Justin doesn't just work with the media. Justin IS the media.
I think it's worth pointing out that Justin.tv led to the two largest YC exits to date, Twitch (Justin.tv pivot), and Cruise (founded by Justin.tv cofounder Kyle Vogt and Justin's brother Dan).
In 2008, Justin.tv co-founder Michael Seibel found Brian Chesky crashed on the floor of a hotel in Austin, offered him space in his room, began coaching him on how to build a startup, introduced him to the rest of the Justin.tv team, and ultimately brought them into YC! (and look where he is now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP6TH3pBPi8)
regarding the Obama clip, i'm impressed Obama can talk so clearly about how airBnB works, for someone who lives in a bubble of security and probably never thinks about where he's going to stay when he goes on holiday, he can describe very well the social reputation components of airBnB.
On that very page a picture description reads "U.S. President Barack Obama and aides Carol Browner, David Axelrod and Jon Favreau working on a speech (...)".
I'm not sure if you mean to refer to only American Presidents or national Presidents globally, but there can be a wide range of them, as far as I can tell. Unless you've looked and found that leaders of even the most far-flung of nations are as described?
A lot of the research around the evolution of intelligence suggests that some large part of what we think of as intelligence is inherently intertwined with the ability to socially signal, prevaricate, and negotiate: to assert social dominance of a group through out-thinking rivals and being better at swaying the majority against those rivals. (Thus why sarcasm is considered inherently witty, exactly to the extent that it's subtle enough to trip up some people but not all.)
If you take the dual roles that a President embodies: that of "managed to out-politician every other politician"; and that of "is believed by the technocrats of their party to be capable of negotiating foreign policy, trade agreements, and military conflicts"—you end up with a fair proxy for that particular 'evolutionary' measure of intelligence.
To appeal to a broad segment of the electorate, you need to a.) be able to predict what will be important to a large number of diverse groups and b.) be able to analyze & synthesize that into a platform & message that will bring them over to your side.
The combination of both is a very rare skill that correlates well with intelligence. Note that it requires both emotional & analytical intelligence: you need to understand what motivates people, and you also need to understand the numbers & segmentation well enough to make sure that you're empathizing with the right group of people.
CEO, BTW, requires a similar skillset. I used to think that CEO was a do-nothing role that you got through political favors, and maybe in a couple dysfunctional companies that's still the case. But in a functioning, market-leading company, being CEO requires that you first understand many different perspectives, and that you can synthesize those into a course of action that avoids pissing off any one core constituency too much.
I have heard from a couple friends that George W Bush was smart, just bad in front of a camera. To be honest, though, my own radar from seeing him all those times - from heuristics and deduction - said he was actually not very intelligent in many areas that other presidents were intelligent in. I think his social intelligence was much higher than Gore's and Kerry's, though.
I've heard it hypothesized that Bush had early dementia. If you watch videos of his younger days, he spoke articulately. During his presidency, he kinda stuttered.
Yes. I was one of the first Justin.tv investors. I think my final return was about 97x, so that's pretty good.
From my perspective at least, Twitch was essentially a re-branding. Basically, they saw that gaming content was popular on Justin.tv, so Emmett decided to move that on to a dedicated site. Ultimately Twitch far eclipsed the justin.tv site, so they shut that down to focus entirely on the Twitch side.
Based on the Startup School podcast episode I heard with Emmett, it sounded like it was less that gaming was popular (I think he said it was 2% of traffic) and more that it was the only content that Emmett actually liked watching. (Not trying to disagree with you, given that you were there, more trying to give another perspective.)
I dont see how it couldn't have. Twitch was almost undoubtedly built on the JTV tech stack and staff. Also consider that Amazon owns the justin.tv domain.
Congratulations to Justin, and to Sam/YC for making a great choice.
On a tangential but related note, does anyone recommend any good follows on Snapchat, particularly anyone discussing tech/entrepreneurship? (There are obviously tons of entertaining celebrities, athletes, musicians, etc, but that's not really relevant here.)
Mark Suster (msuster on snap) of Upfront Ventures/bothsidesofthetable is good for at least a few 'snapstorms' a week covering a wide variety of VC topics. I've also really been enjoying the stories from Bobby Kim (bobbyhundreds), co-founder of seminal LA streetwear label The Hundreds, which tend to be a mix of standard day-in-the-life Snapchat fare as well as more introspective reflections on life and business. Bobby's a smart guy with diverse interests, even if you don't care about skateboarding or which overpriced, limited-edition collaboration is responsible for today's line out the door somewhere on Fairfax, it's still worth checking out Bobby's snaps.
I thought I saw that he had posted them somewhere but I just went looking and couldn't find anything. Hopefully he publishes them because I keep missing them!
The only reason I open snapchat daily is to watch Justin's stories. Nothing else.
He's entertaining and has a good mix of fun stuff, great life advices and answers interesting startup questions.
It is interesting that Snapchat is developing in a direction where people are promoting it for use in communicating with them in a business context. When calling people to follow someone on Snapchat you should include their username or QR code though.
I've interacted personally with him (he may not remember) and I would say he is quite thoughtful and effortlessly able to empathize and interact excellently.
My buddy in this YC batch has nothing but good words to say.
The YC network is a defensible asset I believe PG never saw coming.
I've been following Justin for a while on Snapchat. He's always doing something interesting and offering helpful advice, as well as just providing some insight into the culture of YC. I think he's a great choice for managing PR at YC, seeing as he's already been doing that unofficially for a while now.
I was a $BIGCO intern in 2011. I only hung out with Justin briefly at that time, but he more than anyone else got me into the startup scene. He came off to me as both rawly honest and friendly - attributes that are usually mutually exclusive. He'll make an awesome spokesman.
Is nobody else surprised that a techie (Sam Altman) can use the term PR without qualifying that he doesn't mean github. In Swedish it's called 'yrkesskadad' - occupational damage.
Edit: It's being suggested that the original article as posted didn't have the username, and it was added afterwards. So I've removed my snarky comment.
I think it's worth pointing out that Justin.tv led to the two largest YC exits to date, Twitch (Justin.tv pivot), and Cruise (founded by Justin.tv cofounder Kyle Vogt and Justin's brother Dan).
In 2008, Justin.tv co-founder Michael Seibel found Brian Chesky crashed on the floor of a hotel in Austin, offered him space in his room, began coaching him on how to build a startup, introduced him to the rest of the Justin.tv team, and ultimately brought them into YC! (and look where he is now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP6TH3pBPi8)
I look forward to more of the same :)