0:00

You became the world's youngest billionaire

0:02

at the age of 25. You've

0:04

got Mark Zuckerberg offering you $3 billion.

0:06

That was a fateful day, for

0:08

sure. But we decided that we'd rather

0:10

go to a lot. Was there

0:12

ever a day where you doubted

0:14

that decision? Evan Spiegel is the co-founder

0:17

behind one of the world's biggest

0:19

social media platforms. Snapchat. He turned disappearing

0:21

messages into a multi-billion dollar empire,

0:23

redefining how we connect online. Evan, you

0:25

don't do many podcasts, do you?

0:27

I don't do much public speaking

0:29

at all, but I want to share

0:31

a bit more. So let's go back

0:34

to those early days. So I was

0:36

an introvert growing up, and I loved

0:38

to build stuff at school, I built

0:40

my own computer. And once you start

0:42

realizing that things that look my own

0:44

computer, and once you start realizing that

0:46

things that look really complicated on the

0:48

surface, you start wondering, you know, what

0:50

else you can build. So that led

0:53

to building Snapchat. really really quickly and

0:55

then sort of fade away. And a

0:57

lot of people told us that we

0:59

should sell it. They said you're just

1:01

sending photos back and forth. I was

1:03

just gonna grow for the long term.

1:05

But the growth of Snapchat was atypical

1:07

to say the least. It was like

1:10

this virus and it was reaching 75

1:12

million users on a monthly basis. So

1:14

I wondered if you had any advice

1:16

on the fundamental principles of success. How

1:18

much people care about what they do

1:20

in the ability to move quickly is

1:22

the predictor of success? incredible number of

1:25

ideas and products and features because 99%

1:27

of ideas are not good but 1%

1:29

is. I want to know what they

1:31

teach at Stamfin because the success rate

1:33

of creating some of the world's preeminent

1:36

entrepreneurs is really really high. There were

1:38

a lot of very good lessons. The

1:40

first one is... I want to keep

1:42

the dire of a CEO free and

1:44

not behind any kind of payroll or

1:46

subscription model forever. And the way that we

1:48

do that is that you guys choose to follow and subscribe

1:50

to this show. So if you're listening to the show right

1:53

now, you might have been sent the episode, you might have

1:55

listened to a couple before, can you do me a favour?

1:57

And if you do me this favour, I promise that I'm

1:59

going to... fight every turn over the next

2:01

10 years to keep this show completely

2:03

free without paywalls and without any kind

2:05

of cost to the user, can you

2:07

hit the follow button? The follow button will

2:10

be on whatever app you're listening to now,

2:12

it might be Spotify or Apple or something

2:14

like that, but hitting that follow button which

2:16

is usually in the corner of the app

2:19

or a little tick, is the reason this

2:21

show will stay free forever, forever. Thank you

2:23

so much. If you do that for me, thank you

2:25

so much, I really appreciate it. Evan,

2:30

when you look back over your earliest

2:32

years and you try and make sense

2:34

of the dots that connected in

2:37

hindsight, I guess as Steve Jobs

2:39

once said, what are those dots? There

2:41

were a couple fateful choices that

2:43

my parents made that I think had

2:45

a huge impact. One was that they

2:47

never let me watch TV. So they

2:49

never let me watch TV. It didn't

2:52

want me to spend my time doing

2:54

that, but at the same time would

2:56

allow me to get whatever book I

2:58

wanted. And that was a really, I

3:00

think, formative experience for me. And reading

3:03

a book, you get to use your

3:05

imagination a lot. You get to use

3:07

your imagination a lot, you know, to

3:09

try to paint the characters in your

3:12

own mind. And that was really

3:14

helpful. And because I wasn't watching

3:16

TV, I had a guest experience

3:18

where... my parents could come and

3:20

try to stay at our hotel.

3:22

And I got to use my

3:24

imagination a lot at home. And

3:26

my parents never made me feel

3:28

bad about turning the house upside

3:30

down, moving chairs around to express

3:32

myself and make stuff. Did you

3:35

feel what you fitted in when you were

3:37

a kid? No, not at all. No. I

3:39

was more of an introvert growing

3:41

up. So, you know, I think sometimes that

3:43

made it harder for me to feel like

3:45

I fit in. And when did

3:47

computers come into the picture

3:50

of you? I guess I was

3:52

exposed to my first computer, gosh,

3:54

probably kindergarten, first

3:57

grade, maybe around that period

3:59

of time. Godfather brought over one of

4:01

the early Macintoshes to show our family and

4:03

I got to try out things like KidPix

4:05

and stuff like that. And then I guess

4:07

later on in school, I went to the

4:09

computer lab a lot. I really wanted my

4:11

own computer, so the big breakthrough was when

4:13

my mom said, you know, if you build

4:16

your own computer, you can have it. We

4:18

won't let you connect it to the internet,

4:20

but if you build your own computer, you

4:22

can have it to play with. And so

4:24

that was probably by sixth grade. I had

4:26

a teacher who helped me, you know, take

4:28

all the different pieces you need and put them

4:30

all together to build a computer. And I

4:33

think this act of, you know,

4:35

putting together these pieces, turning it

4:37

on, you know, getting, you know,

4:39

windows up and running just made

4:41

me realize why it seems so complicated

4:43

on the outside. When you're just looking

4:45

at that tower, that box, right, or, you

4:47

know, and you haven't yet opened it

4:49

up and seen what's inside, I think it

4:51

can seem really confusing or complicated. But

4:53

as soon as you realize it's not that

4:55

hard, you know, to put it all

4:57

together and to get started, I think there's

4:59

something really empowering about that feeling. What

5:02

does that feeling teach you? I

5:05

think, you know, and I think this is

5:07

much more the case now, because, you know,

5:09

if you go on YouTube, you can learn

5:11

how to do pretty much anything, right? But

5:13

I think once you start realizing that things

5:15

that look really complicated or confusing on the

5:17

surface aren't that difficult, you start wondering, you

5:19

know, what else you can build or what

5:22

else you can create or, you know, how

5:24

else you can experiment with something that seems

5:26

impossible from the outside, but really is just

5:28

not that hard. And you got bullied in

5:31

school, right? Was it

5:33

sixth grade that you got bullied or

5:35

was it sometime thereafter? Middle school was not

5:37

the, I think not the easiest, easiest time

5:39

for me. Why? You

5:41

know, as I mentioned, I sort of, you know, had

5:44

trouble fitting in. I didn't do a lot

5:46

of activities that some other schoolmates did,

5:48

like, you know, sports and stuff. I played,

5:50

you know, a little bit on the

5:52

tennis team. But so I think, you know,

5:54

in the combination of not really playing

5:56

sports with friends, spending a lot of time

5:58

in the computer lab. you know,

6:00

lunch or after school, I think, you know,

6:02

just led to me feeling a bit socially

6:04

isolated. You know, what is, I think, a

6:07

tricky time for lots of kids. What were

6:09

you like as a kid? Were you confident?

6:11

I don't know if I was confident in myself,

6:13

per se, but I definitely was confident

6:16

in my ideas. Like, I was willing

6:18

to take a stand for ideas that

6:20

I... thought were different or I was

6:22

willing to explore ideas that didn't seem

6:24

popular at the time. Because I thought

6:26

it was, you know, important. I was

6:28

talking to my, my dad's, has been

6:30

staying with us for a while and

6:32

I was talking with him. I was

6:34

like, what do you know, what stories

6:36

do you think I could tell about

6:38

growing up? What do you think? And

6:41

he was like, you know, what stories

6:43

do you think I could tell about growing

6:45

up? What do you think? you know you

6:47

basically interviewed all these teachers and kids and

6:49

parents and you know wrote this whole expose

6:51

about how the math program could be better

6:54

and he was like you know it was

6:56

sort of like maybe better left unsaid

6:58

in that environment but the school to

7:00

their credit supported me and like let

7:02

me publish it and you know I

7:04

think created an environment where

7:07

you know kids could challenge authority which

7:09

which was really you know something that

7:11

I learned was okay. I guess that's a

7:13

principle as well of many of the people

7:15

that I meet like you is that they're

7:17

okay with pushing against convention. And

7:19

at certain moments in your life

7:22

you make these decisions which one

7:24

would say are contrarian bets. I

7:26

can see them all over your story, but

7:28

clearly that was something innate in

7:30

you from a fairly young age as you look

7:32

back. You don't do many podcasts,

7:34

do you? I don't do much public speaking

7:36

at all. It's a 2025 New Year's

7:38

resolution for me though, so we'll see,

7:41

you know, I'm trying to, you know,

7:43

share a bit more. Why? I think

7:45

it's really important that people

7:47

understand our company and what we stand

7:49

for, why we make the decisions that

7:51

we do, and I think part of

7:54

that is, you know, getting to know

7:56

me and Bobby and I, you know,

7:58

started this business, 13. years ago and

8:00

we have made a bunch of different

8:03

choices along the way but I think

8:05

unless we talk about them nobody knows

8:07

and so it's really important for us

8:09

to share you know how how we

8:11

make decisions and our design philosophy and

8:13

that kind of thing. It's a really

8:15

interesting time I think to be a

8:17

CEO generally because I think even 10-15

8:19

years ago CEOs of major companies that

8:21

so many people use and love weren't

8:24

doing podcasts. They were... maybe release press

8:26

releases and their marketing team would kind

8:28

of run the columns, but there's been

8:30

this almost big shift towards leadership transparency.

8:32

Now our leaders are like expected to

8:34

be glass boxes. I think even beyond

8:36

that media has really reshaped to focus

8:38

on individuals, right? Individuals are the... or

8:40

what people are interested in, they're the

8:42

ones who have distribution. So I think

8:45

that the center of gravity has shifted

8:47

away from the entity, like the business,

8:49

to focus more on the individual characters,

8:51

right, and storytellers. So you went off

8:53

to university, and you went to Stanford

8:55

University, which is an incredible university, and

8:57

you went to ultimately try and pursue

8:59

product design at Stanford. Why did you

9:01

choose product design at that stage in

9:03

your life? What was it that was

9:06

calling you about that course? Well, what's

9:08

really cool about product design is the

9:10

basic concept is like you don't need

9:12

to wait around and, you know, wait

9:14

for an idea to fall out of

9:16

heaven or get struck by lightning. You

9:18

can systematically create new ideas by listening

9:20

to people empathizing with them and then

9:22

basically prototyping solutions to the problems that

9:24

they share with you and then iterating

9:27

on those solutions by bringing those solutions

9:29

back to them and saying, what do

9:31

you think? Does this solve your problem?

9:33

So for me to be able to

9:35

combine. my love of making things with

9:37

this process for making things that could

9:39

be useful to people, making new products.

9:41

That was really exciting to me. And

9:43

the product design school was created by

9:45

a really visionary guy named David Kelly.

9:47

I had the opportunity to take a

9:50

class from him and it was really

9:52

just an incredible experience. What is product

9:54

design for someone like me that has

9:56

no... idea what they teach in such

9:58

a course. Is it? Because my head

10:00

says like designing like physical products or?

10:02

A lot of the product design school

10:04

at Stanford is oriented around physical products.

10:06

Of course now, you know, it's so

10:08

much more than that. But when I

10:11

was there at the time and it

10:13

was under the mechanical engineering department, it

10:15

was very oriented around physical products, understanding

10:17

materials, but all part of this framework

10:19

of how do we understand the problems

10:21

that people are facing, how do we

10:23

empathize with them? How do we design

10:25

solutions that solve those problems? Did you

10:27

learn entrepreneurship through this time as well?

10:29

Because I think in your sophomore year,

10:32

you took a class on entrepreneurship in

10:34

venture capital, right? Yeah, that was really

10:36

a game changer. So that class called

10:38

Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital, and the class

10:40

is a series of case studies basically

10:42

led by entrepreneurs who come in and

10:44

present the story of creating their business

10:46

and lessons learned, and then it's an

10:48

open Q&A. I got to listen to

10:50

their amazing stories and ask them questions

10:53

and that was super inspiring to me.

10:55

Do you remember anything you took away

10:57

from those classes that ended up being

10:59

really important for you in terms of

11:01

an idea or a philosophy or anything?

11:03

I think the biggest thing that I

11:05

took away from my time at Stanford

11:07

and from that class was the focus

11:09

on going after really really big opportunities.

11:11

And I think one of the things

11:14

that's so different, growing up here in

11:16

LA, I think a lot of the

11:18

business community that I was exposed to

11:20

is more focused on cash flow, right?

11:22

Like how quickly can this business turn

11:24

a profit? You know, how can we

11:26

do that really predictably? How much cash

11:28

are we going to generate? At Stanford,

11:30

the business culture is entirely oriented around,

11:32

well, how big is that opportunity? Is

11:35

that a opportunity big enough? Because if

11:37

you're not going after something that could

11:39

reach billions of people. That's not that

11:41

interesting. And that was a totally different

11:43

way of thinking for me, combined with

11:45

the venture capital approach, which is really

11:47

to invest a lot of money early

11:49

and scale quickly, and then build out

11:51

the business later after you've achieved scale,

11:53

after you've achieved scale. mass adoption. I've

11:56

always wondered what they teach at Stanford

11:58

especially as it relates to business because

12:00

the success rate of creating some of

12:02

the world's sort of preeminent entrepreneurs is

12:04

really really high so you're telling me

12:06

one of the key ideas is big

12:08

ambitions. Yeah and I think it makes

12:10

sense because it's so hard to create

12:12

a business your odds of success are

12:14

so low so it's really important that

12:16

you go after something really big so

12:19

that if you're successful that at the

12:21

end of the day there's a huge

12:23

opportunity at the end of the rainbow.

