[narrator]

>Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business.

This is because you lack the most overlooked and most difficult to teach skill in investing: empathy. Zapier lets non-programmers, the vast majority of the planet, do things that programmers do. Many programmers have poor empathy and thus make bad salespeople and investors. If you can understand how most of the planet thinks and feels though, you can figure out what is going to work and what isn't.

Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big. I don't really play video games. Who would spend hours watching people play video games? I couldn't understand this phenomenon because I was limiting my exposure to people only inside my own little bubble of reality. I think one can't be a good investor without constantly developing ones empathy because the appeal of various things is difficult to grasp intuitively without a person who would be the customer in mind.

Personally, I think it's important to spend time with people one has nothing in common with to develop this broader empathy and thus be able to pick up on these trends.

[anm89]

Imagine just blasting out at a person that you've never met and know essentially nothing about, based on a few sentences they wrote regarding startup valuations that "they lack empathy". As in you are willing to assess this other person as being completely devoid of empathy.

That seems fairly insane.

[IAmGraydon]

His reply is a textbook example of psychological projection. He clearly lacks empathy and is attempting to attribute it to someone else as a defense mechanism.

[staticassertion]

Is this intended to be ironic? You're doing the exact same thing.

[sicromoft]

That's because he lacks empathy. (Only someone lacking empathy would accuse someone who accused someone else of lacking empathy of doing so due to lack of empathy.)

[narrator]

The word "empathy" has an enormous amount of baggage attached to it unfortunately and triggers a whole library of insinuations and assumptions. Admittedly, it was the wrong word to use. I should have said "Consumer empathy" which would have been appropriately in context. Also there are varying degrees of consumer empathy. I know some people who are absolute naturals at understanding people and it's amazing to see how vivid their intuitive understanding of people is. It's like watching people do sketch art who can draw beautiful things like it's nothing.

[staticassertion]

Honestly it was really obvious from context that you were referring to consumer empathy and not that you were implying that they were a psychopath.

[Permagate]

It could be phrased better, but I think they got the point across. The message is something that most people (not just programmers) could relate on various levels and learn to get better.

[raindropm]

Damn, misjudge the potential of some product made someone instantly lack of empathy? or maybe it's just that I can't feel deeply relate to everything, and not because I'm heartless bastard...(We can try to understand, yes)

Also, please don't tell other people that they lack empathy straight in the face, that's plain rude, and hey,...sounds like lack of empathy :p

Sometimes I think the application of that word is way too broad, especially in business setting.

[etaioinshrdlu]

I don't think my mother or father could figure out Zapier. Yet they can figure out the MS Office suite and Excel to get work done. I think the premise is just wrong, Zapier is just not easy enough for non-programmers still.

This may be where some of the mystery over the product among programmers could lie. It doesn't look like it would actually let non-programmers do what programmers do at all.

[felipellrocha]

> Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big. I don't really play video games. Who would spend hours watching people play video games?

Heh. I grew playing games with friends. When I got tired, I'd spend hours just watching them play and having fun hanging out that way. It was no surprise to me they got so big so fast. It really is all about empathy, and I thought this little anecdote would help strengthen your point! :)

[nojito]

>Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big.

Monetizing loneliness is how social media companies grow. twitch just has a strangle hold on a specific community that no one else thought of.

[selcuka]

To be fair they didn't think of it either. It was a natural pivot from justin.tv when they see that the majority of their users were using the platform to broadcast games.

[slightwinder]

> This is because you lack the most overlooked and most difficult to teach skill in investing: empathy.

Everyone is lacking empathy, that is not limited to the profession. Empathy on most parts comes from your own experience and understanding, and everyones horizon of experience is limited.

> Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big. I don't really play video games. Who would spend hours watching people play video games?

Which is strange, considering how many people watch sports. And most videogames are nothing else, just more focussed on mental skills than physical skills. But the main selling point of twitch is IMHO not people playing games, but the interaction twitch offers alongside this. Twitch in that regard is more like a sportsbar or a local sportsfield, where everyone meets, talks, interacts while some do stuff on the side.

