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judd_4_12-07-2023_150411: [00:00:00] And Matt, you look fantastic. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: I'm trying my best. I didn't wear my glasses today, so, uh, I don't know how well. But you all, I can see you perfectly. You guys look great. So, thank you. Katie, I'm so excited to chat with you. I've been looking forward to this. Like, I've had this like triple, double circled on my calendar for such a long time. I find you to be such a fascinating person and I really can't wait to hear about your story. Um, done a little bit of research on you, so. For those joining the show, I'm Matt Amundsen. I'm standing in for, uh, Craig Rosenberg, who typically does the introductions. Uh, so I'm going to try my best. Uh, currently I'm the CMO of a company called Census, and I am joined by my, uh, co host, Judd. Judd, would you please introduce yourself? Judd Borakove: Sure. [00:01:00] So if you guys don't know, if you haven't listened yet, I'm Judd Borkov. Uh, Some companies do a lot of go to market work, uh, started a company called Go To Market Partners and currently Red Monkey Consulting doing everything around growth and, uh, love business. And Katie, I I'm excited as well. Uh, having grown up in, in the DC area and seeing what you did, I feel like there's a lot of cool conversations we're going to have, so it's gonna be fun. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Uh, so as Judd mentioned, we're joined today by Katie Harbath. Uh, Katie is, uh, a very interesting guest for us today. And we're really excited to dive in. So she's currently the CEO, of an organization called, Anchor change, uh, but you may know her well from her time, uh, leading public policy at a small Silicon Valley startup, uh, that very few people have heard of or interacted with called Facebook, uh, and we're really excited to talk about, uh, today sort of the fun The [00:02:00] intersection of the democratic process with technology, um, she is one of the leading experts in this category, works with a lot of think tanks, uh, and generally puts out just absolutely incredible content, both through her social feeds and her substack and her incredible podcast. And if you're not tuned into those things, especially heading into What is sure to be a wild 2024, not only here domestically, but internationally. Uh, and you're looking to learn a little bit and be up to speed in, uh, in a non biased way. I think she is the ultimate source for the right information on these topics. So Katie, welcome. Katie Harbath: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. You've set a very tall bar. So let's hope that, uh, we can cross it. Judd Borakove: was blushing for you, by the way, like. That was awesome. I wish somebody would intro me like that. Katie Harbath: I know I'm going to have to play that like every morning if I'm feeling a little unsure about myself. I'm just going to have it as being my little pump up song or something. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Well, [00:03:00] thank you so much. Well, maybe we should start with the fact that you're from Green Bay. Any thoughts on the Packers? We, we have a problem here of spending too much time talking about football. Katie Harbath: Oh, we can spend the whole time talking about football. I'm an owner for those that may not know. The Green Bay Packers. It's a small town of a hundred thousand people. Until I was seven, I grew up next to the stadium. So I say I'm as close to being a cheese head as you possibly can get in that town. Um, and yeah, my family's still there, so I'll be heading back there for Christmas and stuff like that. But, you know, I'm being cautiously optimistic for QB. Um, I'm feeling pretty good about it. And like, you know, it was a surprise. We weren't expecting to beat the Lions. We weren't expecting to beat the Chiefs. Um, and so if there's gonna be momentum that's to be had, it's this time in the season to have it. But regardless of what happens, I'm feeling pretty, you know, we're pretty lucky if we're going to have a third quarterback that works out. Um, and I don't want to jinx it, but, you know. Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the season. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: [00:04:00] That's so awesome. Judd Borakove: I like her more already. Yeah, and I love that you're also an owner because for those that don't know, it is basically a public company. You can be an owner as a fan, which is the coolest thing. And I love people when people say, Oh, by the way, I'm an owner. Like not many people get to say that. Katie Harbath: The double take that I get at bars when people, like, I'll just throw it out there and like, and I'll just do this kind of a drive by and they'll be like, wait, what? And then I have to explain, I'm like, if they don't know I'm from Green Bay and stuff like that. And the reality is I spent 250 for a piece of paper to say that I'm a shareholder, but I don't care. That's still pretty darn cool. And it really is like growing up there. It is hard to explain to people unless you actually take them to Lambeau Field to a game. And before COVID, I was taking a lot of friends when their teams would play the Packers to go do that. But I kind of want to pick that back up again because when you walk into that Stadium, you're like, this feels really small. It looks a lot bigger on TV. And you're like, [00:05:00] yeah, it was a high, not even a high school stadium built in 1911. It was just bleachers there. There wasn't even a stadium there and it built up over time. And it really is. I think it was, I can't remember what sports columnist did a really great story about green Bay back in the early two thousands. It is a stadium that popped up, popped up in the middle of a neighborhood. So you're kind of driving along and you're like, there's these little houses and then NFL stadium. So, it's a cool town if nobody's ever visited. Just maybe don't go here in the winter. Maybe try spring or summer. Judd Borakove: I need to build a dome now that you're an owner. Katie Harbath: See, I don't know if I'd want a dome. Because, come on, like there's something about, Judd Borakove: How about retractable? Katie Harbath: they have that for Miller Park for the, um, I guess it's not Miller Park anymore, but the baseball stadium. They have the retractable one. Um, but I think, I mean, how cool is it that when there's, I was telling somebody this the other day, when there's a big snowstorm, the entire community shows up to shovel out And they pay them. I can't remember how much per hour they pay them to do that, [00:06:00] but there's been times where you have a big snowfall Saturday night into Sunday and come 6 a. m., you've got the entire town there with their shovels. Ready to go clear it out to make sure they can watch the game. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Okay. Judd Borakove: So I'm sure our people tuned in, not expecting to hear everything about Green Bay, so maybe we can get into like, we had that little quick chat right before this, which I found really interesting. I'd love you to maybe dig in a little bit more. Where you were talking about, as I was saying, like, how do you see the world? And you kind of likened it to something that I felt was really the kaleidoscope. I'd love you to kind of maybe dig in a little bit there because of the stuff you're seeing and all the intersections. I mean, this is a crazy time from everything from just business in general and how it's being handled to AI and policy and things along those lines. Love to get your take on like the world in general right now is maybe a, a good in to, uh, to the conversation. Katie Harbath: Yeah. Like I was telling you, sort of my mantra going into next year is to panic responsibly. Um, it's, uh, , I've even bought the url, so if anybody wants swag or merch panic responsibly.com though, I just, [00:07:00] I did it 'cause so many people are like, oh my God, I need like that reminder as we go into this because there are, to your point, there are so many things. that are changing, they're changing rapidly. We don't necessarily know exactly how they're going to turn out, how they're going to play up against one another. And so I have been using a, the metaphor of a kaleidoscope as we think about it, because there's so many different ways all of these different elements might play off of one another, that any way you turn that little dial of a kaleidoscope, it changes the picture that you get. And so that's kind of happening. on an hourly basis, a daily basis, a weekly basis, that the thing that I remind people of as we're going into next year is to expect the unexpected, to be willing to adapt and change and be flexible, but kind of have a set of values and things to also ground you as you're going through this, because if, if anybody says to me, oh, there's no way that can happen, I was like, do not [00:08:00] say those words. That's going into 24. Just do not. Like, I think we should have learned our lesson from 2016, from 2020, on all of it. And it's really hard to, we could try to imagine all the crazy things that might happen and I, you know, many of them might be things that we haven't even imagined yet. So I think there's something though that's, I'm trying to have that kind of grounding aspect to it. Um, because all I know is that. But this time next year or the beginning of 2025, the world's going to look very different than what it does today. I just don't know exactly how that's going to look. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yeah, when you think about like all the sort of progress we've made as a society and progress that we've made, you know, from a technology perspective, there have been a couple of things that have happened and you're sitting right in the middle of them, especially on the social side that really changed the way the intersection between how people interact and get information and [00:09:00] around politics or around an election and a voting process. Uh, they've just changed so drastically and yet we, like the biggest story and I know Taylor Swift was just announced as the person of the year. Fantastic. Uh, I would have thought the person of the year was, was AI. Um, just because I think that we are poised for as much as You know, Facebook may have played a part in 2016 and 2020 election cycles. I think AI is going to play this massive part in the 2024 election cycles, not just here domestically, but internationally. And how, how can we even prepare ourselves for that? Because It's so new, you know, we still have people who are just for the first time thinking about like, Oh, I'll just use chat TPT to write my term paper. And then there's other people who are saying, I'm going to figure out how I can use AI to have a massive impact on the outcome of an election. So how are you thinking about that? And I think that that challenge, especially bolstered [00:10:00] by the fact that you've been right in the middle of this massive sea change for society through the social network of Facebook, and then now thinking about how does that prepare you for Policy and the way you're informing, uh, uh, both, both, both governments or parties about how they should think about 2024 and AI's potential impact on that. Katie Harbath: So there's a couple of strings I want to pull there because I am a Swifty as well. And so one thing I'll say first and foremost about, about Person of the Year or whatever, you know, what it would have been with AI, Swift has had, we've seen her impact this year on it. While AI has been the hot topic, I don't think we've actually seen its impact, actual impact yet. on society. And so if we're doing it by purely impact that you can measure versus what it could be, Swift has the measurable impact right now. AI has the potential for impact, is how I would kind of look at that if I were the time editor [00:11:00] in chief on that one. Judd Borakove: Travis Kelsey play into the impact part, just checking. Katie Harbath: No, she put him on the map. Didn't you hear? Please don't, nobody send me, nobody send me nasty things. I knew he was on the map before her. I just think it's a really funny joke to like drive guys up the wall when they say that. Um, I think the whole thing's just really amazing. And anyways, we're not here to talk about Taylor Swift, but we can. Um, but on the AI front. So, you know, my job before Facebook, so my career started here in DC in 2003 at the Republican national committee. running what at that time we called the e campaign. It wasn't even really official. I was in the comms team. They were like, I was like, Hey, I'm 23. And I'm like, here's all this stuff I think we should be doing on the web. And they're like, congratulations, it's yours. So Facebook didn't exist yet. It's coming up on its 20 year anniversary here on February 4th, um, 2024. Twitter didn't exist. YouTube didn't exist. None of these platforms. [00:12:00] And where AI is right now reminds me a bit more about Facebook circa 2008 and its effect on the first Obama campaign, not Obama 2012. Um, Obama 2012 had supercharged Turbocharged everything they had done four years earlier. They were they'd used a lot more data. They use socials a lot more It was just a very different campaign And I think when it comes to AI right now and when I'm advising people and everything and this again kind of goes back to that panic responsibly thing there is a All the ways that AI could impact our society, and we should be thinking about those, and we should be preparing for those, and thinking about them, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't be. However, we need to be very diligent to separate out the signal from the noise of what could happen versus what is actually happening. And