12:25

So in my head I go well

12:27

if it's really really big then the

12:29

chance of failure is probably going to

12:31

go up. So you know I can

12:33

open a coffee shop right and my

12:35

chance of success is pretty decent but

12:37

if I go after building a new

12:40

social network which is something only a

12:42

psychopath would do then my odds of

12:44

success are what one in a gazillion?

12:46

I think what... is exciting though about

12:48

the technology business is the way that

12:50

it scales. And so I think what's

12:52

different than your coffee shop example is

12:54

once you build... a great service once,

12:56

once we build Snapchat one time, it

12:58

can scale to 850 million people around

13:01

the world, right? Whereas you'd have to

13:03

go build a new coffee shop, you

13:05

know, on every street corner to scale

13:07

the business. And so once I think

13:09

you start seeing the world in terms

13:11

of the potential to scale and the

13:13

potential to build, you know, a product

13:15

or service that can reach billions of

13:17

people, it really changes, you know, the

13:19

opportunities you identify or the things that,

13:22

you know, the services that you want

13:24

to build. that most of us, especially

13:26

in the UK, we often don't think

13:28

about building businesses that have the potential

13:30

to reach huge scale, in part because

13:32

we don't have as much of a

13:34

robust, I think, technical track record in

13:36

terms of building great unicorn tech companies

13:38

in Europe, as you guys do over

13:40

here. I mean, I don't know if

13:43

we want to go down this path

13:45

and talk about entrepreneurship in Europe, but

13:47

I think one of the real challenges

13:49

in Europe is how small the different...

13:51

markets are in each country talk to

13:53

entrepreneurs in Europe, oftentimes they're very focused

13:55

on growing first in their country and

13:57

using that market as a stepping stone,

13:59

but all the countries in Europe are

14:01

quite different. They're different cultures and different

14:04

languages, and so sometimes entrepreneurs can spend

14:06

too much time trying to grow in

14:08

Europe. Rather than what I've seen out

14:10

of some companies in Australia, for example,

14:12

they're on an island, the first thing

14:14

that these entrepreneurs are thinking about is

14:16

like, how do I go grow in

14:18

the US? How do I go grow

14:20

in a really, really big market and

14:22

get to scale really quickly? And then

14:25

I can go reinvest and grow in

14:27

Europe or grow in other countries where

14:29

it might be more difficult to grow.

14:31

That is so true. Thinking about my

14:33

investment portfolio, there's about 40 different companies

14:35

there, and almost every single one of

14:37

them. has adopted the approach of, we'll

14:39

crack the UK first and then we'll

14:41

go and figure out the US, but

14:43

in that transition to the US, they

14:46

encounter tons of challenges with how expensive

14:48

it is to succeed here, like marketing

14:50

costs here, if they're in retail, how

14:52

difficult it is to get into target

14:54

or Walmart here. Also, the founders end

14:56

up building their lives, their families in

14:58

the UK, which means that the founders

15:00

can't really, you know, uproot and move

15:02

to the US later in the journey.

15:04

So most of them try the US,

15:06

waste a ton of money, get burnt,

15:09

run back. And then, I've seen that

15:11

story play out over and over again.

15:13

When you think about penetrating these international

15:15

markets, do you send call team members

15:17

there? Oftentimes what we've done with Snapchat

15:19

is actually follow the growth. So looking

15:21

for countries where people have already started

15:23

using the product, already love it, are

15:25

giving us a bunch of feedback. And

15:27

then, you know, we'll send folks there

15:30

or we'll figure out how to sort

15:32

of build on the momentum or make

15:34

sure it's localized properly, make sure we're

15:36

working with local creators so that the

15:38

content's relevant. But I think, you know,

15:40

because our service is based on communication,

15:42

you know, Snapchat doesn't really work unless

15:44

you're using it. with a friend. You

15:46

got to use it together. What we

15:48

look for is just that momentum where

15:51

friends are using it to communicate with

15:53

one another and then figure out how

15:55

to build on top of that with

15:57

the content ecosystem or augmented reality and

15:59

those sorts of things. What was your

16:01

first idea that failed? Well, I mean,

16:03

I made an orange juicer at one

16:05

point, but this... But I think the

16:07

biggest failure was future freshmen. Bobby and

16:09

I, I was really fortunate to me,

16:12

Bobby. He lived across the hall for

16:14

me at our fraternity at Stanford. And

16:16

we shared this love of making stuff.

16:18

So we had kind of worked on

16:20

making stuff. So we had kind of

16:22

worked on a couple social ideas that

16:24

were interesting. But the one thing we

16:26

decided to spend a lot of time

16:28

on was future freshmen, which was designed

16:30

to help kids apply to college. It

16:33

was something that we'd had direct experience.

16:35

We spent about 18 months building like

16:37

a full featured website. You could select

16:39

the schools you wanted to go to.

16:41

It would aggregate all the essay questions

16:43

and requirements and make it really easy

16:45

to apply. But it was very clear

16:47

by the end of that 18 months

16:49

or so that it was going to

16:51

be really difficult for us to win.

16:54

We were up against a company called

16:56

Naviance, which had their own software suite,

16:58

and they had a really good idea,

17:00

which is they went to all the...

17:02

college counselors around the US in high

17:04

schools and things like that and said,

17:06

hey, tell everyone to use Naviance. Make

17:08

sure your students, parents, are using our

17:10

platform. And so they got a lot

17:12

of distribution through all the different schools.

17:15

And so obviously you're going to use

17:17

the platform that's being recommended by your

17:19

college counselor, not an app made by

17:21

two kids out of Stanford. And so

17:23

we had a real distribution disadvantage. And

17:25

then we also realized, like, even if

17:27

we were wildly successful, and we got

17:29

the million students. a year who applied

17:31

a four-year college or something like that,

17:33

we would have to then re-acquire another

17:35

million students the next year. And so

17:38

we sort of had this realization that

17:40

it was going to be really hard

17:42

to build a big business and that

17:44

we really ought to try something different

17:46

and most importantly, try to build something

17:48

that wouldn't take 18 months to build

17:50

before we got great feedback. So to

17:52

try to build something really simple, you

17:54

know, that people could try and that

17:56

we could collect feedback on faster. So

17:59

two points there. But how did you know when

18:01

to quit? You've kind of assembled a

18:03

couple of principles there, but even, I

18:05

think it's difficult in business because you

18:07

can be getting lots of negative feedback,

18:09

but that doesn't necessarily mean that the idea

18:11

is something that you should quit. Maybe it

18:14

means you should pivot or iterate or just

18:16

keep going. But how did you know? What

18:18

were the stars that aligned that told you

18:20

to quit that business? I think for us,

18:22

it was that we didn't love the

18:24

product enough. I think if you really

18:26

love the product, you know, and you

18:28

love what you're building, what you're doing,

18:30

you can fight through just about anything.

18:32

I mean, that was really the case

18:34

with the early days of Snapchat. We

18:36

loved, you know, using the product all

18:38

day with using the product. We were

18:40

using the product. We were using it

18:43

all day with our friends. So we just

18:45

had an attachment to it that we never,

18:47

you know, really developed with future freshmen because

18:49

we weren't applying to the thing that you're

18:51

building. Because I think that's what, you know,

18:54

the love and passion for what you're building

18:56

and the love and passion for the people

18:58

you're working with, like that's what allows you

19:00

to get through, you know, all the challenges

19:02

that come when you try to build a

19:05

business. I think if you don't love what

19:07

you're doing, I mean, I just absolutely love what I

19:09

do and the team that we get to work with

19:11

and of course the products that we make, the

19:13

community we serve. And I think without that, just love

19:16

for what you do for what you do. It can

19:18

for what you do. It can be, it for

19:20

what you do. You felt that you should go

19:22

after a business that didn't take like 18

19:24

months, like two years of your time to

19:26

build before you got it to market.

19:28

Why is that, for entrepreneurs that are

19:30

listening, that maybe have spent years

19:33

perfecting something in their bedroom that

19:35

hasn't gone to market yet, why was

19:37

that insight so important to you for

19:39

your next venture? I think getting that feedback

19:41

from your customers as quickly and early as

19:43

possible is critical, even if it's on like...

19:46

the back of an appkin like hey here's

19:48

what I'm thinking this is what it's going

19:50

to look like what do you think about

19:52

that idea because it's very hard to know whether or

19:54

not you have a good idea unless you can put

19:56

some in front of people and have them use

19:58

it I mean that's almost one of the cardinal

20:01

rules of the product design program that

20:03

I guess we willfully ignored which is

20:05

that you should really rapidly prototype and

20:07

get feedback as quickly as possible so

20:10

that you know you're on the right

20:12

track. I mean, even in the early

20:14

days, you know, Snapchat before it was

20:16

called Snapchat, it was called Picaboo, it

20:19

was more focused on disappearing messages. Very

20:21

quickly we learned that wasn't interesting to

20:23

people. They wanted to communicate with pictures.

20:25

They wanted to talk with pictures. So

20:27

when we called the app Snapchat, we

20:30

explained that it was 10 times faster

20:32

than sending a photo via text message.

20:34

People were like, oh, I want that.

20:36

That's something that I'll use every month

20:38

to create. I think this is a

20:40

really interesting point that a lot of

20:42

founders don't realise that even companies

20:45

like yours, they start with an

20:47

initial hypothesis, which is nearly always wrong.

20:49

But kind of when you hear these

20:51

stories, you hear like, had an idea

20:53

in my basement and then pursued it,

20:55

and then it became a billion-dollar business.

20:58

But there's something in the like

21:00

humility and the realization that your

21:02

initial idea might be wild be off, and

21:04

that your job isn't to like be right. I

21:06

totally agree and I think the challenge

21:08

someone, I think this was like one

21:11

of those vanity fair parties a million

21:13

years ago, the souvenir was a lighter

21:15

and like on one side it's like

21:17

the director is always right and on

21:19

the other side it's like the director

21:21

is always right and on the other

21:23

side it's like the customers never wrong.

21:25

You know and I think like that's

21:27

like always the interesting challenge with a

21:29

business that you have to stay true

21:31

to your vision, the reason why you're

21:33

building a product, is right whether or

21:36

not you agree with that. So how

21:38

did you get past future freshmen to

21:40

your next business? What was the

21:42

journey from there? So you'd met your

21:45

co-founder at that point, Bobby, and

21:47

how did you then move over to the idea

21:49

of Snapchat? I think one of the

21:51

things that was really helpful is that

21:53

I did a semester a quarter abroad

21:56

in Cape Town, and I think taking

21:58

a step back and being there. sort

22:00

of gave me perspective about what we were working.

22:02

I was working on it while I was still

22:04

working on future freshmen while I was there, but

22:06

it really gave me like more perspective and I

22:09

think you know I just realize this is going

22:11

to be really hard and I don't really love

22:13

what we're doing. We got to find something

22:15

else. And was that more than anything a

22:17

feeling you had, like a feeling of just I'm

22:19

not enjoying doing this every day opening my

22:22

emails thinking about this problem? Yeah, I

22:24

think it's so important to listen to listen

22:26

to those feelings. Yeah. Yeah, we

22:28

were very good at not listening

22:30

to them. Think because of parents

22:32

and other pressures, right, to continue

22:34

doing something. So then how did you

22:36

get from there from being in Cape Town

22:38

to the idea for Snapchat? Well, I came

22:41

back from Cape Town. I moved into a

22:43

dorm at Stanford. One of my buddies who

22:45

had been, Reggie, one of my friends who

22:47

had been living in our fraternity before, was

22:50

also in that same dorm. So we were

22:52

hanging out. And one day he was like,

22:54

man, I wish I could send a disappearing

22:56

photo. I was like, that's a super interesting

22:58

idea. And we looked it up. There were

23:01

a couple other apps that we're doing, some

23:03

similar. stuff at the time, but they were

23:05

very, they were much more like security focused.

23:07

They weren't really focused as much on

23:09

fun, you know. So that's a super

23:12

interesting idea, and you could see really

23:14

quickly that it was simple enough that

23:16

we could build it and get

23:18

feedback really quickly, you know. And I

23:20

think there were a couple important design

23:23

choices that we made at the time.

23:25

One was opening to the camera. We

23:27

really wanted to be the, you know,

23:29

the tagline is the fastest way to

23:31

share a moment. We wanted to be

23:34

the fastest way to share a moment.

