The speaker discusses the struggle for interestingness in video content and the need to address this in order to succeed. They mention Snapchat's lenses as a solution to this struggle. They also talk about the challenges of creating a platform for live video and the importance of designing for civil discourse and community moderation. The speaker mentions their product, Beam Panels, which focuses on opinion-based discussions. They also discuss the integration of media and technology in the company and the challenges of managing disparate teams. The speaker concludes by discussing the creative output of the company and the importance of consistently putting out creative work.

- The speaker discusses their creative process and how they work best alone rather than in groups.
- They emphasize the importance of removing obstructions, such as discussions and involving others, in order to be productive and creative.
- The speaker finds finishing a video and uploading it to be a source of energy and satisfaction.
- They also discuss the challenges of scaling their creative process and how they rely on their skilled media team to help them.
- The second speaker talks about their approach to engineering and coding, emphasizing the importance of listening to one's own body and taking breaks when needed.
- They also mention the importance of getting enough sleep and exercise to be a functional human.
- The speakers give advice to early stage founders, including the importance of selling and creating psychology in potential investors or suitors.
- They share anecdotes about their experiences pitching their product and the acquisition process.

- The speaker needed help setting up email accounts and felt insecure about it
- Investors care more about the founder's potential for success than their coding abilities
- Gary Vaynerchuk invested in the speaker's product despite not fully understanding it
- The speaker and their partner relied on each other during the sales process
- They learned from their mistakes and developed a routine for pitching
- The importance of practicing pitches with people who are not potential investors
- Understanding the different types of "no" responses from investors
- The speaker received valuable advice and support from mentors during the fundraising process

- The speaker praises a venture capitalist for taking a chance on them and being decisive in their investment.
- They describe a maniac-like person who was successful in fundraising due to his blind passion and ability to raise large amounts of money.
- The speaker learned to rely on their partner to stay level-headed in meetings and to have confidence in their own presence in powerful rooms.
- The advice given includes the importance of brute force and hard work in achieving success, as well as the need to ask for what you want directly and respect other people's time.
- The speaker shares their experience with the acquisition process, emphasizing the need to approach potential buyers as if fundraising rather than selling the company.

- The process of pursuing potential acquisition opportunities involved 4 months of conversations with 8 to 10 different companies.
- The conversations had to be indirect, using terms like "deeper partnership" or "strategic involvement" instead of directly saying they were selling the company.
- The decision to pursue acquisition opportunities was made in the spring and led to a meeting with Jeff Zucker, where they directly asked him to buy their technology company.
- The acquisition process involved formal meetings, interviews, and evaluations of the technology they had built.
- They leveraged conversations with other companies to create a sense of urgency and confidence in their negotiations.
- Advisors, including Renee Rinesberg and Merrick, provided guidance and support throughout the acquisition process.
- The psychology of the process, especially with the team, was challenging, and transparency was important but difficult to navigate.
- The team was kept informed as certainty increased, but only with actionable information.
- The process lasted for months and involved financial struggles and uncertainty for the company.

- The speaker and his partner decided to rent two mansions in the Dominican Republic and fly the entire team there for a vacation to improve team dynamics and communication.
- They couldn't be completely honest with the team about the company's situation, but asked for their confidence and support.
- The speaker had a mindset of ensuring that everyone on the team would land in a great job if things didn't work out.
- Despite the challenges and uncertainties, the team remained cohesive and no one left.
- The speaker is now learning how to run a media company and navigating the differences between technology and media.
- He is adjusting to a long-term mindset and focusing on building a successful company for the future.
- The speaker is also learning about the differences between engineering and media processes and how they can be applied in different contexts.
- He finds it easier to create content when working alone, as there are fewer considerations and intellectualization involved.
- The speaker is excited about learning how to manage a more structured and managed environment.

The speaker discusses their long-term goals and plans for the future, including moving to Los Angeles, raising their kids outside of the city, and starting a completely different career. They emphasize the importance of planning and taking action to turn ideas into reality.

- The speaker discusses the struggle for interestingness in video content and the need to address this in order to succeed.
- They mention Snapchat's lenses as a solution to this struggle.
- The challenges of creating a platform for live video and the importance of designing for civil discourse and community moderation are discussed.
- The speaker mentions their product, Beam Panels, which focuses on opinion-based discussions.
- The integration of media and technology in the company and the challenges of managing disparate teams are discussed.
- The importance of consistently putting out creative work is emphasized.
- The speakers give advice to early stage founders, including the importance of selling and creating psychology in potential investors or suitors.
- The speaker shares anecdotes about their experiences pitching their product and the acquisition process.
- The speaker discusses their long-term goals and plans for the future, including moving to Los Angeles, raising their kids outside of the city, and starting a completely different career.

