The Next Social Era is Here: Josh Elman & James Currier on Social Products Reshaping Human Connection

I often ask founding teams, 'Do you use your product? How much do you love your product? Is it embodying your habits?' ... In the consumer world, that's foundational. If you don't love your product and use it all the time and haven't shifted over completely... it's going to be really hard for you to convince others to.

There are very few ideas that have never been tried before. It's all about getting the right product at the right time with the right trend and wave.

I think the best founders, especially in this space [tech], are great studies of humanity; they are great studies of people; and they are really great psychologists.

That's the other part of social media that I do like... It's not media that we're just capturing to show off what we're doing; it's media that we're creating with our heart and wanting to share and wanting to get feedback on. I've long dreamed that the best social network out there could be one that shows how long you spent making a post.

You need to maintain this nice balance between believing in yourself and believing in your product and believing in the mission but also being relentlessly skeptical that you've nailed it.

It's so important to understand your growth and to find a durable, sustainable, repeatable channel ... If you can't sustain it through your own engine and your own effort, it is easy to have a Google algorithm change, a Facebook algorithm change, or a business development person or CEO decide to shut you down, and that, all of a sudden, can take your growth away.