23:36

And at the time, I don't know

23:38

if you remember, the iPhone had like

23:40

a shutter animation, so you would like

23:42

tap the camera to open it and

23:45

it would take forever to like open

23:47

up the camera, or to like open

23:49

up the camera, or to like open up

23:51

the camera, or to like open up the

23:53

camera, or to like open up the camera,

23:55

we're gonna get rid of that. disappears. So

23:58

that I think that was a a really

24:00

important choice that we made. And

24:02

then, of course, the choice to let

24:04

people choose how long they wanted to

24:06

let someone see their snap, but with

24:08

a caveat that you could always take

24:10

a screenshot. And that was probably one

24:12

of the most important pieces of feedback

24:14

we got in the initial day. So

24:16

we built the prototype of the app,

24:18

I took it to my design class.

24:20

Here's this new app. It's called Piccaboo.

24:22

You can set a photo that disappears.

24:25

You know, this is really different than

24:27

social media. Social media is all about

24:29

permanence and you're trying to look popular

24:31

and collect all these likes and comments

24:33

and pretty pictures. You know, that's the 1%

24:35

of moments in your life. And here's Snapchat.

24:37

This is our Piccaboo at the time. Here's

24:39

Piccaboo. This is for the other 99%. Right?

24:41

All the other moments that you might be

24:43

embarrassed to post to all your friends, but

24:45

that you want to share with your best

24:47

friend or, you know, your family. Everyone's like,

24:49

this is never going to work because you

24:51

can always take a screenshot. This makes no

24:53

sense. So it doesn't go away. You can

24:55

take a screenshot. And I think one of

24:57

the big inventions and that's why I think

24:59

it's so important to get this feedback. One

25:01

of the big inventions that we made that's

25:04

later that summer when Bobby that were working

25:06

out of my dad's house. invented a way

25:08

to detect if someone had taken the screenshot.

25:10

And so we would send a little notification

25:12

back that said, hey, your friend took a

25:15

screenshot. And I think that was part of

25:17

what made the service fun, that you could

25:19

set how long it would appear for your

25:21

friend, but if they wanted to save it,

25:23

they could take a screenshot, but you would

25:26

know that they saved it. And I

25:28

think that was one of the early

25:30

feedback loops of the product that helped

25:32

make people feel comfortable using it for

25:34

picture messaging. You having that conversation

25:36

with Reggie about wanting photos

25:38

to disappear and the moment

25:41

when you knew Snapchat was

25:43

going to be a big deal.

25:45

Like, how long is that gap? I

25:47

would say it took until maybe,

25:49

certainly the following school year for

25:52

me. So over that summer, Bobby

25:54

and I went to my dad's

25:56

house, worked a lot on the

25:58

service, renamed it Snapchat. got a lot

26:00

of feedback. When we were using it with

26:02

our friends, everyone wanted like, hey, can I

26:04

add a caption? Can I add, you know,

26:06

can I draw on it? Because in the

26:08

original version, it was just a photo. But

26:10

because people were, you know, using just our

26:12

friend group, using it to communicate, we

26:14

needed to add things like captions and

26:17

drawing. So I think the Snapchat launched

26:19

in the App Store about September of

26:21

2011, and it probably wasn't until... late

26:23

that fall maybe or even into

26:25

the following beginning of 2012 that

26:27

I was I remember sitting in

26:29

the back of my classroom and

26:31

we had a snap counter that would count

26:33

the total number of snaps ever sent you

26:36

know and in the early days it was

26:38

like hundreds or a thousand or whatever. and

26:40

you'd you know I'd refresh the page and

26:42

it wouldn't the number one change you know

26:44

but by that time by you know the

26:46

beginning of 2020 12 every time I refreshed

26:48

the snap counter page you know the number

26:50

would go up and it would jump by

26:52

one or two or ten so it was

26:54

clear that people were using the service and

26:56

and communicating and that's like this is this

26:58

is fun you know not only are we

27:00

loving with our friends but there's more people

27:02

using it to you said there is that

27:04

you were using people around you your friends

27:06

to give you your friends to give you

27:08

feedback on what features you should add next.

27:10

You said people wanted to write on it

27:12

and they wanted to add captions.

27:14

As a founder that must be

27:16

quite hard because you're getting lots

27:18

of feedback to change lots of

27:20

things all the time. How do you know

27:22

what to filter as good feedback about your

27:25

implement versus a distraction or

27:27

bad feedback? Is there a framework

27:29

at all that you've had to deploy?

27:31

So I think all feedback is good feedback.

27:33

I think what you do with it. is

27:36

what matters. So for example, let's take the use

27:38

of the caption tool, for example. You know, we

27:40

could have added a super clunky caption tool that

27:42

took forever to use that was like, you know,

27:44

like social media where you add the caption at

27:47

the bottom of the photo and tap it and

27:49

hash tile stuff. The way that we decided to

27:51

implement captions to make it easier for people to

27:53

communicate is all you have to do is tap

27:56

on the photo right after you'd snap, take the

27:58

photo, the keyboard would pop up, a little caption

28:00

bar, you know, the caption bar, well, you know,

28:02

that still allowed you to see the photo behind

28:04

it, instead of it being sort of attached to

28:06

the photo, it was right on top of the

28:08

photo. And then as soon as you hit enter,

28:10

you could, you know, jump to the page where

28:12

you select which friends you wanted to send it

28:14

to. So I think, you know, what was more

28:16

important than hearing feedback of, hey, I want a

28:18

way to add a caption or express

28:21

more on the snap. The way that

28:23

we implemented that feedback and designed something

28:25

really fast and easy to use is

28:28

why that blackbar caption is now, I

28:30

think, synonymous with Snapchat and is well

28:32

known around the world. So it was

28:35

a year from the idea to the

28:37

day when you raised capital for the

28:39

first time, roughly. Yeah, more or less.

28:41

And talk me through that. So how

28:44

much did you raise? How did you

28:46

go about raising the capital? And what

28:48

was the business like at that time

28:50

in terms of users and downloads? Yeah,

28:53

I don't remember the exact sort of

28:55

user statistics, but what was really, really

28:57

helpful is that we had about a

29:00

year of data. So if you remember,

29:02

back then, there were a lot of

29:04

apps that were sort of like a

29:06

flash in the pan, like they would

29:09

get popular really, really quickly, and then

29:11

sort of fade. And so. When we were

29:13

raising money, one of the things that

29:15

really helped us is we had a

29:17

year's worth of data to basically show,

29:19

hey, when people start using this product

29:21

to talk to their friends, they keep

29:23

doing it, because it's really fun and

29:25

it's better than text message-based communication. Visual

29:27

communication is way more fun, more powerful,

29:29

more expressive than text-based communication, and people

29:31

use it consistently once they learn how.

29:33

And that was really important to the

29:35

investors who were worried, is just another

29:37

flash in the pan type. type service.

29:39

So we really just led, I think

29:41

we had like three maybe five slides

29:43

of just the data. Do you remember

29:46

feedback you got from investors at that

29:48

early stage? I think this is important

29:50

because all founders are going to get the

29:52

email that tells them that they're not onto

29:54

something. Yeah, I think the biggest piece

29:56

of feedback was just like, hey, this seems

29:58

like something that the really big powerful

30:00

tech companies are just gonna copy and

30:03

you know it's they're really tough to

30:05

compete with so you know we we're

30:07

not really sure we want to invest

30:09

in something that's going up against these

30:11

really really big powerful tech companies

30:14

I mean there's some wisdom in that

30:16

certainly a lot of foresight in that

30:18

one yeah because the odds anyway of

30:20

building a social networking app are

30:22

extremely low it's we were saying

30:24

before we started recording that you've

30:26

got to be almost like delusional

30:29

to think that you can. I think

30:31

at that time too, you know, Snapchat came

30:33

last after Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, like you name

30:35

it, all of those services had come first.

30:37

And so I think the idea that like,

30:39

you know, and that was still at the

30:42

time when people believed that network effects meant

30:44

that. you couldn't compete, right? Whoever has the

30:46

biggest network is going to win, no one

30:48

else is going to be able to compete.

30:50

And so I think there was that concern

30:52

that, you know, oh, if these other competitors

30:54

are much bigger and they have network effects,

30:57

how are you ever going to grow and

30:59

compete? So that was a big piece of

31:01

feedback. And then I think there was just

31:03

a whole other group of people who didn't

31:05

really understand what the service was. And so

31:07

weren't that interested. But Jeremy at light speed.

31:09

reached out, he had his profile picture was

31:11

a photo of him with Obama. And I

31:14

was like, oh, okay, it must be like

31:16

a real, now with AI, you never know.

31:18

But back then, I was like, okay, it

31:20

must be legit. So we met up with

31:23

them and hit one of his partners that

31:25

I guess his daughter used Snapchat and loved

31:27

Snapchat. And so they understood the service and

31:29

what it was about and how she was

31:32

using with her friends. And so they ended

31:34

up investing $485 thousand dollars at a $4.25

31:36

million valuation. What a fucking deal

31:38

in hindsight. How many users did you have

31:40

at the time when you raised that capital?

31:42

I would guess about a hundred thousand

31:45

or something like that. And the valuation

31:47

was four million dollars roughly. Four point

31:49

two five, yeah. In that first year up

31:51

until the point that you raised that money,

31:53

did you ever doubt that Snapchat was going

31:55

to work? And I guess to understand

31:57

the question a bit more, you almost

31:59

have... after add a goal or

32:01

ambition to it. So I'm presuming

32:04

you wanted it to be and

32:06

thought it could be a company.

32:08

Did you ever doubt that it

32:10

would be? Was there anything that

32:12

ever happened in that first

32:15

year? There was one moment

32:17

where we accidentally took

32:19

down the Snapchat

32:21

infrastructure for three days. So

32:23

the service stopped working entirely for three

32:25

days. something broke and it took us

32:28

three days to fix it and we

32:30

were like we're we're done I mean what

32:32

are we going to do you know the service

32:34

has been down for three days it's a messaging

32:36

service you know so people have been able to

32:39

talk to their friends like is anyone going to

32:41

use it and when we turned it back on

32:43

people just started using it again and

32:45

that gave us a lot more conviction

32:47

and that you know we had a

32:49

product that people really just loved using.

32:51

How and why was it growing was

32:53

it a marketing campaign or was it

32:56

organic? The only thing that we ever

32:58

saw work was, you know, friends using

33:00

it with friends, telling their friends about

33:02

it, and wanting to, you know, learn

33:04

how to use it, because communicating with

33:06

photos was a new thing. I mean, people

33:08

hadn't been talking with pictures before.

33:10

And even the way people thought

33:12

about photos, it was like, a photo

33:14

is for saving a precious moment, right?

33:17

Like, that's, or like, a family photo,

33:19

like, that's, That was just coming out

33:21

of the digital camera, like plug it

33:23

into your computer and upload the photos

33:25

era. So there was this massive, I

33:27

think, behavioral change of people realizing, like,

33:29

wow, like, no, a picture is worth

33:31

a thousand words. And now that I

33:33

can take it instantly on my

33:36

phone and send it with my friend

33:38

and, you know, a couple hundred milliseconds,

33:40

like we can talk with pictures instead

33:42

of just use pictures to save memories.

33:44

I don't think we... really remember that. Isn't that

33:46

crazy that we don't remember? It wasn't that long ago. I

33:48

know, but we just don't remember. Like, as you were saying,

33:50

I was like, fuck, yeah, you couldn't, like, send a photo

33:53

to your friend and talk. Yeah. I was like, I was

33:55

still not trying to think of the app that I could

33:57

have used back then to do that, and they're just like,

33:59

isn't what? Yeah, but now I'm dating

34:01

myself, you know, it's terrible. Yeah. No,

34:03

that's crazy. We forget that because it's

34:06

so commonplace now on every app, you

34:08

know, you can, and I guess they

34:10

ultimately got that from you,

34:12

copied that from you. I've got this

34:14

photo from the early days. Do you

34:17

remember this photo? This is awesome. This

34:19

picture. What is this picture? Where are

34:21

you? What are you doing? Who is

34:23

that? Well, this was actually our first

34:25

office, which was great. It was called

34:27

the Blue House in Venice, 5-2-3 Ocean

34:29

Front walk. And actually, things had reached

34:31

a breaking point in my dad's house.

