2021
Zhang says his first company, Low Key, exited in 2021, which he called a fortunate time.
“And again, I think we exited at like a very fortunate time. It was 2021.”
Topic
Jesse Zhang
10 facts from 2 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
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Jesse Zhang started a company after graduating from Harvard, which was later acquired by Niantic, before he left to found Decagon.
“started a company right out of school. Uh, that company was eventually bought by Niantic, and then I left to start this company.”
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Jesse Zhang grew up in Boulder, competed in math contests and studied computer science at Harvard.
“grew up in Boulder, did a lot of math contests, stuff like that growing up, studied C S at Harvard.”
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Zhang says he angel invests in several fellow contest-alumni startups, and their founders in turn invest in Decagon.
“I angel invest in a lot of the companies you just listed. Uh, a lot of their founders are angel investors in our company.”
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Jesse Zhang's first company, Low Key, built high-performance video capture software for video games.
“We basically built high performance video capture software for video games.”
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About a year and a half into Low Key, Zhang's two school-friend co-founders burned out and left, leaving him alone.
“They both got burnt out and then decided to leave.”
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Zhang says the highest annual price prospective customers named during Decagon's early discovery calls was in the low to mid six figures.
“the time was probably on the order of low to mid six figures”
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Jesse Zhang grew up in Boulder, Colorado.
“I grew up in Colorado, in Boulder. Boulder's a pretty academic town”
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Zhang says that as a young child he played piano three to four hours a day, before his parents shifted him toward math.
“I played a lot of piano, essentially like three, four hours a day.”
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Zhang attended the camp for top performers connected to the USA Math Olympiad for a few years in high school.
“And so there's like, essentially a camp for like the top folks. And so I went there a few years.”
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