Matt Hackett and Casey Neistat are the cofounders of Beme, which was acquired by CNN last year - https://beme.com/

You might already know Casey from his YouTube channel which now has over 8M subscribers - https://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat

And before Beme, Matt was a Hacker-in-Residence at betaworks and the VP of Engineering at Tumblr - https://twitter.com/mhkt

YC's podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - http://twitter.com/craigcannon

I mean, didn't Google just announce last week some clip on camera that captures what's in front of you?

In typical Google form, they pitched it though, as like, this is the center of our AI learning platform about the world, which is the same marketing mistake they made with everyone wants a face computer.

No, everyone does not want a face computer.

Everyone does not want an AR learning camera clipped to their chest.

But they probably do actually want a camera.

I think from purely a creative perspective, I think that the struggle for interestingness, that's a line that we used to use a lot when we were pitching, but like solving the struggle for interestingness from a video perspective is paramount to having anything succeed.

And I think what Snapchat did that was so amazing beyond the story mechanism being so fascinating, but like I dismissed lenses as kind of a gimmick when it first came out.

But what lenses did was it solved the struggle for interestingness from both the creator's perspective and the viewer's perspective.

And I think the trouble that we're seeing, certainly we saw at Beam, that they're seeing with spectacles, and that I think every single live platform, none of which have truly succeeded yet, is because they don't address that struggle for interestingness.

And I think that The reason why video games have succeeded in the live space is because they do.

It's a game and I get to see your face playing it.

There's, that's, that's dealing with the struggle for interestingness.

But I think broadly live is too wide open.

And I think what we were trying to do with Beam like, it's 1 of the things we talked about, should be a 4 second clip or a 6 second clip.

So if you string a bunch of them together, it needs to feel fun like you're watching an edited movie.

Watching people's raw lives got boring quickly.

So how are you going to deal with that in the future if you're handling multiple feeds from all over the world?

So with the product, we learned a lot with Beam V1 that we imported to a much, much smaller problem set, which is what we're dealing with in panels, the product that's out now.

It's what is your opinion on these 5 stories today, these things happening in the world.

We want it to be this place where you get to actually see the full spectrum of perspectives on an issue that might be controversial, that might be, you know, what do you think about the Republican health care proposal, to actually see what a civil debate in video looks like on that.

And the reason, the way we made it more interesting is it's just really contained.

So I think we took a lot of the little product cues about how to set someone up in a context both to create and consume, in which they're going to be articulate and pointed and fast.

And there's some ways that we actually try and guide you towards creating something that's really compelling.

Like, we're not trying to make this, that's not the platform for everything you could possibly take a video of in the world it is what do you think about this new story?

Yeah it's it's it's if you hand someone a camera and say say something interesting they have no idea what to say but if you hand someone a camera and say you know what do you think about the latest health care proposal they might they'll probably have something to say and That something will be tied to a specific narrative.

So that is an attempt at addressing that struggle for interestingness.

Right, I mean it's tricky, because it seems that the internet deviates towards kind of a shit show most of the time.

So generous, You said that so generously.

Yeah, you'll get annihilated in the algorithm for that.

But I agree, comments are absolutely toxic.

If you go into your community settings on the left-hand side, you can go down, you can highlight words, and if any of those words pop up, those comments will be automatically hidden.

So if you were to go into my library of those words, you would find the most disgusting dictionary, bibliography of words that humans have ever, ever uttered.

And the funny thing about that is people who use the kind of slurs and profanities that I have blocked, they also don't know how to spell those slurs or profanities.

So you have to come up with every spelling of every derogatory word you could ever identify because they don't know how to spell well.

I mean, here's the thing about that, though.

I think it's really easy, and I especially think for people our age who sort of grew up on the very early internet, which was a very, very small place compared to the almost half the world that has access to it now.

There's this easy thing to go like, oh, it's just the internet.

I actually think we, as people who make products, need to stop thinking like that and start thinking about Now the entire world now has access to this thing.

Purposefully so that that doesn't happen.

People to not be harassed to actually have a civil discourse If you're designing a social product and you kind of just throw your hands up and go, that's the internet, you're wrong.

Like that is not the era we live in and we need to take on that responsibility as people who make these things.

Who just said, somebody smart just said, I used to go to the internet to escape the real world and now I go to the real world to escape the internet.

I saw a tweet was floating around but I think that that pretty much sums it up.

