Gary Vaynerchuk with Meerkat Founder Ben Rubin at SXSW 2015

what's up everyone it's Gary vaynerchuk uh doing an interview series with Founders I I'm not making a prediction that I'm going to do this often because the truth is I like to hear myself speak more than other people speak but figure we're at South by drock is sad that I didn't tape any as scary V episodes so I decided to make some content obviously for the ask scary V show mircat has become a new amazing addition for the behind the scenes uh obviously I've been paying attention to it very heavily it's been the whole Buzz at South by Southwest I've been following Ben's career for a long time since this product was an iteration couple of iterations ago uh so uh Ben why don't you tell the bainer nation a little bit about yourself and what you're doing now so um we we're working in the live video space for over two years two and a half years now we're trying to figure out how do we form a new habit for people to uh go out of the comfort zone and live stream cuz this is something that people don't do often I'm 27 um from Israel originally uh stud great you look 24 go ahead and uh beside architecture uh I dropped out of uh College in my third year uh to build Deo which was the first iteration of this product y e v o d Rock show it show it how it used to be go ahead and uh what we figur figured out over the time with yevo yo grew to like 400,000 users uh but we felt that there's no heartbeat and what we thought that our vision for this thing to be is not it's not what it's going to be so we go back we went back to our investor and said you know we're in half half of the way down and we think that we should close that PL platform and we need to do series of iteration based on what we learn uh so we set up these six experiment and the first thing that we put out uh was mircat just kind of the whole team was working on a different experience one to friend which was in big use case of Yo and Mira just took off it was built just by the CTO the client not the backend the back end we worked a long time on that um and just took off and after 5 days we decided to focus the whole team on that what was the first day that it was launched when the taking off started uh exactly 16 years 16 days ago uh 27 of February 27th yeah and since then uh Red Bull American Idol Tony Hawk uh the Secretary of Commerce the governor of Florida Gary vaynerchuk why don't we show the leaderboard right now yeah Gary verer killed it yesterday with I think the largest amount of uh concurrent Watchers ever uh more than 15,000 was amazing so what do you think the biggest misconception what was the biggest misconception of mircat right now two three weeks in we're just getting going lot of opinions you know Twitter's going to shut you Down Periscope I don't get it why not you stream what's the biggest misconceptions you're hearing right now I think the B the biggest misconception is underestimating a team that was with a product outside and had 400,000 users and had the chance to iterate and make mistake over and over again in this we had to let go four 4 person of our staff reduce it was we've been through a lot of and the biggest misconception is underestimating how unpolished product could be and underestimating what a team that had a product out for two years and close them product and try different things uh can do the context of all those learnings this learning just this is one misconception like this uh forget about you know what let me take a spin-off because I think a lot of the people that watch this are less worried about where you're going which I think is right the business world what about them on a day-to-day basis normal people yeah let's go that route all right so this is the biggest misconception and people ask why now live streaming so when we were kids we had cameras our parents had cameras uh we know what's the standard of a good photo we know how good photo should look like what is the mindset behind good photo uh what are the standards of what it means a good photo so when a software substitute came like Instagram it was an easy transition for the habit forming to go to the software side we know what a good photo should look like we know what it means live streaming is not we didn't live stream when we were a kid our parents didn't live stream and the biggest misconception don't worry we're raw all right do rock SC yeah we're just

don't worry keep it rolling dck you know how I like it Ben I like it straight all right I like it live stream no problem I love it real time I love the real why do you think I like what you do he I tell him all the time don't edit tell him don't edit dck tell don't edit Dr Rock yes go ahead all right so in the early 20th century people didn't smile on picture it was weird to smile on picture or in Russia in the 60s and 70s cuz they were miserable keep going and that means how habit needs time to evolve and we're are just now unlocking this habit of live streaming how people are going to be live streamers what does it mean what is a good stream to be discover live stream in real time and I think there is a lot of this for us to learn and there's a lot of this that we already learned and I think that the biggest misconception is thinking that there is not going to be a new medium here because we are unlocking new sets of habits what percentage of normal people do you think don't think live streaming is going to take off I don't what's your guess I don't know I I assume a lot of them cuz they're not they don't know what it means to go live they know what live streaming and they think and live streaming do you think 12 13 14 15 16 year olds are more likely to say this is definitely because Snapchat the Snapchat which is an amazing company they just went with a big machete and just paved the road did you guys go with your yellow color because of Snapchat no because mircat is in the Kalahari Desert and it's very yellow and it just like made sense and then the first time we said like oh did we make a mistake it's when you try to open a mircat and you open Snapchat and then you say and then I came to URI and he said I said to him URI I think I think maybe it's not a good idea that it's yellow and he said dude it came from a very true place in the heart and so leave it that way FL yeah good luck to you my friend thank you guys thank you for having me cat it up C it up