I have a feeling, because a lot of people are still trying to figure out These AI tools, even me, like I, I like to use chat [00:13:00] GPT, for instance, to write letters of recommendation, but there's other things like I created my own custom GPT with my newsletter writing to try to think about, but I'm still trying to figure out what do I actually use that for? What's the new way of me for searching and organizing that information to, to need that. And I think it's going to take time. Yes, we're going to see people use these tools. We're going to see, we're going to see them try them. They're going to get a lot of press for doing so. And it reminds me back again in the early 2000s, you throw up a web video or something and everyone's like, Oh my God, they're using digital. Like, isn't this innovative? And you could get an earned media story from it. Um, now. This is moving faster than what the stuff would in the early early 2000s. Um, but my gut is that it's actually going to be the 2028 presidential campaign where we will see, really see AI's impact on the election. And there's things we're going to see now that then we're going to need to get our act together. in the next, just in the U. S. space, in the [00:14:00] next two years and four years after that to really think how we make sure it doesn't have really detrimental impact on 2008. And there's not just bad things. I think there's a lot of good ways that AI could be used in this space as well, um, of doing it. And the last thing I'll just say on this, though, is as we're thinking about that, We need to be really careful about the narrative that we put around AI and elections, because just that narrative, and if it is just a doomsday scenario, it is going to destroy everything. That alone is going to have an impact on how people trust the election and the election process. even if it's not being used. You see foreign adversaries, Facebook likes to use the term perception hack, where foreign adversaries will just try to get reporters or others to claim that they're doing something even if they aren't because that will have, can sometimes sow the chaos that they want even if they're not actually doing the thing that they try to get them to say that they were doing. So it's nuanced, but I think it's an important [00:15:00] nuance for us to think about as we are going into next year and really, um, how do we try to make sure those bad things don't happen, but then also how do we accurately quantify and measure what, how it's actually being used. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Very interesting. Judd Borakove: So, so I'm going to kind of give you the, based on what you're watching question, because Matt, you can jump into, there's so much going on right now. And obviously AI is hot, but there's a lot of business topics from venture capital, investments, business decline, you know, whatever. What is the most interesting? What is the thing you're watching right now? What's really piquing your interest and you're paying the most attention to in the business world? And what's the scariest? Like, what is the thing you're like, Oh, I'm watching it because I'm afraid it might go this direction? Katie Harbath: So I'm very, so my lens tends to be through politics. Through, through a lot of this, so I want to acknowledge that bias as I'm kind of, as I'm kind of thinking about [00:16:00] this. Um, one of the things that I am watching quite a bit is where do business leaders, how did they navigate the 2024 waters? You know, 2020, a lot of businesses got pulled into a lot of ESG stuff. A lot of them got pressure to take stances on things such as voting bills or what might be happening. in different states. They were facing different boycotts, depending upon what positions they were taking or not taking. And I think that since then you've seen a lot of businesses pull back from that, right? Um, not just regular businesses, but also a lot of the social media platforms, because everyone's realizing getting involved in this politics stuff, it You, you, there's no winners, there's no winners. It's just a big headache, but you are seeing employees pushing these businesses more to do this. You are seeing consumers do that. And so I. I worry that if we start having the business community [00:17:00] fracture off a bit more, and it to become more polarized, and trying to pick sides, that that just continues to exasperate. Again, I'm talking more in the US focus here. Does that continue to just exasperate and continue the overall decline that in trust that we see from a lot of folks in a many, in many different ways. And so, and one of the things I think I saw in 2020, that When I do talk to some folks in the business world about this is really making sure even if they don't have a good sense of politics and they don't follow it a ton, make sure you've got advisors and others who are really well versed in the DC political state politics world that can give you that kid that can again determine that signal from the noise. Because it can be really hard or it can be very, I can see a CEO wanting to do a knee jerk reaction of like, Yes, we got to put out a press release because it'll, our employees are demanding [00:18:00] it, these folks are demanding, etc. And not thinking those four, five, six steps down the road of the corner they could be painting themselves into if you don't kind of think about that. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yeah, I think that that is, that, that's an interesting topic because, you know, issues pop up. All the time, whether in an election cycle or foreign, uh, um, uh, you know, where there's a large population of those folks residing within the United States that create very tricky situations for businesses. Do we have a public stance on this? How do we show support? How do we show support without potentially alienating a part of our future customer base, our current customer base? Uh, but also like signify to our employees who may be demanding us to make a statement or take a, take a public stance on this. Uh, that is a very challenging space to occupy. And I can tell you [00:19:00] just from my, uh, my personal experience, you know, I worked at a company, uh, about a year ago. With a very large population of employees that were Ukrainian, that were some residing in the United States, some residing within the Ukraine, uh, like literally people who are behind enemy lines, who are employees of ours and the challenge of making those employees feel seen. And also, you know, taking a stance on how we felt about that as a company publicly was a very, very challenging, uh, water to navigate. And so, you know, maybe for smaller businesses, there's, there's, you know, not necessarily the right resources or, or, or affordable resources to them, but let's, let's Let's back out to some of like larger companies, uh, and maybe go to, to your experience