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First is Theragun, the device I use for post-workout muscle recovery.
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So the choice is muscle recovery, engineering, optimal charity, books, or investment.
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This show is brought to you by Theragun, a handheld percussive therapy device that I use after workouts for muscle recovery.
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It s surprisingly quiet, easy to use, comes with a great app that guides you through everything you need to know.
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This has been a tool I use often throughout all the physical pursuits I ve been under, from cardio to weightlifting to grappling, but it has been recently especially relevant because of a hamstring injury I have, and it s been really helping me on the physical therapy side, on the recovery, getting back to 100%.
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I mean, I can t sing it enough praise.
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Theragun has been just a great device for that.
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Anyway, try Theragun for 30 days at therabody.com slash Lex.
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formerly known as National Instruments.
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NI is a company that has been helping engineers solve the world s toughest challenges for 40 years.
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Their motto is engineer ambitiously.
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I don t think a better motto can possibly exist for any company ever.
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I love ambition, I love engineering, so Engineering Ambitiously is pretty much as good as it gets.
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They have a podcast called Testing 123.
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They have amazing articles, engineering-related articles on ni.com slash perspectives.
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testing, how failure, how rigorous controlled error making that leads to learning and improvement is a part of their success.
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So it s so beautiful to be honest about your failures.
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and to accept them as part of the process.
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I mean, that is what testing is.
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Testing is fundamental to engineering.
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It s not about getting it perfect in the design stage.
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It really is actually testing it through rigor as it meets the real world.
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That s ni.com slash perspectives.
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The idea of giving optimally, of optimal charity, is core to this whole concept that I and a bunch of other people, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, have had a lot of conversation about effective altruism.
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This is such a great implementation of that, because you don t have to worry that your money, if you re donating money to charity, that it s not being used optimally.
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So check them out, go to givewell.org, pick podcast, and select Lex Friedman Podcast at checkout.
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Once again, that s givewell.org, pick podcast, and select Lex Friedman Podcast at checkout.
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Good luck, my friends.
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This episode is also brought to you by Blinkist, my favorite app for learning new things.
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Blinkist takes the key ideas from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes you can read or listen to.
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They have some of my favorite nonfiction.
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Sapiens, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, the Snowden book, the list goes on and on and on.
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I use Blinkist for several reasons.
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So one is to review books that I ve already read.
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Two is to select books that I would like to read next in full.
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And three is get a summary of books I m never going to get a chance to read, likely, but are still important to our culture so that I can understand what people s ideas are.
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In fact, Blinkist just does a remarkable job of summarizing books.
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I feel like sometimes the key insights that Blinkist presents just captures the entirety of the book.
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It s almost like you didn t need to read the book.
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Of course, the magic of reading is if you spend a long time with those ideas, you kind of marinate in those ideas, but that doesn t mean you can t have the key ideas, and that s what Blinkist does masterfully.
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That s blinkist.com slash lext, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T, blinkist.com slash lext.
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This show is also sponsored by Fundrise, spelled F-U-N-D-R-I-S-E.
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It s a platform that allows you to invest in private real estate.
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If you re looking to diversify your investment portfolio, this is a good choice.
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I don t know, I keep hearing that people don t diversify, or at least don t diversify as much as I would prefer.
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I still believe in this age of cryptocurrency, in this age of all kinds of financial investment opportunities, it s still wise to diversify.
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It reduces not only the risk, but also it reduces the load on the market.
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your mental anxiety associated with investing in something.
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And I think fund rise and private real estate is a really interesting sort of orthogonal solution to diversification.
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It s good to allocate some of your funds to this kind of investment.
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Anyway, I m still a big fan of diversification, but what do I know?
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Definitely don t take my advice for it.
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But you should check out Fundrise at fundrise.com slash Lex.
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150,000 investors use it.
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It takes just a few minutes to get started at fundrise.com slash Lex.
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That s fundrise.com slash Lex.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Kevin Systrom.
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At the risk of asking the Rolling Stones to play Satisfaction, let me ask you about the origin story of Instagram.
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So maybe some context.
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You, like we were talking about offline, grew up in Massachusetts, learned computer programming there, liked to play Doom II, worked at a vinyl record store, then you went to Stanford, turned down Mr. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, went to Florence to study photography, those are just,
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some random, beautiful, impossibly brief glimpses into a life.
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So let me ask again, can you take me through the origin story of Instagram, given that context?
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Yeah, you basically set it up.
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All right, so we have a fair amount of time, so I ll go into some detail, but basically what I ll say is
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Instagram started out of a company actually called Bourbon, and it was spelled B-U-R-B-N.
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And a couple things were happening at the time.
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So if we zoom back to 2010, not a lot of people remember what was happening in the dot-com world then, but check-in apps were all the rage.
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So- What s a check-in app?
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Gowalla, Foursquare, Hot Potato,
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So I m at a place, I m gonna tell the world that I m at this place.
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What s the idea behind this kind of app, by the way?
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You know what, I m gonna answer that, but through what Instagram became and why I believe Instagram replaced them.
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So the whole idea was to share with the world what you were doing, specifically with your friends, right?
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But there were all the rage and Foursquare was getting all the press.
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And I remember sitting around saying, hey, I wanna build something, but I don t know what I wanna build.
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What if I built a better version of Foursquare?
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And I asked myself, well, why don t I like Foursquare or how could it be improved?
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And basically I sat down and I said, I think that if you have a few extra features, it might be enough.
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One of which happened to be posting a photo of where you were.
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There were some others.
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It turns out that wasn t enough.
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My co-founder joined.
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We were going to attack, you know, Foursquare and the likes and try to build something interesting.
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And no one used it.
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No one cared because it wasn t enough.
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It wasn t it wasn t different enough.
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Right.
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So one day we were sitting down and we asked ourselves, OK, it s come to Jesus moment.
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Are we going to do this startup?
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And if we re going to, we can t do what we re currently doing.
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We have to switch it up.
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So what do people love the most?
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So we sat down and we wrote out three things that we thought people uniquely loved about our product that weren t in other products.
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photos happen to be the top one.
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So sharing a photo of what you were doing, where you were at the moment was not something products let you do, really.
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Facebook was like, post an album of your vacation from two weeks ago, right?
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Twitter allowed you to post a photo, but their feed was primarily text and they didn t show the photo in line, or at least I don t think they did at the time.
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So even though it seems totally stupid and obvious to us now, at the moment then,
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Posting a photo of what you were doing at the moment was like not a thing.
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So we decided to go after that because we had noticed that people who used our service, the one thing they happened to like the most was posting a photo.
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So that was the beginning of Instagram.
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And yes, like we went through and we added filters and there s a bunch of stories around that.
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But the origin of this was that we were trying to be a check-in app, realized that no one wanted another check-in app.
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It became a photo sharing app, but one that was much more about what you re doing and where you are.
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And that s why when I say I think we ve replaced check-in apps, it became a check-in via a photo rather than saying your location and then optionally adding a photo.
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when you were thinking about what people like, from where did you get a sense that this is what people like?
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You said, we sat down, we wrote some stuff down on paper.
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Where is that intuition that seems fundamental to the success of an app like Instagram?
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Where does that idea, where does that list of three things come from exactly?
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only after having studied machine learning now for a couple of years, I like, I have a- You have understood yourself.
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I ve started to make connections, like, we can go into this later, but obviously the connections between machine learning and the human brain, I think are stretched sometimes, right?
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At the same time,
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being able to back prop and being able to like look at the world, try something, figure out how you re wrong, how wrong you are, and then nudge your company in the right direction based on how wrong you are.
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It s like a fascinating concept, right?
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And I don t, we didn t know we were doing it at the time, but that s basically what we were doing, right?
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We put it out to call it a hundred people and you would look at their data.
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You would say, what are they sharing?
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What resonates, what doesn t resonate?
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We think they re gonna resonate with X, but it turns out they resonate with Y. Okay, shift the company towards Y. And it turns out if you do that enough quickly enough, you can get to a solution that has product market fit.
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Most companies fail because they sit there and they don t, either their learning rate s too slow, they sit there and they re adamant that they re right, even though the data s telling them they re not right.
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or they re learning rates too high and they wildly chase different ideas and they never actually settle on one where they don t groove, right?
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And I think when we sat down and we wrote up those three ideas, what we were saying is, what are the three possible, whether they re local or global maxima in our world, right?
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That users are telling us they like because they re using the product that way.
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It was clear people liked the photos because that was the thing they were doing.
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And we just said, okay, like, what if we just cut out most of the other stuff and focus on that thing?
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And then it happened to be a multi-billion dollar business.
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And it s that easy, by the way.
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Yeah, I guess so.
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Well, nobody ever writes about neural networks that miserably failed.
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So this particular neural network succeeded.
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Oh, they fail all the time, right?
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Yeah, but nobody writes about it.
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The default state is failing.
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Yes.
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When you said the way people are using the app
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Is that the loss function for this neural network, or is it also self-report?
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Do you ever ask people what they like, or do you have to track exactly what they re doing, not what they re saying?
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I once made a Thanksgiving dinner, okay?
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And it was for relatives, and I like to cook a lot.
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And I worked really hard on picking the specific, uh, dishes.
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And, and, and I was really proud because I had planned it out using a Gantt chart and like it was ready on time and everything was hot.
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Nice.
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Like, I don t know if you re a big Thanksgiving guy, but like the worst thing about Thanksgiving is when the turkeys cold and some things are hot and something anyway.
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You had a Gantt chart.
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Did you actually have a chart?
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Oh yeah.
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Yeah.
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Omni plan.
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Fairly expensive, like Gantt chart thing that I think maybe 10 people have purchased in the world, but I m one of them and I use it for recipe planning only around big holidays.
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That s brilliant, by the way.
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Do people do this kind of- Over-engineering?
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It s not over-engineering, it s just engineering, it s planning.
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Thanksgiving is a complicated set of events with some uncertainty with a lot of things going on.
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You should be planning it in this way.
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There should be a chart.
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It s not over-engineering.
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So what s funny is, brief aside.
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Yes, it s brilliant.
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I love cooking, I love food, I love coffee, and I ve spent some time with some chefs who know their stuff.
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And they always just take out a piece of paper and just work backwards in rough order.
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Like it s never perfect, but rough order.
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It s just like, oh, that makes sense.
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Why not just work backwards from the end goal, right?
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And put in some buffer time.
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And so I probably over-specified it a bit using a Gantt chart, but the fact that you can do it, it s what professional kitchens roughly do.
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They just don t call it a Gantt chart, or at least I don t think they do.
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Anyway, I was telling a story about Thanksgiving.
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So here s the thing.
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I m sitting down, we have the meal, and then I got to know Ray Dalio fairly well over maybe the last year of Instagram.
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And one thing that he kept saying was like, feedback is really hard to get, honestly, from people.
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And I sat down after dinner, I said, guys, I want feedback.
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What was good and what was bad?
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Yes.
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And what s funny is like literally everyone just said everything was great.
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And I like personally knew I had screwed up a handful of things, but no one would say it.
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And can you imagine now not something as high stakes as Thanksgiving dinner?
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OK, Thanksgiving dinner, it s not that high stakes.
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but you re trying to build a product and everyone knows you left your job for it and you re trying to build it out and you re trying to make something wonderful and it s yours, right?
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You designed it.
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Now try asking for feedback and know that you re giving this to your friends and your family.
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People have trouble giving hard feedback.
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People have trouble saying, I don t like this or this isn t great or this is how it s failed me.
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In fact,
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You usually have two classes of people, people who just won t say bad things.
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You can literally say to them, please tell me what you hate most about this and they won t do it.
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They ll try, but they won t.
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And then the other class of people are just negative period about everything.
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And it s hard to parse out like what is true and what isn t.
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So my rule of thumb with this is you should always ask people, but at the end of the day, it s amazing what data will tell you.
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And that s why with whatever project I work on, even now, collecting data from the beginning on usage patterns.
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So engagement, how many days of the week do they use it?
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How many?
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I don t know if we were to go back to Instagram, how many impressions per day, right?
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Is that growing?
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Is that shrinking?
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And don t be like overly scientific about it, right?
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Because maybe you have 50 beta users or something.
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But what s fascinating
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is that data doesn t lie.
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People are very defensive about their time.
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They ll say, oh, I m so busy.
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I m sorry, I didn t get to use the app.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like I m just, you know, but I don t know, you re posting on Instagram the whole time.
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SPEAKER_00
So I don t know, at the end of the day, like at Facebook, there was, you know, before time spent became kind of this loaded term there.
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The idea that people s currency in their lives is time, and they only have a certain amount of time to give things, whether it s friends or family or apps or TV shows or whatever, there s no way of inventing more of it, at least not that I know of.
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If they don t use it, it s because it s not great.
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So the moral of the story is you can ask all you want, but you just have to look at the data.
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And
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data doesn t lie, right?
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I mean, there s metrics, there s, um, data can obscure the key insight if you re not careful.
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So, so time spent in the app, that s one, there s so many metrics you can put at this and they will give you totally different insights, especially when you re trying to create something that doesn t obviously exist yet.
1
SPEAKER_01
So,
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you know, measuring maybe why you left the app or measuring special moments of happiness that will make sure you return to the app or moments of happiness that are long lasting versus like dopamine short term, all of those things.
1
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But I think, I suppose in the beginning, you can just get away with just asking the question, which features are used a lot?
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Let s do more of that.
1
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And how hard was the decision, and maybe you can tell me what Instagram looked in the beginning, but how hard was it to make pictures the first class citizen?
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That s a revolutionary idea.
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At whatever point Instagram became this feed of photos, that s quite brilliant.
1
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Plus, also don t know when this happened, but they re all shaped the same.
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It s like, I have to tell you why.
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That s the interesting part.
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Why is that?
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So a couple things.
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One is
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Data, you re right, you can over-interpret data.
1
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Imagine trying to fly a plane by staring at, I don t know, a single metric like airspeed.
1
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You don t know if you re going up or down.
1
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I mean, it correlates with up or down, but you don t actually know.
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It will never help you land the plane.
1
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So don t stare at one metric.
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It turns out you have to synthesize a bunch of metrics to know where to go.
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But it doesn t lie.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like if your airspeed is zero, unless it s not working, right?
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If it s zero, you re probably going to fall out of the sky.
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So generally you look around and you have the scan going.
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Yes.
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And you re just asking yourself, is this working or is this not working?
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But people have trouble explaining
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how they actually feel.
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So just, it s about synthesizing both of them.
1
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So then Instagram, right?
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We were talking about revolutionary moment where the feed became square photos, basically.
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And photos first and then square photos.
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Yeah.
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It was clear to me that the biggest, so,
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I believe the biggest companies are founded when enormous technical shifts happen.
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And the biggest technical shift that happened right before Instagram was founded was the advent of a phone that didn t suck.
1
SPEAKER_00
the iPhone, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like in retrospect, we re like, oh my God, the first iPhone almost had, like, it wasn t that good.
1
SPEAKER_00
But compared to everything else at the time, it was amazing.
1
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, the first phone that had an incredible camera that could like do as well as the point and shoot you might carry around was the iPhone 4.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that was right when Instagram launched.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we looked around and we said, what will change?
