TWiST #53 with Keith Lee, CEO of Booyah Part 1

spiked out I can trip a referee tell by my attitud that I definitely from hello everybody hello welcome to this week in startups it is Friday May 21st very special episode today is the day that I'm going to kill my Facebook account uh a day in which the Facebook story just keeps rolling on and why would you kill your Facebook Facebook um I have been saying for over a year on this program and also Leo reports This Week in Tech and in my email newsletter that I do not trust Mark Zuckerberg but you've mentioned this and they've taken steps to rectify the situation not really uh I don't believe they've taken steps have they made like a mistake again uh they've made many mistakes as you know in the last couple of weeks uh but it's a overriding uh feeling I have that this is not a company you want to trust your data with I believe that you should uh trust people uh you know in the start of the relationship to do the right thing I think you give everybody a fair shot and I think we all gave Facebook a fair chance uh to win us over and let's face it is a good product it's welld designed it's clean and it's got a lot of functionality for um storing your photos uh building out your social graph your family tree uh sharing videos playing games Farmville Etc however the company's Behavior I believe is wildly unethical now this is based on my opinion however backing up my opinion uh is a long line of lawsuits and settlements and pundit and the Press detailing misstep after misstep specifically in the Privacy space we saw this with uh Facebook and their Beacon program uh where they were taking people buying movie tickets uh you know at Fango or you know as an example uh and then syndicating that information back to their news feed um without letting people know they were going to do that uh Facebook started as a closed service and they flipped it to open where the default was everything open and we went through this on the program and in my email newsletter where they duped people you got these dialogue boxes that just said we are enhancing your privacy experience we're enhancing our privacy TOS click here when you click here it basically uh flips everything to open and you can really tell a default matter in my opinion and the default that uh Facebook started with uh private built in expectation with private has now become public but certainly Facebook uh upper management has come out to address these concerns interestingly Facebook has not addressed any of these concerns if you go to Facebook's blog over the past couple weeks they're not even bringing up the Privacy issue and what's particularly disturbing is they h a Business Insider great blog uh SL website has been bringing up these chat transcripts from uh Zuckerberg's past and I don't mean to harp on somebody's past when they're a child or when they're in college and hold their feet to the fire if they you know did keg hand you know keg handstands or something you know or got drunk one night and passed out on the street that's one thing uh but what Zuckerberg did and it's all outlined in The Accidental billionaire will be in the movie um and what the reports have been is shocking and if you want to give him credit for being the youngest billionaire ever or raising all this venture capital or building such a fine product and it is a fine product so I don't want to sit here and say oh my God Facebook is a bad product I think it's a great product run by a bad actor somebody with bad intent and um zuckerberged a long list of complaints he was working for another company connect you uh and then delayed the launch of their social network joked with his friends on instant messenger of how he was going to screw them over by delaying then not delivering the goods uh that they were paying him to do and then launching his competitive product the Facebook uh facing stealing all the information for the Facebook from Harvard uh and the pictures uh reportedly facing a disciplinary hearing reportedly breaking into I'm doing reportedly in front of all those things but it seems like it's become fact and somebody doesn't deny that these things happened you know if this was me and this was all lies I would be out there saying I'm suing you for slander for saying this stuff but he's not doing that which means I think a reasonable person could infer if you're not denying it or suing the person for saying something salacious the salacious thing might be true that's my logic uh breaking into the Harvard crimson's uh journalists emails to see what they were writing about him uh screw uh moving the assets of the

Facebook company from one company to another reportedly to screw Eduardo his partner uh massive lawsuits just a generally I think bad actor Mark Zuckerberg and the behavior of the company is bad and I think that uh as somebody inside the industry I don't want our industry to abuse its users I started in the internet industry uh in the early 90s in fact I was on the internet in the late 80s when it was called bit net when I went to college and I was on bton board systems bbs's in the 80s the internet and technology and specifically the online space represents something to me that is very important Beyond a business and Beyond making money it represents to me and many of the people of my generation the generation exe uh Freedom uh democracy the ability uh to play in a Level Playing Field it is something that we Define ourselves you know on a generational basis and I believe that Facebook uh is taking all that is great about the internet all that is fair balanced and they're corrupting it and they're using it for their own gain and the final straw for me was taking all of this information and giving it to Partners in perpetuity um through their uh liking program and partnership programs with Yelp and other people and I think it's time for us to vote by walking now you don't have to shut down your Facebook account and kill it like I am today uh to participate in this I think you could become what I'm calling a Facebook ghost and one of our readers had this concept and I don't have his name or her name right now but I will give them Credit in the show notes um and here we've made a logo that you can see on my desktop and I've replaced um if you pull up my desktop my picture with this picture of Facebook ghost which you can get on my blog cicis. com and I deleted the last couple of months of updates I deleted all of my photos and I put a little message here saying I'm no longer using Facebook due to their horrible privacy track cage I encourage you to become a Facebook ghost removing all your content stop updating your feed and putting a Facebook ghost image up and I took out all my basic information and I deleted everything in the system this took hours they do not make it easy for you to get out of this thing um but I have succeeded in doing that uh and I suggest one of three things if you feel like this company is a bad actor if you feel that this company is invading privacy and tricking their users too much one the lightest thing you can do is to become a Facebook ghost the next thing you can do is suspend your account and the third thing you can do is delete your account so now we've gone over why I'm doing this uh I should probably walk you through some of the settings and how to do this uh any questions Tyler yeah two things you had a Magic Moment somewhere in the mid to late ' 80s when you were on those BBS systems and it hit you like a ton of bricks absolutely as I think it did for everyone over the age of maybe 30 right and it was this holy Tooley who are these people talking about my favorite band from Toledo and it was magic literally making friends I'm communicating for free around the world on a global basis you know before that time if you wanted to communicate with somebody in another country or even in another state you had two choices you know getting on a bus or getting on a plane or maybe like an 800 chat line uh and people would actually do that they pick up the phone people want to socialize so much that they pick up an 800 number and pay 99 cents a minute to talk to and that I think that was a profound experience for the people who were there at the beginning who felt that and it felt almost like a gift had come down from on high it absolutely has a spiritual feeling to me right I just based on the math of Zuckerberg being I think he just turned 26 I don't think he phys he was old enough to have experienced that event that you I was very lucky I was at the very beginning of that and a lot of other people who had that sort of magic moment and UST and felt this m they knew what it was like before right and they knew how powerful a change it was and maybe he didn't have that experience this is what I'm getting at or maybe he's just a bad guy now here's my I want to touch that one as well which is it that he's a bad guy or is it that he has an agenda and a mission and he is so bent on seeing it through that he's willing to do what he's got to do screw people right um who knows all I know is you we are defined by our actions and the actions of Mark Zuckerberg have been from day one in our industry and in our lives untrustworthy I believe this individual uh has a deep-seated ethics problem anybody who steals the way he steals who double crosses the way he double crosses and who tries to dupe their users is either very stupid or has nefarious