34:33

I think there were seven or eight

34:35

of us living there. One night, his

34:37

girlfriend of the time now, wife came

34:40

in and one of our teammates was

34:42

like sleeping on the couch with a

34:44

blanket she had bought him for Christmas,

34:46

and she was just like, I think

34:48

we've had enough here. So we had

34:50

to get an office and move out

34:52

and move out. We were going to dinner in

34:54

Venice and we walked past this old blue

34:56

house and it had a four lease sign

34:58

on and we were like, wow, this would

35:00

be wild. We could have an office on

35:02

the beach on the Venice boardwalk. Let's call

35:05

them and we called them they wanted a

35:07

crazy amount per square foot and rent. We

35:09

couldn't afford it at the time, but we

35:11

ultimately waited a bit longer and were able

35:13

to negotiate that down. quite a bit and

35:16

moved in to the Blue House. And I

35:18

think the best thing about the Blue House

35:20

was that the Venice Boardwalk is one of

35:22

the most popular tourist destinations in California, maybe

35:24

even in the world. I mean, it's more

35:27

than 10 million people a year come to

35:29

the Venice Boardwalk. And we had a big

35:31

ghost. logo or big app icon outside and

35:33

all day long people would come up and

35:36

talk to us about the app or give

35:38

us feedback or need help with their account

35:40

and so we were just immersed in people

35:42

from all over the world who were using

35:44

Snapchat and wanted to come talk to us

35:46

about it ultimately became like a little too

35:49

much but in the beginning it was just

35:51

so amazing to be right there on the

35:53

boardwalk with so many people. So how many

35:55

people could fit into the blue house? I

35:58

think you know in max capacity

36:00

used... 20-something, I think we were 20-something

36:02

people by the time we moved out,

36:04

maybe 30. It was pretty, I mean,

36:06

I was playing footsie with, you know,

36:08

people under the table, we were pretty

36:10

smushed. And how many users did you

36:12

have at that time? For people to

36:15

be coming up on the Broadwalk

36:17

and having conversations, you must have

36:19

been pretty popular. At that point,

36:21

it must have been millions, I would

36:24

guess, yeah. And you've dropped out

36:26

of a prestigious university, by that

36:28

point obviously, can't be... a

36:30

super easy decision? I really felt I

36:32

had no choice. I didn't have enough

36:34

credits to graduate. I mean, you

36:36

know, I was doing the, I

36:38

was doing the product design program,

36:40

the engineering program, I had a

36:42

lot more classes that I had

36:44

to finish, and ultimately we'd raised

36:46

$485,000 from investors, and you know,

36:48

I was spending all day trying

36:50

to pass these, you know, I

36:52

was taking, I think, 20 credits

36:54

at the time or something, and

36:56

trying to... trying to work on

36:58

our business, I just couldn't do

37:00

both at the same time. So

37:02

I was like, you know, hopefully one

37:05

day I'll be able to go back.

37:07

I actually did end up going back

37:09

and got my degree in 2018, which

37:11

was awesome. And, but, um, I just

37:13

couldn't do both at the same time.

37:15

Why? I just couldn't do both at

37:17

the same time. Why did you get

37:20

back and do your degree? Like, why

37:22

do I need one? You know, I

37:24

think. colleges can be really valuable. It's

37:26

not for everybody, but it made a

37:28

huge impact in my life. So I

37:30

wanted to be able to show how

37:32

important that is to our kids. I was

37:35

thinking earlier when we were talking about college

37:37

slash university, the world was different

37:39

when you went to university and college

37:42

and you've got these four boys now,

37:44

the oldest I think is 14 years old. If

37:46

he wants to be like dad, say he

37:48

wanted to follow in your footsteps, is

37:50

there anything else? based on how the

37:52

world is currently that you'd be advising

37:55

him to learn before the age of like 21.

37:57

Are there any topics or degrees that you

37:59

would be... him towards now if he

38:01

wanted to be like dad if that

38:03

was his decision? I think one of

38:05

the most important things today is really

38:08

nurturing creativity. I mean I think creativity

38:10

is really the the X factor certainly

38:12

in the age of AI right and

38:14

so I think nurturing creativity finding ways

38:16

to develop those skills for example Flynn

38:19

is 14 he loves drawing he's unbelievably

38:21

talented at drawing and I think sometimes

38:23

he's like See that drawing is just

38:25

the way that he's expressing creativity drawing

38:27

is the beginning of that journey of

38:30

exercising those muscles in your brain that

38:32

allow you to visualize something that other

38:34

people don't see right and and that's

38:36

one way That's one tool one skill

38:38

he can use to express what's in

38:41

his in his brain But I think

38:43

exercising that that muscle that creativity is

38:45

so important. I think creativity is just

38:47

becoming more and more rare ultimately because

38:49

so much of our society is oriented

38:52

around things we can measure. Creativity is

38:54

so hard to measure and so I

38:56

think it can be really tough, you

38:58

know, to find the dedication to invest

39:01

in developing creativity when it's uncertain what

39:03

the outcome is. But that's really what

39:05

I would encourage him or so many

39:07

people to do. We're all born creative.

39:09

You know, we're all born with this

39:12

ability to express ourselves and it's only

39:14

over time, I think that we stop.

39:16

you know, practicing that ability or, you

39:18

know, or we become fearful of expressing

39:20

ourselves. And I think that can be

39:23

overcome. Because we think through job titles

39:25

at that age, don't we? We think,

39:27

what's the job title that I should

39:29

be aiming at? So doctor, lawyer, etc.

39:31

versus we don't necessarily think as much

39:34

about collecting useful long-term skills, I'd say.

39:36

I've got my girlfriend's little brother now.

39:38

He's like racking his brain, trying to

39:40

pick a job title for the next

39:42

like that. You know, and the world

39:45

is changing so quickly now as well,

39:47

it's probably makes more sense to try

39:49

and get some fundamental skills that will

39:51

translate. Plus job titles are totally ridiculous

39:53

anyways. In the early days, we would

39:56

just make up, anyone who joined the

39:58

team, we would just make up their

40:00

title. It would have nothing to do

40:02

anything. So job titles are ridiculous when

40:04

the team is small, right? Just in

40:07

general, right? Because I think people anchor

40:09

to job titles to confer status, right?

40:11

And I think ultimately, like, amazing impact,

40:13

creativity, great ideas. come from anywhere, right?

40:15

And the more that you focus your

40:18

organization around hierarchy, I think the less

40:20

you're focusing on the right things, which

40:22

are how are we making sure great

40:24

ideas are coming from anywhere, getting surfaced,

40:26

you know, and being built. But hierarchy

40:29

comes into place when things start to

40:31

get big and we need to put

40:33

processes and reporting lines in place. How

40:35

do you defend against that? Well, I

40:37

think you're getting at like the fundamental

40:40

problem that all companies end up having.

40:42

And I think there's a great book

40:44

called Loons. this issue directly. And basically,

40:46

what the author Safi Bukal found was

40:48

essentially that very big companies, you know,

40:51

once they get a lot larger, they

40:53

have a lot of customers to serve,

40:55

they need to build all this organizational

40:57

infrastructure, and ultimately that comes with hierarchy.

40:59

But the ones that continue to innovate

41:02

that are very successful at innovating consistently

41:04

over long periods of time, also have

41:06

very small, very flat teams that don't

41:08

have any hierarchy at all that are

41:10

really, really focused on innovating. and on

41:13

trying new things. And ultimately, the companies

41:15

that are really successful find a way

41:17

to build a relationship between the huge

41:19

organization that is supporting all these customers

41:21

and needs to be operationally rigorous and

41:24

metrics focused, builds a relationship between them

41:26

and this very small group of people

41:28

who are trying crazy things. And he

41:30

gives a lot of examples, you know,

41:32

one of the ways that the United

41:35

States was able to win World War

41:37

II. They had these crazy group of

41:39

scientists that were trying new things like

41:41

radar and stuff like that at the

41:43

time. But then they were taking those

41:46

ideas, bringing them to the military, which

41:48

is a huge, very structured, hierarchical organization,

41:50

and saying, what do you guys think

41:52

about this? How can you play with

41:54

this? What are your ideas? your feedback,

41:57

take this into battle, put it on

41:59

an airplane, and see what happens, and

42:01

then give that feedback back to this

42:03

very, you know, unstructured, flat, small group

42:05

of inventors and scientists. And by really

42:08

focusing on the relationship between those parts

42:10

of the organization, ultimately companies can figure

42:12

out how to build a strong relationship

42:14

between the two and then innovate over

42:16

time. So how have you done that

42:19

at Snapchat? At Snapchat, we have a

42:21

really small design team. I think it

42:23

would surprise people. It's nine people. Really?

42:25

It is totally flat. So there's no

42:27

fancy titles. Everyone is a product designer.

42:30

The way that the team works is

42:32

very focused around making things. That's the

42:34

entire job. In fact, your very first

42:36

day, when you start, we have design

42:38

critiques once a week for a couple

42:41

hours. Your very first day, you have

42:43

to present something. So you have to

42:45

make something and present it. And what

42:47

that does that I think is... Really

42:49

interesting and powerful is that ultimately of

42:52

course on your first day when you

42:54

have no context for what the company

42:56

is working on No idea what's going

42:58

on how how on earth are you

43:00

supposed to come up with a great

43:03

idea? I mean, it's almost impossible But

43:05

you have to show an idea your

43:07

first day and so ultimately on your

43:09

very first day your worst fear has

43:11

come true that like we're sitting there

43:14

all together and we're looking at an

43:16

idea. That's like ultimately not that great

43:18

opens the door to creativity because you've

43:20

already, it already happened. You already failed.

43:22

The idea wasn't good. And you know,

43:25

what ultimately happens on our design team

43:27

is that 99% of ideas are not

43:29

good. But 1% is. And you know,

43:31

we really abide by that idea of

43:33

like, you know, or the concept that

43:36

like the best way to have a

43:38

good idea is to have lots of

43:40

ideas. So the team is just constantly

43:42

generating an incredible number of ideas and

43:44

products and features and that sort of

43:47

thing. And ultimately our job is to

43:49

try to figure out what the great

43:51

ones are and then most importantly build

43:53

a strong relationship between this little team

43:55

that's coming up. with all this stuff

43:58

all the time and are much bigger

44:00

engineering organization, our bigger product organization, who

44:02

also have all sorts of amazing ideas

44:04

and are also innovating in their own

44:06

way and build a flywheel between the

44:09

two where we can ultimately make a

44:11

lot of new products and then consistently

44:13

make them better. So many questions, though,

44:15

that I'm very, very curious about. The

44:17

first one is, do you measure the

44:20

amount of ideas that that small design

44:22

team are producing? No, but

44:24

I do know when we need more.

44:26

Okay, so you've got a sort of

44:28

intuitive feeling, a small team, you can

44:31

stay close. And then how do you

44:33

get the bigger organization to cooperate with

44:35

this smaller design team when the bigger

44:37

organization have their own incentives, they have

44:39

their own planning cycles, they have their

44:41

own egos, as all humans do? How

44:44

do you get them to work together?

44:46

For us, the bridge organization is probably

44:48

our product organization. And they really helped

44:50

connect the dots between the engineering folks

44:52

and the design folks. And a lot

44:55

of this stuff, you know, actually mirrors

44:57

the relationship that Bobby and I had

44:59

in the very early days, where I

45:01

was more design focused, I had a

45:03

bit of an engineering background and had

45:05

taken some CS, but I was more

45:08

design focused and Bobby, you know, is

45:10

an unbelievable computer scientist, right? You know,

45:12

took math and... computer science at school,

45:14

but he also loved design. And so

45:16

we had this really, you know, powerful

45:18

relationship where, you know, I could talk

45:21

with him about new ideas and design

45:23

and he could talk about the engineering

45:25

constraints. So when, you know, for example,

45:27

when we were inventing this notion that,

45:29

you know, you would tap to take

45:32

a photo and hold to record a

45:34

video at the time, that was a

45:36

really... Big deal, right? To help people

45:38

more easily use their cameras. Now every

45:40

camera on a smartphone is tapped for

45:42

a photo, hold for video. But the

45:45

engineering complexity that was required to enable

45:47

that design was something that we really

45:49

talked about and worked through because the

45:51

way that the design and the animations

45:53

had to work and the way that

45:55

you held your finger really mattered with

45:58

the way that ultimately we were flipping

46:00

between the video feed or capturing a

46:02

still image. And it was that dialogue

46:04

that... ultimately ended up resulting in a

46:06

new product and a new thing that

46:09

people could use. So we mirrored a

46:11

lot of that and tried to build

46:13

that relationship across the organization constantly over

46:15

time where there's a real dialogue and

46:17

an understanding and an appreciation both for

46:19

design and engineering that oftentimes is facilitated

46:22

by our product organization. In terms of

46:24

that small design team you said you

46:26

have a critique session once a week.

46:28

What is a critique session? So it's

46:30

just where we look at work. That's

46:33

all we do. People just share new

46:35

work. So for a couple hours, we'll

46:37

just look at all the new ideas.

46:39

That have come out of that small

46:41

team. And new designs that have come

46:43

out of the last week from that

46:46

team. And these can be anything. Really,

46:48

anything, yeah. Oftentimes they're oriented around solving

46:50

a problem, so kind of coming back

46:52

to that product design philosophy, like what

46:54

problem are we trying to solve? How

46:56

can we empathize with our community? Okay,

46:59

our creators are having friction, you know,

47:01

posting to Snapchat, it's confusing, it's confusing

47:03

to Snapchat, it's confusing the way that

47:05

they're reading their story replies, or that's

47:07

not working the right way. How can

47:10

we make that easier? And then we'll

47:12

just look at a ton of ideas.

