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James Currier | How Your Life is Driven by Network Effects
James Currier is a Founding Partner at NFX and an angel investor in DoorDash, Lyft, and Patreon.
James grew in New Hampshire to a carpenter father and music teacher mother. He left home at 13 on a full scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy. Then Princeton, then HBS, all three on scholarship. After college, he sailed to Tahiti, then went to work for Rupert Murdoch building Asian satellite TV at STAR TV in Hong Kong. At 24, a mysterious misdiagnosis forced him back to the US and led him to Boston.
After a stint at various venture firms, James would go on to co-founder Tickle. As CEO, James grew Tickle to the 18th largest website in the world with over 150 million registered users - before being acquired in 2004 by Monster for $110 million.
James then co-founded three other successful companies — Wonderhill an online video game studio which merged with Kabam in 2010 and later sold for $800M, IronPearl a growth analytics SaaS, acquired by PayPal in 2013, and Jiff an enterprise healthcare software which raised $68M from Venrock, GE, J&J, merged with Castlight in 2017.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
01:31 Selling Worms to Fishermen at 6 Years Old
03:20 From a Dirt Road to Phillips Exeter Academy
04:49 The Hovercraft Corporation of America
07:48 Sailing Across the North Atlantic
09:18 Misdiagnosed in Communist China
10:41 Joining Battery Ventures in the 90s
12:25 Throwing Parties for Hundreds of Tech Associates
13:25 The Origins of Tickle
16:42 The $100M Healthcare IT Clusterf*ck
18:19 The Next 30-Year Technology Window
23:50 When to Start Your Own Company
26:26 The Importance of Geography: San Francisco vs. New York
29:34 AI, Consciousness, and Talking to God
31:51 Discovering Meditation and the Awakened Mind
34:27 Why You Work Best From 10 PM to 2 AM
36:07 Founder Psychology, Psychedelics and Self-Discovery
39:05 Status & Human Interaction
40:49 The Preferred Attachment Theory
42:40 The Real Value of College
44:01 People vs. Capital
47:56 What True Hustle Actually Looks Like
49:56 “Dad Talks” About Sex and Drugs
53:41 Quitting Alcohol at 21: The Ultimate Life Hack
54:42 F*cking Around at Scale
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com
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By YesterdayJames Currier is a Founding Partner at NFX and an angel investor in DoorDash, Lyft, and Patreon.
James grew in New Hampshire to a carpenter father and music teacher mother. He left home at 13 on a full scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy. Then Princeton, then HBS, all three on scholarship. After college, he sailed to Tahiti, then went to work for Rupert Murdoch building Asian satellite TV at STAR TV in Hong Kong. At 24, a mysterious misdiagnosis forced him back to the US and led him to Boston.
After a stint at various venture firms, James would go on to co-founder Tickle. As CEO, James grew Tickle to the 18th largest website in the world with over 150 million registered users - before being acquired in 2004 by Monster for $110 million.
James then co-founded three other successful companies — Wonderhill an online video game studio which merged with Kabam in 2010 and later sold for $800M, IronPearl a growth analytics SaaS, acquired by PayPal in 2013, and Jiff an enterprise healthcare software which raised $68M from Venrock, GE, J&J, merged with Castlight in 2017.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
01:31 Selling Worms to Fishermen at 6 Years Old
03:20 From a Dirt Road to Phillips Exeter Academy
04:49 The Hovercraft Corporation of America
07:48 Sailing Across the North Atlantic
09:18 Misdiagnosed in Communist China
10:41 Joining Battery Ventures in the 90s
12:25 Throwing Parties for Hundreds of Tech Associates
13:25 The Origins of Tickle
16:42 The $100M Healthcare IT Clusterf*ck
18:19 The Next 30-Year Technology Window
23:50 When to Start Your Own Company
26:26 The Importance of Geography: San Francisco vs. New York
29:34 AI, Consciousness, and Talking to God
31:51 Discovering Meditation and the Awakened Mind
34:27 Why You Work Best From 10 PM to 2 AM
36:07 Founder Psychology, Psychedelics and Self-Discovery
39:05 Status & Human Interaction
40:49 The Preferred Attachment Theory
42:40 The Real Value of College
44:01 People vs. Capital
47:56 What True Hustle Actually Looks Like
49:56 “Dad Talks” About Sex and Drugs
53:41 Quitting Alcohol at 21: The Ultimate Life Hack
54:42 F*cking Around at Scale
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yesterdayy.substack.com