bad intent now nobody could execute a product as good as Facebook and be stupid so my logic leaves me with the latter I think he's a great business person product guy but I think that deep down there is something wrong with this individual that he will not even when his company is under tremendous attack I mean he's a 26 year old guy I was 26 I was running my own company had 70 employees if somebody had a problem with me I would be out there in public talking about and defending myself and so that leads me to say who under this type of attack and scrutiny what CEO founder of a company would not discuss the issue with the Press public and their users what type of person would not defend themselves a person hellbent on a mission or a person who's guilty that well yeah and they're not mutually exclusive correct and I think uh he's the reason he has not come out publicly and discussed these issues and the reason these issues have become so bad is because he will not even take an ounce of feedback or criticism about these issues uh and he says things like Hey listen uh privacy's over get over it you know uh and well what if we as individuals don't agree with him well he says my platform is going to be this way and if you don't like it you can leave and so today I think is a celebration of leaving a that we don't agree with now I'm not I don't I'm not delusional here I don't think I'm me deleting my page is going to stop Facebook but I do know that I've been writing this issue for over a year and in the beginning 10% of people were in agreement with me and now 60 70 80% of people believe that Facebook has an Ethics problem around privacy and does not care about its users there's a new issue the most recent issue is what there was reports in the Wall Street Journal that they're selling user data to advertisers so if you were to click on an ad about uh HIV testing uh or um trying to think of something very personal a drug pregnancy or pregnancy um because they were putting your user ID and the URLs it was basically getting passed on to the advertiser through the click and uh data and you know I think that as this unravels we will find out more and more uh places where the bodies are buried so it's getting to a boiling point where this is either going to have he's his his position of kind of ignoring is either going to it's got into such a it's the fever is getting into a sort of critical mass where he's either right in his position and it will you know only this real minority of people are you know going to have a problem with it and he's just going to keep on trucking or this will be the beginning of the end um I think Facebook is a very powerful product and I know extracting myself from it has been something I've had to do with great consideration um I have 5,000 people on my uh page I looked at my refers and said my God can I give up that as a marketing channel just as a product person you know I have product to sell at times I want to keep my fans my friends and my family uh involved in my life my photos of my daughter uh things I'm doing uh my plans for the weekend where I'm checking in on goala you know uh purchases I'm making on blippy I want to Syndicate those things and share them with people and what I've come to realize is I don't need Facebook to do that uh and this is where I think that people can um delete their Facebook account or deactivate it or make it a Facebook ghost and I think that you should do it in those steps I think today is a day for people who um are thinking about this to just go ahead and make your account a Facebook ghost go ahead and place your url of your account in here and let's go through some of the steps of how to do this obviously you know how to change your photos but when you get to your account settings here and you look at uh your privacy settings this is when you start to see how mischievous this company is I just hit privacy and look at all these controls there could be a very easy privacy setting here which says I would like to share my information with my friends my family friends of my friends and family or no one right you could you just have one drop down instead of that they do uh obscuri control by obscuri you have to go and drill down into all of these things so here I'm going into my personal information and look at this menu of how many items and oh do I want my bio and favorite quotes showing with everyone my friends and family friends only or customize and you notice here it doesn't say on this level of the drop

down it doesn't say here no one do you notice that take a look at that Tyler everyone friends and family friends only and then customize is an intimidating word but if you click on customize you can come back here and says okay make this visible too which is the same exact dialogue box friends are friends only specific people only me so they hide two levels this is the this is four levels deep if I only want to share these things with myself in other words I don't want these public I have to go four LEL s deep from the main page to the settings page to the Privacy page and then down into personal information and posts and then into custom privacy what they've done I mean I couldn't it took me hours to figure all this out I've been in the internet industry uh since before the web browser existed literally the web browser didn't exist when I started on the internet uh and here I say only me and I save those settings so what you can do is just go in here and say I'm going to take my religious point of views here and I'm going to customize it do the drop down only me can see my religious views and then photo albums you can edit this and you can pick who sees your stuff and what I did was I just took all my photos out uh and a company that I was lucky enough to Angel invest in that I'm a huge fan of backup a iile let you back up your Facebook account so I backed up all my images then deleted all my images and deleting all your images takes time uh and you can't even delete the images obviously that you're friends have tagged you in um so that's a pain in the neck um but going to your account here um account settings uh Etc going to your profile rather and uh you know just basically editing the stuff and deleting it so I took all the information on the side here and um just took the edit box and said hey remove this I don't want my relationship status here and edit that information and take out all your information you don't need to have your information here um and there's really nothing good that's going to come out of it um and here I actually still have my relationship status here I thought I deleted that I don't want people interestingly I deleted that and now it's still showing that I'm married um anyway uh I just put a note here I am no longer using Facebook due to their horrible track record on privacy Etc and here's the likes and interest I have 46 likes and interest if I want to take these likes and interest out I have to visit each one of these pages and unsubscribe from but I can't just clear them here again this is what Facebook does to try to make us uh share overshare information we don't want these are all getting shared all the things I'm a fan of and I can't get out of these things I have to go visit each one again hours and hours so let's talk about suspending your account because that's the first step any comments or thoughts Tyler um it's it's I feel like he Zuck is thinking he's just going to uh play quiet and I hope this goes away and he's thinking a much longer term and really hoping this doesn't I mean he's obviously taken the decided position to not respond to all of this yep and um it'll be really interesting to see how that plays out yeah because at some point the louder it gets the more obvious he's ignoring it and people will have to vote with their feet but it I think that he's clearly enable it I mean this is going to make it much worse now but he's thinking if you if they if they're not I've done so much at this point yeah that if they haven't already left I can pretty much do anything at this point right what else left that could he do to interestingly to violate here in the chat room I see that uh Mark Zuckerberg has logged into the chat room and asking for any props to Palo out I have a feeling that's not Mark Zuckerberg in the Ustream chat room so uh let's show deactivating my account uh you can deactivate your account now what this means is it's basically turned off nobody else can see your account and um you uh you can always turn it back on but the Public's not going to see it they still have your information in there so you know if you don't want your information to be compromised by Facebook and let's face it they've compromised people's information many times um You probably shouldn't trust them that's my belief uh that's many people's belief at this point you want to get as much information out of Facebook as you can delete your pictures of your kids get them out of there put them on a site from a company you can trust I feel I can trust Yahoo has never broken that arrangement with me I really feel like I can trust Google when they have a snafu like they did with their you know uh they've had yet Buzz they take ownership of it they talk about it and it was a purely technical snafu yeah it doesn't matter the snafu right what you can judge people had us uh very brief one of the best ways to uh judge a person is how they behave

