YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Citron

lines on the record: 119
first: 2022-03-07
most recent: 2022-03-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, so the idea was we have a new device in an iPhone, and how could we make a game that takes advantage of the device in a fun and interesting way? And so like, what was unique about an iPhone is it had an accelerometer, so you could turn the device sideways, and it had contact lists. So your friends were already sort of there. So we decided to build essentially a puzzle game, effectively imagine Tetris, but with a kind of Lord of the Rings aesthetic with some role-playing mechanics you could level up and unlock characters and compete against other people. And you could turn the phone sideways to kind of change the direction of how the board moved. And it was pretty popular. We won a bunch of awards for it, but it didn't end up becoming the business that we thought it would be.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Launch a new business. And so I saw the App Store and I was like, oh my gosh, this might be the opportunity to launch the video games business. We shut down the Uno game and started packing on an iPhone title before they were even any tools to do it. And we ended up launching a game the day the App Store opened about five months later. We were one of the first 50 titles on the App Store. And I remember thinking if we get a thousand players in the first week, that would be incredible. And we got 1,000 in the first hour. And I was like, oh, this is something.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did pretty well. We had, I think, maybe 10,000 people using it and playing Uno with each other. And the interesting thing here is we were working on it for probably. Couple months, I think. And then Steve Jobs announced the App Store. And I remember, you know, watching the keynote, I think that was in early 2008. He announced the App Store. And I just remember listening to that going like, holy smokes, this is going to be like a new game console launching. And what I mean by that is like, you know, whenever a new video game console launches, that's the opportunity for a new video game studio to get started because there aren't 200 games available. Like, you know, when the PlayStation 3 claims that comes out or, you know, one of these new systems, it's just a handful of titles. And so if you can be a launch title, you can get a lot of distribution because you'll get a lot of awareness because the console makers will push the games. And so it's a great opportunity to”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was on Beb Which was a different social network at the time. This was back when it wasn't clear which social network was going to be the one that everyone used.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I built it. But I realized that there were so many things about that interaction that were just not what people wanted. So we ended up building a kind of multiplayer Uno game where you could.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, this was like back when Flash was new and webcams were kind of new. Turns out it's a horrible idea. We actually shut it down the day that we launched it. Like, no one wanted to do this.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we had a year to come up with something. And so the first idea that I worked on was an online dating site where you could place your raids with people to kind of get to know them.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Peter Rellin. Yeah. He was a technologist himself who had started a company and been pretty successful and was looking to do something and had this idea to help up-and-coming entrepreneurs like programmers like learn how to build and launch companies. But that ended up being one of the best decisions. And fortuitous situations of my life.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get some cheese or something from the fridge, and he's sitting and talking with another one of the kids on the couch explaining how his uncle's looking for folks who want to start a company. And I just remember stopping and being like, hi. Can I meet your uncle? And so we got to talking. And that was kind of how I got into Silicon Valley. It was another one of these like totally accidental situations.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the funny story is so I had moved to Berkeley because I wanted to kind of be in more of a social environment. You know, I was 20 at the time, moved to the Bay Area, basically didn't know anybody. And after living by myself for nine months or something, I was like, I want to go be somewhere where I can make more friends. Since I was kind of the same age as the fourth year students over Berkeley, I found some house in Berkeley where there were like nine other college kids living and I got a room in there with them to like make friends. And one of the folks who was living there had an uncle who was starting a tech incubator. And I remember I was like walking to the kitchen.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have a great idea and you can actually bring it to life, you can convince total strangers to give you money, join your project. And so this notion that you have to go to a great school, it didn't end up being a thing for me, you know, at least. And lots of people that I know didn't go to great schools and they're super successful.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I don't know. Maybe that was the case. But I think at some level, one of the great things about Silicon Valley, I think, at least from my point of view, is that it's kind of really just about what you can do. And not really about where you're from. There tends to be some of this, like, you know, if you're from a more prestigious school, maybe you have like the network that helps you. But at the end of the day, like the beauty of Silicon Valley is that.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's exactly what happened. You know, I think higher education is kind of an interesting part of society because In reality, you know, I'm now like almost 20 years removed from all of this. And when I work with people, the school they went to like never comes up, right? It's like. What can you do? What do you know?”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big part of it was helping people around town learn to use computers. And then from the programming stuff, it was, I would like to meet people on the internet who were in these programming communities who were like looking for people to help them build websites. And I was like, I can do that. And so I met a bunch of different people who contracted me to build websites for them. And actually, I remember the first time that I was trying to get paid, I went and talked to my parents and I was like, hey, mom and dad, like I need to be able to accept like a couple thousand bucks from someone on the internet. Like, how do I do that? And they actually, they actually thought I was selling drugs or something because they were like, how are you getting paid online? I was like, no, no, and like I showed them. I was like, no, look, this is all this computer programming stuff I've been doing. And they're like, oh, that's great. And so they helped me set up like a PayPal account.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in high school, I built a couple video games, but I also learned how to build my pages. And I also, I think part of it, you know, when you think about Was something my dad taught me early on was got to have a skill that you can use to make money So I kind of that all kind of compounded.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Circle on it, and I just like lost myself. I was like, this is amazing. Like, holy crap, like, you can actually make video games. And I just became obsessed with computer programming.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a funny story. Actually, so this was shortly after we moved to Florida, and this is one of those things where it's like if my family hadn't moved to Florida, like maybe this would never have happened and my whole life would have been different. But I ended up making a bunch of friends in eighth grade when I moved there and had a slumber party for my 13th birthday. And everybody sort of fell asleep except for me and one other guy. And we were sitting around talking and he's like, I know how to make video games. And of course, I'm like, no, you don't. Like you're lying. Like you don't know how to make video games. And he says, no, no. I really know how to make video games. And so we installed this thing called QBasic on my computer, which was like a very basic kind of computer programming environment. And he starts typing in some commands on the computer and starts drawing these little circles on the screen. I mean, imagine like the lamest graphics you could possibly imagine, like a black screen with like a little...”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was in middle school, we had a phone in the kitchen with a very long cord. And when a friend would call, I take the phone attached to that cord, down the hall, and into a closet where I could close the door for privacy. Every now and again my mom or dad would pick up the phone in the middle of my conversation and I would say mom I'm on the phone. Now right at the start of the pandemic a version of this exact scenario played out except this time I was the one intruding on my child and he wasn't even on the phone. He was at his desk on his computer playing Minecraft wearing a headset and mic. I walked into his room, started asking him some questions when he looked at me in horror and said Dad I'm talking to my friends and I could hear little voices coming out of his headset, multiple voices.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I started the company in 2012, the idea was eventually to build a games distribution business. And so fast forward to 2018, realizing that it wasn't going to work and isn't what our customers wanted, it kind of was one of those moments where I was like questioning everything, like, do I know what I'm doing? How are we going to build a business? And I actually was kind of physically ill for a week because I didn't really know what to do. Because so much of our time and energy was leading up towards building that business.”
2022-03-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Discord: Jason Citron · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT