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Justin.TV seems to have a very interesting startup model. An apparently trivial "outer" application which needs a good deal of innovation "under the covers" to pull off, which is where the real competitive edge comes from. Pulls in a different direction from how most people parse "build what users want".

I wonder how they pitched it to YC (and other investors).

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>> I wonder how they pitched it to YC (and other investors).

AFAIK, Justin and a friend took part in the first YC session with a web calendar called Kiko, which they sold on eBay for 5 or 6 figures to a media company after Google came out with theirs. They started working on Justin.tv to have a product in a market which didn't exist at the time, mobile streaming video, to have a better chance of survival.

I believe Justin et al have been working on Justin.tv even before Google purchased YouTube, and are funded by investors closely linked to YCombinator who enjoyed his YCombinator calendar startup.

"funded by investors closely linked to YCombinator"

And maybe a little from YC partners, too...

YC is the closest link to YC, smarty.

they didn't pitch it to yc. IIRC their initial project was a web calendar that died when google did theirs. I think most of the current stuff they figured out when Justin did his initial stunt and it just picked up from there.

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