David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…In fact Snapchat acquired a company to do that. They acquired a company doing it. There were glasses you wore on your face and that took video before Snapchat Spectacles. You know, there were messengers before them. They weren’t first, but they were the first thus far and we’ll see how Spectacles perform. The first to make like a real product that just works and is delightful and solves a need for a user, and I think that’s what this originality means and that’s what Steve was, right? Like Object Oriented Programming, all this stuff existed at Xerox PARC before NeXT. Object Oriented Programming and networking, like all this stuff was out there, workstations, blah, blah. But, like, it was technology; it wasn’t a product. It wasn’t something that you plugged it in and it just worked and it delighted you and it solved your need. I think that, I don’t know, especially like as a VC this is what we look for. So many times we meet founders, we meet companies, and they’re doing something cool that’s hard technically and the question is just like, okay, like the question I always ask is, like: What data do you have, what signal do you have that people want this? And so many times you get this blank stare back. Like, “Well, what do you mean? This was never possible before?” That’s not what I asked.…

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