at, at, at Facebook. Um, how would you have sort of informed the, the company there, how to think [00:20:00] about, uh, and how to, uh, acknowledge maybe employees who are. Uh, impacted by something happening foreign, whether that's, you know, what's currently happening in, in, uh, in Israel or what is happening in Ukraine, uh, with the public perception that such an, such an announcement or statement could make. Katie Harbath: I mean, you're kind of giving me, I was just thinking about, like, I don't even know where to begin. Because, like, when I, my time at Facebook, you not only had what was happening inside the company with employees and others and their opinions of what happened, but then it was also external forces who were wanting and getting it from all different sides of what they wanted us to do when it came to content moderation or political ads or stuff like that. Like every given day it was sort of like you're taking incoming from, from every which direction and that can be really paralyzing for some. Companies and leaders, right? Um, and [00:21:00] I, the best you can do is the best of your ability. I think that also do not wait to think through what you're going to do in these different situations until it happens. Like actually take the time to kind of think through, you know, just let's use the election again. If Trump wins or Biden wins. or just a Republican wins or a Democrat wins. Like, there's different scenarios that you can kind of think about about what you might, what you might face, what you might do, how you kind of think about that because you're in just a totally different mindset when you are in the middle of it because you're also dealing with your own emotions as a, as a person, as a voter, as a citizen, plus trying to weigh all of those as, as a company. And this is where it kind of goes back to me saying, having those values. And then having the conversation, the trickiest part, and this is why I call my podcast Impossible Trade offs. And I talk about this because the hardest thing is when you have two values, two or three values that [00:22:00] you hold the most dear and now you got to rank those. And the one I always use with, with, when it comes to technology and democracy and like social media and all that is freedom of speech and safety matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yeah. Katie Harbath: you balance those two things. And that's something I've been grappling, continue to grapple with a lot in how you find those balances around thinking, thinking about that and what that looks like. And the other thing too is that as you're thinking about, cause the risk assessment for every company is going to be different. The, the choices you have in front of you of whether or not you want to say something publicly or not, or what your employee base might want, et cetera, is all going to look very, very different. And that's why you kind of, it's hard to give a prescriptive answer because it's more like here's the framework to think about that as you're doing it. The thing I would just say though, too, as, as you are thinking about these things is Make sure that you're not just listening to the, the, the loudest voices in the room. [00:23:00] Because many times, depending upon the issue, there may be people who don't feel comfortable speaking out about where they are because they just don't want to have to deal with the potential pushback that they might get. from that. And so making sure that you're really taking the time and have a way to really be thinking about that and being clear with employees about the business trade offs or what, what those trade offs are that you're, that you're making. Um, I found that I was, you know, I, sometimes I was making these decisions. Sometimes I was agreeing with them that the company would do. And a lot of times I was just like, I know, let me be transparent about my thinking. They may not agree with me, but at least I'm being transparent about the thought process behind it and what I was weighing and what I wasn't weighing. And frankly, at the end of the day, this is something I always have to remind the people that it worked for me and others too. Sometimes if those values don't [00:24:00] match and that means you can't work there anymore, that's a decision you as an employee have to, you as an employee have to make. And that's, sometimes that's going to become incompatible, but you know, Everybody's got to make the choices that are best for them and you're just not going to please everyone. You're not. So you got to make the take the next best step forward that you can. Judd Borakove: And on that train of thought, you know, obviously handling polarization internally is hard. Handling it in the media is hard. But then when you think of corporate, right, you have internal employees, external customers, plus government, plus. The Katie Harbath: Shareholders. Judd Borakove: shareholders, investors, and more. With the move towards more of a global environment, even in startup now, right? Like we're seeing people will outsource dev, they'll outsource different things. They'll have, they'll have employees in multiple countries, multiple states, multiple areas. Obviously now we have a deeper [00:25:00] polarization going on because let's say if you were in Ukraine versus you were an employee in America, you may have a different take because of matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: yep. Mm hmm. Judd Borakove: Have you ever dealt with or how would you think about handling these internal policies and is there differentiation by location? Is that something you can look at or do you kind of hold to this is who we are on a whole? And that's just it. Sorry, guys, because obviously those types of decisions can actually have a major impact on your business strategy. Katie Harbath: I mean there's um, I would highly recommend first and foremost if anybody's working in a global context. There's a great book called The Culture Map. That talks through, I don't know if you all have ever read that or anything, I think it's a couple years, maybe, it's by Aaron Mead, I believe, I'm looking at it right now on my, um, Oh no, it's Aaron somebody, that, um, that other Aaron is somebody I work with at another organization. But anyways, the culture map. It talks about how different cultures and people from different [00:26:00] backgrounds work together and, and, uh, process information and like hierarchy structures and everything like that. And I think that that's really helpful to have if you're going into I really wish I would have had it when I first started working globally at Facebook because it would have really helped me to understand where different folks were coming from as we were having some of these difficult conversations and issues that I ended up learning. on the, on the job as part of that. I think that there's a lot more art to this than