Your live hangout where you share your experiences. Watch movies with 100+ friends, play and share games, watch sports, hangout, and more!
Tech
KAST
Meet KAST
"Evasyst, Inc (dba Kast) is a media technology company with a consumer product, Kast, that makes watch parties easy. You can host public and private watch parties with you and your friends. Kast is available on PC, Mac, web, and mobile. Download Kast at www.kast.gg Kast the product: released in June 2019, it has organically grown to over two million+ registered users with only organic growth. Kast the company: Mark Ollila was appointed to CEO on Halloween 2018. The company has expanded into two main locations, San Diego, USA, and Helsinki, Finland. The San Diego location allows the company to be close to the heart of the gaming esports community (Overwatch from Blizzard is in Irvine, Rocket League from Psyonix is in San Diego, League of Legends is in Los Angeles). The Finnish location allows the company to be close to the gaming epicenter of Europe of Helsinki (Supercell, Rovio, Remedy, Next Games), and acts as a springboard into Europe and easy access to Asia. Kast has developed technology and know-how that is unique to the creation of intimate private watch parties, aka spectate, that scales with millions of users. The management team of Kast are veterans in the gaming and entertainment space, having delivered experiences and consumer services to hundreds of millions of people. Kast today is monetizing through advertising, and subscription, and growing the number one watch party experience for games and movies across PC, Mac, Chrome Web, iOS, and Android. Kast also has 7 patents granted/allowed, and 4 patents pending in the video/chat/social space. Kast is headquartered in San Diego and has a subsidiary in Helsinki, Finland."
Why is your company the best option to solve the problem you're solving?
Kast is a cross-platform content-agnostic solution to watch parties. We have a team that has done it before, and has the battle scars to prove it, and thus will not panic when new challenges come ahead. We also have the approach that we are targeting the everyday person, and thus our focus is on simplification and ease of use.
What nuggets of info make you interesting? Why do people care about what you're doing?
We employ 13 people in San Diego, located at the San Diego Innovation Center opposite Miramar Airport. We are a dog-friendly office. People using our platform spend 3 hours per session. We have a community from 204 countries. Over 50% is North America.
What else do you want us to know?
Our Chief Experience Officer, Elina Ollila, has 14 patents and also is the President of UX Speakeasy in San Diego. Our CTO Tim Flack use to be a photographer of San Diego music bands. Our President Justin Weissberg use to be an ex-professional esports player, and top 100 for COD and WOW."
BEHIND THE COMPANY
CEO/Founder: Mark Ollila
What one book, podcast, newsletter, etc. do you recommend to other entrepreneurs? Why?
The Resonant Leader for business. Helps you focus on what leadership is and how it influences everyone in your life. How do you help other people succeed? The Dark Forrest for personal. It answers the question of why we have not seen any alien extraterrestrial life yet. The second book of the Three-Body Problem trilogy.
What is your company's secret sauce?
The secret sauce is our product team's ability to understand the space and design simple but powerful interfaces for the experience combined with our engineering teams ability to rapidly make those ideas a reality and get them in the hands of users which product then gathers feedback from creating a fast and virtuous feedback loop. Kast is designed for 1 click streaming and is so easy that anyone can use it. Also helps that we have a family of patents in the Watch Party Space.
What inspired you to start/run this company?
I had a successful career at Nokia/Microsoft which was a lot of fun. Everything I worked on, influenced millions of people. What I saw in Kast, was the opportunity to build a company that had that same effect - influencing millions. Also - always wanted to be a media mogul.
What's the best entrepreneurial advice you've received?
Make myself replaceable.
What sets your company culture apart?
Our culture is set up on several principles, which we use as quotes of wisdom. These include: 1) We want to build a champion team, not a team of champions. 2) Vision-based leadership, facts-based management 3) Data wins arguments
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