47:14

They very often are getting feedback from

47:16

one another, oftentimes are tackling projects together

47:18

in small teams, you know, but all

47:20

come together on a regular basis. I

47:23

love this point you were making about

47:25

the key thing that you've discovered is

47:27

that the game is more ideas, not

47:29

trying to find a perfect idea. More

47:31

ideas, more feedback. You increase your failure

47:33

rate, you get more feedback. It does

47:36

kind of go contrary to what people

47:38

think when they're building a business. They

47:40

think the game is to have the

47:42

perfect idea. But those are all people

47:44

who've never built a business before. Yeah,

47:47

true. Yeah. Because eventually you learn something,

47:49

right? You learn that you're not that

47:51

good at guessing. Yeah, and I think

47:53

ultimately you have to maximize your rate

47:55

of learning. I mean, that's just critical.

47:57

Maximize your rate of learning. Let's go

48:00

back to those early days. You're in

48:02

that office. When you think about the

48:04

people in that photo that were part

48:06

of the first order 20, how important

48:08

in hindsight is hiring? I think it's

48:11

everything. I think it's everything. And these

48:13

were really, really just wonderful people. I

48:15

mean, still, you know, in many cases,

48:17

close friends. And I think, interesting, there

48:19

was a moment I realized, David, Daniel,

48:21

Bobby, and a couple other of our

48:24

original engine. All of them. you know,

48:26

original engineers were musicians as well. And

48:28

it was really interesting this moment, you

48:30

know, because the early folks who were

48:32

working on the engineering side of Snap

48:34

were unbelievably creative and unbelievably talented. And

48:37

it was an interesting like aha. because

48:39

I think oftentimes people think of the

48:41

disciplines as separate like oh there's designers

48:43

and then over there there's engineers and

48:45

I think so much of the magic

48:48

actually is when those disciplines combine or

48:50

cross over or people who really love

48:52

and appreciate both. Especially for a company

48:54

that's aspiring to be creative in everything

48:56

that's doing. On this point of hiring,

48:58

did you make any hiring mistakes in

49:01

those early days? Oh, absolutely. What are

49:03

those mistakes? Not necessarily people, but the

49:05

frameworks were off or the way that

49:07

you hide these people or what caused

49:09

the mistakes? I think occasionally in the

49:11

early days, we almost like over-indexed on

49:14

the wrong types of experience, if that

49:16

makes sense. So one of the things

49:18

we really wanted to do was bring

49:20

in people who were very, very experienced

49:22

leaders who had run much bigger teams.

49:25

That was like, if we want to

49:27

build a big company, we got to

49:29

find people who have... run big companies

49:31

and big teams. And so one of

49:33

the early engineering leaders who joined our

49:35

team, I think he was coming from

49:38

working on a team of 300 or

49:40

something like that at Amazon was coming

49:42

to like a team of eight at

49:44

Snapchat. But we were really thinking ahead

49:46

about like how can we hire people

49:48

who can actually help us scale here

49:51

and build some. really big. And I

49:53

think that sort of focus on leadership

49:55

experience and experience leading at scale was

49:57

really valuable. I think what was oftentimes

49:59

a bit less valuable in those early

50:02

days was almost more people who had

50:04

very specific domain expertise. So there were

50:06

people who had, you know, come for

50:08

an interview or something like that and

50:10

be like, well, I think what you

50:12

guys should do is add likes, because

50:15

every other platform has likes. So if

50:17

you just add likes, then people will

50:19

use your service more. And not really

50:21

coming with the same open-mindedness and curiosity

50:23

about, well, why is Snapchat doing it

50:26

differently? Like, why don't you have likes

50:28

and comments? Like, how are you thinking

50:30

about the service differently? And how can

50:32

I change and grow and adapt to

50:34

the way that you're thinking about it

50:36

to help you grow faster? And so

50:39

I think now one of the things

50:41

we're always looking for in the interview

50:43

process is adaptability, right? It's amazing to

50:45

have prior experience, but the question is

50:47

how do you apply that prior experience

50:49

to a new context and change and

50:52

adapt the way that you see things,

50:54

change your perspective, you know, to be

50:56

able to meet the needs of our

50:58

business, which is different than, you know,

51:00

other businesses. What are the other factors?

51:03

If you were to make a perfect

51:05

Snapchat employee now, what would their personality

51:07

be their... the attributes. We have three

51:09

values and three leadership behaviors. Three values

51:11

are kind smart and creative. Those have

51:13

been the values since the very beginning,

51:16

really, because Bobby and I were just

51:18

having a conversation. Like, what kind of

51:20

people do we want to work with?

51:22

Kind smart, creative, like. Great. But since

51:24

then, and we can spend some more

51:26

time talking about this, I think what

51:29

was really fascinating over time was to

51:31

learn, you know, and by the way,

51:33

10 years ago, people were not talking

51:35

about kindness at work. I mean, people

51:37

will be like, sorry, what? You know,

51:40

no, kind, no, kind, smart, creative. Like,

51:42

why kindness? What we found was that

51:44

with, that the relationship between kindness and

51:46

creativity, idea and it actually isn't that

51:48

great that they're not going to be

51:50

laughed at that they'll be supported right

51:53

unless you have that sort of supportive

51:55

culture it's very hard to be creative

51:57

and so we learned over time that

51:59

actually wow kindness is is kind of

52:01

the essential ingredient if you want to

52:04

have a creative a creative culture but

52:06

anyways kind smart creative smart pretty self-explanatory

52:08

and then when it comes to leadership

52:10

behaviors there's three leadership behaviors or attributes

52:12

we look for I just want to

52:14

pose on that point of kind Do

52:17

you make a distinction between someone being

52:19

nice and being kind? Because in your

52:21

environment you also mentioned that you do

52:23

these critique sessions and you're giving people

52:25

critical feedback and if a culture gets

52:27

a little bit too kind, then isn't

52:30

that going to inhibit innovation and feedback?

52:32

We always differentiate between kind and nice.

52:34

There's a couple examples that I think

52:36

help with that. So like for one,

52:38

I think it's really kind to tell

52:41

somebody that they have something stuck in

52:43

their teeth. You have something stuck in

52:45

your teeth, you want to know about

52:47

it, right? It might make you feel

52:49

awkward. Certainly as the person pointing it

52:51

out, it's a little awkward, right? If

52:54

you just want to be nice, you

52:56

pretend nothing's going on and you just

52:58

say, oh, you know, nice to meet

53:00

you, whatever. But if you're really being

53:02

kind and you want to help that

53:04

person, you've got something stuck in your

53:07

teeth, you've got to take care of

53:09

that. you know, at work or they're

53:11

struggling to grow or they're struggling with,

53:13

you know, to perform, you know, their

53:15

duties at SNAP, you know, the nice

53:18

thing to do is maybe just make

53:20

them feel good about it. Oh, don't

53:22

worry, you know, I'm sure it'll be

53:24

okay. The kind thing to do is

53:26

really, you know, I'm sure it'll be

53:28

okay. The kind thing to do is

53:31

really help them succeed, right? Leadership values.

53:33

You said there's leadership values. Okay, there's

53:35

three of them. The first one is

53:37

T-shaped leadership. So we talk a lot

53:39

about T-shaped leadership. by that is that

53:42

you have a real depth of experience,

53:44

a depth of expertise in a given

53:46

area, and then a real breadth of

53:48

understanding of the business overall, and an

53:50

ability to connect with lots of different

53:52

types of people who think different ways.

53:55

Because you need to be able to

53:57

connect with lots of different types of

53:59

people who think different ways. Because you

54:01

need to be able to connect your

54:03

expertise to all the different areas of

54:05

our team. And it's really important that

54:08

you have folks who have deep expertise,

54:10

but then they have to apply it

54:12

to all these other cross-functional areas. So

54:14

they have to have a familiarity with

54:16

it and an ability to relate to

54:19

people with different viewpoints or other areas

54:21

of expertise. And as we proceed with

54:23

these leadership principles, are you saying that

54:25

in order to become a leader at

54:27

Snapchat, you need these three things? Or

54:29

are you saying everybody at Snapchat needs

54:32

these three things? We think everyone is

54:34

a leader. So we do apply it

54:36

broadly, but of course, you know. I

54:38

think it's really important as we're thinking

54:40

about hiring or bringing in a new

54:42

leader or that this is something that

54:45

we talk to folks about. So if

54:47

someone's not quite T-shaped, if they're a

54:49

little bit I-shaped, is there something they

54:51

can do to become a bit more

54:53

T-shaped? Yeah, that's almost maybe the easier

54:56

one. right if you can build on

54:58

a if you can build on a

55:00

real depth of expertise by going engaging

55:02

with folks maybe outside of your comfort

55:04

zone or in different parts of the

55:06

business and build that curiosity and understanding

55:09

that helps develop I think that breadth

55:11

of understanding I think what's harder is

55:13

if you're a generalist and you don't

55:15

have that deep skill set or that

55:17

deep area of expertise it's really really

55:20

hard to bring enough value to the

55:22

team right and I think that's that's

55:24

where people get frustrated with like the

55:26

idea of middle management, right, where it's

55:28

like, oh, this is just a person

55:30

who, you know, knows a little about

55:33

a lot, but can't really help me

55:35

solve this problem because they don't really

55:37

know the details. They don't really understand,

55:39

you know, how to help me, you

55:41

know, grow as an individual or solve

55:43

this tough technical problem. And so I

55:46

think that's why that area of expertise

55:48

is so important because it's so hard

55:50

to inspire people that you're working with

55:52

if you don't know a lot about

55:54

you know the area that you're working

55:57

in. And do you need to be

55:59

a T-shaped leader at Snapchat now and

56:01

when there was 10 of you in

56:03

the bedroom or in your dad's house?

56:05

Has it always been important or is

56:07

that a function of being bigger? It's

56:10

a great question. I wish we had

56:12

been more thoughtful about the leadership. values

56:14

and characteristics we were looking for back

56:16

then. I think, you know, when you're

56:18

working on a team of 10 or

56:20

a team of 20, you're not thinking

56:23

as much about what leadership characteristics are

56:25

really important to us. It's more about

56:27

like, how do we survive tomorrow? You

56:29

know, but I think over time as

56:31

we learned what leaders were really successful

56:34

at SNAP, we were able to, you

56:36

know, kind of look at those attributes

56:38

and say, okay, you know, these are

56:40

the leaders who can, who really succeed

56:42

here and drive a lot of value

56:44

for our business. Before we move on

56:47

to the second too, if this Evan

56:49

could have gone back to the Evan

56:51

that was running a team of 10

56:53

and he could have pulled him aside

56:55

and said, listen, here's some advice that

56:58

you're going to need to know about

57:00

leadership in building this team. The most

57:02

critical advice I could give you at

57:04

this time, and this is here. I

57:06

would have said everything's going to be

57:08

okay. Everything's going to be okay. You

57:11

know, I think sometimes people are too

57:13

focused on making the right decision and

57:15

not as focused on fixing it if

57:17

they're wrong. And I think what I

57:19

would have put more emphasis on is

57:21

just how quickly Are you changing your

57:24

mind when you receive new information? How

57:26

quickly are you fixing a problem or

57:28

a mistake if you didn't make the

57:30

right decision in the first place? And

57:32

that's the feedback loop that is so

57:35

mission critical to building a business in

57:37

the early days. It has very little

57:39

to do. Obviously there's existential decisions, you

57:41

know, and those can, you know, create

57:43

some big problems for your business, but

57:45

most decisions are not existential decisions. And

57:48

the more important thing is to make

57:50

a decision and then if you're wrong,

57:52

fix it. When you're wrong, fix. it

57:54

part that deserves most of the attention

57:56

and also how you can identify, you

57:58

know, who your great leaders are, who,

58:01

you know, who really talented folks on

58:03

the teamwork because they're very quick to

58:05

point out, you know, I don't think

58:07

we did that. Right. I think we

58:09

should take this path, you know, this

58:12

other path that, you know, we maybe

58:14

hadn't considered the first time. And I

58:16

think it takes courage to say that

58:18

in an organization, rather than just say,

58:20

oh, we're doing a great job. in

58:22

your check, because one of the things

58:25

that I think of when I was

58:27

the first time building a student notice

58:29

board was I would get feedback and

58:31

the feedback would be saying, you're wrong

58:33

about this, you need to change. And

58:36

I think that sometimes there was a

58:38

part of me that knew, but I

58:40

was like too scared. to act upon

58:42

it. So I kind of like gaslit

58:44

myself to just keep going. And I

58:46

think a lot of founders do that.

58:49

I know this because they come to

58:51

me in my portfolio and they say,

58:53

oh Steve, there's this guy we've hired

58:55

and he's been there now for a

58:57

year and he's just not cutting it.