And so is it just like heavily community moderated?

Like how do you guys, because this is like obviously a contentious opinion.

How do you put these ideas into your product?

Yeah, I mean, there's no 1 answer and I don't think we, I'm not gonna come and say like, here's exactly what we're doing, and it's perfect.

What we're doing right now with panels is we're very purposefully building it slowly.

You have to sign up, give us some info about yourself, and we're trying to let people in in real demographic balance.

We're trying to, you know, in general tech early adopters tends to skew a little bit male.

We're trying to make sure that that doesn't skew the community and so we actually set up a place where when we do open the doors fully, it is something where you're like, oh, all kinds of opinions are welcome here.

Trolling doesn't work and isn't going to get me attention.

So moderation is definitely a piece of that, but it's every aspect of the product design and every aspect of how you build the community, which I don't think at this point you can just have, okay, we'll just let everyone on and free for all and we'll moderate out the bad stuff.

You need to be thinking a lot more carefully.

Yeah, and you're also building like a media plus product company.

I mean, they're kind of wrapped together.

Do you see the world shifting towards that?

You know, like controlling your content and making lots of content that people like while also building product?

Yeah, I mean, I think that almost every media company right now, their technology products are just a device to further disseminate the media that they're making.

There isn't a holistic consideration of how can the media and then the technology they're using to promote that media, how can they have a more symbiotic relationship?

And I think that's easy to talk about that problem, it's very hard to talk about solutions.

And I think panels, beam panels is a very literal version of integrating those 2.

But I can tell you plainly that it's very hard to realize.

Like the way we've integrated Beam thus far into our content I think is boring.

I think it's much more interesting to explain it.

Like we have this crowdsourcing product that we can have people chiming in from around the world and instead of having panelists that are old bearded men, we have panelists from all around the world.

But then when you see the reality of it, you're like, I don't care.

So these are very challenging problems to solve.

And I think, again, the benefit that we have here is that we are trying to solve them from day 1.

We're trying to solve them proactively instead of reactively.

We're not going to be backing our successful big media company into solving these problems.

We're building a company around those problems.

And is managing these like disparate kinds of teams new and weird for you?

Or have you felt like you figured it out so far?

No, I mean, I absolutely, it is new and weird.

You know, I think I've always been on the other sort of the other arrangement where we have like we have technology team where people or I work on a technology product or run a team that makes technology product that lots of media gets made with, never having both of those under the same roof.

So every single day it's on that very basic thing that I was talking about of getting people in the newsroom to realize that this can change, that we are in 100% control of the product we're using, that requires daily reminders, rejiggering of the way that we work, figuring out, all right, how do we actually get a producer who sits not just on the news team, but also with the product team and actually gathers feedback, brings it into the actual product, the perspective of, hey, I have to make a video and it's due tomorrow.

And I would love to include people from panels, but these 10 things don't work.

I don't think there are many people who have tried to do both simultaneously like this.

My response to that question is that Matt does a great job.

So kind of transitioning, but something that I also think is really cool about you guys is just like overall creative output.

Like when you started vlogging, because I've known Matt for a while, but like he started talking about you to me and he's like, oh yeah man, he's doing videos every day.

And like having made some videos myself, I was like, holy shit, this is a lot of work and this is a lot of editing and 1 of the common questions throughout all the the Twitter responses to us was about like creative process and creative energy and you guys have any like rituals or practices to just consistently put out creative work, both on the engineering side and video side?

I mean, on the video side, that's something I can speak to very well.

The ritualistic aspect of what I do is entirely wrapped in kind of my own self-reliance.

And 1 thing that's been made abundantly clear to me is I'm working with this big, unbelievably talented, skillful media team here at Beam is that I'm a very effective person when I'm by myself.

And when I have to work in groups, like I fall to pieces.

Like does not work well with others is what it said in every report card I got until I dropped out of high school in the 10th grade.

So For me, that creative process is 1 where, and finding that cadence that you talked about of making a video every day, was 1 where I removed every obstruction between me and finishing it.

And other people are the biggest obstructions.

I have an idea, well let's talk through that idea.

And the metaphor that I use of discussing ideas and groups is like when an idea at its inception It's an ice cube and it's rock-hard and you can look at it You can see it and you can study it You know what it is But when a discussion begins you have to pass that ice cube around the room It starts to melt and melt and melt and after enough discussions the ice cube's gone and everybody's hands are wet and nobody quite remembers what that idea was.

So for me when it comes to creation, like remove that obstruction.