when they make mistakes right when they screw up when you f up that's when you can tell a person's character and what happens consistently when Mark Zuckerberg screws up or does or behaves badly which and I think most of the time it's the ladder but some just a mistake I mean Beacon was just naive uh or just maybe overthinking or getting high on your own Supply or any of these number of things you can judge somebody by their behavior Google messes up Yahoo messed up AOL messed up giving out search data what did they do they said we are so sorry we screwed up and they detail how they screwed up cuz part of making amends is explaining what you did to the other person right you can do that when you when it's an honest mistake if you intentionally screw somebody you're not really in a position to say sorry it was an accident and more importantly actually you can well your attorneys are not going to your attorneys are going to say don't say anything oh okay so that's interesting maybe you think he's getting information from his attorneys and legal counsil saying shut up you stood up so bad that this IPO is coming off the rails because of the lawsuits they're just what my prediction is he will be in front of a senate hearing like the dags at BP like the garbage at Goldman Sachs and all these guys who've been robbing and destroying the environment and the country he is falling into that same loome car you know group um so let's deactivate let's just do it I would like to see John McCain at the Senate hearing try to deactivate his Facebook account that would be brilant that would be brilliant TV and you know what you lo you know what's H you know what happened on Facebook yesterday nothing the day before nothing happens on Facebook there's nothing going on there people playing Farmville people sharing some photos they're giving status updates put your photos on Flickr or Google Picasso those are much better photo sharing sites they don't downgrade the resolution they don't break your privacy and they have very granular privacy settings uh down to the Picture level where you can do really interesting things uh and they're just better smug mug there's many better choices and we have to vote with our dollars jeie David sax who was on the program I don't remember what uh episode but jeie David saaks was on one of the first couple was number two yeah so when David saaks was on he showed Genie Genie's a brilliant way and if you put any member of your family especially like aunties you know those aunties who are really into family and show up early for Thanksgiving and Easter and like it's their big day of the year uh or you know uh seder or whatever rashash Shana uh uh Quanza that ant will build out your whole family treat to a level of absurdity that you have never seen in Genie and it's a beautiful service for birthday reminder status updates from your family and completely secure and private you can just set it up to be just you and your family and you can share photos there as well and birthdays and updates and it's great it's so much better for family than something like Facebook and for updates we all know Twitter is a better product for updates there's more going on there everybody's got a Twitter handle you can easily interact with everybody yes you know it's public in general and should set your thing on private uh but uh I think it's a better status update place all that leaves is really casual games and I there's a lot of casual game sites you can go to or you can just use your you can make yourself a Facebook ghost and only use your Facebook page for playing your Farmville so if you go to your account settings you go to account here up the top right and you just go to account settings right so now that's one step and right there at the bottom of the setting page is deactivate account I'm going to click deactivate boom nothing to be scared about and then here comes the Facebook desperation unbelievable they put a picture of my sister-in-law saying she's gonna miss me because she's got a cupcake and she's holding the cupcake this is my sister Joyce in the Jason calanis patented style what you see there in my patented cupcake eating style is that I rip the bottom of the cupcake off and I make a sandwich out of it so the icing is containable this is a patented idea that Facebook has stolen from me he has he knows no bounds but look at this desperation 400 4,813 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you are you sure choyce is going to miss you Michael's l i mean everybody's going to miss me no they're not they're going to find me on Twitter and many other places why are deactivating I don't understand Facebook I don't feel safe on Facebook I have another Facebook I have a privacy concern I'm going to put uh please remember that you can always control the information that you share and who can see it before you deactivate please take a moment to learn more about the Privacy works on Facebook desperate if there is a specific question concern you have we hope to find it add address in the future uh and then I will explain here I do not trust your company or your CEO and founder Mr Mark suckerberg and I will uh should I email out a first further emails I'll leave it on I want to see what they're going to say to me and I'm just going to click here deactivate boom please confirm with your password of course that's it standard thing to do so somebody doesn't do this

to your account while you're uh getting a cup of coffee now is Security check I got to go do this uh okay and finally am I deactivated not deactivated please deactivate my account confirm with my password yes that's my password okay now put this in patcha oh there we go your Facebook account has been activated to reactivate your account login boom boom so now if we were to go to facebook/ Jason calacanis you will not see my account this page was not found J calacanis I am now deactivated that's a second step you can take I suggest everybody take off today's the 21st just take off until June 1st and see how it feels to have nine days off of the Facebook machine that's something very simple you can do spend that time with your family spend that time reading spend that time going for a walk get those minutes back in your life nothing is going on Facebook go play Scrabble with your family or on your iPad I'm not anti- technologist it's not a Ludy thing it's just you don't want to support companies that treat you badly go spend that time on Genie zinga's site if you want to okay so now I'm deactivated now if I want to log back in just use my same login and password and it's going to ask me to I believe it should prompt me to reactivate my account and then we're going to delete this account and once we're done with that we can get on with the show there's a lot of important information on this show today we got a great s Jason shark tank where people are going to be pitching us on ideas and uh Keith Lee the CEO of booya uh is going to be on that's my town which is one of the most popular location based Services uh and uh he will be on talking about that and his I think he raised $20 million this week Booyah what there is okay so uh no I don't want chro Chrome to save this password and I'm activated again or not let's see Yep looks like if you just log in you're back on so that's it you can deactivate nothing to worry about now if you want to kill your account how to kill your Facebook account permanently this is known as deleting your account and hopefully when I delete my account Facebook doesn't have my stuff but I actually don't believe them I think they still have my information uh and to do this uh to delete your account you have to go to a special URL but it's not linked to anywhere on here help center application wow I guess there's no easy way to get to the delete you have to go to the specific URL but shouldn't there be a link from my account settings to do this security password networks Facebook ads language mobile know how do you actually delete is there a menu item and if I do a search delete my Facebook page am I going to find it I got a Wiki how article but not actually had to deleted here uh so I'm going to have to type in this URL because there's no way to get to it through the news feed um I wonder if people in the chat room uh have the link to delete it for okay here we go so you can't even find the oh look at that great people in the uh Nick 365 says he just deactivated his account uh that's great um where does anybody know how to get to it I'm just asking the chat room here we have 600 people almost watching 570 does anybody know how to get to the delete page through the navigation or do they just hide that from you it's people are saying it's a well- hidden link but there's got to be a way to get to it right you can't you we have to confirm this you can't find this page uh in the navigation you have to Google it wow it's deliberately hidden that tells you all you need to know uh no account settings no it's not in account settings so you have to just go to this link there's a group on how to Perman link her account that a user made but you can't get to it so you have to go to the URL facebook. com/ SLC contact. php question mark showcore form equal delete uncore account this is pathetic the fact that I have to I'm going to create a bitly URL for this and I'm going to put in this URL name it uh uhuh I will name this so that it

is easy for you to remember uh here we go I'll put that in here and I'll customize this and I'm going to name it die Facebook no that link is taken of course it is die Facebook die is that link T okay there we go so all you have to do if you want to get off of Facebook is go to bitly bit. ly die Facebook die and that'll take you to this hidden URL uh and then I'm just going to hit it says here if you don't think you will use Facebook again and would like your account deleted we can take care of that for you keep in mind that you will not be able to reactivate your account or retrieve any of the content submissions you have added if you would like your account deleted then click submit This Is The Moment of Truth we're going to delete the count at this very moment is there any final words that we need to say Tyler I mean could this decision be any easier to not enable a company that behaves so badly is there any reservation in the chat room that this is the right thing to do is there any reservation in anybody if now if anybody has anything to say it now or uh you are going to have to uh hold your peace they say at a wedding speak now or forever hold your peace not entertain it's pretty entertaining the chat room is going crazy right now and so I have my bayonet this bayonet by the way was sent to me from Afghanistan from a captain in Afghanistan gave me his bayonet because he said when you're out of ammunition and you're up against the wall the last thing your commander says to you is to put the bayonets up and to put these onto your rifle because this is all you got between you and the afterlife and he said that I inspired his group in Afghanistan and so he sent me an actual banet from Afghanistan with confirmed al- qaa kill on it doesn't have a confirmed Al qaa kill on I'm just joking uh but that's the greatest gift they ever had I'm going to read the letter from him if he lets me I just want to get permission first uh but that's a great knife and this is going to be me killing the page uh okay here we go uh drum roll please I was saying click the mouse with the knife that's pretty funny no I will do it right now I'm going to click the submit button and it gives me this dialogue you are about to permanently delete your page please fill out your password which I will do gladly please fill out the catcha God they make it so hard don't they okay get me out of here God I absolutely put my email my address this is uh where it's so hard to read this catcha sometimes loading this could be it here we go wow this is taking a long time when you have 5,000 friends people are really excited wow this could take forever I think there's going to be an offer to entice you to leave from I think they're actually connecting me to Mark Zuckerberg's office hello Mr Zuckerberg well uh here we go you're look at this another window they will not every time I try to leave they pull me back in another confirmation screen this little you see how you write these dialogue screen is how you get judged in our industry look at this one permanently delete account I've said like five times I want this account deleted your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days if you log into your account with the next 14 days your account will be reactivated and you'll have an option to cancel your request I mean I don't understand what that means exactly if you log here with the next 14 days your account will be reactivated you have an option to cancel your request option to cancel my request to delete okay I get it but it's just more obscuri so if I click okay here am I deleted please okay that's it I am uh off of the it seems like I am off of the Facebook fantastic and uh I think your idea is beyond brilliant and that was brilliant I feel like I'm weight lifted actually I don't have to log into Facebook and H look at all these stupid just nonsense all right everybody else you can delete your stuff as well I will be on you can be sure I'm going to be on every news program over the weekend like discussing why I deleted my Facebook as if I have that much time I need to go play poker the World Series

main events coming up and I got to get training again uh yes the knife is right here somebody in the chat room wanted to see the knife again pretty nice knife I mean it's significant and by the way it's uh I can wear this because they said if it's the same the knife just has to be the width of your hand and it's okay to wear it so I think that's about the width of my hand right it's about yeah about you have to hold to the right angle but I think that's about the width so it should be no problem wearing that around Santa mon all right let's move on with the program uh and did I just question for the chat room did anybody else delete their account or turn their account off I'm wondering people are saying my page is not up there oh I think you're talking about my fan page yes I have a fan page as well on Facebook which I can't log into anymore but there's a fan page that says everybody should quit and I guess I got to take that one down too uh so although I don't think I can people can start a fan page and you don't have control over right so it's I can't decide that I can't let you have my fan page on there so uh some people said hey if you feel this way why don't you get Mahalo to not allow uh Facebook log in uh very simple answer to that question uh I can't make that decision for users if they want to log are you I can't believe you just delet needed your account why uh Janet and Alicia are now friends you didn't oh really you didn't see it oh my God I missed it CU you deleted your account I deleted my account which Janet alici you can still yeah oh I got to get back on there and find out somebody did Janet change her relationship shus oh my God my life is just over all right anyway that was all very entertaining I feel a great weight lifted uh let me just say thank you uh to our friends at Ben Q thank you for sponsoring the program and thank you most of all for giving uh us one of these incredible SP uh 890 projectors this thing is ridiculous we have it set up here at the office the Facebook s the Facebook the BenQ sp890 full HD 1080p projector beautiful crisp bright HD uh regardless of the lighting in the room and we have it in a sunny Santa Monica conference room here this thing is life-changing compared to the other projectors we had you plug it into a Mac you don't have to change the a resolution because it can do absurd resolutions uh it's super easy to use and you can put an HDMI into it uh you can put on your ethernet I don't know why would you put it on ethernet I don't understand but it can go on your ethernet I guess you can send uh movies to it you can put up a Blu-ray player and boy these guys have been great to us and they gave us one of these to uh to use for the next couple of months and uh now it's become basically a fight of who gets to use it which conference room or outside by the lunch desk beautiful BQ sp890 thank you for sponsoring the program it's time for ask Jason all right on the line I have Mark are you there I am here Mark I've been watching you for the last 40 minutes laughing as I delete my Facebook account how did your Facebook deletion go uh um you didn't delete say no comment I uh I actually have a uh family that an interest a weird family situation and it's kind of uh the only communication that I have with certain family members huh but other than that you might not use it uh I actually use it for uh a little bit of promotion and networking as well so yeah it's uh and yeah and I don't have uh near as many Twitter followers as uh the great Jason calacanis so it's I got to use every networking tool I have I have at but you uh you do have some concerns about it or you feel great about it um it's uh I think that anybody who tries to do what we do uh and try and you know tries to hold on to you know privacy I think that uh privacy is an illusion once you connect yourself onto the interwebs Y I agree uh you shouldn't put anything up there that you don't think is going to be exposed yeah I mean don't talk smack about your boss don't uh you know I mean you know don't say anything that you wouldn't want on a billboard in your local town you know yeah especially not on Facebook where they might uh bait and switch you and put it out there you've got a question for us let's hear it uh well my startup uh heav as sell. com just finished our bootstrapping phase uh and you know we gave away thousand did a big huge promotion uh got tons of great

data but and that data makes me extremely confident that we're ready for the next step uh so I want to know uh how to vet Angel Investors if they come at me how to get time with Angel Investors and also is go big Network legit okay and more importantly when is O open Angel Forum getting to Seattle uh okay these are all great questions uh so your site is heavy as hell right I'm looking at it right now I have the correct website uh you can vote stories up and down yep in a dig like fashion or it seems like videos in some cases uh and so my initial reaction here is I have a digik competitor where you can vote things up and down um and you've got it looks like this is for a certain type of music heavy metal Rock Punk goth correct yeah it's it's going for the niche kind of thing whereas I mean dig you go to dig uh you know unless it's uh one of the buzz bands that you know like uh radio head uh you know Cold Play that kind of thing uh you know meat and potatoes rock is not welcome on dig and so uh my frustrations with dig basically birthed heavy as hell got it and so it's but now as we develop it we're actually kind of starting to add elements of other sites and make it uh a much more intimate uh networking from B from artists to their fans right uh so I like the idea I agree with you uh dig is for you know everything it's sort of like Yahoo answers it's for every possible question that's its strength and its weakness uh and verticalized versions of dig or Hacker News as an example which is a vertical version of dig um those things I think will work well your question is how do you find people to be Angel Investors and how you vet them when you do find them the best way really is to look for people who have done something in a similar space and have some um uh affinity for you or the vertical so uh somebody who is into this type of music and uh who was in Seattle and who's done social news would be the ideal person if that person existed uh that would be somebody who has a lot of knowledge in the space uh and there's a there was a company called newsvine I believe up in Seattle that did like curated news and voting I would find the team from newsvine I don't know if newsvine was it bought by MSNBC at some point I think it was so I would look for the management team of newsvine I go on LinkedIn I go on Facebook I go on Twitter I would look for the people who work there maybe they had a little bit of an exit and maybe they see some promise in what you're doing or former dig employees uh but one thing I would say is you have to look deeply at this idea and say is this idea fundable uh and right now uh I'm not certain that it will get big enough that an angel investor would want it so you may need a value proposition you say I am going to do every genre of music I have built a platform and I am going to make one of these for jazz heavy metal one of these for goth Etc and there's going to be 25 verticals of music and then I'm going to go uh into other you know verticals like the verticals of um uh books or movies or something and you're going to try to create Niche communities uh where people discuss the news on them and you're going to get SEO this way and here's who the sponsors are going to be right now it feels kind of small and narrow um so if you were going to try to raise a quarter million dollars from um Angel Investors I think they would say how does this become a $10 million a year in Revenue business and you might not be able to give them uh a good enough Answer Tyler your thoughts uh it was from Seattle and it was MSNBC thatc um I don't have anything to add other than your points to okay does that answer your question uh well uh I also wanted to know what your thoughts are on go big Network yeah now I've seen this it's come up a couple of times do they ask you to pay anything to connect you with investors uh there is uh there are premium versions of it yeah um and I was I'm kind of curious as to you know me before I give them money I wanted to get uh you know the sense's approval uh you know if uh if you've never heard of them that makes me kind of Wonder I've got actually got a uh question live that I uh that I submitted to this site called mahalo. com you might have heard of it yep um and uh but uh it's uh a question pending you know what's what are people's thoughts on it yeah I don't think that this is a legitimate site uh and I'll tell you why anybody who's an angel investor is not looking for deal flow via a website that charges people to Route them to the right investor I think this is probably maybe it's not total scam but it feels scammy to me and

every angel investor of note I know uh the way that they connect with clients uh I'm sorry clients um uh entrepreneurs is through their existing Network or an over the transom email uh text uh um Twitter message or Facebook reach out uh you can go take a look at a site called Venture hacks. com which a great site uh and I'm on the site and they have all the Angels listed there I guarantee you none of these angels um I can't guarantee you but I'm almost certain none of these angels are on go big Network I can assure you that I am not Mark cubin is not uh Chris Saka is not Kevin Rose is not Matt mull are not getting their deals through the go big Network um this to me seems like they're telling people what they want to hear post a request for funding connect with investors and get funded that is not how it works that is the exact opposite of how it works uh the way it works I mean this might be a great way to get recruiters to call you and lawyers people who want to sell you something to get your startup going but that's not how it works uh you're going to go to Tech events you're going to look at crunch Bas you're going to read the trades you're going to get on LinkedIn and you're going to hustle and find these people and say can I get a cup of coffee with you I really loved uh news Vine and I just wanted to talk to you for a couple minutes I'm an aspiring entrepreneur if there's any way I'll meet you anywhere downstairs of your office building just for 10 minutes to get coffee and show you what I'm doing and get your advice I really appreciate it people love that somebody's asking for advice even myself like I don't have a lot of time but if somebody asked me like three or four times and they're in the area I'll sit down with them sure uh or I'll have Tyler sit down with them uh no big deal and so um I don't recommend paying for these premium memberships and going through this website it's just not how it works uh and deal Brokers are ALS a scam in general so if somebody wants to represent you and you pay them $5,000 a month and they circulate you around VCS and Angels that's a scam too uh know and if they want you to pay to get on stage at Young startups conference or ketsu Forum or Mike scam Seagal in New York or these guys and they want you to give you some of their Equity that's a scam too all scams uh not the way the real industry Works uh they're praying on people who are desperate to get money for their startups which is understandable what you want to do is find people at startup companies in your area and break bread with them and get the honest advice from them and you got some honest advice from me I'm looking at this idea saying to Niche how can it be bigger uh how can this be a platform how can this get many more people involved uh and get bigger because if you're going to put an investment in you want to see it get bought at some point have an exit so because it is an investment right has the investment has to be realized I don't know what the exit strategy here is who does it get sold to um a music site maybe but it would be better if you had 25 of these and then Rolling Stone said hey we're going to buy this network of 25 you know Community News sites around music and we're going to plug it into Amazon or you know uh some site that sells music or Barnes & Noble or something um so thanks for the call uh we're coming to Seattle when open for um Boston is in June 18th Boston's June 18th Seattle's the following month it's in my office yeah so we'll be there July and uh we need people right now to go to who are in Boston who are looking to raise Angel funds to go ahead and go to open Angel forum. com and uh I think right now you have 125% chance of getting accepted to Boston because I think there's under six people have applied uh your chances of getting into Boston right now entrepreneurs is great because it's a first time in the city we don't get that many applications we might only get 50 applications for six spots you got 10% chance and you know what a lot of times there's 10 or 20 applications we can you know cancel out because are just business plan so um Boston in June Seattle in July London in October that will put us at eight cities and we have two national sponsors semantic and Silicon Valley Bank open Angel Forum will be an eight cities this year 15 next year we're totally sustainable we have a full-time staffer I think we have something coming on in November we could do in November and we could have do it November possibly in another city all right thanks a lot uh Mark and uh we will talk to you soon right thank you peace uh but you know I always respect guys who are building something and actually get it done yeah and I think that's the most important thing so the reason I really like this is he actually built it he's learning there's a huge difference between having an idea and having something to show yeah you have to build a site because nowadays it's so easy it only costs $10,000 or 10 hours or 100 hours you know a couple hundred in designers you have to have the site um on lockdown you have to actually have produced something of quality so that people can

get an idea of if you're somebody they should work with it's got it's gotten to a point where if you have the idea you can build the site there's yeah just to show the idea absolutely it's sort of like the business plan is now the mockup of the site or the mockup is now the actual site um and another person who has it unlock down is DNA M DN everybody loves DNA they are a complete hosted Exchange Server solution Point NCM as low as 295 a month you're going to want to call them and tell them that your Uncle Jason sent you they have been a sponsor of the program from the beginning uh and they are incredibly um just a well thought out service all of their customer support you know is in the United States 100% we need these jobs here in the United States what could be more patriotic with July Fourth coming up then putting your hosted exchange server on DNA mail and getting somebody in the United States to give you customer support uh you're going to want to go check out DNL DN everybody loves dn. com and kind of want to get more of a background on the guy behind DNA mail and rvps George great guy uh episode 32 you go you can see him right we had him on the show he sponsors the show it's all in the family I didn't I got a whole new level of appreciation for D and power BPS after watching his interview yeah he's a really great uh CEO with a great team uh and doing great work so you're going to want to check them out let's do a shark tank what I want that's what I want what I want I hear the train coming that is the pitch train rolling into the station and you've got to get off the you [ __ ] train and just pick one and you got to get on the pitch train there we go it's the pitch train pulling in let's hear a pitch I love when see you know Founders pitch it's great they're always so excited you know what I'm talking about Tyler they get stupid excited talking over themselves all right on the line we have uh Mark Z from Palo Alto and you have an idea for a social network no it's j Jay is on the line Jay can you hear us hey how you doing can you hear me how you doing Jay we can hear you all right great uh so uh you know the rules of Shark Tank you're going to give us a 60c pitch we are going to listen and then rate you on both your ability to pitch on a scale of 1 to 10 and then we're going to rate you on your idea 1 to 10 all right everybody in the chat room has to listen very deeply and then put I for idea seven or whatever it happens to be space Oh I'm sorry pitch you can write out the word pitch colon number idea colon number or if you if you're a regular you just put seven SL whatever we know the first one is the pitch next one is the idea everybody in the chat room can uh give me a uh okay I understand Captain I like to get a that people are listening so I would like to see okay Captain Roger Oh Captain My Captain there we go so now people are saying Roger I captain yes Captain okay Cappy affirmative 1010 Okay C Senor uh understand Captain okay I understand let's roll I sakar captain you're Captain yes I understand okay uh are you ready Jay I am ready let's do it okay uh let's let fwn do and into the room or else she's going to cry fondu is here come here girl you want to hear the pitch get in here good girl okay in three two one go Jason have you ever been in a jam and need a second set of eyes but no one's around to help with the emergence of powerful live streaming technology our product on the spot solves this problem on the spot channels the power of mobile streaming technology to provide a live answer platform for people who need a response immediately a simple application on your smartphone allows stream streamers to quickly select their problem category and present live video feed to a pool of relevant online gurus now response time plays a role in the viewer competition and correct answers are rewarded with points so users at home are now engaged in and experiencing your situation as it happens and are able to provide a live response and resolution a closed circuit option would be available for private or corporate use the revenue stream comes from an advertisement driven prize system where players accumulate points to obtain rewards provided by the advertisers there's huge value here because advertisers can choose a specific know category to reach their target audience on the spot is essentially Ustream meets

Mahalo bringing you answers when you need them most done perfect you had like five seconds left good job uh so what I heard was uh an iPhone application uh that allows you to uh ask a question over video and get a video response or some sort of uh video response so sort of like directory Services I guess t uh or uh something like that and it's good for advertisers because you know the vertical somebody's asking a question so if they're asking what movie should I see this weekend you might play an ad for a movie and if you're asking uh what's a great place to have Japanese food in Santa Monica you might have a local ad etc uh I think you did a solid job of pitching I didn't understand exactly what platform it's on I think you said mobile mostly uh streaming video on mobile is you know still coming it feels like chaa with video uh a little bit or Mahalo answers or Yahoo answers with uh video we've actually discussed this idea here um it sounds like chat roulette with Q& A uh so it's interesting uh I think it's more fun than in business uh I think users might get into it certain users uh a lot of people don't like to be on video but some uh are exhibitionists and do like to be on video I give the uh pitch was very solid a seven and a half and I give the idea part of me wants to say an eight because I like this kind of Q& A knowledge space and part of me wants to say a seven because I think it's bouquey so I may have to go seven and a half again Tyler what do you think um the hard part with video even if you do manage to get a lot of people on is the SEO element of it which is so inherent in all of this the real key benefit of text is the ability well first of all the ads alone read your text and decide what ads to run with it and in video so video is less efficient far less efficient for SEO for advertising though it's not automatic but I also I don't know if I'm waiting for an answer do I want to watch a video I guess it would be maybe if the videos were saved so if I asked what's the best iPhone iPad case right and an iPad expert answered it then the video pre-roll or on the bottom would be fine but AR of the archive of the answers might beting I'll kind of answer the question with the question why isn't there a video eBay or video Craigslist because it doesn't provide enough value over text and images if I'm going to buy a car but actually some people and now when you put cars up there they do videos of the cars and there are services that actually go and take videos of the car but I don't know that the video provides any more value perhaps in erotic services or Adult Services on craigs listate with the video would be more valuable even on eBay Motors I don't have like a the rim shot here there was there is oh there it is anyway go ahead even eBay Motors uh the vast majority are not video right and that's been around a long time they do have those live auctions on video you know on the on television stuff like that anyway what does the chat room think let's ask the chat room what do you guys think of the idea I see eight uh the I'm sorry the pitch 8 the idea 7 88 um I see 97 I see the pitch was eight seven I think the pitch was good uh he didn't go too fast slow pitch seven pitch eight pitch seven pitch nine idea 7978 8698 people actually really like it so this is uh one of the better pitches we've had uh I see a lot of sevens and I see some eights and nines which is good um so address some of our uh feedback Jay all right yeah let me give some input on that I think that as a quote unquote knowledge Guru you're actually logging into a web browser to answer these questions so you're not actually giving a video response basically you're selecting a knowledge category whether it be health or science that you're most comfortable with and based on the users out in the field and this is really supposed to be you know if you're out and about and you need a quick answer you point your phone uh you know at the problem and ask the question as opposed to you being on you know on the video yourself um you know you point the phone at the problem you ask the question and the people in the actual waiting in the knowledge categories are there to actually you know they have the internet at their disposal they're there to uh essentially obtain an answer for you and text it to you or not put it into you know an input uh box which comes up on your phone and you accept that answer is correct on your phone and you're done okay that sheds a lot more light on it because we we're sitting here wondering why would I want to get a response back in video but it makes a lot more sense that you're taking a video of the fact that you have a dent in your

car or a flat tire on your car uh or right how do I fix this or you know yeah you got to burn or you got to cut you beasting what should I do here's my beasting uh how do I get the and that's where the business value comes in because for example if you are say A you know an IT technician on site you know and you're trying to figure out a problem whether it be at a residential you know uh at a residence or at a business you can ESS you know Point your phone at the problem if you're having a problem with a router or something and people at your central office are saying oh well you know you have these wires plugged in backwards let me help you out here and they send you a quick text and reverse this and you know so it can help you in in a number of ways okay so I am going to take one point off for your pitch and add one point for your idea all right because it didn't come across and a lot of people were confused um you got to be very clear and say people will submit video of their problem and receive text back as their answer correct this is particularly helpful in situations like a b and c so you know uh a person gives a video of the outfit they're going to wear tonight but they don't know if it looks good and one of our fashion experts would look at it and tell them thumbs up and how they could uh enhance the outfit take those stockings off and wear you know leggings or I don't know what I'm not a fashion guy but so I think you could explain it a little better uh we do have attachments on Mahalo and we support video Maps images and mp3s and what we find is most people don't take the time to add a video except in answers where they like to put a video for you know if they find somebody has answered a question in video or a funny thing like somebody asked what's the best video movie from the 80s they'll put you know a scene from Fast Times at rgm high that they like a lot what right now the video is live streaming so you know if they're in the situation as it happens they can get an immediate response and it's a single click of a button and how are you incentivizing the answerers or experts yeah what's my incentive as the answer okay that is our point system basically you're going into the category of you're choosing because you're most comfortable with that area um you know you're trying to answer these questions as quickly as possible and you know the first R response gets a point right and you start accumulating these points and you have a an advertisement driven prize system and based on that you can go into the prize store and you can purchase uh you know uh products that are placed there from your advertisers or they may have some sort of promotion going on right like the Mahalo store it's I almost relate to like the boardwalk where you're saving up tickets to get the biggest prize because it's a tiered system so you're going up and your and uh to break your heart here's the Mahalo store where you can go buy a Jawbone which is one of our sponsors and you can buy the jaw bone at a discount uh and use your Mahala dollars to do it or you can donate them to Ka uh or buy gift card so yes uh you are on the right track people are incented by achievement porn which is like the points and other people are uh they'll just like helping people so that's the Goodwill other people want the points to get the things uh that's the sort of game aspect and the little rewards uh you have a pretty good idea uh I guess it just depends on if people want to submit a video of their problems yeah and I guess you there's a technical issue with how do I get because it's real time the real time element has an advantage I see why that's of interest to you but it poses an interesting technical problem in that you can only can be viewed one at a time well on quick I don't know if you're familiar with that platform uh you know basically and this is where the idea came from uh my friend and I were actually watching all the random videos pop up as they were happening uh just because it was intriguing I see and you know we saw basically the video we saw was some flashing lights we said oh what's this so we clicked on it and it turned out to be some kids getting pulled over by the police and so you know we were interested we were watching it and these kids are videotaping as it are H you know as it's happening the police officers are asking them questions they're asking for identification and so on and so forth and they start to question whether or not their rights are being violated so in response I go out and find these Amendment rights you know Yahoo answers or something uh and I basically send it to them and they you know they look on their phone like oh look we're getting live responses here this is great so they start reading off of these you know responses to the police officers and you know lo and behold they get left alone because you have to include that in your pitch by the way that's an Incredible use case I you know I'd love to I just uh I wanted to make sure I could get everything in and I didn't think I could it's a good use case uh I mean you gotta be careful those kids could also get beat up and have their phone broken with the wrong cops in the wrong town yeah um and it's actually illegal to record a police officer if they don't know they're being recorded oh really they did know they were being recorded and they actually I understand too I'm just saying you have to be careful with message to kids interacting with the

