1. Would you call yourself the Kanye East of Tech (Persian roots)?
LOL Kanye East! That’s brilliant. Yes, I am the Kanye East and my cofounder who built Everipedia is the “Persian Mark Zuckerberg”!
2. I met you in person and was surprised that you are actually humble. Seems like you have an alter ego online?
Online is where I get freaky-freaky. I watch porn online, I say whatever I want. In person I am rather reserved. This is the opposite of my former cofounders, Tom Lehman and Ilan Zechory, who try to act normal on the Internet even tho they are total weirdos IRL….
3. What’s your new favorite app?
Flyy. I love hearing the sound of my own voice. I think I have such a beautiful speaking voice.. I don’t know how to sing, which is a shame, cause you know I would be belting out some beautiful ballads.
4. Everipidia is pretty genius. What do you love about it so much?
My biggest frustration in LIFE was that I didn’t have my own Wikipedia — I tried soooo hard to get one. I paid a kid to put one up for me and they took it down! So when I saw that I finally have my own EVERIPEDIA page, it really spoke to me.. I immediately knew this shit is gonna blow up, and started working on it really hard. 3 months later, they let me become a cofounder and we raised money! (from LA VC Mucker Capital)
5. How do you think Everipidea will change the world?
Wikipedia has 5 million pages. They delete 1000 pages A DAY! It is the 7th-biggest site in the world. Someday, Everipedia will have billions of pages, just like Facebook. So think about how big of a site it could be.. I think it will someday be the biggest site in the world. All of human knowledge will be contained in it — including everything that Wikipedia deletes LOL.
6. You have been through YC, co — founded one of the most well known startups and are now on your third and most likely biggest venture. What are you doing differently this time around?
Everipedia is growing a lot faster than Rap Genius because I’m already kind of a B celebrity, at least for tech nerds. The problem is that old man Capitalists like Ben Horowitz don’t like me anymore.. but the young people of tech still love me, and I appreciate them. So the plan is: I am going to spend a couple years with Everipedia, make the traffic grow really big, and then they are going to “fire” me so the old men can give them hundreds of millions of dollars. Brilliant right?
7. What’s the most valuable lesson you learned at YC? Who was your favorite mentor?
MOST VALUABLE LESSON OF YC: YC doesn’t actually help you! It is just window dressing. Same as how going to Harvard doesn’t actually make you any smarter. All of this resume-padder stuff is just for social signaling, it has no intrinsic value. Paul Graham one time suggested we should change the name of Rap Genius to “Definator”…which sounds like Defecator. THANKS FOR THE SUGGESTION PG! LOL
My favorite dudes at YC are gone now! Harj Taggar and Garry Tan — two very good friends. I love those dudes.
8. If you could invest what kind of entrepreneurs or ideas would you be investing in and why? Who do you think investors are overlooking?
The only angel investment I’ve ever made was in Coinbase. Bitcoin is my obsession, I think it will change the world even more than the internet. Also, Coinbase is an incredible company. The cofounder Fred Ehrsam is my friend, he seems like a dude who is destined to be an extremely powerful billionaire. He is a pimp.
9. Which female do you look up to in Tech? Who is your Taylor Swift of Tech?
My hero is Elizabeth Holmes, no doubt! Everyone is talking shit about her now.. I think she is a boss. I don’t care if Theranos has made any major breakthroughs or whatever — it has succeeded in marketing! And that’s all anything really is: marketing. There are no ACTUAL tech breakthroughs anymore (except Bitcoin..)