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SPEAKER_00
Because everyone has a camera in their pocket.
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SPEAKER_00
And it was so clear to me that the world of social networks before, it was based in the desktop and sitting there and having a link you could share, right?
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SPEAKER_00
And that wasn t gonna be the case.
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So the question is, what would you share if you were out and about in the world?
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SPEAKER_00
If not only did you have a camera that fit in your pocket, but by the way, that camera had a network attached to it that allowed you to share instantly.
1
SPEAKER_00
That seemed revolutionary.
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SPEAKER_00
And a bunch of people saw it at the same time.
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It wasn t just Instagram.
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There were a bunch of competitors.
1
SPEAKER_00
The thing we did, I think, was not only, well, we focused on two things.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we wrote down those things.
1
SPEAKER_00
We circled photos and we said, I think we should invest in this.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then we said, what sucks about photos?
1
SPEAKER_00
One, they look like crap, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
They just, at least back then.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now, my phone takes pretty great photos, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Back then, they were blurry, not so great, compressed, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Two, it was really slow, like really slow to upload a photo.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I ll tell a fun story about that and explain to you why they re all the same size and square as well.
1
SPEAKER_00
And three,
1
SPEAKER_00
if you wanted to share a photo on different networks, you had to go to each of the individual apps and select all of them and upload individually.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so we were like, all right, those are the pain points.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re going to focus on that.
1
SPEAKER_00
So one, instead of, because they weren t beautiful, um, we were like, why don t we lean into the fact that they re not beautiful.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I remember studying in Florence, my photography teacher gave me this Holga camera, and I m not sure everyone knows what a Holga camera is, but they re these old school plastic cameras.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think they re produced in China at the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I want to say the original ones were from the 70s or the 80s or something.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re supposed to be like $3 cameras for the every person.
1
SPEAKER_00
They took nice medium format films, large negatives,
1
SPEAKER_00
but they kind of blurred the light and they kind of like light leaked into the side.
1
SPEAKER_00
And there was this whole resurgence where people looked at that and said, Oh my God, this is a style, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I remember using that in Florence and just saying, well, why don t we just like lean into the fact that these photos suck and make them suck more, but in an artistic way.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it turns out that had product market fit.
1
SPEAKER_00
People really liked that.
1
SPEAKER_00
They were willing to share their not so great photos if they looked not so great on purpose.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s the second part.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s where the filters come into the picture.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
1
SPEAKER_01
So computational modification of photos to make them look extra crappy to where it becomes art.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, add light leaks, add like an overlay filter, make them more contrasty than they should be.
1
SPEAKER_00
The first
1
SPEAKER_00
filter we ever produced was called X-Pro2.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I designed it while I was in this small little bed and breakfast room in Todos Santos, Mexico.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was trying to take a break from the bourbon days.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I remember saying to my co-founder, I just need like a week to reset.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that was on that trip, worked on the first filter because I said, you know, I think I can do this.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I literally iterated
1
SPEAKER_00
one by one over the RGB values in the array that was the photo and just slightly shifted.
1
SPEAKER_00
Basically, there was a function of R, function of G, function of B that just shifted them slightly.
1
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t rocket science.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it turns out that actually made your photo look pretty cool.
1
SPEAKER_00
It just mapped from one color space to another color space.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was simple, but it was really slow.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you applied a filter, I think it used to take two or three seconds to render.
1
SPEAKER_00
Only eventually would I figure out how to do it on the GPU.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I m not even sure it was a GPU, but it was using OpenGL.
1
SPEAKER_00
But anyway, I would eventually figure that out, and then it would be instant.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it used to be really slow.
1
SPEAKER_00
By the way, anyone who s watching or listening, it s amazing what you can get away with.
1
SPEAKER_00
in a startup, as long as the product outcome is right for the user.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like you can be slow, you can be terrible, you can be, as long as you have product market fit, people will put up with a lot.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then the question is just about compressing, making it more performant over time so that they get that product market fit instantly.
1
SPEAKER_01
So fascinating because there s some things where those three seconds would make or break the app.
1
SPEAKER_01
but some things you re saying not.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s hard to know when, you know, it s the problem Spotify solved, making streaming work.
1
SPEAKER_01
And delays in listening to music is a huge negative, even slight delays.
1
SPEAKER_01
But here you re saying, I mean, how do you know when those three seconds are okay, or are you just gonna have to...
1
SPEAKER_01
try it out because to me, my intuition would be those three seconds would kill the app.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like I would try to do the open GL thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I wish I were that smart at the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
Um, I wasn t, I just knew how to do what I knew how to do.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I decided, okay, like why don t I just iterate over the values and change them?
1
SPEAKER_00
And what s interesting is that, um,
1
SPEAKER_00
Compared to the alternatives, no one else used OpenGL.
1
SPEAKER_00
So everyone else was doing it the dumb way.
1
SPEAKER_00
And in fact, they were doing it at a high resolution.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now it comes in the small resolution that we ll talk about in a second.
1
SPEAKER_00
By choosing 512 pixels by 512 pixels, which I believe it was at the time,
1
SPEAKER_00
we iterated over a lot fewer pixels than our competitors who were trying to do these enormous output like images.
1
SPEAKER_00
So instead of taking 20 seconds, I mean, three seconds feels pretty good, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So on a relative basis, we were winning like a lot.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so that s answer number one.
1
SPEAKER_00
Answer number two is we actually focused on latency in the right places.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we did this really wonderful thing
1
SPEAKER_00
when you uploaded.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the way it would work is, you d take your phone, you d take the photo, and then you d go to the edit screen where you would caption it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And on that caption screen, you d start typing and you d think, okay, what s a clever caption?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I said to Mike, hey, when I worked on the Gmail team, you know what they did?
1
SPEAKER_00
When you typed in your username or your email address,
1
SPEAKER_00
Even before you ve entered in your password, like the probability once you enter in your username that you re going to actually sign in is extremely high.
1
SPEAKER_00
So why not just start loading your account in the background?
1
SPEAKER_00
Not like sending it down to the desktop, that would be a security issue.
1
SPEAKER_00
issue, but like loaded into memory on the server, like get it ready, prepare it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I always thought that was so fascinating and unintuitive.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, Mike, why don t we just do that?
1
SPEAKER_00
But like, we ll just upload the photo and like assume you re going to upload the photo.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if you don t, forget about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
We ll delete it, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So what ended up happening was people would caption their photo.
1
SPEAKER_00
They d press done or upload.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you d see this little progress bar just go thoop.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it was lightning fast, okay?
1
SPEAKER_00
We were no faster than anyone else at the time, but by choosing 512 by 512 and doing it in the background, it almost guaranteed that it was done by the time you captioned.
1
SPEAKER_00
And everyone, when they used it, was like, how the hell is this thing so fast?
1
SPEAKER_00
But we were slow.
1
SPEAKER_00
We just hit the slowness.
1
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t like, these things are just like, it s a shell game.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re just hiding the latency.
1
SPEAKER_00
That that mattered to people like a lot.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think that so you were willing to prop with a slow filter if it meant you could share it immediately.
1
SPEAKER_00
And of course, we added sharing options, which let you distribute it really quickly.
1
SPEAKER_00
That was the third part.
1
SPEAKER_00
So latency matters, but relative to what?
1
SPEAKER_00
And then there s some like tricks you get around to just hiding the latency.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don t know if Spotify starts downloading the next song eagerly.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m assuming they do.
1
SPEAKER_00
There are a bunch of ideas here that are not rocket science that that really help.
1
SPEAKER_01
And all of that was stuff you were explicitly having a discussion about, like those designs and argument, you were having like arguments, discussions.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m not sure it was arguments.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I m not sure if you ve met my co-founder, Mike, but he s a pretty nice guy and he s very reasonable.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we both just saw eye to eye and we re like, yeah, just like make this fast or at least seem fast.
1
SPEAKER_00
It ll be great.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, honestly, I think the most contentious thing, and he would say this too initially,
1
SPEAKER_00
was I was on an iPhone 3G, so like the not so fast one.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he had a brand new iPhone 4, that was cheap.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nice.
1
SPEAKER_00
And his feed loaded super smoothly, like when he would scroll from photo to photo, buttery smooth, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
But on my phone, every time he got to a new photo, it was like, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, allocate memory, like all this stuff, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, Mike, that s unacceptable.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s like, oh, come on, man, just like upgrade your phone.
1
SPEAKER_00
Basically, you didn t actually say that.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s nicer than that.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I could tell he wished like I would just stop being cheap and just get a new phone.
1
SPEAKER_00
But what s funny is we actually sat there working on that little detail for a few days before launch.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that polished experience, plus the fact that uploading seemed fast for all these people who didn t have nice phones,
1
SPEAKER_00
I think meant a lot because far too often you see teams focus not on performance.
1
SPEAKER_00
They focus on what s the cool computer science problem they can solve, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Can we scale this thing to a billion users?
1
SPEAKER_00
And they ve got like a hundred, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
You talked about loss function.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I want to come back to that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like the loss function is like, do you provide a great, happy, magical, whatever experience for the consumer
1
SPEAKER_00
And listen, if it happens to involve something complex and technical, then great.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it turns out, I think most of the time, those experiences are just sitting there waiting to be built with like not that complex solutions.
1
SPEAKER_00
But everyone is just like so stuck in their own head that they have to over-engineer everything and then they forget about the easy stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, also maybe to flip the loss function there is you re trying to minimize the number of times there s unpleasant experience, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like the one you mentioned where when you go to the next photo, it freezes for a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s almost as opposed to maximizing pleasure, it s probably easier to minimize the number of like the friction.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And as we all know, you just, you just, uh, you just make the pleasure negative and then minimize everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we re mapping this all back to neural networks.
1
SPEAKER_00
But actually, can I say one thing on that, which is, I don t know a lot about machine learning, but I feel like I ve, I ve tried studying a bunch that whole idea of reinforcement learning.
1
SPEAKER_00
and planning out more than the greedy single experience, I think is the closest you can get to ideal product design thinking.
1
SPEAKER_00
where you re not saying, hey, like, can we have a great experience just this one time?
1
SPEAKER_00
But like, what is the right way to onboard someone?
1
SPEAKER_00
What series of experiences correlate most with them hanging on long-term, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So not just saying, oh, did the photo load slowly a couple times or did they get a great photo at the top of their feed?
1
SPEAKER_00
But like, what are the things that are going to make this person come back over the next week, over the next month?
1
SPEAKER_00
And as a product designer asking yourself, okay, I want to optimize, not just minimize bad experiences in the short run, but like, how do I get someone to engage over the next month?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I m not going to claim that I thought that way at all at the time, because I certainly didn t.
1
SPEAKER_00
But if I were going back and giving myself any advice, it would be thinking, what are those second-order effects that you can create?
1
SPEAKER_00
And it turns out having your friends on the service is an enormous win.
1
SPEAKER_00
So starting with a very small group of people that produce content that you wanted to see, which we did, we seeded the community very well, I think.
1
SPEAKER_00
Ended up mattering.
1
SPEAKER_01
So, yeah, you said that community is one of the most important things.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s from a metrics perspective, from maybe a philosophy perspective, building a certain kind of community within the app.
1
SPEAKER_01
See, I wasn t sure what exactly you meant by that when I ve heard you say that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you can elaborate, but as I understand now, it can literally mean get your friends onto the app.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Think of it this way.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can build an amazing restaurant or bar or whatever, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
But if you show up and you re the only one there, is it like, does it matter how good the food is?
1
SPEAKER_00
The drinks, whatever?
1
SPEAKER_00
No.
1
SPEAKER_00
These are inherently social experiences that we were working on.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the idea of having people there
1
SPEAKER_00
Like you needed to have that, otherwise it was just a filter app.
1
SPEAKER_00
But by the way, part of the genius, I m going to say genius, even though it wasn t really genius, was starting to be marauding as a filter app was awesome.
1
SPEAKER_00
The fact that you could, so we talk about single player mode a lot, which is like, can you play the game alone?
1
SPEAKER_00
And Instagram, you could totally play alone.
1
SPEAKER_00
You could filter your photos.
1
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of people would tell me, I didn t even realize that this thing was a social network until my friends showed up.
1
SPEAKER_00
It totally worked as a single player game.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then when your friends showed up, all of a sudden it was like, oh,
1
SPEAKER_00
not only was this great alone, but now I actually have this trove of photos that people can look at and start liking, and then I can like theirs.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so it was this bootstrap method of how do you make the thing not suck when the restaurant is empty?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but the thing is, when you say friends, I mean, we re not necessarily referring to friends in the physical space.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you re not bringing your physical friends with you.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re also making new friends.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you re finding new community.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s not immediately obvious to me that
1
SPEAKER_01
it s like, it s almost like building any kind of
2
SPEAKER_00
of community.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was, it was both.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what we learned very early on was what made Instagram special and the reason why you would sign up for it versus say, just sit on Facebook and look at your friends  photos.
2
SPEAKER_00
Of course we were live and of course it was interesting to see what your friends were doing now.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the fact that you could connect with people who like took really beautiful photos in a certain style all around the world, whether they were travelers, it was the beginning of the influencer economy.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was these people who became professional Instagrammers way back when, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
But they took these amazing photos and some of them were photographers, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like professionally.
2
SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden you had this moment in the day when you could open up this app and sure, you could see what your friends were doing, but also it was like, oh my God, that s a beautiful waterfall.
2
SPEAKER_00
Or, oh my God, I didn t realize there was that corner of England or like really cool stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the beauty about Instagram early on was that it was international by default.
2
SPEAKER_00
You didn t have to speak English to use it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just look at the photos.
2
SPEAKER_00
Works great.
2
SPEAKER_00
We did translate.
2
SPEAKER_00
We had some pretty bad translations, but we did translate the app.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, even if our translations were pretty poor, the idea that you could just connect with other people through their images was pretty powerful.
2
SPEAKER_01
How much technical difficulty is there with the programming?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like what programming language you were talking about?
2
SPEAKER_00
Zero.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like maybe it was hard for us, but I mean, we, there was nothing.
2
SPEAKER_00
The only thing that was complex about Instagram at the beginning,
2
SPEAKER_00
technically was making it scale.
2
SPEAKER_00
We were just plain old objective C for the client.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it was iPhone only at first?
2
SPEAKER_00
iPhone only, yep.
2
SPEAKER_01
As an Android person, I m deeply offended, but go ahead.
2
SPEAKER_00
Come on, this was 2010.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, sure, sure, sorry.
2
SPEAKER_00
Android s getting a lot better, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I take it back, you re right.
2
SPEAKER_00
If I were to do something today, I think it would be very different in terms of launch strategy, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Android s enormous too.
2
SPEAKER_00
But anyway, back to that moment, it was Objective-C and then we were Python based, which is just like, this is before Python was really cool.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like now it s cool because it s all these machine learning libraries like support Python and right now it s super,
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, cool to be Python.
2
SPEAKER_00
Back then it was like, oh, Google uses Python.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like maybe you should use Python.