science. So again, it's very hard to be prescriptive on this. Um, from a social media perspective, for our external policies, these platforms very much oftentimes want to have global standards, but then they do end up becoming more local and local instances of what you want. Nudity is a great easy example. You know, places like the Middle East, not cool with it. Places like Brazil or other places. very different culture on it. And so you kind of [00:27:00] have to think through different options of how you, of how you weigh that. And because of this too, every company is a little bit of a different culture of where your employees are from, where they might be coming from. I think the most important thing is to be really conscious of a bias of like from where you're from. Usually it's from the United States. So be really careful about. So having just an American bias when trying to think through these problems, make sure you're trying to understand what this does look like in other, in other places. I remember having some of these conversations around the racial justice protests in 2020 and how we were experiencing this in the States, which is very different than how people were experiencing it elsewhere around the world. And so you couldn't necessarily just export what we were doing in the States to elsewhere. in other countries to make that work. And that was something that you really needed that feedback from those employees and other things on that. I think about this example too of, um, there's a lot of conversation [00:28:00] about social media companies in India and employees being very concerned that the government might show up at your front door. And, or you might be arrested in some of these places. And that is a privilege that we don't, if you're an American, you haven't ever lived in any of those places, you don't even think about that. Like it doesn't even occur to you as part of all that. So forgive me for kind of going on a couple of tangents there, but I think as part of all of that is really understanding Who you're, we'll just talk about your employee base at the moment, but also making sure you're consciously understanding all the places around the globe that you are, what markets you're entering, which vendors you're working with, which governments you might run up against, and make sure that you are prepared or at least understand the risks. that can come with doing that because otherwise you might find yourself in a spot where a government is asking you for information or showing up on your front doorstep in a way that you were not expecting to have happen, um, [00:29:00] because you were just trying to move so quickly and grow so quickly that you weren't sort of thinking about, again, that those steps four, five, six steps down the road. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: it's interesting. I was just reading your your recent post on your sub stack, which was really like You'd gone deeply into the concept of like the tightrope of free speech and trust and safety talk to the audience a little bit about like how Like, what is the right way, or maybe not necessarily the right way, because I don't, I don't know that there is one, but like, the challenges of walking that tightrope right now, especially, you know, Katie Harbath: my, I've seen Twitter turn matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: you know, as we think about social media and all the various channels that we can be on, we've seen, you know, at least in my experience, like, We've seen Twitter turn into, or X, I should say, turn into, you know, a place that is, has sort [00:30:00] of, you know, recently said like, we'll let, we'll let free speech go and maybe not be so concerned about trust and safety. And then it seems like other social media channels have leaned into more moderation with the effort being there, more trust and safety, or more safety, but maybe coming at the expense of trust. Katie Harbath: how matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: So how are you thinking about this tightrope specifically in social media right now? Katie Harbath: Yeah, this is something that I think I think about at least daily, if not multiple times daily, um, as part of it, and it's, it's actually been a thread throughout my career from college, um, working at the student newspaper. The Badger Herald at UW Madison, um, where David Horowitz ran an ad that we ended up getting protested by and stuff like that. Anyways, I mention all of that because it's, it's sort of interesting how this has been a long standing thread for this. But one thing recently that it's one of those where I've got, [00:31:00] I'm trying to weigh my, those different values that I mentioned, and I know there's people who fall on some of these decisions differently than where I might. I tend to be a bit more of allowing more speech versus taking down more speech, but to your point of the piece that I did, and I had to break it up into two parts because I started just, I just started like brainstorming this week and I'm like, okay, what are all the different aspects that we have to take into account when thinking about that speech versus trust and safety balance? And I ended up with 30. And then I was like, oh my, and I whittled it down to 20 and then I was writing the newsletter. I'm like, I got to break this up into 10 and 10 because otherwise it's going to be way too much. for people. And it's one of those things, and this happens a lot in this space, is that when you, if you don't follow it a lot, a lot of people want this to be black and white. They want it to be very simple, a simple answer. They think that it's, you know, a lot of people have that first reaction of like, well, why in [00:32:00] the world would the Facebook or YouTube make that decision? Like, What idiots? Like, of course you're going to do this one. And that's again why I called my podcast Impossible Trade Offs because I'm like, all right, let's unpack this a little bit, right? So first, there's what the policy is of the company versus how well they can execute on it. There's the question of, um, do you Is it okay for somebody to say something but how much do you amplify it? How do you treat things for people under 18, under 13 versus those over that are adults? How do you think about paid content versus content people are putting up for free? What about what politicians do on the platform? Is there a newsworthiness factor to what they're doing versus what a normal user might be? And in our ideal world we might want everyone to be treated equally but the fact of the matter is political speech has been given. extra protections here in the United States around the First Amendment. And so one of the things I try to do a lot is there is There's an [00:33:00] ideal world that people have in their head, and then there's also reality of where we're working. And I'm not saying we always just