One of the biggest startup cliches is that every other startup wants to become a platform for other startups to build on. But to Christopher Poole, the founder of Canvas and 4Chan, that is the wrong approach. “People get caught up in trends—game mechanics, building a platform,” he tells Chris Dixon in the Founder Stories video above. Instead of trying to copy what works for others, founders should “focus on building what you love, focus on the product and building the community.”
He doesn’t understand “this obsession with building platforms. Focus on building something worth scaling. You don’t even have something worthy of an API yet. Focus on users and have them fall in love with your thing.” Amen.
Poole (aka Moot) also talks about his “boring” Internet habits and how he went to California to recruit the team to build Canvas, his current startup, and brought them back to New York City. In the video below, he talks about how he’s helping to “keep kids off the street” and into startups with HackNY, which is doing a student-only Hackathon this weekend (sign up here), and his work as an adviser to Lerer Ventures.
This is Part III of this interview. Watch Part I and Part II, or the entire uncut interview. (Subscribe to Founder Stories on iTunes).
Christopher “moot” Poole is the founder of 4chan—a simple, image-based bulletin board. Since its inception, 4chan has grown from a niche site targeting anime fans, to one of the largest and most influential communities on the ‘Net. Commanding over 9 million users a month, many popular viral videos, phenomena and memes get their start on 4chan. In 2009, moot was selected by TIME Magazine’s editors as one of the TIME 100”: an annual list of “The World’s Most Influential...
4chan is a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images. Different boards are dedicated to different topics, from Japanese anime to videogames, music, and photography. Users do not need to register a username before participating in the community.
Canvas is an image-centric social website currently in development, led by Christopher Poole. Canvas has an imageboard that allows users to anonymously share and comment on media, with eventual plans to include video and audio. The site also has image editing tools built into its interface, so users no longer need to rely on desktop editing programs to manipulate content.
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