The more buzzling part for me are youtube-videos of people playing stuff, because those are missing the interacting and it's just like watching a very poor movie with low production-value.

> I think one can't be a good investor without constantly developing ones empathy because the appeal of various things is difficult to grasp intuitively without a person who would be the customer in mind.

Yes, it's a given that you need to understand the thinking and problems of customers if you wanna sell them something well. Just throwing stuff at them might work, but more efficient is to understand what they want and what they need, and then build and sell it specifically to the targeted customers.

Similar like in a game you need to understand the abilities and weaknesses of your enemy to slay them. That's why marketing and reasearch exist.

[arn]

> Who would spend hours watching people play video games

Ask yourself who would spend hours watching people play sports, and it might not seem so foreign.

[daniellarusso]

Twitch started from Justin.tv, so it was not really about videogames originally.

But, if you think about how professional sports is and could foresee the rise of e-sports...

[narrator]

It's kind of like the rise of live electronic music. Oh there aren't any feats of manual dexterity like playing the guitar or drums well, but people go to see electronic musicians perform anyway.

[daniellarusso]

There was an interesting discussion on /r/DJs, about electronic music performances in the late 90s and early 2000s.

One of the comments articulated that the focus was on the music, not the DJ’s performance, and often times the DJ was not clearly visible, nor intended to be.

Another commenter pointed out that as an electronic music producer nowadays, the only way to present your music, as you also pointed out, is to DJ in front of a crowd.

Don’t underestimate a good DJ, though.

But, it was also pointed out that not all good producers are good DJs and vice-versa.

It is also worth mentioning that Twitch has become an increasingly popular venue for DJs to livestream during quarantine. Ephemeral live performances to reduce copyright infringement penalties are the norm.

Interesting times.

[doopy1]

Actually it's because the valuation is insane. They pull like $140MM per year and someone values that at $5B.

[user3939382]

I've been a programmer for over 20 years and I still use Zapier because I find it relatively quick and easy. Dealing with writing code for authentication, various API versions, debugging, deploying and maintaining the code is all a PITA that I'm happy to avoid where possible.

[jaxn]

Does Zapier only get revenue from paid subscriptions? Or do companies pay for promotion / integration? I suspect there is a big business around semi-private APIs and gluing "enterprise" partnership deals together.

[subpixel]

I empathize - in fact I feel the pain. Yet in all my many years of using Zapier I've never paid for the service, and I also would never have guessed the scale of their business.

[duxup]

" Zapier lets non-programmers, the vast majority of the planet, do things that programmers do"

I doubt that's the reason for the evaluation, that's hardly unique.

[jojobas]

There was already plenty of middleware tools that allowed API to API translation.

They all (and I assume Zapier is no exception) only allow "no code" integration in only the most basic scenarios.

I don't think it has much to do with empathy, much rather unbounded money printing of late.

[xwolfi]

Dentists lack empathy: they cant understand how most people think and never explain how they think outside of their bubble.

Our startup, Dentir, makes you do things dentists do :p

[rtpg]

The core difference being that “put value X from system S into value Y in system V” is actually conceptually extremely simple, and is mostly encumbered by machinery around it and “incidental complexity”.

Dentistry _is_ all the complexity and the skill of , like, drilling into your mouth or whatever.

[hervature]

To me, you just proved the GP’s comment about “empathy” (in quotes because imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes isn’t empathy, but that’s what they call it). The difficulty with programming has almost nothing to do with the machinery around it and entirely to do with the ability of the general population to understand statements like the one you just made with 4 variables. The direct proof of this is that Word is much more complex than Sublime Text which I use to program. Yet, everyone knows Word. Of course, if someone starts programming with an IDE, they have an additional tool to learn.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s easier to teach someone to be precise with a drill than it is to teach computer literacy.