Trevor Blackwell (TB) on success: My definition of success is doing something that I love and something that my customers love. When we can save our customers time and make them happy, that’s what motivates me every day.
HK: So it is not only your matter but others as well?
TB: Yes it has to have a broader impact in my own life for it to mean anything.
HK: Is that since you were young?
TB: Yes, I think things are only useful if you can bring them to the world at large.
HK: I personally, but strongly agree. Let me ask about your professional engagements and I want to ask about two of your professional engagements – Anybots and Y Combinator – at first, Anybots, what do you want to do through this company? Oh, and thank you for inviting me today’s launch party.
TB: Sure. I want to make distance irrelevant.
People spend so much time going from place to place for business meetings and there are reasons why it’s worth travelling, like it’s worth travelling to somewhere beautiful and warm but every time I have to travel to Pittsburgh it doesn’t make me happy.
HK” [Laugh] Physical tiredness?
TB: Yes. It’s time consuming and tiring to travel. What we really want to do is give you the full experience of visiting a place without having to be on an airplane. And that’s a different experience than what video conferencing today gives you.
You can use Skype but then you are, it’s like you are talking to someone through a window and the window looks out onto their desk with a bunch of junk in the background. And what you want to do is you want to walk in the front door of their place and see what they are doing and meet all the people as if you were really visiting a place and that’s what mobile telepresence avatar is about.
HK: Cool. Almost like visual worlds can be identified with real world?
TB
Yes, absolutely. I mean I have done quite a few things now through the robot without going there and I remember those places as if I had been there. We’ve heard that from our customers too, that one guy went to a conference in Washington and said afterwards he remembers being there. He remembers where people were standing and what the room looked like and remembers people coming in and out and where the different sections were.
HK: Cool. I’m just wondering about your thoughts on money, you know, capital. Is earning money the primary thing to achieve success, in terms of business?
TB: No, money is only a problem if you go below zero.
HK: [Laugh] So money is not the issue?
TB: Well you can’t ignore it, it’s a really big problem if you go below zero but that’s not why I am doing it. I am doing it to have the maximum impact and…
HK: Maximum impact on…?
TB: On people’s lives. How improving people’s regular business interactions by saving them having to drive all over town or fly.
HK: What do you think about the key element to be a successful entrepreneur?
TB: Not giving up.
HK: Is it that simple?
TB: It is that simple. Because to end up with a successful product you probably have to try 100 things that aren’t successful and whenever you go talk to people with a product that’s not quite the right thing it’s discouraging because they are going to say no, they don’t want it. You have to have that determination to keep iterating until you finally find something that people want.
HK: Does that mean, to be successful, you have to stick to one product or have to be flexible?
TB: Oh you have to be flexible. Our first robot product attempt had legs. It was a terrible idea.
HK: [Laugh] Then, you changed it lots of times?
TB: We changed that and then we changed it about 15 more times until we found something that people seemed to want.
HK: Let’s talk about Y Combinator. At first, since I came here, the Silicon Valley, I was wondering why Y Combinator is so different from other incubators?
TB: Y Combinator is special because it was the first of that style of incubator, there are now quite a few more competitors but Y Combinator was really the first doing that model of investing in as many companies as possible. What we discovered was that the more companies we invested in the better we got at giving them advice. Because we’ve seen the trajectories of 200 start up companies we just know more about what happens to start-up companies than anyone possibly could if they had only seen 10 or 50 start up companies.
There’s an accumulated knowledge about what really happens in an early stage start up in the first few months and it’s hardly ever written about. But we have more data about that than anyone else now.
HK: The reason people focus on Y combinator. Is that as a result of research or famousness?
TB: Both. We are well known and so we are often an entrepreneurs first choice for where to go and also we can do a better job giving them advice because we have more data and experience on how start ups really work.
HK: So do you always say to start up CEOs don’t give up or do you have any other advice for them?
TB: Well we tell them to give up on a particular idea all the time.
We tell this idea is horrible, no one is ever going to buy it. And sometimes they listen and sometimes we’re wrong and sometimes they were right. But not to give up on the idea of being an entrepreneur is the important thing. If a given idea is often a bad one and the only way you can find that out is by trying and seeing it not become popular and switching and trying something new.
HK: I asked about your thoughts on money as an entrepreneur, which is making social impacts. Do you have another opinions on money as an incubator?
TB: No, we decided when we started Y Combinator that we weren’t going to be money people. We weren’t going to run Y Combinator thinking primarily about money, we were going to think primarily about how to help entrepreneurs like ourselves. We started our own company – most of the founders of Y Combinator started a company together in 95 – and it was really hard. We didn’t know where to find investors, we didn’t know who to ask for advice and so we decided we would be the kind of investors we wished we had found when we were starting a company.
HK: Cool. Can you tell me what was the biggest lesson from your whole career?
TB: Work with the best people you can find. I think that’s the biggest lesson. Always be asking who is the best person I could be working with on this project and try to seek them out and work with them.
HK: In other words having good human connection?
TB: Yes and not just having them but working with them. Trying to get people involved. The best people that you can think of.
HK: That’s a great lesson. Now the final question I want to ask you is to give me your advice to achieve success in a general sense, not as an entrepreneur and not as a inventor?
TB: I don’t think I can improve on Y Combinator’s advice which is make something people want. And that’s true in business and that’s true outside of business as well. It’s true in art, if you’re a musician you should make music people want to hear. If you are an artist you should make paintings people want to see. And in business make products people want to buy.
HK: So it’s not like what you want to do and rather it’s for others?
TB: Well you have to make something that matters to yourself too or else your heart won’t be in it. But I am sure everyone can find an overlap that they care about and the rest of the world cares about. I think that’s where it gets really satisfying is when it’s something you care about and something people want.
Trevor Blackwell is the Founder of Anybots and the Co-Founder of Y Combinator.
Haegwan Kim is a writer who was born in Osaka, Japan in 1989 and grew up near Tokyo where went to a Korean school for 12 years.
