Houseparty’s Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani: “An epidemic of loneliness”

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Ben Rubin and Sima Sistani, founders of video chat app Houseparty, to talk about trying and failing multiple times (3:00), why live streaming didn’t work (5:50), telling investors that their company was a bust - three months after raising $14m (8:50), focussing on the 99% (10:45), how Sima and Ben teamed up (14:15), building an alternative to “performative” social media (17:35), Sima’s background in banking (21:00), countering the loneliness epidemic (22:40), launching Houseparty (26:00), reengineering the app after it took off (29:30), raising $50m from Sequoia Capital (32:10), on everyone copying everyone in Silicon Valley (33:10), how Houseparty works (37:30), how both being immigrants influenced how they built the product (39:05), on not having a plan to make money (46:10), and their worst days of work (47:30).

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