58:59

I'm like, why the fuck are you

59:02

telling me? And they're procrastinating avoiding the

59:04

conversation, but clearly they know, it's not

59:06

right. It's funny you say

59:08

that because any time someone comes to

59:10

ask me about like that type of

59:12

people advice Like what do you think

59:14

we should do? You know do you

59:16

think that I'm like sounds like you've

59:18

already made up your mind So yeah,

59:20

I think it is I think it

59:23

is really important to you know act

59:25

on that feedback not be afraid to

59:27

change direction quickly if you know you

59:29

realize that you made a mistake but

59:31

as you point out it's it's hard

59:33

to do and sometimes it is worth

59:35

seeing if you're your bet you know,

59:37

plays out. You don't want to thrash

59:39

the team and change your mind all

59:41

the time. So sometimes, you know, it

59:43

is sometimes we're seeing things through a

59:45

little bit before you change. Is there

59:48

anything else you would have said to

59:50

that younger Evan in that, in your

59:52

dad's house, advice? At that point, before

59:54

we had scaled to a lot of,

59:56

you know, thousands of people, I think

59:58

we could have been much more clear

1:00:00

on the culture, the kind smart creative

1:00:02

piece, and really embedded... that in the

1:00:04

team prior to scaling. Because one of

1:00:06

the biggest challenges that we confronted was,

1:00:08

you know, as we went from 20

1:00:10

people to 2,000 people, we basically imported

1:00:13

all of these different cultures from all

1:00:15

sorts of different companies. Like we imported

1:00:17

an Amazon contingent, right? We, you know,

1:00:19

who they really love their six-page documents.

1:00:21

We, you know, imported a Google. contingent,

1:00:23

right, and they're very focused on consensus-based

1:00:25

decision-making. We imported, you know, a contingent

1:00:27

from meta as well, and I think

1:00:29

we were too slow to be really

1:00:31

clear about what our values were and

1:00:33

what that looks like in practice, what

1:00:35

those behaviors looked like. And I think

1:00:37

if we had earlier and faster, so

1:00:40

when we're evaluating performance and we look

1:00:42

at our values, kind smart creative, we

1:00:44

have specific... behaviors attached to that are

1:00:46

actually research backed and whatever. We did

1:00:48

a whole study to understand which of

1:00:50

those behaviors are really tied to performance

1:00:52

and those values. But that gives people

1:00:54

a really clear framework for the expectations

1:00:56

for how to behave at SNAP and

1:00:58

our unique culture. And there was a

1:01:00

moment in time where I felt like

1:01:02

we were losing control of our culture

1:01:05

and I wasn't happy with our company

1:01:07

and the team. I remember I was

1:01:09

complaining. to a friend of mine, this

1:01:11

is probably like your story of folks

1:01:13

coming to you and saying, oh, it's

1:01:15

not working. I was complaining to a

1:01:17

friend of mine and I was just

1:01:19

like, man, I don't like it. Like,

1:01:21

I don't like my job. I don't

1:01:23

like what our companies become. And she

1:01:25

just looks at me and she's like,

1:01:27

then fix it. And I was like,

1:01:30

great point. And I think that it

1:01:32

had changed and grown so quickly that

1:01:34

it was really hard to stay true

1:01:36

to our. values, but I think, you

1:01:38

know, I really took that advice to

1:01:40

heart and just started trying to fix

1:01:42

it with our team, getting really clear

1:01:44

about the values, getting really clear about

1:01:46

the behaviors, holding a higher bar and

1:01:48

saying, hey, you know, if you're not

1:01:50

into that kind, smart, creative thing, that's

1:01:52

okay. There are other companies with different

1:01:55

cultures, but, you know, that really matters

1:01:57

to us here. So do you wish

1:01:59

you had, this would have been a

1:02:01

pretty remarkable thing to do, but do

1:02:03

you wish you had made like a

1:02:05

like a culture Bible, like a culture

1:02:07

Bible? in the early days. And then,

1:02:09

like, I'm thinking practically, what should have

1:02:11

found to do then if they're at

1:02:13

that stage when they've got a small

1:02:15

team now to prevent what happened to

1:02:17

you in terms of the culture becoming

1:02:19

a little bit too pick and mix?

1:02:22

So I think it's less about the

1:02:24

culture. Bible and more about how you

1:02:26

apply whatever your values are to your

1:02:28

hiring processes to your promotion processes to

1:02:30

whether or not people still work at

1:02:32

the company and so we were too

1:02:34

slow to embed those values in our

1:02:36

performance evaluation and so I think if

1:02:38

we had been way faster at just

1:02:40

saying hey these are our values and

1:02:42

what we stand for this is what

1:02:44

it looks like in practice and if

1:02:47

you're not living up to that this

1:02:49

isn't the right home for you like

1:02:51

that would have helped shape the culture

1:02:53

a lot faster also because immediately people

1:02:55

see, oh wow, if they're serious about

1:02:57

their values and they're asking people to

1:02:59

leave if they won't live up to

1:03:01

their values, well then I, you know,

1:03:03

I better get on board with the

1:03:05

values or find, you know, another culture

1:03:07

that fits, you know, fits my personality

1:03:09

better. It just doesn't seem like a

1:03:12

priority to found this culture. I think

1:03:14

it's such a priority, but it's hard

1:03:16

to understand what it means. You know,

1:03:18

I had so many people telling me,

1:03:20

like, you got to really focus on

1:03:22

the culture, focus on the culture, like,

1:03:24

what do you mean by culture? It's

1:03:26

like, it's actually just how people behave,

1:03:28

right? I mean, that's really what we're

1:03:30

saying, like, what is the collection of

1:03:32

group behaviors, you know, that are acceptable

1:03:34

or norms in your company? So I

1:03:36

think instead of using this big culture

1:03:39

word, which I was hearing this big

1:03:41

culture word, When we're talking with founders,

1:03:43

we should just be more specific about

1:03:45

how people are living the values of

1:03:47

their company every day through their behaviors.

1:03:49

And that's dictated essentially by the incentives

1:03:51

of the organization, because what you said

1:03:53

is you basically introduced incentive structures, so

1:03:55

you're going to be exited or you're

1:03:57

going to be promoted. And getting really

1:03:59

real about that and serious, but the

1:04:01

tough conversations come where it's like, well,

1:04:04

that person's a superstar, you know, but

1:04:06

they're not really living our kindness value.

1:04:08

And Bobby, I think is so... It

1:04:10

was so great on this. Bobby is

1:04:12

like Evan. There's no such. is a

1:04:14

brilliant jerk. If you're really brilliant, how

1:04:16

could you possibly be a jerk? I

1:04:18

mean, it just meant, you know, and

1:04:20

you're like, damn, I love that. So

1:04:22

I think this concept that like, if

1:04:24

you're really that smart, how could you

1:04:26

possibly be a jerk to people? I

1:04:29

mean, what? That I think really informed

1:04:31

our approach to building out our team

1:04:33

and I think gives you that clarity

1:04:35

in those moments where you're like, wow,

1:04:37

but they're so smart or they're so

1:04:39

talented. kind of people. What was the

1:04:41

worst advice you got in those early

1:04:43

years? We talked about some of the

1:04:45

good advice and the good advice you'd

1:04:47

give now, but was there any like

1:04:49

really bad advice that you got that

1:04:51

seemed to make sense but was terrible

1:04:53

advice? I think a lot of people

1:04:56

in the early days, you know, told

1:04:58

us that that we should sell it.

1:05:00

I mean, there were a lot of,

1:05:02

there was one embarrassing moment. I remember

1:05:04

I joined a conference call. early with

1:05:06

some of our lawyers and I don't

1:05:08

think they had known I had joined

1:05:10

and they were talking about, you know,

1:05:12

this thing is basically going to zero,

1:05:14

you know, I mean, this was in

1:05:16

the early days, like it's just a

1:05:18

fad, you know, da, da, da, da,

1:05:21

da, and I'm like, oh, hey, guys,

1:05:23

you know. You're joking. They didn't know

1:05:25

you were on the call. They hadn't

1:05:27

known I joined because I joined because

1:05:29

I joined because I joined, I joined

1:05:31

because I joined, I joined a minute

1:05:33

or two early, I joined because I

1:05:35

joined because I joined a minute or

1:05:37

two, joined because I joined a minute

1:05:39

or two, a minute or two, a

1:05:41

minute or two, a, a, a, a,

1:05:43

a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:05:46

a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:05:48

a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:05:50

a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:05:52

a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:05:54

a, a, What they missed was our

1:05:56

vision for the future, right? They only

1:05:58

saw what was in the public. We

1:06:00

were working on all sorts of, and

1:06:02

still are working on all sorts of

1:06:04

amazing new products that give us conviction

1:06:06

in the future and our ability to

1:06:08

make products that people make products that

1:06:10

are ability to make products that people

1:06:13

to make products that people really love.

1:06:15

But I think from the outside when

1:06:17

you were looking at Snapchat, you're like,

1:06:19

people are just sending photos back and

1:06:21

forth. What looks like a bug at

1:06:23

Facebook? Yeah, that was a fateful, fateful

1:06:25

day for sure. How does that begin?

1:06:27

How does that story begin? Is it

1:06:29

an email, a phone call, an introduction?

1:06:31

I think it was an initial email.

1:06:33

And I think we met at some

1:06:35

point. And they were interested in what

1:06:38

we were doing. And at that time,

1:06:40

they were working on a competitor called

1:06:42

Polk. And so they were kind of

1:06:44

talking with us, hey, we're exploring this

1:06:46

space kind of thing. What do you

1:06:48

think? And maybe you want to join

1:06:50

Facebook. I think they had just acquired

1:06:52

Instagram. to probably like a year earlier

1:06:54

or something like that. And our view

1:06:56

was that Instagram had been wildly undervalued

1:06:58

in that acquisition, ultimately had given up

1:07:00

like a massive, massive opportunity. Instagram was

1:07:03

sold for a billion, was it? A

1:07:05

billion, yeah. And WhatsApp was 19 billion

1:07:07

roughly, I think. Your 23 years old

1:07:09

at that point. You've got Facebook, Mark

1:07:11

Zuckerberg, offering you. a lot of money.

1:07:13

I heard that it was three billion

1:07:15

dollars, they offered? Yeah, we never talked

1:07:17

about it publicly, but yeah. Is that

1:07:19

the number? That's not technically the number,

1:07:21

but it's what's been reported publicly, so

1:07:23

we can go with that. Okay, but

1:07:25

did you get an offer? There was

1:07:27

a real conversation about what it would

1:07:30

look like and, you know... to join

1:07:32

forces. But ultimately, you know, when we

1:07:34

talked with our board and our investors,

1:07:36

you know, we decided that we'd rather

1:07:38

go it alone. So. I'm trying to

1:07:40

understand as a 23-year-old, if someone offers

1:07:42

me three billion dollars for an app

1:07:44

that I've started, you said you're probably

1:07:46

still at your dad's house or in

1:07:48

the blue office at that point. Yeah,

1:07:50

I think we were definitely my dad's

1:07:52

house. You're in your dad's house and

1:07:55

someone's offering you three billion dollars for

1:07:57

an app. I wish I could say

1:07:59

it was wisdom. I think it was

1:08:01

just that Bobby and I loved what

1:08:03

we were doing. We loved what we

1:08:05

were working on. We believed in that.

1:08:07

the future of it and ultimately we

1:08:09

were able to convince our investors as

1:08:11

well that like our opportunity was much

1:08:13

bigger over time and you know so

1:08:15

I think that's you know that's what

1:08:17

gave us I guess the confidence in

1:08:20

making that decision. Did you ever get

1:08:22

to meet with Mark or speak to

1:08:24

Mark about it? Yeah yeah I've known

1:08:26

Mark for a long time. And was

1:08:28

he he was keen to buy it?

1:08:30

I you know I we had we

1:08:32

had some interesting conversations about what it

1:08:34

could look like for us to work

1:08:36

at at at Facebook I you know

1:08:38

I want to be so sensitive those

1:08:40

conversations that I don't like speak at

1:08:42

upturn but you know he's he's very

1:08:44

strategic and very good at identifying you

1:08:47

know at the time they had a

1:08:49

piece of software that was identifying sort

1:08:51

of what are the fast-growing apps you

1:08:53

know so that they could. pursue them

1:08:55

for acquisitions. I'm just so I'm so

1:08:57

interested to see how those things play

1:08:59

out. It's almost it sounds like something

1:09:01

you'd see in a movie where you

1:09:03

get this call from someone like Mark

1:09:05

Zuckerberg who's built this massive empire and

1:09:07

you'll miss it feels like you get

1:09:09

summoned. I'd imagine you get summoned from

1:09:12

your dad's house to come and meet

1:09:14

him and you went to Facebook's offices

1:09:16

to meet him I'm guessing in person.

1:09:18

I think at one point I went

1:09:20

up there we he came and met

1:09:22

us at we met at Cheryl's condo

1:09:24

in like Santa Monica or something like

1:09:26

that Cheryl had a condo there and

1:09:28

so we I think that's where we

1:09:30

first met Bobby and I met him.

1:09:32

And did he tell you that he

1:09:34

was going to copy you if you

1:09:37

didn't sell? He just explained that he

1:09:39

was working on Polk and that you

1:09:41

know it was for picture messaging and

1:09:43

that kind of thing. I'm guessing you

1:09:45

didn't want to join a big company

1:09:47

at that point? It was less so

1:09:49

like not wanting to join a big

1:09:51

company, I think fundamentally we wanted to

1:09:53

build a business that was different. I

1:09:55

mean you go back to our first

1:09:57

blog post and the way that we

1:09:59

talked about wanting to offer an alternative

1:10:02

to social media that we felt like

1:10:04

social media was about being pretty imperfect

1:10:06

and we wanted a way to communicate

1:10:08

with our friends that was fun. The

1:10:10

company ethos, the values, the visions, were

1:10:12

so divergent, it was very hard to

1:10:14

imagine that like we could keep doing...