2
SPEAKER_00
Facebook was PHP.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like I had worked at a small startup of some ex-Googlers that used Python.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we used it and we used a framework called Django, which still exists and people use for basically the backend.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then
2
SPEAKER_00
There were a couple interesting things in there.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we used Postgres, which was kind of fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was a little bit like hipster database at the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
Versus MySQL.
2
SPEAKER_00
MySQL, like everyone used MySQL.
2
SPEAKER_00
So like using Postgres was like an interesting decision.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
But we used it because it had a bunch of geo features built in because we thought we were going to be checking out.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s also super cool now.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you were into Python before it was cool and you were into Postgres before it was cool.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we were basically like, not only hipster, hipster photo company, hipster tech company, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
We also adopted Redis early, and like, loved it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it solved so many problems for us.
2
SPEAKER_00
And turns out that s still pretty cool.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the programming was very easy.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like, sign up a user have a feed, there was nothing, no machine learning at all zero.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you give some context, how many users at each of these stages?
2
SPEAKER_01
We re talking about a hundred users, a thousand users.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the stage I just described, I mean, that technical stack lasted through probably 50 million users.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, seriously, like you can get away with a lot with a pretty basic stack.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like I think a lot of startups try to over-engineer their solutions from the beginning to like really scale and you can get away with a lot.
2
SPEAKER_00
That being said, most of the first two years of Instagram was literally just trying to make that stack scale.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it wasn t it was it was not a Python problem.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like, literally just like, where do we put the data?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s all coming in too fast.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, how do we store it?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do we make sure to be up?
2
SPEAKER_00
How do we like,
2
SPEAKER_00
How do we make sure we re on the right size boxes, that they have enough memory?
2
SPEAKER_00
Those were the issues, but.
2
SPEAKER_01
Can you speak to the choices you make at that stage when you re growing so quickly?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you use something like somebody else s computer infrastructure or do you build in-house?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m only laughing because we, when we launched, we had a single computer that we had rented in some color space in LA.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t even remember what it was called.
2
SPEAKER_00
Cause I thought that s what you did when I worked at a company called Odeo that became Twitter.
2
SPEAKER_00
I remember visiting our space in San Francisco.
2
SPEAKER_00
You walked in, you had to wear the ear things and it was cold and fans everywhere.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we had to, you know, plug one out, replace one.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was the intern.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I just like held things, but I thought to myself, Oh, this is how it goes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then I remember being in a VC s office.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it was Benchmark s office.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think we ran into another entrepreneur and they were like, oh, how are things going?
2
SPEAKER_00
We re like, ah, you know, try to scale this thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they were like, well, I mean, can t you just add more instances?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, what do you mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
And they re like, instances on Amazon.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was like, what are those?
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was this moment where we realized how deep in it we were because we had no idea that AWS existed, nor should we be using it anyway.
2
SPEAKER_00
That night we went back to the office and we got on AWS, but we did this really dumb thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re so sorry to people listening.
2
SPEAKER_00
we brought up an instance, which was our database.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s gonna be a replacement for our database.
2
SPEAKER_00
But we had it talking over the public internet to our little box in LA that was our app server.
2
SPEAKER_01
Very nice.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s how sophisticated we were.
2
SPEAKER_00
And obviously that was very, very slow.
2
SPEAKER_00
Didn t work at all.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it worked, but didn t work.
2
SPEAKER_00
Only like later that night did we realize we had to have it all together.
2
SPEAKER_00
But at least like if you re listening right now and you re thinking, you know, I have no chance.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m going to start a startup.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have no chance.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
We did it.
2
SPEAKER_00
We made a bunch of really dumb mistakes initially.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think the question is, how quickly do you learn that you re making a mistake and do you do the right thing immediately right after?
2
SPEAKER_01
So you didn t pay for those mistakes by failure.
2
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, how quickly did you fix it?
2
SPEAKER_01
I guess there s a lot of ways to sneak up to this question of how the hell do you scale the thing?
2
SPEAKER_01
Other startups, if you have an idea, how do you scale the thing?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it just AWS and you try to write the kind of code that s easy to spread across a large number of instances and then the rest is just put money into it?
2
SPEAKER_00
Basically, I would say a couple of things.
2
SPEAKER_00
First off, don t even ask the question, just find product market fit, duct tape it together, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like if you have to, I think there s a big caveat here, which I want to get to, but generally all that matters is product market fit.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s all that matters.
2
SPEAKER_00
If people like your product.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do not worry about when 50,000 people use your product because you will be happy that you have that problem when you get there.
2
SPEAKER_00
I actually can t name many startups where they go from nothing to something overnight and they can t figure out how to scale it.
2
SPEAKER_00
There are some, but I think nowadays it s a, when I say a solved problem, like there are ways of solving it.
2
SPEAKER_00
The base case is typically that startups worry way too much about scaling way too early and forget that they actually have to make something that people like.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s the default mistake case.
2
SPEAKER_00
But what I ll say is, once you start scaling, I mean, hiring quickly people who have seen the game before and just know how to do it, it becomes a bit of like, yeah, just throw instances of the problem, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
But the last thing I ll say on this that I think did save us,
2
SPEAKER_00
we were pretty rigorous about writing tests from the beginning.
2
SPEAKER_00
That helped us move very, very quickly when we wanted to rewrite parts of the product and know that we weren t breaking something else.
2
SPEAKER_00
Tests are one of those things where it s like, you go slow to go fast, and they suck when you have to write them because you have to figure it out.
2
SPEAKER_00
There are always those ones that break when you don t want them to break and they re annoying and it feels like you spent all this time.
2
SPEAKER_00
But looking back, I think that like long-term optimal, even with a team of four, it allowed us to move very, very quickly because anyone could touch any part of the product and know that they weren t going to bring down the site, or at least in general.
2
SPEAKER_01
At which point do you know product market fit?
2
SPEAKER_01
How many users would you say?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it all it takes is like 10 people or is it a thousand?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it 50,000?
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think it is generally a question of absolute numbers.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a question of cohorts, and I think it s a question of trends.
2
SPEAKER_00
you know, it depends how big your business is trying to be.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
But if I were signing up a thousand people a week and they all routine, like the retention curves for those cohorts looked good, healthy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And even like as you started getting more people on the service, maybe those earlier cohorts started curving up again because now there are network effects and their friends are on the service or totally depends what type of business you re in.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I m talking purely social, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Um,
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t think it s an absolute number.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it is a, I guess you could call it a marginal number.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I spent a lot of time when I work with startups asking them like, okay, have you looked at that cohort versus this cohort, whether it s your clients or whether it s people signing up for the service.
2
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of people think you just have to hit some Mark, like 10,000 people or 50,000 people, but really
2
SPEAKER_00
seven-ish billion people in the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
Most people forever will not know about your product.
2
SPEAKER_00
There are always more people out there to sign up.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just a question of how you turn on the spigot, so.
2
SPEAKER_01
At that stage, early stage, yourself, but also by way of advice, should you worry about money at all?
2
SPEAKER_01
How this thing s going to make money?
2
SPEAKER_01
Or do you just try to find product market fit and get a lot of users to enjoy using your thing?
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it totally depends.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s an unsatisfying answer.
2
SPEAKER_00
Um, I was talking with a friend today who he was one of our earlier investors and he was saying, Hey, like, have you been doing any angel investing lately?
2
SPEAKER_00
I said, not really.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m just like focused on what I want to do next.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he said, the number of financings have just gone bonkers.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like just bonk.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like people are throwing money everywhere right now.
2
SPEAKER_00
Um,
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think the question is, do you have an inkling of how you re going to make money?
2
SPEAKER_00
Or are you really just like waving your hands?
2
SPEAKER_00
I would not like to be an entrepreneur in the position of, well, I have no idea how this will eventually make money.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s not fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you are in an area, like let s say you wanted to start a social network, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Not saying this is a good idea, but if you did, there are only a handful of ways they ve made money and really only one way they ve made money in the past, and that s ads.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, if you have a service that s amenable to that, and then I wouldn t worry too much about that because if you get to the scale, you can hire some smart people and figure that out.
2
SPEAKER_00
I do think that is really healthy for a lot of startups these days, especially the ones doing like enterprise software, slacks of the world, et cetera, to be worried about money from the beginning, but mostly as a way of winning over clients and having stickiness.
2
SPEAKER_00
I like, of course you need to be worried about money, but I m gonna also say this again, which is, it s like long-term profitability.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you have a roadmap to that, then that s great.
2
SPEAKER_00
But if you re just like, I don t know, maybe never, like we re working on this Metaverse thing, I think maybe someday, I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like that seems harder to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you have to be as big as Facebook to like finance that bet, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you think it s possible, you said, you re not saying it s necessarily a good idea to launch a social network.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you think it s possible today, maybe you can put yourself in those shoes, to launch a social network that achieves the scale of a Facebook or a Twitter or an Instagram and maybe even greater scale?
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_01
How do you do it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Asking for a friend.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, if I knew, I d probably be doing it right now and not sitting here.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, I mean, there s a lot of ways to ask this question.
2
SPEAKER_01
One is create a totally new product market fit, create a new market, create something like Instagram did, which is like create something kind of new, or literally out-compete Facebook at its own thing, or out-compete Twitter at its own thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
The only way to compete now if you want to build a large social network is to look for the cracks, look for the openings.
2
SPEAKER_00
No one competed, I mean, no one competed with the core business of Google.
2
SPEAKER_00
No one competed with the core business of Microsoft.
2
SPEAKER_00
You don t go at the big guys doing exactly what they re doing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Instagram didn t win quote unquote because it tried to be a visual Twitter.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like we spotted things that either Twitter wasn t going to do or refuse to do, images and feed for the longest time, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Or that Facebook wasn t doing or not paying attention to because they were mostly desktop at the time and we were purely mobile, purely visual.
2
SPEAKER_00
Often there are opportunities sitting there.
2
SPEAKER_00
You just have to, you have to, you have to figure out like, I think like there s a strategy book.
2
SPEAKER_00
I can t remember the name, but talk about moats and just like the best place to play is where your competitor like literally can t pivot because structurally they re set up not to be there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s where you win.
2
SPEAKER_00
And what s fascinating is like, do you know how many people are like, images?
2
SPEAKER_00
Facebook does that Twitter does that?
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, how wrong were they really wrong?
2
SPEAKER_00
And these are some of the smartest people in Silicon Valley, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
But now Instagram exists for a while.
2
SPEAKER_00
How is it that Snapchat could then exist?
2
SPEAKER_00
Makes no sense.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like plenty of people would say, well, there s Facebook, no images.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, okay, Instagram, I ll give you that one.
2
SPEAKER_00
But wait, now another image-based social network is gonna get really big.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then TikTok comes along.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like the prior, so you asked me, is it possible?
2
SPEAKER_00
The only reason I m answering yes is because my prior is that it s happened once every, I don t know, three, four or five years consistently.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I can t imagine there s anything structurally that would change that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s why I answer that way, not because I know how, I just, when you see a pattern, you see a pattern and there s no reason to believe that s going to stop.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s subtle too, because like you said, Snapchat and TikTok, they re all doing the same space of things, but there s something fundamentally different about
2
SPEAKER_01
like a three second video and a five second video and a 15 second video and a one minute video and a one hour video, like fundamentally different.
2
SPEAKER_00
Fundamentally different.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think one of the reasons Snapchat exists is because Instagram was so focused on posting great, beautiful manicured versions of yourself throughout time.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there was this enormous demand of like, hey, I really like this behavior.
2
SPEAKER_00
I love using Instagram, but
2
SPEAKER_00
Man, I just wish I could share something going on in my day.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do I really have to put it on my profile?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do I really have to make it last forever?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do I really?
2
SPEAKER_00
And that opened up a door.
2
SPEAKER_00
It created a market, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
And then what s fascinating is Instagram had an explore page for the longest time.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was image driven, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
but there s absolutely a behavior where you open up Instagram and you sit on the Explorer page all day.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is effectively TikTok, but obviously focused on videos.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s not like you could just put the Explorer page in TikTok form and it works.
2
SPEAKER_00
It had to be video, it had to have music.
2
SPEAKER_00
These are the hard parts about product development that are very hard to predict, but they re all versions of the same thing with varying,
2
SPEAKER_00
Like if you line them up in a bunch of dimensions, they re just like kind of on, they re different values of the same dimensions, which is like, I guess, easy to say in retrospect.
2
SPEAKER_00
But like, if I were an entrepreneur going after that area, I d ask myself like, where s the opening?
2
SPEAKER_00
What needs to exist because TikTok exists now?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I wonder how much
2
SPEAKER_01
things that don t yet exist and can exist is in the space of algorithms, in the space of recommender systems.
2
SPEAKER_01
So in the space of how the feed is generated.
2
SPEAKER_01
So we kind of talk about the actual elements of the content, that s what we ve been talking, the difference between photos, between short videos, longer videos.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wonder how much disruption is possible in the way the algorithms work.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because a lot of the criticism towards social media is in the way the algorithms work currently.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it feels like, first of all, talking about product market fit, there s certainly a hunger for
2
SPEAKER_01
social media algorithms that do something different.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t think anyone, everyone s like complaining, this is not doing, this is hurting me and this is hurting society, but I keep doing it because I m addicted to it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they say, we want something different, but we don t know what.
2
SPEAKER_01
It feels like a, just different.
2
SPEAKER_01
It feels like there s a hunger for that, but that s in the space of algorithms.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wonder if it s possible to disrupt in that space.
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
Um, I have this thesis that the worst part about social networks is that there, uh, is the people it s, it s, it s a line that sounds funny, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Because like, that s why you re
3
SPEAKER_00
call it a social network.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what does social networks actually do for you?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, just think, you know, like, imagine you re an alien and you landed and someone says, hey, there s this site, it s a social network.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re not going to tell you what it is, but just what does it do?
3
SPEAKER_00
And you had to explain it to them.
3
SPEAKER_00
Just two things.
3
SPEAKER_00
One is that
3
SPEAKER_00
people you know and have social ties with distribute updates through whether it s photos or videos about their lives so that you don t have to physically be with them, but you can keep in touch with them.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s one.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s like a big part of Instagram.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s a big part of Snap.
3
SPEAKER_00
It is not part of TikTok at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there s another big part, which is there s all this content out in the world that s entertaining.
3
SPEAKER_00
whether you want to watch it or you want to read it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And matchmaking between content that exists in the world and people that want that content turns out to be like a really big business.
3
SPEAKER_01
Search and discovery, would you?
3
SPEAKER_00
Search and discovery.
3
SPEAKER_00
But my point is it could be video, it could be text, it could be websites, it could be, I mean, think back to
3
SPEAKER_00
Think back to like Dig, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or StumbleUpon or, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
But like, what did those do?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like they basically distributed interesting content to you, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think the most interesting part or the future of social networks is going to be making them less social because I think people are part of the root cause of the problem.
3
SPEAKER_00
So for instance,
3
SPEAKER_00
Often in recommender systems, we talk about two stages.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a candidate generation step, which is just like of our vast trove of stuff that you might want to see, what small subset should we pick for you?
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
Typically that is grabbed from things your friends have shared.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Then there s a ranking step, which says, okay, now given these 100, 200 things, depends on the network, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s like be really good about ranking them and generally rank the things up higher that get the most engagement.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right?
