Coub

Shaan discovered 'Kube,' the TikTok of Russia, years before TikTok

Shaan recounts inviting visiting Ukrainian entrepreneurs to his office and asking what the hottest thing back home was; the answer was Coub, a short-video-with-mismatched-audio app already at 10 million daily users. It got into Y Combinator but never crossed over to America, and years later TikTok did the same concept better.

“And I said, what's the hottest shit in Ukraine? I asked it kind of as a joke. And they go, oh, Kube. And everyone's like, Kube, Kube, Kube. And I was like, what the fuck is Kube? And I go to the website and it's basically TikTok. It's these short videos with audio that's like mashed together that doesn't fit the video. And they were funny as hell.”