need to be in the reality part, but I try to bring a more pragmatic, nuanced approach to these because I worry that if we only stick in the idealism world, you don't actually impact the real world. And what is happening as, as part of all of this. And I think that at least here in the United States, you know, there's three to add to that kaleidoscope of issues that we're facing next year. The Supreme Court has three issues in front of it that, you know, for even for any business owner, they should be paying attention to because there is one about whether or not states like Texas and Florida can dictate. to a company like Facebook, how they can do content moderation. Well, if the Supreme Court determines that Texas and Florida can do that, what's going to stop states from passing more laws for them to be able to tell corporations what they can or cannot do, what they can or cannot say. There [00:34:00] is a slippery slope there that I'm really nervous about if the court goes that direction. My gut is they won't, um, given where they're at, but you just, you kind of don't know because one of the challenges with the courts I always joke is like, if you think politicians don't get how this stuff works, let me introduce you to some judges, um, around all of this. I mean, they're, they're very lovely, very smart people, but just, you know, they, they, they themselves admit that they don't know this. These things, these things really well. And so as we're going into next year, people are going to be in business leaders and politicians and pundits and like everybody is going to get pulled into wanting to have, people are going to want them to have gut reactions. They're going to want them to have hot takes. They're going to be like, we saw this with the Israeli conflict, right? Like people being like, if you don't say something right away, you are. Put whatever they would be called in that blank, in that space. And there is a real danger of doing that because it might feel good in the [00:35:00] moment, but then it's going to have again, second, third, fourth, fifth, there's going to be a lot of ripple effects to that and unintended consequences that can happen. And so again, being able to be a bit more grounded in that storm when that happens. While we're thinking about it is important and then again I was laying out in that piece all the different facets that a social media company or an online platform might have to think about Businesses might have their own trade offs that they need to think about as part of all this and that kind of goes back to my thing about think about this before the crisis happens so that you kind of can go through some of these and be like about, okay, if I, if I have to, you know, pick somewhere on the spectrum between these two, I'm going to, you know, I might lean this way. Um, and, and everything will have to be determined by the context of the situation that you're in. Like, it's really, but there's something about at least knowing. Those are the trade offs I'm going to have to think through. Gives you a bit of a road map and a grounding [00:36:00] road map. It's a bit of like, you know, how people have the lists if the earthquake happens or something, like here's the Because when it's happening, you start to panic and it's like nice to have the thing on the refrigerator you can pull down and be like, okay, if I only got 15 minutes to get out of my house I can do this. Like if I'm a business leader, I'm having that, I'm having that prepper kit for when this stuff happens to be able to pull down and think about it. Um, and for many people, again, online platforms, it's that freedom of speech versus trust and safety, but I'm kind of broadening it out because I think there's going to be a lot of things that people are going to have to, um, be balancing and thinking about as we go into next year, when a lot of people are going to be pressuring others to try to be in support of whatever they're in support of. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: that's, that's fascinating. I, I want to Try to ground that in something for our listeners who are maybe working at small businesses. And it's something that as an executive I've been thinking about for the last couple of years, which is a lot of [00:37:00] companies, early stage businesses, they have, um, they spend a lot of time coming up with what are their business values. And those business values are almost always in the way that they develop products. The way that maybe they interact, uh, uh, as employees, whether it's like, hey, we're sort of green lighting you to give people tough love, or, uh, we're, we're sort of fierce but fair. Um, they may be that we're a, you know, customer first business. As companies are thinking about their business values, would you recommend they think about adopting values there that can prepare them for moments like this? Where it's, hey, there's a conflict. And as we know in the United States, many of our entrepreneurs are, you know, not born in the United States. They come from other parts of the world. And, and, and there are many people who are leaders of companies who are being directly impacted by things that are happening [00:38:00] globally. And I, I feel for the pressure that they might be under as an, as an organizational leader to say, Gosh, I'd sure love to say something, but I also don't want to alienate my employees or, uh, or, or, or my potential customers, my investors, whomever. Um, it sort of, uh, enables them to say, hey, we've thought about this, this is our value, this is what we care about as a company, but it's less about how they ship product or how they interact with customers, but it's how they might interact with the public world. Katie Harbath: I'd say a couple of things there. One, it's still important to think through the values first. You don't want the values to be dictated and driven by the crisis. So you want to have the values first, and then you do, you know, in the online world we call them threat ideation exercises or red teaming. You may have heard that with the AI stuff and all of that. But once you have those initial set of values, then you do that red teaming of what those [00:39:00] crisis scenarios might be to stress test, um, are these values really holding up for me in that stress test? Are there gaps in the values that I have around all of that? And I think that that's something that. That's not just a once a year, like a one time deal. Like that's got to be almost like a once or twice a year type of thing that you kind of revisit with, with all of that in thinking about it. The third thing though, that, and I think that this is where most people are going to want to like pull their hair out and stuff is though you're also going to have to be flexible to the situation and not always be so rigid that you're like, well, our values say this. So like one of those things I had