Kyle Vogt

Why did I leave MIT, move to San Francisco, and start a reality TV show with three guys I barely knew?  I wish I could say I had some preconceived idea that it would turn into a great company, which it ultimately did, but that was just luck.

The truth is that I was sold on the opportunity to build cool hardware.  My due diligence on the team consisted of googling Justin and Emmett to make sure they weren’t business school predators or serial crackpots.  They sold their first company on Ebay for a quarter million bucks, which I thought was pretty legit, so I agreed to spec out a prototype camera after our first meeting.  They said I was competing against another “consultant”, so I went overboard and prepared a 20 page engineering document, including 3d renderings, video codec research, and production cost estimates.  It was worth a bit more than the $750 I was paid for it, but I believe in making good first impressions at any cost.

Well, it worked.  Justin and Emmett funded the construction of my first camera prototype, which was little more than a laser-cut box filled with rechargeable batteries, a wireless modem, and an MPEG2 video server.  Since it was all off-the-shelf stuff, I didn’t have to write a single line of code.  I shipped the box out to San Francisco, and Justin promptly strapped it to his back and streamed himself driving a go-kart around the city in a viking costume.  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that.  Nor were my parents, who were looking the reason I was threatening to leave MIT for a few months.  Instead of a real explanation, they got a grainy go-kart video.

Regardless, I was convinced that even if the business flopped, we’d have a good time doing it.

Read Part 2 of Justin.tv History