The Pioneer
The frontier and an appetite for the unknown, goes first.
Emmett Shear fits The Pioneer archetype because his career is defined by entering unmapped territory before markets validate it. He co-founded Justin.
“Yeah, our thought process was well, we don't want to do this anymore. We've built this thing and the code's fine. It works. It is a calendar. It's a web calendar that exists. Someone must want this. Where can we sell our startup?”
“It's interesting, right? It was a stunt. I think we learned something from the eBay experience, which was if you do something that's a little bit provocative and crazy that people want to talk about, people will talk about you. So that definitely worked.”
“This is actually just how I would say a lot of angel investing in Silicon Valley, or in this case in Cambridge, but like tech angel investing works. In the beginning, the investable asset is not the idea and it's not the execution and it's not the research or whatever.”
“I mean, I used to get that question every interview. Then usually, what I would do actually is I'd ask them, well, first of all, just tell me, what do you watch TV? Oh, well, what do you watch? Oh, you like watching the NFL. You like watching football. Oh, interesting. Well, it turns out people who like video games do the same thing.”
YC Root Access: “Lecture 16 - How to Run a User Interview (Emmett Shear)”
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE