SV Icons: Jason Calacanis
Living untethered
When 140 students don`t leave the room for 3 hours on Friday night - there`s only possible reason - JCal is here. This past week we were lucky to organize a pitch night and dinner with Jason Calacanis.
JCal gave in-depth, specific feedback after each of the 10 business idea pitches and his unfiltered yet constructive, clear, crisp feedback was eye-opening. We learned so much by just being there - watching the pitches and listening to the feedback.
Here are some takeaways:
- An early startup is all about the team, the product, and how the product affects the customers. Jason advised students to forget about terms such as the competitive landscape and other mumbo-jumbos.
- UX/UI is becoming more critical because it builds retention with the users - study UI/UX (I personally love growth.design for this).
- Look for founders who have worked together in the past and are now starting something together. An analogy he uses - these founders have gone to wars together in the past and are currently working together to create a business idea
- Product velocity, how quickly one can release products or features and iterate, matters: speed to market is better than perfection. Have a bias for action.
- The Silicon Valley VC scene is not shielded from underhanded and unscrupulous business tactics - ethics, honesty, and forthrightness are essential to combat them.
- Top companies such as Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Google are great for building skills and networks but not for building a company that skyrockets your learning and capabilities.
- First-time founders have a never-ending supply of energy, and investing in them is also an investment in their future. For example, Jason’s long-term relationship with Travis Kalanick led to his successful investment in Uber.
- AI can make you understand the world in a way you can never imagine - it provides unbiased, rational answers to what`s true. AI will play the role of philosophers who were arguing what`s the right way to think.
- Identifying and using your superpower is very important. For Jason, it is talking. He leveraged it in building excellent podcasts, This Week in Startups and All-in.
- Jason doesn’t believe in Web3 and that it provides any tangible value to users and is primarily used for swindling money out of people:
1. Unchanging blockchains do not improve the data issues they are trying to tackle. Indeed, they probably make them worse;
2. Crypto schemes have mainly been used to swindle money from unsophisticated investors, which has always been obvious to the critical players involved.
Organizer: Georgi Koreli, Olga Chumanskaya
Editor: Jacky Lin
Contributors: Joe Glick, Noor Izzaldeen