in my piece was about spirit of the policy versus letter of the policy. So, there are times, like, you cannot write up a policy for every weird thing that people are going to come up with on the internet. And the one I always use is that old Tide Pods challenge, when people are eating Tide Pods. It's not specifically in the rules that you can't film yourself eating Tide Pods, [00:40:00] but Obviously our policies are meant to cover don't eat Tide Pods, so that's kind of a spirit of the policy type of thing, whereas if you're going with the letter of the one, and I do think sometimes business leaders fall into a trap of being like, too much of being like, okay we have the playbook, we're following the playbook, we're sticking to our guns about this, and there are times where that's right, there's times where you might need to be a bit more Flexible and honest to God can only know in the moment and make sure you've got good advisors around you and how to be thinking about that around what that, what that might be because it may be right to stick to, to stick to what you're saying. You may need to adapt it a little bit and you need to build that muscle of having that, that bit of flexibility and kind of, again, thinking about the precedent you might be setting and other things like that as you're going into any of those types of situations. Judd Borakove: So I want to do a bit of a hot take [00:41:00] real quick, and I want you to jump in too. So everybody is seeing this, you know, with venture capital, PE, investment, the, the rising rate of capital, uh, we're watching certain models that have been in existence for a long time fail. What is the hot take right now on like, how imperative is this for us to focus on what's going on, how we're taking capital, how we're building our business? I think everybody is. Pretty good at being able to speak to that part. In reference to this kind of economic environment and the changes we know will come, because obviously the economy is pretty sick. We know it will go back to a certain state. We know it will go back to the other side at some point. How do you think about what's currently going on? Is there a big problem with the way that, let's say, venture capital has been allowed to work and manage and do things? Are we in for big change? How has it affected you? I'd love both of you guys to weigh in because I think this is one. That I'm [00:42:00] hearing a lot. I'm seeing people start to get a little bit concerned. They saw some, you know, we've recently seen one of the big players, OpenView, shut their matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yep. Judd Borakove: And the way that they're looking at the world, and I'm sure more are coming. So I'd love kind of the take on like, from the policy perspective, from the business perspective, like, how are you viewing this? And is this like a big issue we need to really be paying attention to? Katie Harbath: Yeah. I mean, I also don't know if you saw Twitch, I think announced yesterday, they're pulling out of Korea because they can't, because of the economics and like being able to afford it and stuff like that. I think that, so you all know more on the business side than I do, but what I will say is that. Next year is just a year on like anything we've ever seen, or will see. It's the first time ever, so we've been talking about all this global stuff, but look, from an election standpoint, it's the first time ever that in the same year as a U. S. presidential election, you've got elections in India, Indonesia, Taiwan, maybe Ukraine. Mexico, the United Kingdom, [00:43:00] the European Parliament. There's 83 national level elections across 78 countries that I'm tracking. The Economist says that 4. 2 billion people are going to be affected by elections next year. That is a huge geopolitical moment. That's a lot of countries in the G7, in the G20, in BRICS. It could really change how trade agreements are done, how all of business is run and what that looks like, let alone then from the tech companies and everyone else trying, uh, many different surface areas for trying to protect the integrity of elections online. And so, again, You all should add your business acumen on top of this, but I think that there is a, let's recognize next year for the chaotic year that it might be, how do you prepare for that and think about that? And how do you, how do you set your business up for success to weather that? And then be thinking about how you come out of that as we go into 2025, [00:44:00] where you are going to continue to see a rapid rise of AI. Like, Just expect more change and, and be, and be thinking about that and we might see some fundamental reshifting of how business is done, but I generally see those things don't happen overnight. They happen over. Periods of time. It'll be interesting how regulation and other things follow. And even within all this chaos, there's also been not that much change. As you say, the economy tends to be cyclical. So that's kind of one of the things I'm kind of looking at, too, is like even past history of how people have weathered times like the 60s and stuff like that, um, and kept moving forward. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yeah, I think I'm looking at it and I'm saying, hey, you know, we went through a period of really unprecedented growth in the midst of the pandemic and there were winners, uh, and then there are. Lately have been a lot of losers and there's been, you know, large [00:45:00] institutions that have lost and generally speaking, you feel like, Hey, you know, the, the bottom starts to drop out. Who are the people that are most impacted? It's small to mid sized businesses, larger corporations have the ability to shed some, some of their staff and see their stock prices rise. And that's certainly been the MO. I mean, we saw that with Spotify this week. Uh, there's a company that's experienced 130 percent growth year on year and they still, uh, laid off 1, 500 employees and what did it do? You know, got their stock price up 13 percent in a single day. But somebody's got to pay the price for some of this stuff and we saw it last year with Silicon Valley Bank. Uh, and I think we saw it, uh, this week with, with, with Openview, who is a venture capital firm that I, I personally never worked with or worked for a portfolio company of theirs. Um, but there were people that were extraordinarily aggressive with their capital and mistakes were made. And, you know, we see all the mistakes [00:46:00] that small businesses or midsize tech companies made, but there inevitably were going to be larger organizations that, that, that, uh, that felt the hammer of that as well. And we're starting to see it. Will there be more venture capital firms that wind down? I think that there probably will be. Um, uh, are there, you know, I feel very personally lucky to work with some of the best. Um, who, you