3
SPEAKER_00
So what s the problem with that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Step one is we ve limited everything you could possibly see to things that your friends have chosen to share.
3
SPEAKER_00
or maybe not friends, but influencers.
3
SPEAKER_00
What things do people generally want to share?
3
SPEAKER_00
They want to share things that are going to get likes, that are going to show up broadly.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they tend to be more emotionally driven.
3
SPEAKER_00
They tend to be more risque or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
So why do we have this problem?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s because we show people things people have decided to share, and those things self-select to being the things that are most divisive.
3
SPEAKER_00
So how do you fix that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, what if you just imagine for a second that why do you have to grab things from things your friends have shared?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why not just like grab things?
3
SPEAKER_00
That s really fascinating to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s something I ve been thinking a lot about.
3
SPEAKER_00
And just like, you know, why is it that when you log onto Twitter, you re just sitting there looking at things from accounts that you followed for whatever reason?
3
SPEAKER_00
And TikTok, I think has done a wonderful job here, which is like, you can literally be anyone.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you produce something fascinating, it ll go viral.
3
SPEAKER_00
But like, you don t have to be someone that anyone knows.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to have built up a giant following.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to have paid for followers.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to try to maintain those followers.
3
SPEAKER_00
You literally just have to produce something interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
That is, I think, the future of social networking.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the direction things will head.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think what you ll find is it s far less about people manipulating distribution and far more about what is like, is this content good?
3
SPEAKER_00
And good is obviously a vague definition that we could spend hours on, but
3
SPEAKER_00
Different networks, I think, will decide different value functions to decide what is good and what isn t good.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s a fascinating direction.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s almost like creating an internet.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s what Google did for web pages.
3
SPEAKER_01
They did page rank search.
3
SPEAKER_01
So discovery, you don t follow anybody on Google when you use a search engine.
3
SPEAKER_01
You just discover web pages.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so what TikTok does,
3
SPEAKER_01
is saying, let s start from scratch.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s start a new internet and have people discover stuff on that new internet within a particular kind of pool of people.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, what s so fascinating about this is like the field of information retrieval, like I always talked about, as I was studying this stuff, they ve always used the word query and document.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I was like, why are they saying query and document?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like, they re literally, like, if you just stop thinking about query as like literally a search query, and a query could be a person.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, a lot of the way, I m not gonna claim to know how Instagram or Facebook machine learning works today, but,
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you want to find a match for a query, the query is actually the attributes of the person, their age, their gender, where they re from, maybe some kind of summarization of their interests.
3
SPEAKER_00
And and that s a query.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that matches against documents.
3
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, documents don t have to be text.
3
SPEAKER_00
They can be videos.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re however long.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what the limit is on TikTok these days.
3
SPEAKER_00
They keep changing it.
3
SPEAKER_00
My point is just you ve got a query, which is someone in search of something that they want to match.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you ve got the document and it doesn t have to be text.
3
SPEAKER_00
It could be anything.
3
SPEAKER_00
And how do you match make?
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s one of these like, I mean, I ve spent a lot of time thinking about this.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t claim to have mastered it at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I think it s so fascinating about where that will go with new social networks.
3
SPEAKER_01
See, what I m also fascinated by is metrics that are different than engagement.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the other thing from an alien perspective, what social networks are doing is they, in the short term, bring out different aspects of each human being.
3
SPEAKER_01
So first, let me say that,
3
SPEAKER_01
an algorithm or a social network for each individual can bring out the best of that person or the worst of that person.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a bunch of different parts to us, parts we re proud of that we are, parts we re not so proud of.
3
SPEAKER_01
when we look at the big picture of our lives, when we look back 30 days from now, am I proud that I said those things or not?
3
SPEAKER_01
Am I proud that I felt those things?
3
SPEAKER_01
Am I proud that I experienced or read those things or thought about those things?
3
SPEAKER_01
Just in that kind of self-reflective kind of way.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so coupled with that, I wonder if it s possible to have different metrics that are not just about engagement,
3
SPEAKER_01
but are about long-term happiness, growth of a human being, where they look back and say, I am a better human being for having spent 100 hours on that app.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that feels like it s actually strongly correlated with engagement in the long-term.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the short-term, it may not be, but in the long-term, it s like the same kind of thing where you really fall in love with a product.
3
SPEAKER_01
You fall in love with an iPhone, you fall in love with a car.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what makes you fall in love is like,
3
SPEAKER_01
really being proud and just in a self-reflective way understanding that you re a better human being for having used the thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s what great relationships are made from.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not just like you re hot and we like being together or something like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s more like I m a better human being because I m with you.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that feels like a metric that could be optimized for by the algorithms.
3
SPEAKER_01
But anytime I kind of talk about this with anybody, they seem to say, yeah, okay, that s going to get out-competed immediately by the engagement, if it s ad-driven especially.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just don t think so.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t, I mean, a lot of it is just implementation.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ll say a couple of things.
3
SPEAKER_00
One is to pull back the curtain on daily meetings inside of these large social media companies.
3
SPEAKER_00
a lot of what management, or at least the people that are tweaking these algorithms, spend their time on are trade-offs.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s these things called value functions, which are like, okay, we can predict the probability that you ll click on this thing, or the probability that you ll share it, or the probability that you will leave a comment on it, or the probability you ll dwell on it.
3
SPEAKER_00
individual actions, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And you ve got this neural network that basically has a bunch of heads at the end, and all of them are between zero and one, and great, they all have values, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or they all have probabilities.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then in these meetings, what they will do is say, well, uh, how much do we value a comment versus a click versus a share versus, uh, and then maybe even some downstream thing, right.
3
SPEAKER_00
Um, that has nothing to do with the item there, but like driving follows or something.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what typically happens is they will say, well, what are our goals for this quarter at the company?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, we want to drive sharing up.
3
SPEAKER_00
OK, well, let s turn down these metrics and turn up these metrics.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they blend them right into a single scalar with which they re trying to optimize.
3
SPEAKER_00
that is really hard because invariably you think you re solving for, I don t know, something called meaningful interactions, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And this was the big Facebook pivot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t actually have any internal knowledge.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I wasn t in those meetings, but at least from what we ve seen over the last month or so, it seems by,
3
SPEAKER_00
actually trying to optimize for meaningful interactions, it had all these side effects of optimizing for these other things.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t claim to fully understand them.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what I will say is that trade-offs abound.
3
SPEAKER_00
And as much as you d like to solve for one thing, if you have a network of over a billion people, you re going to have unintended consequences either way.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it gets really hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what you re describing is effectively a value model that says like, can we capture, this is the thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, can you capture utility in a way that like actually measures someone s happiness?
3
SPEAKER_00
That isn t just a, what do they call it?
3
SPEAKER_00
A surrogate problem where you say, well, I kind of think like the more you use the product, the happier you are.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was always the argument at Facebook, by the way.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was like, well,
3
SPEAKER_00
people use it more, so they must be more happy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Turns out there are like a lot of things you use more that make you less happy in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
Not talking about Facebook, just, you know, let s think about whether it s gambling or whatever, like that you can do more of, but doesn t necessarily make you happier.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the idea that time equals happiness, obviously you can t map utility and time together easily.
3
SPEAKER_00
There are a lot of edge cases.
3
SPEAKER_00
So when you look around the world and you say, well, what are all the ways we can model utility?
3
SPEAKER_00
There s like one of the,
3
SPEAKER_00
Please, if you know someone smart doing this, introduce me because I m fascinated by it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it seems really tough.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the idea that reinforcement learning, like everyone interesting I know in machine learning, like I was really interested in recommender systems and supervised learning and
3
SPEAKER_00
And the more I dug into it, I was like, oh, literally everyone smart is working on reinforcement learning.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like literally everyone.
3
SPEAKER_01
You just made people at OpenAI and DeepMind very happy, yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I mean, but what s interesting is like, it s one thing to train a game.
3
SPEAKER_00
And like, I mean, that paper that where they just took Atari and they used a ConvNet to basically just like, train simple actions.
3
SPEAKER_00
Mind blowing, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely mind blowing.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s a game.
3
SPEAKER_00
Great.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now what if you re constructing a feed for a person, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like how can you construct that feed in such a way that optimizes for a diversity of experience, a long-term happiness, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
But that reward function, it turns out in reinforcement learning, again, as I ve learned, like reward design is really hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
And
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, like how do you design a scalar reward for someone s happiness over time?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, do you have to measure dopamine levels?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, do you have to?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, you have to have a lot more signals from the human being.
3
SPEAKER_01
Currently, it feels like there s not enough signals coming from the human being users of this algorithm.
3
SPEAKER_01
So for reinforcement learning to work well, you need to have a lot more data.
3
SPEAKER_00
It needs to have a lot of data.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that actually is a challenge for anyone who wants to start something, which is you don t have a lot of data.
3
SPEAKER_00
So how do you compete?
3
SPEAKER_00
But I do think back to your original point, rethinking the algorithm, rethinking reward functions, rethinking utility.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s cool.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s an open opportunity for a company that figures it out.
3
SPEAKER_01
I have to ask about April 2012 when Instagram, along with its massive employee base of 13 people, was sold to Facebook for $1 billion.
3
SPEAKER_01
What was the process like on a business level, engineering level, human level?
3
SPEAKER_01
What was that process of selling to Facebook like?
3
SPEAKER_01
What did it feel like?
3
SPEAKER_00
So I want to provide some context, which is I worked in corporate development at Google, which not a lot of people know, but corporate development is effectively the group that buys companies, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
You sit there and you acquire companies.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I had sat through so many of these meetings with entrepreneurs.
3
SPEAKER_00
We actually, fun fact, we never acquired a single company when I worked in corporate development.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I can t claim that I had like a lot of experience.
3
SPEAKER_00
Um, but I had enough experience to understand, okay, like what prices are people getting and, and what s the process.
3
SPEAKER_00
And, and as we started to grow, you know, we were trying to keep this thing running and we were exhausted and we were 13 people.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, we were trying to think back.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s probably 27.
3
SPEAKER_00
37 now, so young and on a relative basis, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And we re trying to keep the thing running.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then, you know, we go out to raise money and we re kind of like the hot startup at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I remember going into a specific VC and saying, our terms we re looking for are, we re looking for a $500 million valuation.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I ve never seen so many jobs drop.
3
SPEAKER_00
all in unison, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, thanked and walked out the door very kindly after.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I got a call the next day from someone who was connected to them and said, they said, we just want to let you know that like, it was pretty offensive that you asked for $500 billion valuation.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I can t tell if that was, um,
3
SPEAKER_00
like just negotiating or what, but it s true, like no one offered us more, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So we were- So can you clarify the number again?
3
SPEAKER_01
You said how many million?
3
500.
3
SPEAKER_01
500 million, okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
500 million, yeah, half a billion.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in my mind, I m anchored like, okay, well, literally no one s biting at 500 million.
3
SPEAKER_00
And eventually we would get Sequoia and Greylock and others together at 500 million, basically, post.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was 450 pre, I think we raised $50 million.
3
SPEAKER_00
But just like no one was used to seeing $500 million companies then.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don t know if it was because we were just coming out of the hangover 2008 and things were still on recovery mode, but then along comes Facebook.
3
SPEAKER_00
And after some negotiation, we ve 2X to the number from a half a billion to a billion.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it seems pretty good, you know.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think Mark and I really saw eye to eye that this thing could be big.
3
SPEAKER_00
We thought we could, their resources would help us scale it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in a lot of ways, it de-risks, I mean, it de-risks a lot of the employees  lives for the rest of their lives, including me, including Mike, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Um, I think I might have had like 10 grand in my bank account at the time, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, we re working hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
We have nothing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Um, so on a relative basis, it seems very high.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I think the last company to exit for anywhere close to a billion was YouTube that I could think of.
3
SPEAKER_00
And thus began the giant long bull run of 2012 all the way to where we are now, where I saw some stat yesterday about how many unicorns exist and it s absurd.
3
SPEAKER_00
But then again, never underestimate technology and the value it can provide.
3
SPEAKER_00
And man, costs have dropped and man scale has increased.
3
SPEAKER_00
you can make businesses make a lot of money now, but on a fundamental level, I don t know, like how do you describe the decision to sell a company with 13 people for a billion dollars?
3
SPEAKER_01
So first of all, like how did it take a lot of guts to sit at a table and say 500 million or 1 billion with Mark Zuckerberg?
3
SPEAKER_01
it seems like a very large number with 13.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, especially, it doesn t seem it is, they re all large, especially like you said before the unicorn parade.
3
SPEAKER_00
I like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going to use that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
The, uh, the, the, you were at the head of the unicorn parade.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the, uh, yeah, it s a massive unicorn parade.
3
SPEAKER_00
Um, okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
So,
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I mean, we knew we were worth quote unquote a lot, but we didn t, I mean, there was no market for Instagram.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s not, you couldn t mark, you couldn t mark to market this thing in the public markets.
3
SPEAKER_00
You didn t quite understand what it would be worth or was worth at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in a market, an illiquid market where you have one buyer and one seller and you re going back and forth and well, I guess there were like VC firms who were willing to, you know, invest at a certain valuation.
3
SPEAKER_00
So,
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, you just go with your gut.
3
SPEAKER_00
And at the end of the day, I would say the hardest part of it was not realizing
3
SPEAKER_00
Like when we sold, it was tough because like literally everywhere I go, restaurants, whatever, like for a good six months after it was a lot of attention on the deal, a lot of attention on the product, a lot of attention.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was kind of miserable.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you re like, wait, like I made a lot of money, but like, why is this not great?
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s because it turns out, you know, and I don t,
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, like I don t really keep in touch with Mark, but I ve got to assume his job right now is not exactly the most happy job in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s really tough when you re on top and it s really tough when you re in the limelight.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the decision itself was like, Oh cool, this is great.
3
SPEAKER_00
How lucky are we?
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a million questions.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, go, go first.
4
SPEAKER_01
First of all, why is it hard to be on top?
4
SPEAKER_01
Why did you not feel good?
4
SPEAKER_01
Can you dig into that?
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve heard Olympic athletes say after they win gold, they get depressed.
4
SPEAKER_01
Is it something like that, where it feels like it was kind of like a thing you were working towards?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sure.
4
SPEAKER_01
Some loose definition of success.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this sure feels like, at least according to other startups, this is what success looks like.
4
SPEAKER_01
And now, why don t I feel any better?
4
SPEAKER_01
I m still human.
4
SPEAKER_01
I still have all the same problems.
4
SPEAKER_01
Is that the nature?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or is it just like negative attention of some kind?
4
SPEAKER_00
I think it s all of the above.
4
SPEAKER_00
But to be clear, there was a lot of happiness in terms of like, oh my God, this is great.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like we won the Superbowl of startups, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Anyone who can get to a liquidity event of anything meaningful feels like, wow, this is what we started out to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
Of course we want to create great things that people love,
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, like we want in a big way, but yeah, there s this big like, Oh, if we won, what is like, what s next?
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they call it the, we have arrived syndrome.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, which I, I need to go back and look where I can quote that from.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I remember reading about it at the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was like, Oh yeah, that s that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I remember we had a product manager leave very early on when we got to Facebook.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he said to me, I just don t believe I can learn anything at this company anymore.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like it s hit its apex.