1:10:16

what we love and the way that

1:10:18

we loved doing it as a part

1:10:20

of that organization because they're just oriented

1:10:22

in a very different way. Was there

1:10:24

ever a day where you doubted that

1:10:26

decision? No. Not even a moment? Not

1:10:29

a moment. No. Were all of the

1:10:31

board supportive? Yeah, all of our investors

1:10:33

were supportive. They would have made a

1:10:35

lot of money. Yeah, but they did

1:10:37

something very smart early on in like

1:10:39

a prior financing round around that, I

1:10:41

guess around that time or before then,

1:10:43

where we were, Bobby and I were

1:10:45

each able to sell $10 million of

1:10:47

stock. So we each had $10 million

1:10:49

bucks and we were like, wow, like

1:10:51

we made it, like we've made it,

1:10:54

like we've been enough money forever and

1:10:56

that like allowed us to just swing

1:10:58

for the fences. I mean, you know,

1:11:00

at that point you're like, you're like,

1:11:02

like, you know, have a family, we

1:11:04

were like, we each got 10 million

1:11:06

bucks, like, let's go for it. I

1:11:08

mean, there's a lesson in there as

1:11:10

well for founders who are considering taking,

1:11:12

as they say, taking some off the

1:11:14

table. I got a voice note from

1:11:16

a, I was actually listening to it

1:11:19

this morning, I was actually listening to

1:11:21

it this morning, and I responded to

1:11:23

it this morning, a friend of mine

1:11:25

whose business was, I think it was

1:11:27

at the top of the market in

1:11:29

2020, was set for an IPO. me

1:11:31

if I would buy some shares offer.

1:11:33

I took a look at the business

1:11:35

and I valued at a quarter of

1:11:37

a million. Sorry, a quarter of a

1:11:39

billion. So 250 million very different numbers.

1:11:41

And her investors around her were telling

1:11:43

her it was worth something else. So

1:11:46

she had sent me a voice note

1:11:48

which is now four years later this

1:11:50

morning saying thank you for that Stephen

1:11:52

because although we didn't end up doing

1:11:54

a deal with you, you put this

1:11:56

idea in my head that I could

1:11:58

be being... Basically having a story sold

1:12:00

to me. So what I ended up

1:12:02

doing a couple of months after our

1:12:04

conversation is I sold some shares and

1:12:06

Obviously you know what happened in 2020

1:12:08

with the markets and eventually everything comes

1:12:11

crashing down and she says I would

1:12:13

be losing my mind now because the

1:12:15

companies struggling and obviously the markets have

1:12:17

changed if I hadn't have taken some

1:12:19

off the table and she was sending

1:12:21

a voice note four years later to

1:12:23

say thank you for putting that seed

1:12:25

in her head and I hear the

1:12:27

same with you I hear that you

1:12:29

took some money off the table it

1:12:31

changed your decision framework but also you

1:12:33

just never know yeah and and I

1:12:36

think you have to be to your

1:12:38

point you have to be careful about

1:12:40

approaching these situations as like zero-sum like

1:12:42

either we're gonna like go big, you

1:12:44

know, and with the risk that we'll

1:12:46

lose it all, or, you know, we'll

1:12:48

sell the company. I think, you know,

1:12:50

there are all sorts of creative solutions

1:12:52

that allow founders to take some money

1:12:54

off the table, take care of their

1:12:56

families, and still swing for the fences

1:12:58

and build a big business. And venture

1:13:00

capitalists are really aligned with the Swing

1:13:03

for the Fences philosophy. Growth investors may

1:13:05

be less so as the business gets

1:13:07

bigger, but when you have venture capitalists,

1:13:09

I mean, you know, you know, they're

1:13:11

looking for 10 for 10X, 100X. return.

1:13:13

So I think, you know, to find

1:13:15

a formula that works for founders, it

1:13:17

allows them to, you know, take care

1:13:19

of their families, but also swing for

1:13:21

the fences, is, I think, a valuable

1:13:23

approach. Are you in Mark Friends? You

1:13:25

said, you know him? Last time I

1:13:28

saw him was at the Senate hearings,

1:13:30

I think, what, last year. Those look

1:13:32

fun. She tried sometimes. No fucking for

1:13:34

any chance. No chance. By 2014. when

1:13:36

you were 24 years old, 40% of

1:13:38

US adults were using Snapchat every day,

1:13:40

and by 2015 Snapchat was reaching 75

1:13:42

million users on a monthly basis. At

1:13:44

that point, what's life like for you?

1:13:46

As a CEO, as a founder. This

1:13:48

was 2015? 2014, 2015. You became the

1:13:50

world's youngest billionaire at the age of

1:13:53

25, just four years after launching Snapchat,

1:13:55

with an estimated net worth of four

1:13:57

billion at the time. Life was pretty

1:13:59

good. I met my wife in 2014,

1:14:01

which was a game changer for me.

1:14:03

And... Why now? She's an incredible, just

1:14:05

an incredible woman and really... gave me

1:14:07

a huge sense of stability and a

1:14:09

massive amount of support. She really cares

1:14:11

about wellness. That's something that she's really

1:14:13

passionate about. So it's like I live

1:14:15

with a wellness coach basically every single

1:14:17

day and you know to have that

1:14:20

sort of stability and support system while

1:14:22

going through you know building our business

1:14:24

was just profoundly helpful. How do you

1:14:26

manage that though? How do you manage

1:14:28

a romantic relationship when you are piloting

1:14:30

a rocket ship? I think one of

1:14:32

the things that was really helpful is

1:14:34

she's incredibly accomplished herself. She has her

1:14:36

own business that she is working on

1:14:38

called Core Organics, which is an organic

1:14:40

skin care business. So she really understands

1:14:42

that it's hard to be an entrepreneur

1:14:45

and was always really supportive of my

1:14:47

work and my commitment to my work

1:14:49

and our team. And so I think

1:14:51

that was almost something that brought us

1:14:53

together or not something that pushed us

1:14:55

apart. And I think... It's interesting, I

1:14:57

talk to a lot of people who

1:14:59

sometimes say, hey, my relationship's been under

1:15:01

strain because I'm working so much. And

1:15:03

what I realize when I have those

1:15:05

conversations with people is very oftentimes they

1:15:07

met their spouse when they weren't working

1:15:10

as much. They met their spouse 10

1:15:12

years ago, 15 years, 20 years ago,

1:15:14

when they were just getting started in

1:15:16

their career. And I think, you know,

1:15:18

it can be difficult when you have

1:15:20

a much bigger job and it's all

1:15:22

time, you know, you know, all consuming.

1:15:24

And your spouse is like, you're like,

1:15:26

you know, you know, working all that

1:15:28

much, you were spending more time with

1:15:30

me. From the minute I met my

1:15:32

wife, we were both working flat out.

1:15:34

And so I think this expectation that,

1:15:37

you know, we both work all the

1:15:39

time to support our business, support our

1:15:41

family, do what we love to do,

1:15:43

was kind of just built into the

1:15:45

relationship. But then how did you make

1:15:47

time to see each other? Do you

1:15:49

need to put systems in place to

1:15:51

make sure that you're not just both

1:15:53

at the office the whole time? One

1:15:55

of the things that's really been helpful,

1:15:57

that's really been helpful. It's really been

1:15:59

helpful. always family day. And that means

1:16:02

everyone's at home. And so if our

1:16:04

kids want to have friends over or

1:16:06

whatever, that's totally fine, but they're not

1:16:08

going to their friends' houses, where everyone's

1:16:10

together, and... you know, just dedicating that

1:16:12

time to our family is really important.

1:16:14

What role does she play in giving

1:16:16

you feedback? Oh wow. She gives very

1:16:18

candid feedback. Which is a gift, right?

1:16:20

That's a gift. Yeah, and I think

1:16:22

she's really passionate about areas that are

1:16:24

different than what I'm passionate about. And

1:16:27

so, you know, she's able to give

1:16:29

me feedback. in different areas or things

1:16:31

that I really even wouldn't consider. Is

1:16:33

there any tough feedback that she shared

1:16:35

with you that you can share with

1:16:37

me? You know, I think one of

1:16:39

the challenges that I have sometimes is

1:16:41

I can have a very like harsh

1:16:43

tone. Like even if what I'm saying

1:16:45

is really, you know, I'm trying to

1:16:47

be helpful or kind or whatever, I

1:16:49

was raised by, my dad was a

1:16:52

litigator, my mom was a tax lawyer,

1:16:54

like I grew up listening to my

1:16:56

dad, have very intense conversations on the

1:16:58

phone all the phone all the phone

1:17:00

all the phone all the time. I

1:17:02

can be very direct. And I don't

1:17:04

think it's helpful, and I don't think

1:17:06

people want to listen when you have

1:17:08

a sharp or aggressive tone. And so

1:17:10

I think she's always just encouraging me,

1:17:12

like, hey, you could say the same

1:17:14

thing, but in like a slightly different

1:17:16

way, and people will hear it. My

1:17:19

girlfriend says that to me. Because I

1:17:21

think sometimes I failed to context switch

1:17:23

out of work, Steve, to then. And

1:17:25

you know, because you'll be getting emails

1:17:27

and text at home sometimes and my

1:17:29

girlfriend might come up and she might

1:17:31

say something and the way I respond

1:17:33

is almost how I would respond as

1:17:35

if I was at the office. And

1:17:37

it just, and I have to say

1:17:39

she's always right because there is a

1:17:41

part of my tone which I think

1:17:44

was conveying the emotion I was feeling

1:17:46

from the thing I was doing to

1:17:48

her to try and get her to

1:17:50

leave me alone. This is something we

1:17:52

can both work on. It's crazy. It's

1:17:54

crazy. Matt is so much at home

1:17:56

the way you say something. 100% and

1:17:58

having an empathy and a kindness. And

1:18:00

you've had four children as well, which

1:18:02

is something that I've not had. So

1:18:04

for me, that's an extra. responsibility on

1:18:06

top of the rocket ship of Snapchat,

1:18:09

the relationship, and now four kids as

1:18:11

well. Yeah, but it's the greatest in

1:18:13

the world, I mean the greatest thing

1:18:15

in the world to have kids. Really?

1:18:17

Literally nothing better in the planet. I

1:18:19

mean, I have not found anything close.

1:18:21

Why? Because the love and connection that

1:18:23

you have with your children is unlike

1:18:25

anything else that you'll ever experience. I

1:18:27

mean, it's profound, you know. How do

1:18:29

you both juggle the four children? the

1:18:31

businesses, the relationship? Well, I think Miranda

1:18:33

probably juggles it better than I do.

1:18:36

I think, and she's really committed to

1:18:38

spending time with our children. I mean,

1:18:40

that's something that's so important to her,

1:18:42

and it's important to me. I don't

1:18:44

think, you know, I spend a lot

1:18:46

of time, actually, over the years, just

1:18:48

I found people who are extremely successful

1:18:50

and just like, hey, how do you

1:18:52

raise great kids? Like you've been extremely

1:18:54

successful, how'd you doing it? of these

1:18:56

conversations was basically that parents that are

1:18:58

actually committed that can spend that time

1:19:01

with their kids and do it themselves,

1:19:03

engage with their kids themselves, they tend

1:19:05

to have really fruitful relationship with their

1:19:07

kids and their kids seem to turn

1:19:09

out really great. And it breaks my

1:19:11

heart that there are so many parents

1:19:13

that can't spend that direct one-on-one time

1:19:15

with their kids or I guess in

1:19:17

my case one on four time with

1:19:19

with with their kids because that seems

1:19:21

to be kind of the key ingredient

1:19:23

is that connection with your parents. Do

1:19:26

you own a business or do you

1:19:28

work in marketing? If that's you listen

1:19:31

up for a valuable opportunity from our

1:19:33

show sponsor LinkedIn I'm an investor in

1:19:35

about 40 odd companies and while they

1:19:37

operate in different industries they all face

1:19:39

one challenge maybe the most important challenge

1:19:42

when it comes to marketing getting their

1:19:44

brand in front of the right audiences.

1:19:46

We can probably all think of times

1:19:48

when we've been scrolling on social media

1:19:50

and received an ad that absolutely wasn't

1:19:53

relevant to us. LinkedIn has now grown

1:19:55

to a network of over a billion

1:19:57

professionals, including 130 million decision makers, which

1:19:59

means you can specifically target your buyers

1:20:01

by job time. title, seniority, industry, even

1:20:04

company revenue. So stop wasting your marketing

1:20:06

budget on the wrong audience and start

1:20:08

targeting the right crowd through LinkedIn now.

1:20:10

And because you're part of my community,

1:20:12

LinkedIn is offering you a hundred dollar

1:20:15

credit for your next campaign. Head to

1:20:17

linkedin.com/diary to claim yours now. That's linkedin.com/diary.

1:20:19

And of course terms and conditions apply

1:20:21

and only available on LinkedIn ads. I

1:20:23

saw your LinkedIn page. You know what

1:20:26

I'm gonna say. I think so, yeah.

