Kayvon Beykpour is the co-founder and CEO of Macroscope, an AI code review agent, backed by Lightspeed, Thrive Capital Google Ventures, and others.

Previously, Kayvon was the GM of Twitter’s consumer division until the platform was acquired by Elon Musk. He Joined Twitter after co-founding Periscope, a live video platform where people can create, watch, discover and share live video, Periscope was acquired by Twitter for $120M in 2015. Periscope pioneered technology that inspired Instagram Live, TikTok Live, Facebook Live, and other social networks’ expansion into livestreaming.

Prior to Periscope, he co-founded Terriblyclever Design LLC, a software company that was sold to Blackboard Inc. Following the acquisition, Kayvon led Blackboard’s mobile division for four years where he grew its team from five to more than 100 employees and helped the company become one of the most downloaded apps in the education industry.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:54 Fleeing the Iranian Revolution to California

00:04:32 How Gaming Sparked a Career in Tech

00:08:28 Growing Up With 12 Kids

00:12:32 Pissing Off an Apple Exec with a Jailbroken iPhone

00:14:29 From a Cardboard Sign to Winning Emmys

00:19:20 Building Software for Colleges While Skipping Class

00:20:53 Selling $100k Apps to Best Buy & HP

00:22:32 Getting Acquired Over a Spam Call

00:27:03 The Importance of Passion

00:34:21 The Origins of Periscope

00:39:20 Scott Belsky Invented “Teleportation”

00:43:20 Six Months of Failed Designs

00:47:33 Selling to Twitter Before Launching

00:54:07 Trolled by Kobe Bryant

00:57:41 Turning Down Elon Musk

01:01:54 Founding Macroscope

01:10:21 The Two Most Consequential Life Decisions

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