4
SPEAKER_00
We sold it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Great.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just don t have anything else to learn.
4
SPEAKER_00
So from 2012 all the way to the day I left in 2018, like the amount I learned and the humility with which I realized, oh, we thought we won.
4
SPEAKER_00
A billion dollars is cool, but like there are a hundred billion dollar companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, on top of that,
4
SPEAKER_00
We had no revenue.
4
SPEAKER_00
We had, I mean, we had a cool product, but we didn t scale it yet.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s so much to learn.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then competitors and how fun was it to fight Snapchat?
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like it was like Yankees, Red Sox.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s great.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like that s what you live for.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um,
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, you win some, you lose some, but the amount you can learn through that process.
4
SPEAKER_00
What I ve realized in life is that there is no end.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s always someone who has more.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s always more challenge, just at different scales.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this sounds like a little Buddhist, but
4
SPEAKER_00
Everything is super challenging, whether you re like a small business or an enormous business.
4
SPEAKER_00
I say, like, choose the game you like to play, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to imagine that if you re an amazing basketball player, you enjoy, to some extent, practicing basketball.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s got to be something you love.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s going to suck.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s going to be hard.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re going to have injuries, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But you ve got to love it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the same thing with Instagram, which is
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, we might have sold, but it was like, great.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s one super bowl title.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can we win five?
4
SPEAKER_00
What else can we do now?
4
SPEAKER_00
I imagine you didn t ask this, but okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I left.
4
SPEAKER_00
there s a little bit of like, what do you do next, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, what do you, how do you top that thing?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s the wrong question.
4
SPEAKER_00
The question is like, when you wake up every day, what is the hardest, most interesting thing you can go work on?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because like, at the end of the day, we all turn into dirt, doesn t matter, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But what does matter is like, can we really enjoy this life?
4
SPEAKER_00
Not in a hedonistic way, because that s, it s like the reinforcement learning, learning like short-term versus long-term objectives,
4
SPEAKER_00
can you wake up every day and truly enjoy what you re doing knowing that it s going to be painful?
4
SPEAKER_00
Knowing that like, no matter what you choose, it s going to be painful.
4
SPEAKER_00
Whether you sit on a beach or whether you manage a thousand people or 10,000, it s going to be painful.
4
SPEAKER_00
So choose something that s fun to have pain.
4
SPEAKER_00
But yes, there was a lot of, we have arrived and
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a maturation process you just have to go through.
4
SPEAKER_01
So no matter how much success there is, how much money you make, you have to wake up the next day and choose the hard life, whatever that means next.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s fun.
4
SPEAKER_01
The fun slash hard life.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, hard life.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
I guess.
4
SPEAKER_00
What I m trying to say is slightly different, which is just that no one realizes everything s going to be hard.
4
SPEAKER_00
Even chilling out is hard.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you just start worrying about stupid stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don t know, like, did so-and-so forget to paint the house today?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or like, did the gardener come or whatever?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, or, oh, I m so angry and my shipment of wine didn t show up and I m sitting here on the beach without my wine.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, I m making shit up now.
4
SPEAKER_01
But like- It turns out that even chilling, aka meditation, is hard work.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and at least meditation is like productive chilling where you re like actually training yourself to calm down and be, but backing up for a moment, everything s hard.
4
SPEAKER_00
You might as well be like playing the game you love to play.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just like playing and winning and I m still on the, I think the first half of life, knock on wood.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I ve got a lot of years and what am I gonna do, sit around?
4
SPEAKER_00
And the other way of looking at this, by the way,
4
SPEAKER_00
Imagine you made one movie and it was great.
4
SPEAKER_00
Would you just like stop making movies?
4
SPEAKER_00
No, generally you re like, wow, I really like making movies.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s make another one.
4
SPEAKER_00
A lot of times, by the way, the second one or the third one, not that great, but the fourth one, awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
And no one forgets the second, or everyone forgets the second and the third one.
4
SPEAKER_00
So there s just this constant process of like, can I produce?
4
SPEAKER_00
And is that fun?
4
SPEAKER_00
Is that exciting?
4
SPEAKER_00
What else can I learn?
4
SPEAKER_00
So this machine learning stuff for me has been this awesome new chapter of being like, man, that s something I didn t understand at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now I feel like I m one 10th of the way there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that feels like a big mountain to climb.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I distracted us from the original question.
4
SPEAKER_01
Return to the machine learning.
4
SPEAKER_01
Cause I d love to explore your interest there.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I mean, speaking of sort of challenges and hard things, is there a possible world?
4
SPEAKER_01
where sitting in a room with Mark Zuckerberg with a $1 billion deal, you turn it down.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, of course.
4
SPEAKER_01
What does that world look like?
4
SPEAKER_01
Why would you turn it down?
4
SPEAKER_01
Why did you take it?
4
SPEAKER_01
What was the calculation that you were making?
4
SPEAKER_00
Ah, thus enters the world of counterfactuals and not really knowing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if only we could run that experiment.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, the universe exists.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just running in parallel to our own.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s so fascinating, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we re talking a lot about money, but the real question was, I m not sure you ll believe me when I say this, but could we strap our little company onto the side of a rocket ship?
4
SPEAKER_00
and get out to a lot of people really, really quickly with the support, with the talent of a place like Facebook.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, people often ask me what I would do differently at Instagram today, and I say, well, I d probably hire more carefully, because we showed up, just like before I knew it, we had like 100 people on the team, then 200, then 300.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know where all these people were coming from.
4
SPEAKER_00
I never had to recruit them.
4
SPEAKER_00
I never had to screen them.
4
SPEAKER_00
They were just like internal transfers, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So it s like relying on the Facebook hiring machine, which is quite sort of, I mean, it s an elaborate machine.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s- It s great, by the way.
4
SPEAKER_00
They have really talented people there.
4
SPEAKER_00
But my point is, the choice was like, take this thing, put it on the side of a rocket ship that you know is growing very quickly.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like I had seen what had happened when Ev sold Blogger to Google, and then Google went public.
4
SPEAKER_00
Remember, we sold before Facebook went public.
4
SPEAKER_00
There was a moment at which the stock price was $17 by the way, Facebook stock price was $17.
4
SPEAKER_00
I remember thinking, what the did I just do?
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
Uh, now at 320 ish, I don t know where we are today, but like, okay, like the best thing by the way, is like when the stock is down, everyone calls you a dope.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then when it s up, they also call you a dope, but just for a different reason.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like you can t win.
4
SPEAKER_01
Less than in there somewhere.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, but you know, the choice is to strap yourself to a rocket ship or to build your own.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, Mr. Elon built his own literally with a rocket ship.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s a difficult choice because there s a world.
4
SPEAKER_00
Actually, I would say something different, which is Elon and others decided to sell PayPal.
4
SPEAKER_00
for not that much.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, how much, was it about a billion dollars?
4
SPEAKER_00
I can t remember.
4
SPEAKER_01
Something like that, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was early, but it s worth a lot more now, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
To then build a new rocket ship.
4
SPEAKER_00
So this is the cool part, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
If you are an entrepreneur and you own a controlling stake in a company,
4
SPEAKER_00
Not only is it really hard to do something else with your life, because all of the, you know, value is tied up in you as a personality attached to this company, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But if you sell it and you re getting yourself enough capital and you like have enough energy, you could do another thing or 10 other things or in Elon s case, like a bunch of other things.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, like I lost count at this point.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it might have seemed silly at the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
And sure, like if you look back, man, PayPal is worth a lot now, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But I don t know, like, do you think Elon, like, cares about, like, are we going to buy Pinterest or not?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I just, he is, he created a massive capital that allowed him to do what he wants to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s more freeing than anything, because when you are an entrepreneur attached to a company, you gotta stay at that company for a really long time.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s really hard to remove yourself.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I m not sure how much he loved PayPal versus SpaceX and Tesla.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have a sense that you love,
4
SPEAKER_01
Instagram.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
I loved enough to like work for six years beyond the deal.
4
SPEAKER_01
Which is rare, which is very rare.
4
SPEAKER_01
You chose.
4
SPEAKER_00
But can I tell you why?
4
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
Please.
4
SPEAKER_00
There are not a lot of companies that you can be part of where the Pope s like, I would like to sign up for your product.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like I m not a religious person at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m really not.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, but when you go to the Vatican and you re like walking among giant columns and you re hearing the music and everything, and like the Pope walks in and he wants to press the signup button on your product, like it s a moment in life.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, no matter what your persuasion, okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
The number of doors and experiences that that opened up was, it was incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the people I got to meet, the places I got to go, I assume maybe like a payments company is slightly different, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But that s why, like, it was so fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
And plus, I truly believed we were building such a great product and I loved, loved the game.
4
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t about the money, it was about the game.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you think he had the guts to say no?
4
SPEAKER_01
Is that, so here s, I often think about this, like how hard is it for an entrepreneur to say no?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because the peer pressure, so every, like basically the sea of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are gonna tell you, I mean, this is their dream.
4
SPEAKER_01
The thing you were sitting before is a dream.
4
SPEAKER_01
To walk away from that is really, it seems like nearly impossible.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because Instagram could, in 10 years, be, you know, you could talk about Google.
4
SPEAKER_01
You could be making self-driving cars and building rockets that go to Mars and compete with SpaceX.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so that s an interesting decision to say, you know,
4
SPEAKER_01
Am I willing to risk it?
4
SPEAKER_01
The reason I also say it s an interesting decision because it feels like per our previous discussion, if you re launching a social network company, there s going to be that meeting, whatever that number is, if you re successful.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re in this rocket ship of success, there s going to be a meeting
4
SPEAKER_01
with one of the social media, social network companies that wanna buy you, whether it s Facebook or Twitter, but it could also very well be Google, who seems to have like a graveyard of failed social networks.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s, I mean, I don t know, I think about that, how difficult it is for an entrepreneur to make that decision.
4
SPEAKER_01
How many have successfully made that decision, I guess?
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a big question.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s sad to me, to be honest, that too many make that decision, perhaps for the wrong reason.
4
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, when you say make the decision, you mean to the affirmative.
4
SPEAKER_00
To the affirmative, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Got it, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
There are also companies that don t sell.
4
SPEAKER_00
right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And take the path and say, we re going to be independent.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you ve never heard of them again.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like I remember, uh, path, right.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was one of our competitors early on.
4
SPEAKER_00
Uh, there s a big moment when they had, I can t remember what it was like $110 million offer from Google or something.
4
SPEAKER_00
It might ve been larger.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um,
4
SPEAKER_00
And I remember there was like this big TechCrunch article that was like, they turned it down after talking deeply about their values and everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know the inner workings of Foursquare, but like, I m certain there were many conversations over time where there were companies that wanted Foursquare as well.
4
SPEAKER_00
Recently, like, I mean, what other companies?
4
SPEAKER_00
There s Clubhouse, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don t know, maybe people were really interested in them too.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, there are plenty of moments
4
SPEAKER_00
where people say no, and we just forget that those things happen.
4
SPEAKER_00
We only focus on the ones where they said yes, and like, wow, what if they had stayed independent?
4
SPEAKER_00
So I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
I used to think a lot about this, and now I just don t because I m like, whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
Things have gone pretty well.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m ready for the next game.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, think about an athlete
4
SPEAKER_00
where, I don t know, maybe they do something wrong in the World Series or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
And like, if you let it haunt you for the rest of your career, like, why not just be like, I don t know, it was a game, next game, next shot, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
If you just move to that world, like, at least I have a next shot, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, that s beautiful, but I mean just in insights, and it s funny you brought up Clubhouse, it is very true.
4
SPEAKER_01
It seems like Clubhouse is on the downward path, and it s very possible to see a billion plus dollar deal at some stage, maybe like a year ago or half a year ago, from Facebook, from Google.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think Facebook was flirting with that idea too, and I think a lot of companies probably were.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wish it was more public.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know what, there s not like a badass public story about them making the decision to walk away.
4
SPEAKER_01
We just don t hear about it and then we get to see the results of that success or the failure, more often failure.
4
SPEAKER_00
So a couple of things.
4
SPEAKER_00
One is, I would not assume Clubhouse is down for the count at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re young, they have plenty of money, they re run by really smart people.
4
SPEAKER_00
I d give them like a very fighting chance to figure it out.
4
SPEAKER_00
There are a lot of times when people called Twitter down for the count and they figure it out and they seem to be doing well, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So just backing up like and not knowing anything about their internals like.
4
SPEAKER_00
there s a strong chance they will figure it out and that people are just down because they like being down about companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
They like assuming that they re going to fail.
4
SPEAKER_00
So who knows?
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
But let s take the ones in the past where like we know how it played out.
4
SPEAKER_00
There are plenty of examples where people have turned down big offers and then you ve just never heard from them again.
4
SPEAKER_00
But we never focus on the companies cause you just forget that those were big.
4
SPEAKER_00
But inside your psyche,
4
SPEAKER_00
I think it s easy for someone with enough money to say money doesn t matter, which I think is bullshit.
4
SPEAKER_00
Of course money matters to people.
4
SPEAKER_00
But at the moment, you just can t even grasp the number of zeros that you re talking about.
4
SPEAKER_00
It just doesn t make sense.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So to think rationally in that moment is not something many people are equipped to do, especially not people where I think we had founded the company a year earlier, maybe two years earlier, like a year and a half, we were 13 people.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I will say, I still don t know if it was the right decision, because I don t have that counterfactual.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know that other world.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m just thankful that by and large, most people love Instagram still do.
4
SPEAKER_00
By and large, people are very happy with like the time we had there.
4
SPEAKER_00
Um, and I m proud of what we built.
4
SPEAKER_00
So like, I m cool.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like we re, you know, now, now it s, it s next shot.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, if we could just linger on this Yankees versus Red Sox, the fun of it, the competition over, I would say, over the space of features.
4
SPEAKER_01
So there are a bunch of features, like there s photos, there s one minute videos on Instagram, there s IGTV, there s stories, there s reels, there s live.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that sounds like it s like a long list of too much stuff, but it s not, because it feels like they re close together, but they re somehow, like what we re saying, fundamentally distinct, like each of the things I mentioned.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe can you describe the philosophies, the design philosophies behind some of these, how you were thinking about it during the historic war between Snapchat and Instagram, or just in general?
4
SPEAKER_01
this space of features that was discovered.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s this great book by Clay Christensen called Competing Against Luck.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like a terrible title, but within it, there s effectively an expression of this thing called jobs to be done theory.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s unclear if like he came up with it or some of his colleagues, but there are a bunch of places you can find with people claiming to have come up with this jobs to be done theory.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the idea is if you like zoom out and you look at your product, you ask yourself, why are people hiring your product?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like imagine every product in your life is effectively an employee, you know, you re CEO of your life and you hire products to be employees effectively.
4
SPEAKER_00
They all have roles and jobs, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why are you hiring a product?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why do you want that product to perform something in your life?
4
SPEAKER_00
And what are the hidden reasons why you re in love with this product?
5
SPEAKER_00
Instagram was about sharing your life with others visually, period, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Why?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because you feel connected with them.