Don't talk, don't involve other people, don't need anything from anyone to realize this new video every 24 hours and that's wildly effective.

It seems to crush you too, just like actual time and energy.

It's like, that's like an energy source for me.

It's like, aren't you so tired because you run a dozen miles a day?

It's like, no, I'm not tired because I run a dozen miles a day.

Like, no, I'm not crushed because I made my video.

Like the days that I'm down are days that I don't finish anything.

And there is that sort of dopamine rush you get when you finish something and there's no greater sort of punctuation to finishing something than clicking upload and sending it out to millions of people.

So no, like that's a power source for me.

What's crushing is like now we're trying to scale that and if there's 1 thing I'm hyper aware of it's my own limitations creatively, editorially, I have a lot of them.

And the people we have here working on our media department, especially in the editorial side, are way more skilled than I could ever be, as far as a journalist goes.

Incredibly smart, articulate, capable, amazing on camera, better looking people than I could ever.

So then how do I sort of impart my understanding that I've gotten via 8000000 subscribers and 800 videos, how do I share that understanding and scale at least some part of that with this incredibly capable team?

And I think the answer to that is something that we've been working towards for the last

I mean, I'll talk about engineering and like coding, building a product, because at this point I'm, at this point in my career, I'm a manager and like that's a very different, it is a very different skill set and it's something that you need to work on a different way.

But I don't think that's quite as interesting probably to the early stage founder as that I'm the technical half of the team and holy shit, we have to have this thing ready for an Apple keynote and what am I going to do?

So that's the context I would give this advice in.

And to me, when that was me, when I was sitting there going, oh yeah, we have this Apple presentation and I have to hot glue this app together so that we can show it to them so that they'll get excited and maybe, maybe include us in this keynote.

The thing that I always try to pay attention to is just listening to my own body and head.

And this is something that I think all of the, not all, but a lot of the startup rhetoric will push you away from and just say like, you know, crush it, drink a Monster Energy drink, stay up all night, deliver it.

And there is, you know, once a year max where that's actually effective and that's the right thing to do.

Most of the time, If you sit down and the code's not coming, it's just, you're struggling, you shouldn't be doing it.

Like, step away, go for a walk, come back in half an hour, try again.

Go do something else that's mindless, get your head off of it.

But Programming is like a deeply draining, incredibly mentally complex task and doing it 12, 14 hours a day, you're not getting 12 or 14 hours of work and you're just completely fooling yourself.

So, actually listen to what your head is telling you.

You go like, all right, I'm not doing this 100% right now.

And what's your equivalent to Casey's running?

My equivalent to Casey's running is I am, so unlike Casey, I need like, I need 7 hours of sleep.

And like those are, that's basic, basic, basic context for being a functional human for me.

I mean, it took many years to get to that point where I'm like, that's what I need.

That's why I'm not functional in the weeks that I'm not functional, but it's just like that is baseline that needs to happen or Nothing else.

what else can we I want to talk to early stage founders?

Yeah That's what I want to talk to you right now.

Well, I mean they're broad there are plenty of broad questions around advice, right, for starting a company.

Let's do advice supported by funny anecdotes.

Do you want me to start with a funny anecdote?

When Matt and I were first pitching the very first iteration of Beam, which is like Matt coded it and it was mostly just duct tape and spit.

It was glued together, it was a framer demo that we were pretending was an app.

Yeah, it was, we, you know, It was a series of, what do you call it, an email feed or something, a series of cells, I guess.

And you would press on a cell and a video would start playing.

We figured out that when we would hand it to someone who would be an investor, after they'd scroll up and scroll down, their finger would typically be over the sixth cell.

So therefore, under the sixth cell, under each cell we had videos that we meant to feel live, but were actually pre-recorded and edited and manipulated and put in there.

Under that sixth cell was a Google class video of Jack, who worked with us at the time, being pulled over by a police officer and the interaction of him talking his way out of a ticket.

It's like bright lights, red and blue, like nothing more interesting.

So when we hand it to an investor, they would thumb through and invariably hold down on that sale and they'd be like, whoa, what's happening here?

And Matt and I would have this dog and pony show.

We'd lean over the table and be like, oh my God, oh that's Jack.

And be like, yeah, the crazy stuff that pops up in this feed.

And like that was, you wouldn't believe it.

That was like, that was the kind of, the kind of theatrics that we would put on.

To me, it's reminiscent of like the stories of Steve Jobs' first demo for the iPhone where if you didn't follow this specific path through the product demo the entire OS would collapse and that was that was some some of the Dog and pony show that we didn't reverse for sharing what the app was capable of or what our hopes for

yeah Well, Well, then you also had like dog and pony show before CNN, right?

