those conversations at the very early side of those.

Because there's a lot of criticism online of things that already exist.

And I think that if you read your op-ed of your daily paper, you will find a lot of that.

But what we're trying to do is really kind of start at where we are with new products.

And in some ways, it's kind of the most fun.

I mean, you could just sit around and criticize the existing technology all day long.

I mean, and it's actually very gratifying to do that in some ways.

In a mean, putting down celebrities kind of way.

But I think that the goal of this show is actually much more about possibility, right, than shutting stuff down.

So this is a little bit of a side note, but I did have a question about current existing technologies.

So if you say were an employee at a company where you're like, I don't know if this should exist.

Because it's no longer like if you're working at a hardware store 50 years ago and you're like, I don't know, I just sell like screws and hammers and nails and whatever.

You're like, you know, kind of like doing no harm.

I mean, you know, obviously you can harm somebody with a hammer.

Maybe you're like, oh, I sold screws to a serial killer.

But now you're like, okay, I think maybe 5 years ago people might say like, I don't know, you know, I'm just like an employee at this company and I'm just whatever.

I mean, I think that 1 of the great things about millennials, and what are we calling the people that come after them

And then there's the 1 that there's like, you know, after.

So kids today, whatever you call them these days, are super engaged and want to know that the things that they're working on have merit, are putting things on a good trajectory, have positive impact and not negative impact.

And you see this happening over and over again.

You see organizations rising up to help people inside of organizations communicate with each other and figure out how to communicate this to senior management, etc.

So I think it's a huge movement and I think that people have started to realize as employees of large companies that they also have the power to say, no, no, like it should not exist this way.

And actually be part of that influence and conversation and kind of actually set the trajectory of their work.

It's really, you know, it's the work that you do every day.

I think that we all recognize that a lot of the time, those of us who are so lucky to earn paychecks working in technology, which is a privilege, and most people do not have this privilege and so we should consider ourselves extremely lucky, are able to, with our work, and you can kind of see, change the world, right?

And kind of this has always been the promise of Silicon Valley.

We're here, we're going to change the world, right?

Are you changing the world for the better?

I mean, yes, you're changing the world, right?

Everybody's changing the world with their work every day.

And are you changing that world for the better or not?

And you want to be always making sure that you bring your moral compass to work with you.

Yeah, and absolutely, and you have a choice.

I know many people at companies who feel like they got lucky and they just ended up there.

And they're like, oh, I don't know, I might be part of this machine, but I don't know if I can be part of another machine anymore.

But I think as people start to think about stuff, they do end up moving on.

But I was curious about you as a founder, did you ever look back, and maybe even on projects, where you're like, I don't know.

Edith Warren if that was a decision that should have been made.

Well, sometimes you can't see the consequences of it.

So for example, if you go back to my Flickr photo stream to around 2004, you'll see the design.

I posted it up there I think in 2008 or something like that, of the first activity feed.

I never called it a feed, I called it recent activity, because a feed always reminded me of animals at a trough.

Subsequently, And this was a significant thing.

It was kind of reverse cron that we had seen in blogs.

And The difference was it included activity from other people in your social network.

It was the first time that this had actually kind of appeared.

And so you would see people liking your photo.

You would see when your friends had posted a photo and all that kind of thing.

And you know, you could just basically see activity as it was happening on the system.

And it's interesting because this was then adopted by Facebook subsequently, but the changes that were made there were very significant.

We could see it all the way along the way.

We could see that, oh, suddenly they're reordering things based on people's attention, not on chronology, Right?

We saw that and we're like, whoa, that is not good.

Because suddenly if you have somebody, you know, it's kind of the same thing on, you know, kind of television.

What gets your attention is not necessarily the thing that you should be paying attention to.

It's a security hack of your biology, is kind of how I think about it.

Because you're just kind of as a human animal, You know, you're like, you know, you see like naked people, you are not going to not look at that.

You see a car accident, you're not going to not look at that.

I mean, it goes back to the early days of newspapers.

And so once you start organizing things not based on simply I am interested in following this person.

I'm interested in what they have to say, exciting or boring, right?

And then kind of making it so that not only is it the most attention-getting things are promoted, but you can buy your way there.

So it's like I think that a recent activity, reverse cron list, I don't think there's that much wrong with it until you start adapting it in these somewhat nefarious ways.

So you see some of the inventions that you can't.