5
SPEAKER_00
You get to show off.
5
SPEAKER_00
You get to feel good and cared about, right, with likes.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it turns out that that will, I think, forever define Instagram.
5
SPEAKER_00
And any product that serves that job is going to do very well.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
Stories, let s take it as an example, is very much serving that job.
5
SPEAKER_00
In fact, it serves it better than the original product because when you re large and have an enormous audience.
5
SPEAKER_00
you re worried about people seeing your stuff or you re worried about being permanent so that a college admissions person is going to see your photo of you doing something.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so it turns out that that is a more efficient way of performing that job than the original product was.
5
SPEAKER_00
The original product still has its value, but at scale, these two things together work really, really well.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, I will claim that other parts of the product over time didn t perform that job as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think IGTV probably didn t, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Shopping is like completely unrelated to what I just described, but it might work, I don t know, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Products, I think,
5
SPEAKER_00
Products that succeed are products that all share this parent node of like this job to be done that is in common.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then there s just like different ways of doing it, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Apple, I think does a great job with this, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like managing your digital life and all the products just work together.
5
SPEAKER_00
They sync, they like, it s beautiful, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Even if they require like silly specific cords to work, but they re all part of a system.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s when you leave that system and you start doing something weird that people start scratching their head.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think you are less successful.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I think one of the challenges Facebook has had throughout its life is that it has never fully, I think, appreciated the job to be done of the main product.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what it s done is said, ooh, there s a shiny object over there that starts getting some traction.
5
SPEAKER_00
Let s go copy that thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then they re confused why it doesn t work.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, why doesn t it work?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s because the people who show up for this don t want that.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s different.
5
SPEAKER_01
What s the purpose of Facebook?
5
SPEAKER_01
I remember I was a very early Facebook user.
5
SPEAKER_01
The reason I was personally excited about Facebook is because you can, first of all, use your real name.
5
SPEAKER_01
I can exist in this world.
5
SPEAKER_01
formally exists.
5
SPEAKER_01
I like anonymity for certain things, Reddit and so on, but I want it to also exist not anonymously so that I can connect with other friends of mine non-anonymously.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s a reliable way to know that I m real and they re real and that we re connecting.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s kind of like, I liked it for the reasons that people like LinkedIn, I guess.
5
SPEAKER_01
but like without the form, like not everybody is dressed up and being super polite, like more like with friends.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then it became something much bigger than that.
5
SPEAKER_01
I suppose there s a feed.
5
SPEAKER_01
It became this, um,
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it became a place to discover content, to share content that s not just about connecting directly with friends.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it became something else.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t even know what it is really.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you said Instagram is a place where you visually share your life.
5
SPEAKER_01
What is Facebook?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, let s go back to the founding of Facebook and why it worked really well initially at Harvard and then Dartmouth and Stanford, and I can t remember, probably MIT, there were like a handful of schools in that first tranche, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
It worked because there are communities that exist in the world that want to transact.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when I say transact, I don t mean commercially, I just mean they wanna share, they wanna coordinate, they wanna communicate, they want a space for themselves.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Facebook at its best, I think, is that.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if actually you look at the most popular products that Facebook has built over time, if you look at things like Groups, Marketplace, Groups is enormous.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Groups is effectively like everyone can found their own little Stanford or Dartmouth or MIT, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And find each other and share and communicate about something that matters deeply to them.
5
SPEAKER_00
That is the core of what Facebook was built around, and I think today is where it stands most strongly.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s brilliant.
5
SPEAKER_01
The groups, I wish groups were done better.
5
SPEAKER_01
It feels like it s not a first-class citizen.
5
SPEAKER_01
I know I may be saying something without much knowledge, but it feels like it s kind of bolted on.
5
SPEAKER_01
while being used a lot.
5
SPEAKER_01
It feels like there needs to be a little bit more structure in terms of discovery, in terms of like- Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, look at Reddit.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like Reddit is basically groups that are public and open and a little bit crazy, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
In a good way.
5
SPEAKER_00
But there s clear product market fit for that specific use case.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it doesn t have to be a college.
5
SPEAKER_00
It can be anything.
5
SPEAKER_00
It can be a small group, a big group.
5
SPEAKER_00
It can be group messaging.
5
SPEAKER_00
Facebook shines, I think, when it leans into that.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think when there are other companies that just seem exciting and now all of a sudden the product shifts in some fundamental way to go try to compete with that other thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
that s when I think consumers get confused.
5
SPEAKER_00
Um, even if you can be successful, like even if you can compete with that other company, even if you can figure out how to bolt it on, eventually you come back and you look at the app and you re like, I just don t know why I opened this app.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like why?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like too many things going on.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that was always a worry.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you listed all the things that Instagram and I almost gave me a heart attack, like way too many things, but I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Entrepreneurs get bored.
5
SPEAKER_00
They want to add things.
5
SPEAKER_00
They want to like, right.
5
SPEAKER_00
Um,
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t have a good answer for it, except for that.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think being true to your original use case and not even original use case, but sorry, actually not use case original job.
5
SPEAKER_00
There are many use cases under that job.
5
SPEAKER_00
Being true to that and like being really good at it over time and morphing as needs change.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think that s how to make a company last forever.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, honestly, my main thesis about why Facebook is in the position it is today is if they have had a series of product launches that delighted people over time,
5
SPEAKER_00
I think they d be in a totally different world.
5
SPEAKER_00
So just like imagine for a moment, and by the way, Apple s entering this, but like Apple for so long, just like product after product, you couldn t wait for it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You stood in line for it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You talked about it.
5
SPEAKER_00
You got excited.
5
SPEAKER_00
Amazon makes your life so easy.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like, wow, I needed this thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it showed up at my door two days later and like,
5
SPEAKER_00
Both of these companies, by the way, Amazon, Apple have issues, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
There are labor issues, whether it s here in the US or in China, there are environmental issues, there are, but like when s the last time you heard like a large chorus being like, these companies better pay for what they re doing on these things, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think Facebook s main issue today is like, you need to produce a hit.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you don t produce hits,
5
SPEAKER_00
It s really hard to keep consumers on your side.
5
SPEAKER_00
Then people just start picking on you for a variety of reasons, whether it s right or wrong.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not even going to place a judgment right here and right now.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m just going to say that it is way better to be in a world where you are producing hits and consumers love what you re doing.
5
SPEAKER_00
because then they re on your side.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s, it s the past 10 years for Facebook has been fairly hard on this dimension.
5
SPEAKER_01
So, and by hits, it doesn t necessarily mean financial hits.
5
SPEAKER_01
It feels like to me, what you re saying is something that brings a joy, a product that brings joy to some fraction of the population.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, TikTok isn t just literally an algorithm.
5
SPEAKER_00
In some ways, TikTok s content and algorithm have more sway now over the American psyche than Facebook s algorithm, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s visual, it s video.
5
SPEAKER_00
By the way, it s not defined by who you follow.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s defined by some magical thing that, by the way, if someone wanted to tweak to show you a certain type of content for some reason, they could, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But people love it.
5
SPEAKER_01
So as a CEO, let me ask you a question, because leadership matters.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is a complicated question.
5
SPEAKER_01
Why is Mark Zuckerberg distrusted, disliked, and sometimes even hated by many people in public?
5
SPEAKER_00
Right, that is a complicated question.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, the premise,
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not sure I agree with the premise.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I can expand that to include even a more mysterious question for me, Bill Gates.
5
SPEAKER_00
Hmm.
5
SPEAKER_00
What is the Bill Gates version of the question?
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you think people hate Bill Gates?
5
SPEAKER_01
No, distrust.
5
SPEAKER_01
Ah.
5
SPEAKER_01
So takeaway one, it s a checklist.
5
SPEAKER_01
There is, I think Mark Zuckerberg s distrust is the primary one, but there s also like a dislike, maybe hate is too strong a word, but it s just, if you look at like the articles that are being written and so on, there s a dislike and it makes, it s confusing to me because it s like the public picks certain individuals and they,
5
SPEAKER_01
and they attach certain kinds of emotions to those individuals.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so someone once just recently said, there s a strong case that founder-led companies have this problem and that a lot of Mark s issues today come from the fact that he is a visible founder with this story that people have watched in both a movie and they followed along and he s this boy wonder kid who became one of the world s richest people.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he s no longer marked the person, he s marked this image of a person with enormous wealth and power.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in today s world, we have issues with enormous wealth and power for a variety of reasons, one of which is we ve been stuck inside
5
SPEAKER_00
you know, for a year and a half, two years, one of which is a lot of people were really unhappy about not the last election, but the last last election.
5
SPEAKER_00
And where do you take out that anger?
5
SPEAKER_00
Who do you blame but the people in charge?
5
SPEAKER_00
That s one example or one reason why I think a lot of people express anger, resentment or unhappiness with
5
SPEAKER_00
with Mark.
5
SPEAKER_00
At the same time, I don t know, I pointed out to that person, I was like, well, I don t know, like, I think a lot of people really like Elon.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, Elon arguably, like he kept his, you know, factory open here throughout COVID protocols, which arguably a lot of people would be against.
5
SPEAKER_01
while saying a bunch of crazy offensive things on the internet.
5
SPEAKER_00
They still- And like basically, you know, gives the middle finger to the SEC like on Twitter and like, I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m like, well, there s a founder and like people kind of like him.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I do think that-
5
SPEAKER_01
the founder and slash CEO of a company that s a social network company is like an extra level of difficulty.
5
SPEAKER_01
If life is a video game, you just chose the harder video game.
5
SPEAKER_01
So, I mean, that s why it s interesting to ask you because you were the founder and CEO of a social network.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right, exactly.
5
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_01
But you re one of the rare examples.
5
SPEAKER_01
Even Jack Dorsey s disliked.
5
SPEAKER_01
not to the degree, but it just seems harder when you re running a social media company.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
I never thought of Jack as just like, I think generally he s well-respected.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think so.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think you re right.
5
SPEAKER_01
But he s not loved.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like you, I mean, to me, Twitter is an incredible thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Again, can I just come back to this point, which seems oversimplistic, but like, I really do think how a product makes someone feel.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
They ascribe that feeling to the founder.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
5
SPEAKER_01
So make people feel good.
5
SPEAKER_00
So think about it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, let s just go with this thesis for a second.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
5
SPEAKER_00
I like it, though.
5
SPEAKER_00
Amazon s pretty utilitarian, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
It delivers brown boxes to your front door.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sure, you can have Alexa and you can have all these things, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But in general, it delivers stuff quickly to you at a reasonable price, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think Jeff Bezos is wonderfully wealthy, thoughtful, smart guy, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But like, people kind of feel that way about them.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re like, wow, this is really big.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re impressed that this is really big.
5
SPEAKER_00
But he s doing the same space stuff Elon s doing, but they don t necessarily ascribe the same sense of wonder, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Now let s take Elon.
5
SPEAKER_00
And again, this is pet theory.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t have much proof other than my own intuition.
5
SPEAKER_00
He is literally about living the future.
5
SPEAKER_00
Mars, space, it s about wonder.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s about going back to that feeling as a kid when you looked up to the stars and asked, is there life out there?
5
SPEAKER_00
People get behind that because it s a sense of hope and excitement and innovation.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you can say whatever you want, but we ascribe that emotion to that person.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, let s say you re on a social network and people make you kind of angry because they disagree with you, or they say something ridiculous, or they re living a FOMO type life where you re like, wow, I wish I was doing that thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think Instagram, if I were to think back, by and large, when I was there, was not about FOMO, was not about this influencer economy, although it certainly became that way closer to the end.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was about the sense of wonder and happiness and beautiful things in the world.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, I mean, I don t want to have a blind spot, but I don t think anyone had a strong opinion about me one way or the other.
5
SPEAKER_01
For the longest time, the way people explained to me, I mean, if you want to go for toxicity, you go to Facebook or Twitter.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you want to go to feel good about life, you go to Instagram to enjoy, celebrate life.
5
SPEAKER_00
And my experience when talking to people is they gave me the benefit of the doubt because of that.
5
SPEAKER_00
But if your experience of the product kind of makes you angry, it s where you argue,
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, a big part of Jack might be that he wasn t actually the CEO for a very long time and only became recently.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I m not sure how much of the connection got made.
5
SPEAKER_00
But in general, I mean, if you hate, you know.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m just thinking about other companies that are in tech companies, if you hate like what a company is doing or it makes you not feel happy.
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I don t know, people are really angry about Comcast or whatever.
5
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Are they even called Comcast anymore?
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SPEAKER_00
It s like Xfinity or something, right?
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SPEAKER_00
They had to rebrand.
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They became meta, right?
5
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But my point is, if it makes you angry- That s beautiful, yeah.
5
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But the thing is,
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This is me saying this.
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I think your thesis is very strong and correct, has elements of correctness, but I still personally put some blame on individuals.
5
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Of course.
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I think you said, Elon, looking up, there s something about childlike wonder to him.
5
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to his personality, his character.
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Something about, I think more so than others, where people can trust him.
5
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And there s, I don t know, Sandra Prachai is an example of somebody who s like, there s some kind, it s hard to put into words, but there s something about the human being where he s trustworthy.
5
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He s human in a way that connects to us.
5
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And the same with Sajjan Nadella.
5
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I mean, some of these folks,
5
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Something about us is drawn to them, even when they re flawed.
5
SPEAKER_01
So your thesis really holds up for Steve Jobs, because I think people didn t like Steve Jobs, but he delivered products and then they fell in love every time.
5
SPEAKER_01
I guess you could say that the CEO, the leader, is also a product.
5
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And if they keep delivering a product that people like by being public and saying things that people like, that s also a way to make people happy.
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But from a social network perspective, it makes me wonder how difficult it is to explain to people why certain things happen, like to explain machine learning.
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to explain why certain, the woke mob effect happens, or the certain kinds of like bullying happens, which is like, it s human nature combined with algorithm, and it s very difficult to control for, how the spread of quote unquote misinformation happens.
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It s very difficult to control for that.
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So you try to decelerate certain parts and you create more problems than you solve.
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And anything that looks at all like censorship can create huge amounts of problems.
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It s a slippery slope.
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And then you have to inject humans to oversee the machine learning algorithms.
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And anytime you inject humans into the system, it s gonna create a huge number of problems.
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And I feel like it s up to the leader to communicate that effectively, to be transparent.
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First of all, design products that don t have those problems.
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And second of all, when they have those problems, to be able to communicate with them.
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I guess that s all going to, when you run a social network company, your job is hard.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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I will say the one element that you haven t named that I think you re getting at is just bedside manner, which Steve Jobs, I never worked for him.
5
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I never met him in person.
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had an uncanny ability in public to have bedside manner.
5
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I mean, some of the best clips of Steve Jobs from like, I wanna say, maybe the 80s when he s on the stage and getting questions from the audience about life.
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And he ll take this question that is like, how are you gonna compete with blah?
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And it s super boring.
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And I don t even know the name of the company.
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And his answer is as if you just asked like your grandfather the meaning of life.
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Yeah, and you sit there and you re just like, what, like, yeah, and there s that bedside manner.