So, I mean, we should talk about the acquisition too.

I think the thing that you, especially if you're an engineer and you're approaching these things, you're like, you don't think about all of these interactions are sales processes.

Like every single time you talk to someone external, whether it's a potential investor, you are selling.

And I think it's really hard for engineers to get that mindset, because they're like, If I make a good thing, it will sell itself, or my co-founder will sell it.

It is every single interaction, you are selling.

Running a fundraising process, running an acquisition process, mechanically and what it's like in the room there a little bit different, but essentially it's the same thing.

And selling isn't just performing, and it's not acting a certain way.

It is getting as much information as possible about the other party, what they want, how they think, what motivates them, what's going to make them feel like they're going to miss out if they don't do something with you.

And that's exactly the same for fundraising as it is for the acquisition process.

We figured out ways to create psychology in the people we were trying to sell, where they really, really thought

had to work with us and this was an opportunity and a window that was gonna close.

Yeah, it's Robert McNamara's rules of war.

And in our case, it was always, for me, the psychological approach was always sort of empathizing with either the people we were asking for money from when we were raising or potential suitors when it was acquisition time.

But I think that was something that was really, really effective.

And honestly, this sounds naive or almost a bit of a platitude, but it's like, once I realized what demonstrating the passion behind what we were doing, the effectiveness of that, I leaned on Matt really hard for the first phase of fundraising because of my own insecurities about my lack of technical understanding.

And to quantify my lack of technical understanding, I have 0, 0 technical understanding.

Matt has to help me set up my email accounts.

And I used to look to Matt, and it was only through the process that I realized that any investors, any understanding realizes that a good founder will hire the best engineers, engineers that are better than he or she is, and they really don't give a shit about how well you can write code.

They care if you will succeed or if you will not succeed.

And Gary Vaynerchuk, who really is all he's cracked up to be.

I say that with no hesitation, extraordinary human being.

But Gary's 1 of the first people I met with, and I pitched the product to him by myself as best I could.

At the end of that pitch, he had this look on his face and I looked at him and said, you don't have any idea what this is, do you?

And then he said, put me down for half a million.

He said, because I bet on the jockey, not on the horse.

And that was extremely telling for me because I think to hear Matt's story and what Matt represents and why he's doing this and then from me, it is a much more compelling story, a much more compelling narrative than what we saw the potential of our products, of our product at the time.

And so were you relying on each other during that sales process?

Because I know for people who don't know you, you're a very, very personable person and not just this engineer guy who sits in the corner all the time.

But it's just like, yeah, I mean, it's obvious through the podcast, but for those of you who don't know, because like what have you learned from Casey in this whole process?

Obviously you're an interesting person, YouTube does really well, you're captivating and now you have a crazy reach.

Were you guiding this fundraising process or were you relying on each other?

Yeah, I mean we're absolutely relying on each other.

And I think the thing about the fundraising acquisition process both is we developed an ad for both of them.

It was like the first time we did it, it was a disaster.

Investor, you know, sitting at Sequoia, and 1 of the Sequoia partners asks a question, and we both like look at each other and start to answer at the same time.

So, but no, but it took, I mean, A, so the pro tip on fundraising, actually like those kinds of sales processes, like start with someone you, and don't, this is something, someone gave us this advice, but like start with someone you don't care about,

don't think is gonna, you know, You know them well enough to know they're not going to invest.

Or don't shoot for the moon and then screw it up, but the first person you talk to should be someone who you know is going to say no, so that you can get all the jitters out, you can try the act.

And literally what we would do is, you know, we drove all around the valley for our fundraising and we would go to a meeting, you know, have this very typical hour meeting with a partner at a VC firm, and then we would go as far away as we could.

So we would go to like a donut shop where we knew nobody from

There's 1 in Redwood City, in fact, that we probably had, I don't know, 10 hours of conversation in.

But we literally go to this donut shop, sit down, and debug the entire meeting.

We would just go there and go like, okay, that part where you jumped in and said X, that was perfect, we need to do more of that, or we got too much in the weeds when they asked this question, like, actually Casey, you should just take that 1 and kill it immediately.

And I'll say that Sep Kambar, who was my MIT professor, and 1 of the earliest investors, the first investor and what ended up being Beam, he said to me, he was like, practice your pitch on people that you don't want money from.

Don't practice on friends, practice on real world.

And when he said this to me, I rolled my eyes.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Casey Neistat and Matt Hackett on Live Video's Struggle for Interestingness