Summary: Jason Calacanis, angel investor, joins us this week for part one of a two-part interview. As an early investor in companies like Uber and Robinhood, Jason shares his insights for achieving startup success. He explains why a company’s brand is so important from its beginning stages, and delivers a hot take on VC culture today. He also gives his opinion on what the number one killer of startups is, and mulls over the following equation: 1 good idea + 1 good idea = zero good ideas. Show notes Conversation with Jason Calacanis, angel investor (0:56) Thumbtack, one of Jason’s investments, is an online service that matches customers with local professionals (1:12) DataStax, another of Jason’s investments, is a cloud database company (1:13) Robinhood, another company Jason invested in early on, a financial tech company (1:14) Jason’s book, Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups--Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000 (1:18) Launch, founded by Jason, has a mission of supporting founders and inspiring innovation (2:20) Silicon Valley Reporter was a publication that focused on New York’s tech scene (2:28) Why is brand so important from a company’s early stages? (2:35) The This Week in Startups podcast (5:05) Chris Sacca’s first episode on This Week in Startups (6:43) Phil Libin on an episode of This Week in Tech (7:29) The Midas List of 2017 (10:57) What is, in Jason’s view, the #1 killer of startups (13:22) One good idea plus another good idea equals zero good ideas (14:28) AI use case (14:35) How Phil’s watch violated principles of good AI product design (16:32) Listener question (18:39) Sift, an All Turtles product,f is an experiment in news therapy (18:53) Listener question via the All Turtles Facebook page: “Does Sift remove biased statements and opinions and just report the facts?” We want to hear from you Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Voicemail: +1 (310) 571-8448 Email: hello@all-turtles.com Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