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And if you lack that, or if that s just not intuitive to you, I think that it can be a lot
6
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harder to gain the trust of people.
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SPEAKER_01
And then add on top of that, missteps of companies, right?
6
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It s, I don t know if you have any friends from the past where like, maybe they crossed you once or like, maybe you get back together and you re friends again, but you just never really forget that thing.
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It s human nature not to forget.
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I m Russian.
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You crossed me once.
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We solved the problem.
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So my point is it, there s,
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Humans don t forget.
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And if there are times in the past where they feel like they don t trust the company or the company hasn t had their back, that is really hard to earn back, especially if you don t have that bedside manner.
6
SPEAKER_01
And again, like I m not attributing this specifically to Mark because I think a lot of companies have this issue where
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One, you have to be trustworthy of the company and live by it and live by those actions.
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And then two, I think you need to be able to be really relatable in a way that s very difficult if you re worth what these people are.
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It s really hard.
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Yeah.
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Jack does a pretty good job of this by being a monk.
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But I also, like, Jack eschews attention.
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Like, he s not out there almost on purpose.
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He s just working hard, doing square, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, I literally shared a desk like this with him at Odio.
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I mean, just normal guy who likes painting.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, I remember he would leave early on, like, Wednesdays or something to go to, like, a painting class.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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And he s creative, he s thoughtful.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, money makes people like more creative and more thoughtful, like extreme versions of themselves, right?
6
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And this was a long, long time ago.
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SPEAKER_00
You mentioned that he asked you to do some kind of JavaScript thing.
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We were working on some JavaScript together.
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SPEAKER_01
I like,
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That s hilarious, like pre-Twitter, early Twitter days, you and Jack Dorsey are in a room together talking about JavaScript, solving some kind of menial problem.
6
SPEAKER_01
Terrible problems, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, not terrible, just like boring, boring widget problem.
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I think it was the ODO widget we were working on at the time.
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I m surprised anyone paid me to be in the room as an intern, because I didn t really provide any value.
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I m very thankful to anyone who included me back in the day.
6
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It was very helpful.
6
SPEAKER_01
So thank you for listening.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, is there Odia that s a precursor to Twitter?
6
SPEAKER_00
First of all, did you have any anticipation that this Jack Dorsey guy could be also ahead of a major social network?
6
SPEAKER_00
And second, did you learn anything from the guy that like, do you think it s a coincidence that you two were in the room together?
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SPEAKER_00
And it s the coincidence meaning like, why does the world play its game in a certain way where these two founders of social networks?
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s so weird, right?
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Like, I mean, it s also weird that
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Mark showed up in our fraternity my sophomore year and we got to know each other then like long before Instagram.
6
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It s a small world, but let me tell a fun story about Jack.
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We re at Odeo and I don t know, I think Ev was feeling like people weren t working hard enough or something.
6
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And I can t remember exactly what he, he created this thing where every Friday,
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if it was every Friday.
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SPEAKER_01
I only remember this happening once.
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But he had like a statuette, it s like of Mary.
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And in the bottom, it s hollow, right?
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And I remember on a Friday, Ev decided he was going to let everyone vote for who had worked the hardest that week.
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We all voted.
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Closed ballot, right?
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SPEAKER_01
We all put it in a bucket.
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SPEAKER_01
And he tallied the votes.
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SPEAKER_01
And then whoever got the most votes, as I recall, got the statuette.
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SPEAKER_01
And in the statuette was 1,000 bucks.
6
SPEAKER_01
I recall there was 1,000 bucks.
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SPEAKER_01
It might ve been 100 bucks, but let s call it 1,000.
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SPEAKER_01
It s more exciting that way.
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SPEAKER_00
It felt like 1,000, yeah.
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It did to me for sure.
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I actually got two votes.
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I was very happy.
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We were a small company, but as the intern, I got at least two votes.
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SPEAKER_00
So everybody knew how many votes they got individually?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
And I think it was one of these self-accountability things.
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SPEAKER_01
Anyway, I remember Jack just getting like the vast majority of votes from everyone.
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And I remember just thinking like, I couldn t imagine he would become what he d become and do what he would do, but I had a profound respect that the new guy who I really liked worked that hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you could see his dedication even then, and that people respected him.
6
SPEAKER_01
But that s the one story that I remember of him, like working with him specifically from that summer.
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SPEAKER_00
Can I take a small tangent on that?
6
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
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SPEAKER_00
There s kind of a pushback in Silicon Valley, a little bit against hard work.
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SPEAKER_00
Can you speak to the sort of, the thing you admire to see the new guy working so hard, that thing, what is the value of that thing in a company?
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SPEAKER_01
See, this is, like, just to be very frank, it drives me nuts.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, I saw this really funny video on TikTok.
6
SPEAKER_01
Was it on TikTok?
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SPEAKER_01
It was like, I m taking a break from my mental health to work on my career.
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SPEAKER_01
I thought that was funny.
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SPEAKER_01
So it s like, oh, it is kind of phrased that way, the opposite often, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
Um, okay.
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SPEAKER_01
So a couple things, uh, I, uh, I have worked so hard.
6
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to do the things that I did.
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SPEAKER_01
Like Mike and I lost years off of our lives, staying up late, figuring things out, the stress that comes with the job.
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I have a lot more gray hair now than I did back then.
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It requires an enormous amount of work and most people aren t successful, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
But even the ones that do don t skate by.
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I am okay if people choose not to work hard because I don t actually think there s anything in this world that says you have to work hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
but I do think that great things require a lot of hard work.
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So there s no way you can expect to change the world without working really hard.
6
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And by the way, even changing the world, you know, the folks that I respect the most have nudged the world in like a slight direction, slight, very, very slight.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like even if Elon accomplishes all the things he wants to accomplish, we will have nudged the world in a slight direction, but it requires enormous amount.
6
SPEAKER_01
There was an interview with him where he was just like, he was interviewed, I think at the Tesla factory.
6
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And he was like, work is really hard.
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This is actually unhealthy.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I can t recall the exact, but he was like visibly shaken about how hard he had been working.
6
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And he was like, this is bad.
6
SPEAKER_01
And unfortunately, I think to have great outcomes, you actually do need to work at like three standard deviations above the mean.
6
SPEAKER_01
But there s nothing saying that people have to go for that.
6
SPEAKER_00
See, the thing is, but what I would argue, this is my personal opinion, is nobody has to do anything, first of all.
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SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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They certainly don t have to work hard.
6
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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But
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I think hard work in a company should be admired.
6
SPEAKER_01
I do too.
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And you should not feel like
6
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you shouldn t feel good about yourself for not working hard.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, so for example, I don t have to work out.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t have to run.
6
SPEAKER_00
I hate running, but like, I certainly don t feel good if I don t run because I know for my health, like there s certain values, I guess is what I m trying to get at.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s certain values that you have in life.
6
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It feels like there s certain values that companies should have and hard work is one of the things.
6
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I think that should be admired.
6
SPEAKER_00
I often ask this kind of silly question just to get a sense of people, like if I m hiring and so on.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just ask if they think it s better to work hard or work smart.
6
SPEAKER_00
it was helpful for me to get a sense of people from that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because you think like the right- The answer s both.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s that?
6
SPEAKER_00
The answer s both.
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SPEAKER_00
The answer s both.
6
SPEAKER_00
I usually try not to give them that, but sometimes I ll say both if that s an option.
6
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of people kind of, a surprising number will say work smart.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there are usually people who don t know how to work smart.
6
SPEAKER_00
and they re literally just lazy.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s two effects behind that.
6
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One is laziness and the other is ego.
6
SPEAKER_00
When you re younger and you say it s better to work smart, it means you think you know what it means to work smart at this early stage.
6
SPEAKER_00
To me, people that say work hard or both, they have the humility to understand like, I m going to have to work my ass off because I m too dumb to know how to work smart.
6
SPEAKER_00
And people who are self-critical in this way, in some small amount, you have to have some confidence.
6
SPEAKER_00
But if you have humility, that means you re going to actually eventually figure out what it means to work smart.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then to actually be successful, you should do both.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I have a very particular take on this, which is that,
6
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No one s forcing you to do anything.
6
SPEAKER_01
All choices have consequences.
6
SPEAKER_01
So if you major in, I don t know, theoretical literature, I don t even know if that s a major.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m just making something up.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s supposed to be regular literature.
6
SPEAKER_00
Applied literature.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, think about like theoretical.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Spanish lit from the 14th century.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like just make, make up your esoteric thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then the number of people I went to Stanford with who get out in the world and they re like, wait, what?
6
SPEAKER_01
I can t find a job.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like no one wants a theoretical, like there are plenty of counter examples of people have majored in esoteric things and gone on to be very successful.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I just want to be clear.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s not about the major, but every choice you make, whether it s to have kids, like,
6
SPEAKER_01
I love my children.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s so awesome to have two kids.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it is so hard to work really hard and also have kids.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s really hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there s a reason why certain very successful people like don t have, or not successful, but people who run very, very large companies or startups have chosen not to have kids for a while or chosen not to like prioritize them.
6
SPEAKER_01
Everything s a choice.
6
SPEAKER_01
And like, I choose to prioritize my children because like, I want to do that, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
So everything s a choice.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now, once you ve made that choice, I think it s important that the contract is clear, which is to say, let s imagine you were joining a new startup.
6
SPEAKER_01
it s important that that startup communicate that like the expectation is like, we re all working really, really hard right now.
6
SPEAKER_01
You don t have to join this startup.
6
SPEAKER_01
But like, if you do just know, like you re, it s almost as if you join, I don t know, pick your, pick your, pick your like sports team.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, let s go back to the Yankees for a second.
6
SPEAKER_01
You want to join the Yankees, but you don t really want to work that hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
You don t really want to do batting practice or pitching practice or whatever for your position, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
That to me is wacko.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s actually the world that it feels like we live in in tech sometimes, where people both want to work for the Yankees because it pays a lot.
6
SPEAKER_01
but like don t actually want to work that hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
That I don t fully understand because if you sign up for some of these things, just sign up for it, but it s okay if you don t want to sign up for it.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s so many wonderful careers in this world that don t require 80 hours a week.
6
SPEAKER_01
But when I read about companies going to like four day work weeks and stuff, I just like, I chuckle because I can t get enough done with a seven day week.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t know how,
6
SPEAKER_01
And people will say, oh, you re just not working smart.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, no, I work pretty smart, I think, in general.
6
SPEAKER_01
I wouldn t have gotten to this point if I hadn t some amount of working smart.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there is balance, though.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I used to be a pretty big cyclist.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t do it much anymore just because of kids and prioritizing other things, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
But one of the most important things to learn as a cyclist is to take a rest day.
6
SPEAKER_01
But to me and to cyclists, like resting is a function of optimizing for the long run.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s not like a thing that you do for its own merits.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s actually like, if you don t rest, your muscles don t recover.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then you re just not as like, you re not training as efficiently.
6
SPEAKER_00
You should probably, the successful people I ve known in terms of athletes, they hate rest days.
6
SPEAKER_00
But they know they have to do it for the long term.
6
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
6
SPEAKER_00
They think their opposition is getting stronger and stronger.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s the feeling.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you know it s the right thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
And usually you need a coach to help you.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, totally.
6
SPEAKER_01
So, I mean, I use this thing called training peaks, and it s interesting because it actually mathematically shows where you are on the curve and all this stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
But you have to have that rest, but it s a function of going harder for longer.
6
SPEAKER_01
Again, it s this reinforcement learning, like planning the aggregate and the long.
6
SPEAKER_01
But a lot of people will hide behind laziness by saying that they re trying to optimize for the long run, and they re not.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re just not working very hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
But again, you don t have to sign up for it.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s totally cool.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like I don t think less of people for like not working super hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s just like, don t sign up for things that require working super hard.
6
SPEAKER_00
And some of that requires for the leadership to have the guts, the boldness to communicate effectively at the very beginning.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, sometimes I think most of the problems arise from the fact that the leadership is kind of hesitant.
6
SPEAKER_00
to communicate the socially difficult truth of what it takes to be at this company.
6
SPEAKER_00
So they kind of say, hey, come with us, we have snacks, you know.
6
SPEAKER_01
Unlimited vacation.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, Ray at Bridgewater is always fascinating because, you know, people, it s been called like a cult on the outside or cult-ish.
6
SPEAKER_01
But what s fascinating is like, they just don t give on their principles.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re like, listen, this is what it s like to work here.
6
SPEAKER_01
We record every meeting.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re like brutally honest.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s not gonna feel right to everyone.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if it doesn t feel right to you, totally cool.
6
SPEAKER_01
Just go work somewhere else.
6
SPEAKER_01
But if you work here, you are signing up for this.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s been fascinating to me because it s honesty up front.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s a system in which you operate.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if it s not for you, like no one s forcing you to work there, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
I actually did.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I did a conversation with him and kind of got stuck in a funny moment, which is at the end I asked him to give me honest feedback of how I did on the interview.
6
SPEAKER_00
Did he?
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t think so, he was super nice.
6
SPEAKER_00
He asked me, he s like, well, tell me, did you accomplish what you were hoping to accomplish?
6
SPEAKER_00
I was like, that s not, I m asking you as an objective observer of two people talking, how do we do today?
6
SPEAKER_00
And then he s like, well, he gave me this politician answer.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, I feel like we ve accomplished successful communication of like ideas, which is, I d love to spread some of the ideas in that, like in principles and so on.
6
SPEAKER_01
Back to my original point, it s really hard to get feedback.
6
SPEAKER_00
Even for Ray Dalio.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s really hard to give feedback.
6
SPEAKER_01
And one of the other things I learned from him and just people in that world is like,
6
SPEAKER_01
Man, humans really like to pretend like they ve come to, that they ve come to some kind of meeting of the minds.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like if there s conflict, if you and I have conflict, it s always better to meet face-to-face, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Or on the phone.
6
SPEAKER_01
Slack is not great, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Email s not great, but face-to-face.
6
SPEAKER_01
But what s crazy is you and I get together and we actively try to, even if we re not actually solving the conflict, we actively try to paper over the conflict.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah, it didn t really bother me that much.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah, I m sure you didn t mean it.
6
SPEAKER_01
But like, no, in our minds, we re still there.
6
SPEAKER_01
So this is one of the things that as a leader, you always have to be digging, especially as you ascend.
6
SPEAKER_00
Straight to the conflict.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but as you ascend, no one wants to tell you you re crazy.
6
SPEAKER_01
No one wants to tell you your idea is bad.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, oh, I m going to be a leader.
6
SPEAKER_01
And the idea is, well, I m just going to ask people.
6
SPEAKER_01
No one tells you.
6
SPEAKER_01
So like, you have to look for the markers, knowing that literally just people aren t going to tell you along the way.
6
SPEAKER_01
And be paranoid.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you asked about selling, you know, the company, I think one of the biggest differences between me and a lot of other entrepreneurs is like, I wasn t completely confident we could do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like we could be
6
SPEAKER_01
alone and actually be great.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if any entrepreneur is honest with you, they also feel that way.
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But a lot of people are like, well, I have to be cocky and just say, I can do this on my own.
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We re going to be fine.
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We re going to crush everyone.