police officers there are three things you should say to a police officer when you're being pulled over no sir yes sir I'm sorry officer you can answer what other question you want but that's a pretty good start and leave your camera phone in your quick in your pocket you do not want to agitate an officer there's no reason to take that out as an adversarial thing to do that's just some free advice for me and that's the advice I would give them is turn off your phone and just be a gentleman and keep your hands where you can see them I got pulled over in the Tesla the other day this is what I do this is why I get off all the time I got pulled over twice in the Tesla in one month twice because you don't have plates on the car I got the car back I'm going to put the plates on but anyway it was and it it's just a freak thing cuz it's the only two times I've ever been pulled over for the plates uh well actually one time this time I one time was the plates and one time I made a left turn where I wasn't supposed to make them and the guy both times I got let off here here's what I do turn the car off take the key out put the key on the dashboard where the cop can see it this sends a signal that you are not going to drive off like a maniac and that you have empathy for them that you are uh understand that driving off is a crazy thing that some people do in cars the keys are right up there then I take my wallet and I put my wallet up there and I take my driver's license out and I lay it on top of my wallet and I grab the insurance cuz you know it takes a couple minutes I put the insurance on uh the dashboard and I put my hands at 11 and one o00 if it is a clock 11 and 1 o'cl not 9 and three where I could jump down and grab something 11 and one and dome light on very important I've got the dome light on Keys registration license hands at 10 and one I'm sorry officer no I did not realize that I made a left turn I apologize for that uh I'm just on my way home can I have your license registration yes it's right here now watch my hands go from here to here he says okay I'll be right back I come back why are there no plates in your car she got the car back from the store my wife's going to put the plates on she's just had a baby and she she's forgets things and uh anyway I got off both times yeah I agree it's a unique scenario that I bring up but it you know ultimately it showed me that there was value there so you know whether it be uh applying this to another scenario which you know definitely could be um that particular scenario showed me that there was value and it was unique I don't expect that to happen very frequently so what is interesting though is that uh you have this compelling question and I felt compelled to give my answer on video I'm comfortable on video most people or not um we had in the road map for Mahalo answers uh the ability to give a video response not what you're talking about taking a video for the question but just click a button and if I want to answer the question I could do it in video and some people actually started doing this themselves uh they would make a YouTube video and then paste the YouTube video into the answer uh but it never took off and I think it's because it's hard to be entertaining in video I don't know if my storytelling is any good but I tried to tell the story entertainingly I don't know if it's entertaining or not but I thought there's some value in the story I think that there's too many steps there I think that people like to be involved in situations as they're occurring it kind of makes you feel like you're there and you're part of the experience with them you're on to something you might this might be a situation where you're too early because it might be that video live you know the networks aren't so good it breaks up I was playing with quick like two years ago a lot people remember I was driving the Prototype of the Tesla around town and I really liked it but it it's kind of flaky maybe it's gotten a little bit better the networks are getting better this might just be one of those situations where you're a little bit early when the iPhone comes out with the video camera on the front next week or the week after that might be the thing that makes your thing possible 4G networks everyone having a decent phone and more there's another quick problem to solve which is when you were doing the quick and this is exactly what he's talking about which is you pull out your phone and you show something and you had a chat room going right away cuz you had a ton of Twitter followers that would see that you're streaming and crazy Aston CER was doing the same thing yeah um but how do you filter the responses that you're getting so that you know that they're of a qualified answer to some extent yeah like I don't necessarily want people who don't have legal expertise Consulting me on what to say to the police officer y yeah there there's definitely an element of human trust there I think that as the answers come up on the phone it would be almost like a translucent overlay and the first answer to come in would remain at the top so you're not getting like this constant stream of ANS and you can't read them quick enough because they're flying by you you're able to kind of go down and look at the top you know few and there is that

element of trust there if you deem that to be a correct answer you mark it as correct and you listen you're getting some amount of information I think that it's the idea is a little early uh it feels a little bit Minority Report but kind of cool in that way I think that if the iPad had a video in on both sides like the one I predicted you know the one Steve Jobs gave me the 2. 0 version that I have to this day uh with the solar power uh when that comes out and you have video on the front and back that could be interesting because then I would be at the scene of the accident and I would be holding this and you would see what's in front of me and you'd see me picture in a picture and then I would see you in a box and it would be more like Skype multi-way calling or what we do here at the tricaster so um this I think your idea is an interesting idea in college like in the MIT media lab or for like a flyer to build something like this I don't think it's I wouldn't invest in it because I think it's too soon but it is something I would think would be fun to play with good job uh you did a great job actually I like that nice job Jay thank you okay uh everybody knows that if you watch 10 episodes of uh this week in startups live and you tweet that you're you want to come to the launchconf tocom what do they get Tyler free ticket they get a free ticket to the launch conference so uh Roberta will take attendance during the show she's got like a some sort of a document with your Twitter handle in it I believe uh and uh man we are running behind uh but uh you're GNA want to what do they do Roberta tell everybody in the chat room what they do all right so you just say that you want to come to the launchconf decom it's going to be in San Francisco in the winter we have a great guest with us uh this week and uh Power VPS has great managed hosting for you go to Power VPS and use the code pound twist and you will get uh your 25% discount for Life power vps. com virtual and dedicated website hosting powered by the cloud 30-day money back guarantee upgrades to fit your growing needs choose from C panel plus uh for ultimate control and uh go take a look these guys do a great job and uh they've been helping me hosting some special projects that will be revealed at another time go check out power VPS 877 hug Cloud you want to hug the cloud