But then you go back, I mean you could look at, I forget what year it was, but then there was the rise of things like Upworthy.

that was like the early days, like oh we can sensationalize positive things and get in the feed before you had to buy your, Because as soon as you switched to pay promotion of your Facebook page, it changed the game.

Like you didn't get any activity in the feed unless you bought your way to the feed.

I know, and it was kind of a tragic thing to see a network that was yours.

Like this is your cousin and your sister and your coworker and your friend.

And then suddenly like, yeah, they're gone.

And so, I mean, you know, Yes, you can sensationalize worthy things as well.

But I think that the problem is in the verb sensationalize, attentionify.

But now both of you guys are doing this as investors, right?

How do you think about, oh, I don't know, maybe this shouldn't exist or maybe because –

Because like honestly, it's super interesting.

And he was introduced to Juul, which is the cigarettes, right?

And the way he was pitched this was, it's a great product.

Like fewer people will smoke as a result of using Joel.

And he was kind of like, okay, well that's an interesting claim.

But then why would you start a smoking company to like have there be less smoking, if you know what I'm saying?

And so he… and then he kind of looked into it and he was like… In no way are they actually explaining the addictive properties of nicotine.

Like there's, you know, 5 million new smokers because of this single product, a single product.

And they recently got investment from Philip Morris.

And so he could have, at the very early stages of Juul, because he happened to meet them really early, have invested $250,000 in this company, which would now be worth $25 million.

He said, and I thought this was super interesting, I never had put a price on my ethics and integrity before, but I now know.

And so I think sometimes, like, yes, you can totally get rich by burning down the rainforest and kind of creating sexist media and, you know, all kinds of things that you can invest in.

Do you invest in them is the question, right?

And I think that at YesVC, I'm an investor and my firm is called YesVC.

I think we have generally, you know, certain categories that we won't invest in.

The LPs have rules that you can't invest in guns.

But like we don't invest in gaming, right?

And the reason that we don't is because it's like a lot of the time it's like, you know, it's like it has all the same mechanisms as addictive gambling and things like that.

And like a lot of times it's just like Las Vegas for children.

And you realize that the same mechanisms that are, you know, the security exploits, frankly that social media has taken advantage of, are, which, that's a whole nother conversation that we can have about my opinions of social media.

You know, we just don't wanna be in that kind of atmosphere if it has those kinds of properties, right?

It's just a category that I'm not against games, you know.

I'm like a, you know, give me some Settlers of Contamination.

But I'm not in the business of creating these, you know, addictive-like behaviors.

So and the gaming category is full of that.

And I mean, that's why I like the concept of this show that you're doing a lot, because I think more of those conversations about should we fund this, should we be part of this, you know, oftentimes, you know, since we're so early, you know, we're the first, you know, check for the first money in.

Because you're basically putting the Y Combinator seal of approval on every company that you invest in.

We too, we're like putting a Yes VC seal of approval on every company that we endorse.

Tricky things have happened at YC, Absolutely, where a company pivots and you're like, oh boy, that was not the intended consequence of the 120 grand at the time.

And you can kind of disavow them, try to go in and coach them and whatnot.

But I think that part of the Y Combinator conversation should be in the should this exist direction.

And I think it's also important that another thing too is that we have a, we wrote this thing called the founder, the co-founder charter, which is a conversation that co-founders have, and I'm sure that Y Combinator has some version of this as well, where you kind of set out your expectations, your hopes and dreams for the company, and where you would want to go.

But I think it's really important also to put down in that document what you will and won't do.

If you're in AI, or you're in CRISPR, or you're in 1 of these kind of emerging categories, it's like an ethical minefield, Really know where you will and won't go.

Do you make all of the founders that you invest in fill out this charter?

I mean, It's kind of offered and we kind of have the conversation.

We encourage that conversation, it's not required.

But I think that our founders tend to be of a certain kind.

And if you look at all of my prior companies, my prior investments, they do have a certain flavor.

There's a certain ethos that they have in common.

It was a very human community, very creative, very communicative.

And other companies that I've been part of include Etsy, where I was the fourth or fifth person there on the founding team and then became the chairman up through its, I mean, you know.

And then other companies that I have funded, like Kickstarter, they have a very, I think, human ethos.

And the kind of technology that I've always hoped to build, and part of the reason I'm doing this podcast is that I've always seen a big part of my job, as me catering a fake, is actually to humanize technology.

And it has a tendency to do that if it goes in certain directions.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Caterina Fake on Her New Podcast, Should This Exist? With Kat Manalac