know, have very diversified portfolios and are, are well set up. But, you know, we're also starting to see big gigantic rounds go out again, right? Uh, as long as you are building a product that, uh, that is, you know, sort of centered around AI, um, you can go out and get a big check again. So, um, it'll be interesting to see how, how that all plays out. I think it's, it's You know, my, my, my personal belief is, uh, and like, I don't want to make things too political, but like, there are a lot of people, uh, in places that deploy lots of capital or receive lots of [00:47:00] capital that would love to see a, a, a change in Washington, D. C., and I assume that that's true in other parts of the world as well. People feel like clearly things aren't working right now. And what is the optimal way for most people, uh, for, for things to change is to see a, you know, a big change at the absolute top, not the top in venture capital or the top in PE, but the top in, in, in government. And so I, I think that there are, you know, in just anecdotal conversations that I have with peers and associates around here in Silicon Valley, there's a lot of people that are, would, would like to see, uh, a different person sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania. And they believe that that will have a massive impact on, on the economy. And I'm not, you know, I don't want to talk about like who I'd like to see in there or not like to see in there, but like, it's hard for me to believe that if there was a change there, that we wouldn't see a change, uh, in our economy in a, in a, in a, uh, in the not too distant future. Katie Harbath: I mean, that's a pretty political cyclical thing, [00:48:00] right, that a lot of people do want that, all that. I'm curious, do you think that there's an AI bubble building that could pop? matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: definitely. Definitely. Katie Harbath: Yeah. Judd Borakove: We haven't even scratched the use cases of it yet, yet it's, right? It's so hyper focused that it's inevitable. And everybody has already run to it, like they run to most things that are new and hot. We have to have it here. We have to use it here. We have to Katie Harbath: We're like four year olds at a soccer game, like, matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yeah. Katie Harbath: right, of like running towards these things. And that's why I was kind of saying earlier when you were asking about the AI question, like, Yeah. In all honesty, when I look at it again through the elections context, to me, it is an accelerant of problems we've already been dealing with matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Mm Katie Harbath: on many of these things. It's not, and it's, and I really worry that we're going to have blinders on, that it's the only thing we're kind of looking at, and we're not looking at other things. Aspects as well that could really impact how people are getting their news and information and how [00:49:00] they think their trust in the electoral system and there's so many other things and we just have this tendency to really want again run to and focus on the shiny thing and you tend to forget to look at the other things in the shadows that that's what ends up like one of the things I have anxiety about is we're going to wake up the day after the election in 2024 and feel like we did the day after the election in 2016. Where we're like, how in the world did this happen? Well, because we weren't looking underneath the right rocks and we weren't looking in the shadows of where this other stuff might be, might be happening. And I'm a little nervous we're going to repeat history again in a little different way. Um, it's not necessarily about who wins or doesn't win, like it could come in a lot of different formats, but just that thing of like we weren't paying attention to it. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yeah, and I think, I think to your point earlier, there's like much broader stakes than just what's going to happen in, in DC. There's elections happening all across the world and like the, the issues that we're facing here in the United States around our [00:50:00] economy and the way we're thinking through it are not unique to this country. And so there are a lot of people that are thinking, hey, we want to see change in our country as well. And we want to see change in our economy as well. Katie Harbath: If I can make one point on that though, one interesting thing, well there's many interesting things, but if you look at ad impact who says this is going to be a 10 billion election in the United States, the amount of money spent, but most of that money they actually expect to be spent on down ballot races with the presidential being number two. Because I, one of the things I'm watching is that people are burnt out on the news. They're not that wild about a Trump Biden rematch, but what is driving them to the polls? Referendum on abortion, state level races, more local level races, and we could have something where you have a bit more of a reverse coattails, where it's not actually the top of the ticket that is driving people to go to the polls to vote. It is what is happening more locally at their state and local level. And that will impact the top of the ticket, but it's not, it's [00:51:00] rather than it being the top of the ticket dragging everybody else. It's the other way around of, of how we're, of how we're sort of thinking about that. And so change, like again, from a business perspective, if you're trying to forecast this. Don't just be looking at DC. Yes, definitely be looking elsewhere around the world, but also be looking at home. Every place you have an office, any place you have employees, any place you have a storefront, whatever your business is, because what is happening at that level, you could also get sucked into as well. matt_3_12-07-2023_120411: Yeah. Judd Borakove: So we're about at time, but a couple of things. One, I think we've done a really good job of weaving a very cautionary tale for not just business, but everybody to be thoughtful and plan for worst case. Something we've always talked about mitigation, risk mitigation planning and things like that. And it's, it's probably going to be more imperative now than we've seen. In the past. And two, Katie, you're awesome. Uh, everybody, anything, uh, to contact her, we're going to put in our show notes. Also, if you want to panic [00:52:00] responsibly, uh, go to her website, buy her stuff, follow her. She's awesome. And we love you guys. Thank you always for tuning in and being in a part of this. And Katie, thank you for being here and taking the time to spend with us. Knuckleheads who need to learn from people like you. So. Love you guys. Thank you so much. You'll hear our outro, even though I just said it. And, uh, we'll talk to you guys soon. Have a good one.[00:53:00]