1:20:28

And your LinkedIn bio, it says that

1:20:30

you're the, I think, VP of product

1:20:32

at Metter? Not my joke. We have

1:20:34

appropriated that joke from, I think, Kara

1:20:37

Swisher who originated it, but I think

1:20:39

now that they've copied ephemeral messaging and

1:20:41

stories, everything, you know, a lot of

1:20:43

the stuff we've done in augmented reality,

1:20:45

of course now they say they're working

1:20:47

on glasses, which, you know, we've been

1:20:50

working on for over a decade. I

1:20:52

think I've earned that title, I don't

1:20:54

know. That must piss you off. Because

1:20:56

that would piss me off. Like I

1:20:58

can sit on a podcast and I

1:21:01

can say now I wouldn't be bothered,

1:21:03

you know, the thing is blah blah

1:21:05

blah blah blah. But no, that would

1:21:07

piss me off because you just told

1:21:09

me that there's a lot of people

1:21:12

that are going to great creative lengths

1:21:14

to think of these ideas. They're having

1:21:16

thousands of ideas. You're fighting to find

1:21:18

one. And then you have that moment

1:21:20

where you present it to the world

1:21:23

that you present it to the world

1:21:25

says this is interesting. One

1:21:27

of the things that's incredibly irritating about

1:21:29

it is they repurpose our inventions to

1:21:31

make products that make people feel unhappy

1:21:34

and bad about themselves. One of the

1:21:36

things that was so fascinating, just in

1:21:38

the last year, there was a study

1:21:40

out of the Netherlands, totally independent study

1:21:42

out of the Netherlands, we weren't involved,

1:21:44

another one out of Australia, and it

1:21:46

was comparing, I think, like Instagram, TikTok,

1:21:48

and Snapchat. And it basically found that

1:21:50

Snapchat, there are no negative, the study

1:21:52

determined, there were negative health, mental health,

1:21:55

health implications of using Instagram and TikTok.

1:21:57

And in fact, I think the study

1:21:59

in the Netherlands found Snapchat actually promotes

1:22:01

well-being and helps promote your relationships as

1:22:03

well. And so I think what's really

1:22:05

frustrating is when people think because they've

1:22:07

copied some of our features that the

1:22:09

products are the same or that they

1:22:11

do the same thing. When our product

1:22:13

is designed in a way that's... very

1:22:16

different that's designed to support your relationships

1:22:18

with your close friends and family and

1:22:20

ultimately is something that supports your your

1:22:22

well-being and so what we never want

1:22:24

anyone to think is if they're using

1:22:26

stories on Instagram that that's the same

1:22:28

as Snapchat and you know even though

1:22:30

they stole the the the name of

1:22:32

the product or the way that you

1:22:34

know some of the functionality of it

1:22:36

the way that Snapchat is designed on

1:22:39

the whole is something that can have

1:22:41

a really positive impact in people's lives

1:22:43

and that's not something that people feel

1:22:45

when they use Instagram. Did you ever

1:22:47

consider sending Mark an email or a

1:22:49

message or a phone call when they

1:22:51

first started copying some of your core

1:22:53

features like the story feature? No, we

1:22:55

didn't do that. I think, you know,

1:22:57

one of the things that I really

1:23:00

admire about Kevin's system is when they

1:23:02

copied the stories feature, they stopped pretending

1:23:04

that they were doing anything different. I

1:23:06

mean, with things like Polk, they tried

1:23:08

to sort of pass it off as

1:23:10

their own creation. Oh, we're, you know,

1:23:12

doing it a little bit differently, you

1:23:14

know, with stories. Kevin Sistrum came out

1:23:16

and just said, hey, we think this

1:23:18

is a really great feature, this is

1:23:21

a really great product, and we're going

1:23:23

to steal it and put it in

1:23:25

Instagram, and we think you're going to

1:23:27

love it. And, you know, I think

1:23:29

that the honesty at least was admirable.

1:23:31

Is there, do you feel a sense

1:23:33

of injustice when someone steals your idea

1:23:35

like that? No, no, I mean, that

1:23:37

is sort of the, the, uh... I'm

1:23:39

sure you know the saying like you

1:23:42

know great artist Steele I think like

1:23:44

one of the things about our industry

1:23:46

is that people are constantly being inspired

1:23:48

by one another I mean in the

1:23:50

very early days I went to visit

1:23:52

bite dance when they only had totea

1:23:54

out the app totea out which was

1:23:56

a news news feed app essentially but

1:23:58

it was backed by AI by ML

1:24:00

and when I saw that was really

1:24:03

inspiring to me and we made a

1:24:05

big change to our product we actually

1:24:07

sept out all of the creator and

1:24:09

publisher content from our stories from friends.

1:24:11

And we said, hey, you know, unlike

1:24:13

social media, where you're seeing content based

1:24:15

on what your friends like or what

1:24:17

your friends comment on, on Snapchat, we're

1:24:19

going to do ML-driven recommendations. So you'll

1:24:21

have content from your friends, but then

1:24:24

you're going to have this whole other

1:24:26

world of content from creators and publishers

1:24:28

that's going to be recommended based on

1:24:30

your interests and what you're passionate about.

1:24:32

part of innovating. So I think it

1:24:34

is a part of the game, but

1:24:36

it definitely showed us that if we're

1:24:38

going to innovate, if we're going to

1:24:40

make new products, we ought to make

1:24:42

things that are really difficult to copy,

1:24:45

that take a long time to copy

1:24:47

that are really hard to do, because

1:24:49

if you go after really difficult and

1:24:51

hard things, it's much harder for these

1:24:53

large. companies to just copy them. Because

1:24:55

I'm thinking about so many founders that

1:24:57

I know that have started businesses and

1:24:59

it might be anything from a t-shirt

1:25:01

company to maybe it's a podcast and

1:25:03

they're dealing with people copying their ideas

1:25:06

and sometimes they react really badly and

1:25:08

they take to social media and they

1:25:10

post both and say look this person

1:25:12

copied us and they tag the brand.

1:25:14

What advice would you give to founders

1:25:16

that are being knocked off? I think

1:25:18

it's really important to very very quickly

1:25:20

evolve from being just a product or

1:25:22

just a feature to becoming a platform

1:25:24

or an ecosystem. And so what I

1:25:27

mean by that is if I compare

1:25:29

the early days of stories where people

1:25:31

just were posting stories for one another,

1:25:33

it's relatively easy to copy that feature.

1:25:35

You know, you can code that up

1:25:37

pretty quickly. When I look at what

1:25:39

we've done with augmented reality, right, we

1:25:41

have a lens core, which is our

1:25:43

own rendering engine for augmented reality that

1:25:45

runs on the phone, but also on

1:25:48

our glasses, we have a tool called

1:25:50

Lens Studio that's an incredibly sophisticated tool

1:25:52

that developers can use to build these

1:25:54

AR experiences. We have a huge hundreds

1:25:56

of millions of people who are using

1:25:58

these AR experiences on the phone, and

1:26:00

we have hundreds of thousands of... who

1:26:02

are making all of these AR experiences.

1:26:04

When you have that sort of very

1:26:06

complicated technology that's hard to copy, and

1:26:09

you have an ecosystem of people that

1:26:11

are using it, both in terms of

1:26:13

developers, you know, creators, and also our

1:26:15

community who love those AR experiences, it

1:26:17

becomes very, very hard to, you know,

1:26:19

copy the four million lenses that developers

1:26:21

have created for our platform, you know,

1:26:23

or move the hundreds of millions of

1:26:25

people who are enjoying augmented reality on

1:26:27

Snapchat to a new platform. business, the

1:26:30

faster you can evolve from being a

1:26:32

feature or product to a real platform,

1:26:34

I think that's where the value is

1:26:36

created over the long term. So it's

1:26:38

almost like this relationship between like

1:26:40

how hard and complicated the

1:26:42

thing was to build and create is

1:26:44

sort of inversely correlated to how

1:26:46

easy it is to copy? I think so.

1:26:48

And then, you know, how much of an

1:26:51

ecosystem it is in terms of other people

1:26:53

using it, right? Almost more of like

1:26:55

a marketplace, right. It makes it very difficult

1:26:57

to migrate both sides of the marketplace. Do

1:27:00

you think that the technology companies that

1:27:02

exist now, those trillion-dollar ones, those

1:27:04

big social platforms, are monopolies and

1:27:06

should be broken up? Because there

1:27:08

was a big call originally

1:27:10

to break these companies up. And you've been,

1:27:12

I guess you could say, a victim to

1:27:14

the strength of a monopoly, being able

1:27:16

to swoop in, copy, replicate, steal and

1:27:19

innovation. I think what matters more about whether

1:27:21

or not there are monopolies is sort

1:27:23

of what do we think is going

1:27:25

to happen next. I mean if you

1:27:27

remember there was a period of time

1:27:29

when everyone thought that Microsoft was going

1:27:31

to take over the world and they

1:27:33

were caught up in a lot of

1:27:35

antitrust legislation or antitrust inquiries and

1:27:37

lawsuits and whatnot and ultimately as a

1:27:40

result maybe of being distracted by the

1:27:42

lawsuits but I think also just a

1:27:44

function of how they thought about their

1:27:46

business at the time they missed the

1:27:48

entire mobile. cycle. You know, I think

1:27:50

people are looking at Google right now

1:27:52

and saying is there a similar

1:27:55

moment happening for Google? Google is

1:27:57

subject to a lot of these

1:27:59

antitrust inquiries. is Chachi BT, for example,

1:28:01

coming along and with AI. you know,

1:28:03

actually going to make it a lot

1:28:05

harder for Google's core business to compete.

1:28:08

And so I think given just the

1:28:10

longevity of the regulatory and litigation cycle,

1:28:12

I mean, you're talking 10 plus years,

1:28:14

it almost doesn't matter so much if

1:28:17

the government thinks that it's a monopoly

1:28:19

or not because there's not much, it

1:28:21

seems like that they're able to do

1:28:23

about it. So what I think matters

1:28:25

a lot more for small technology companies

1:28:28

is thinking about what fundamental innovations, fundamental

1:28:30

technologies, can we work on, can

1:28:32

we develop. that ultimately can help us

1:28:34

grow our business and maybe, you know, one

1:28:36

day catch one of these larger companies on

1:28:39

a back foot. I want to talk about

1:28:41

that, but my last question on copying

1:28:43

was, if you were in Mark Zuckerberg's

1:28:45

shoes, would you have copied Snapchat?

1:28:47

I think given their market position, it's

1:28:49

a very effective strategy. They basically have

1:28:51

an enormous... cash pile. They, I think

1:28:53

they're investing $20 billion a year right

1:28:55

now just into, you know, the AR

1:28:57

Glasses stuff and some of their VR

1:28:59

stuff. AR Glasses stuff is largely copying

1:29:01

what we've been doing. And then outside

1:29:04

of that, they have tens of billions

1:29:06

of dollars and all sorts of other

1:29:08

investments, including copying chat GPT, right, and

1:29:10

all of the progress on large language

1:29:12

models. So I think it's quite an

1:29:14

effective strategy if you're at that scale

1:29:16

generating that much cash to just, you

1:29:18

know, deploy that capital across a bunch of

1:29:20

different bets and wait and see what companies

1:29:22

are successful and what they make and then

1:29:25

try to throw a ton of capital and

1:29:27

hoping that those companies don't get to scale.

1:29:29

Was there a hard day for you amongst all

1:29:31

of this copying? Was there a hard day today

1:29:33

that you can recall? There was a lot of

1:29:35

concern when Instagram Stories first launched that Snapchat

1:29:38

would essentially be obsolete and you know... they

1:29:40

did a very good job talking about how

1:29:42

many people were using stories and we got

1:29:44

a lot of questions and pressure about Snapchat

1:29:46

ever going to succeed. And people didn't, I

1:29:48

don't think they realized at the time that

1:29:51

folks were using Instagram mostly for content creators

1:29:53

and influencers and that sort of thing, and

1:29:55

they were mostly using Snapchat for their friends

1:29:57

and family. And so we had really focused.

1:30:00

on this Friends and Family use case, that

1:30:02

was not really what Instagram was going after.

1:30:04

They were much more focused on influencers. And

1:30:06

I think it was really only because Snapchat

1:30:08

had started growing with those influencers. If you

1:30:10

remember, you know, DJ Collard and some of

1:30:13

those early snaps, there were influencers who were

1:30:15

starting to join Snapchat just to use stories,

1:30:17

right? To use it differently than how we

1:30:19

had... initially designed it for friends and family.

1:30:21

And I think that's what really got Instagram's

1:30:23

attention. So it was really frustrating in those

1:30:26

moments where people were saying, well, how's Snapchat

1:30:28

going to survive? Because they didn't understand that

1:30:30

stories on Instagram is for a totally different purpose

1:30:32

than stories on Snapchat. You must see that coming

1:30:34

because people start leaking that there's this new feature

1:30:37

coming. I was running a social media business at

1:30:39

the time. there were hackers that can kind of

1:30:41