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Some people do say that, and then it s not right and they fail.
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being honest in that moment with yourself, with those close to you.
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And also you talked about the personality of leaders and who resonates and who doesn t.
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It s rare that I see leaders be vulnerable, rare.
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And one thing I tried to do at Instagram, at least internally, was like say when I screwed up and like point out how I was wrong about things and point out where my judgment was off.
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Everyone thinks they have to bat 1,000, right?
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That s crazy.
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The best quant hedge funds in the world bat 50.001%.
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They just take a lot of bets, right?
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Renaissance.
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They might bat 51%, right?
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But holy hell, the question isn t are you right every single time and you have to seem invincible.
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The question is, how many at-bats do you get?
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And on average, are you better on average, right?
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With enough bets and enough at-bats that your aggregate can be very high.
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I mean, Steve Jobs was wrong at a lot of stuff.
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The Newton, too early, right?
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Next, not quite right.
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There was even a time when he said, like, no one will ever want to watch video on the iPod.
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Totally wrong.
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But who cares if you come around and realize your mistake and fix it?
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It becomes just like you said harder and harder when your ego grows and the number of people around you that say positive things towards you grows and I actually think it s really valuable that
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Like let s imagine a counterfactual where Instagram became worth like $300 billion or something crazy, right?
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I kind of like that my life is relatively normal now.
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When I say relatively, you get what I mean.
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I m not making a claim that I live a normal life, but like, I certainly don t live in a world where there are like 15 Sherpas following me, like fetching me water or whatever.
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Like, that s not how it works.
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I actually like that I,
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have a sense of humility of like, I may not found another thing that s nearly as big, so I have to work twice as hard, or I have to like learn twice as much.
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I have to, we haven t talked about machine learning yet, but my favorite thing is all these like famous, you know, tech guys
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who have worked in the industry pontificating about the future of machine learning and how it s going to kill us all.
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And I m pretty sure they ve never tried to build anything with machine learning themselves.
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Yes.
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So there s a nice line between people that actually build stuff with a machine, like actually program something, or at least understand someone s fundamentals, and the people that are just saying philosophical stuff for journalists and so on.
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It s an interesting line to walk because the people who program are often not philosophers.
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Or don t have the attention.
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They can t write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.
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It doesn t work.
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So it s nice to be both a little bit, to have elements of both.
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My point is the fact that I have to learn stuff from scratch or, or that I choose to, or like, uh, yeah, I mean, again, I have a lot of advantages.
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I like, but my point is it s awesome to be back in a game where you have to fight.
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That is, that s fun.
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So being humble, being vulnerable.
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It s an important aspect of a leader, and I hope it serves me well, but I can t fast forward 10 years to know.
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That s my game plan.
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Before I forget, I have to ask you one last thing on Instagram.
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What do you think about the whistleblower, Francis Haugen, recently coming out and saying that Facebook is aware of Instagram s harmful effect on teenage girls as per their own internal research studies on the matter?
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What do you think about this baby of yours, Instagram, being under fire now, as we ve been talking about, under the leadership of Facebook?
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You know, I often question
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where does the blame lie?
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Is the blame at the people that originated the network, me, right?
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Uh, is the blame at like the decision to combine the network with another network with a certain set of values?
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Um, is the blame at how it gets run after I left?
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Like is, is it the driver or is it the car?
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Right.
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Um,
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Is it that someone enabled these devices in the first place?
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If you go to an extreme, right?
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Or is it the users themselves, just human nature?
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Is it just the way of human nature?
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Sure, and like the idea that we re going to find a mutually exclusive answer here is crazy.
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There s not one place.
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It s a combination of a lot of these things.
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And then the question is like, is it true at all?
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Right?
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Like I m not actually saying that s not true or that it s true, but there s always more nuance here.
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Do I believe that social media has an effect on young people?
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Well, it s got to.
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They use it a lot.
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And I bet you there are a lot of positive effects, and I bet you there are negative effects, just like any technology.
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And where I ve come to in my thinking on this is that I think any technology has negative side effects.
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The question is, as a leader, what do you do about them?
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And are you actively working on them, or do you just not really believe in them?
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If you re a leader that sits there and says, well, we re going to put an enormous amount of resources against this.
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We re going to acknowledge when there are true criticisms, we re going to be vulnerable and that we re not perfect.
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And we re going to go fix them and we re going to be held accountable along the way.
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I think that people generally really respect that.
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But I think that where Facebook I think has had issues in the past is where they say things like, I can t remember what Mark said about misinformation during the election.
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There was that like famous quote where he was like, it s pretty crazy to think that Facebook had anything to do with this election.
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Like that was something like that quote.
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And I don t remember what stage he was on.
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But ooh, that did not age well, right?
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you have to be willing to say, well, maybe there s something there and wow, like I want to go look into it and truly believe it in your gut.
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But if people look at you and how you act and what you say and don t believe you truly feel that way.
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It s not just the words you say, but how you say them and that people believe that you actually feel the pain of having caused any suffering in the world.
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So to me, it s much more about your actions and your posture post event than it is about debugging the why.
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Cause I don t know,
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Like, I don t know this research.
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It was written well after I left, right?
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Like, is it the algorithm?
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Is it the Explorer page?
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Is it the people you might know unit connecting you to, you know, ideas that are dangerous?
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Like, I really don t know.
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So we d have to have a much deeper, I think, dive to understand where the blame lies.
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What s very unpleasant to me to consider, now, I don t know if this is true, but to consider the very fact that there might be some complicated games being played here.
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For example, as somebody, I really love psychology, and I love it enough to know that the field is pretty broken in the following way.
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It s very difficult to study human beings well at scale, because the questions you ask affect the results.
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You can basically get any results you want.
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And so you have an internal Facebook study that asks some question of which we don t know the full details, and there s some kind of analysis, but that s just the one little tiny slice into some much bigger picture.
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And so you can have thousands of employees at Facebook, one of them comes out and picks whatever narrative, knowing that they become famous, coupled with the other really uncomfortable thing
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I see in the world, which is journalists seem to understand they get a lot of clickbait attention from saying something negative about social networks.
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Certain companies, like they even get some clickbait stuff about Tesla or about
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especially when it s like, when there s a public famous CEO type of person, if they get a lot of views on the negative, not the positive.
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The positive they ll get, I mean, it actually goes to the thing you were saying before.
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If there s a hot, sexy new product, that s great to look forward to.
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They get positive on that, but absent a product, it s nice to have like the CEO messing up in some kind of way.
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And so couple that with the whistleblower and with the,
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this whole dynamic of journalism and so on, with Social Dilemma being a really popular documentary.
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It s like, all right, my concern is there s deep flaws in human nature here in terms of things we need to deal with, like the nature of hate, of bullying, all those kinds of things.
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And then there s people who are trying to use that
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potentially to become famous and make money off of blaming others for causing more of the problem as opposed to helping solve the problem.
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So I don t know what to think.
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I m not saying this is like, I m just uncomfortable with, I guess, not knowing what to think about any of this.
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Because a bunch of folks I know that work at Facebook on the machine learning side, so Yann LeCun, I mean, they re quite upset by what s happening.
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Because there s a lot of really brilliant, good people inside Facebook that are trying to do good.
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And so all of this press, Yann is one of them.
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And he has an amazing team of machine learning researchers.
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he s really upset with the fact that people don t seem to understand that this, this is not, the portrayal does not represent the full nature of efforts that s going on at Facebook.
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So I don t know what to think about that.
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Well, you just, I think very helpfully explained the nuance of the situation and why it s so hard to understand.
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But a couple of things.
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One is, um,
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I think I have been surprised at the scale with which some product manager can do an enormous amount of harm to a very, very large company by releasing a trove of documents.
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Like I think I read a couple of them when they got published and I haven t even spent any time going deep.
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Part of it s like, I don t really feel like reliving a previous life, but
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Wow.
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Like talk about challenging the idea of open culture and like what that does to Facebook internally.
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If Facebook was built like I remember.
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Like my office, uh, we had this like no visitors rule around my office.
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Cause we always had like confidential stuff up on the walls and never was super angry.
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Cause they re like, that goes against our culture of transparency and like marks in the fish cube or whatever they call it.
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The aquarium, I think they called it.
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Um, we re like, literally anyone could see what he was doing at any point.
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And, um, and I don t know, I mean, other companies like Apple have been quiet slash lockdown.
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Snapchat s the same way for a reason.
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I don t know what this does to transparency on the inside of startups that value that.
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I think that it s a seminal moment.
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And you can say, well, you should have nothing to hide.
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Right.
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But to your point, you can pick out documents that show anything.
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Right.
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But I don t know.
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So what happens to transparency inside of startups and the culture that
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will have that that startups or companies in the future will grow like the startup of the future that becomes the next Facebook will be locked down.
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And what does that do?
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Right?
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So that s part one.
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Part two.
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Like, I don t think that you could design a more like a well orchestrated handful of events from the like 16 minutes to
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releasing the documents in the way that they were released at the right time.
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That takes a lot of planning and partnership.
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And it seems like she has a partner at some firm, right, that probably helped a lot with this.
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But man, at a personal level, if you re her, you d have to really believe in what you are doing, really believe in it, because you are personally putting your ass on the line, right?
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Like, you ve got a very large company that doesn t like enemies, right?
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It takes a lot of guts.
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And I don t love these conspiracy theories about like, oh, she s being financed from some person or people.
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Like I don t love them because that s like the easy thing to say.
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I think the Occam s razor here is like someone thought they were doing something wrong and was like very, very courageous.
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And I don t know if courageous is the word, but like, so
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without getting into like, is she a martyr?
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Is she courageous?
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Is she right?
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Like, let s put that aside for a second.
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Then there are the documents themselves.
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They say what they say.
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to your point, a lot of the things that like people have been worried about are already in the documents or they re already been said externally.
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And I don t know, I m just like, I m thankful that I am focused on new things with my life.
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Well, let me just say, I just think it s a really hard problem that probably Facebook and Twitter are trying to solve.
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I m actually just fascinated by how hard this problem is.
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There are fundamental issues at Facebook in tone and in an approach of how product gets built and the objective functions.
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And since people, organizations are not people.
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So yawn and fair, right?
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Like there are a lot of really great people who like literally just want to push reinforcement learning forward.
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They literally just want to teach a robot to touch, feel, lift, right?
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Like,
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They re not thinking about political misinformation, right?
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But there s a there s a strong connection between what funds that research and an enormously profitable machine that has trade-offs.
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And one cannot
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one cannot separate the two.
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You are not completely separate from the system.
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So I agree, it can feel really frustrating to feel if you re internally internal there, that you re working on something completely unrelated and you feel like your group s good.
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I can understand that.
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But there s some responsibility still you have to acknowledge.
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It s like the Roy Dalio thing.
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You have to look in the mirror and see if there s problems and you have to fix those problems.
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Yeah.
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You ve mentioned machine learning reinforcement quite a bit.
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I mean, to me, social networks is one of the exciting places, the recommender systems where machine learning is applied.
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Where else in the world, in the space of possibilities over the next five, 10, 20 years, do you think we re going to see impact of machine learning?
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When you try it on a philosophical level, on a technical level, what do you think?
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Or within social networks themselves?
7
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Well, I think the obvious answers are...
7
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climate change, right?
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Like think about how much fuel or just waste there is in energy consumption today because we don t plan accordingly, because we take the least efficient route or... The logistics and stuff, the supply chain, all that kind of stuff.
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Yeah.
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I mean, listen, if we re going to fight climate change, like one really way, one awesome way to do it is figure out how to optimize how we operate as a species and
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and minimize the amount of energy we consume to maximize whatever economic impact we wanna have.
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Because right now those two are very much tied together.
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And I don t believe that that has to be the case.
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There s this really interesting, you ve read it.
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For people who are listening, there s this really interesting paper on reinforcement learning and energy consumption inside buildings.
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It s like one of the seminal ones, right?
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But imagine that at massive scale.
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That s super interesting.
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I mean, they ve done,
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like resource planning for servers for peak load using reinforcement learning.
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I don t know if that was at Google or somewhere else, but like, okay, great.
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You do it for servers, but what if you could do it for just capacity in general energy capacity for cities and planning for traffic?
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And of course there s all the self-driving cars and I don t know, like I m not going to pontificate like crazy ideas using reinforcement learning or machine learning.
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It s just so clear to me that humans don t think quickly enough.
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So it s interesting to think about machine learning, helping a little bit at scale.
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So a little bit to a large number of people that has a huge impact.
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So if you optimize, say Google maps, something like that, trajectory planning, or what a map quest first.
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Getting here, I looked and it was like, here s the most energy efficient route.
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And I was like, I m going to be late.
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I need to take the fastest route.
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As opposed to unrolling the map.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Like, and that s going to be very inefficient no matter
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I was definitely the other day, like part of the Epsilon of Epsilon Greedy with Waze, where like I was sent on like a weird route that I could tell they re like, we just need to collect data of this road.
7
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Kevin s definitely going to be the guinea pig.
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And great.
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Now we have... Did you at least feel pride?
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Oh, going through it, I was like, oh, this is fun.
7
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Like now they get data about this weird shortcut.
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And actually I hit all the green lights and it worked.
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I m like, this is a problem.
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This is bad data.
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Bad data.
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They re just going to imagine.
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I could see you slowing down and stopping at a green light just to give them the right kind of data.
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But to answer your question, like, I feel like that was fairly unsatisfying.
7
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And it s easy to say climate change.
7
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But what I would say is, at Instagram, everything we applied machining learning to got better for users, and it got better, better for the company, I saw the power, I didn t fully understand it as an executive.
7
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And I think that s actually one of the issues that, uh,
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And when I say understand, I mean the mathematics of it.
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Like, I understand what it does.
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I understand that it helps.
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But there are a lot of executives now that talk about it in the way that they talk about the internet, or they talked about the internet like 10 years ago.
7
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They re like, we re going to build mobile.
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And you re like, what does that mean?
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They re like, we re just going to do mobile.
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And you re like, OK.
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So my sense is the next generation of leaders will have grown up having had classes in reinforcement learning, supervised learning, whatever.
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And they will be able to thoughtfully apply it to their companies in the places it is needed most.
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And that s really cool because I mean, talk about efficiency gains.
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That s what excites me the most about it.
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Yeah, so there s, it s interesting just to get a fundamental first principles understanding of certain concepts of machine learning.
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So supervised learning from an executive perspective.
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Supervised learning, you have to have a lot of humans label a lot of data.
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So the question there is, okay, can we gather a large amount of data that can be labeled well?
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And that s the question Tesla asked, like, can we create a data engine that keeps
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sending an imperfect machine learning system out there.
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Whenever it fails, it gives us data back.
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We label it by human and we send it back and forth this way.
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Then there is, Yann LeCun s excited about this self-supervised learning, where you do much less human labeling and there s some kind of mechanism for the system to learn it by itself on the human-generated data.
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And then there s the reinforcement learning, which is like,
7
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basically allowing, it s applying the AlphaZero technology that allow through self-play to learn how to solve the game of Go and achieve incredible levels at the game of chess.
7
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Can you formulate the problem you re trying to solve in a way that s amenable to reinforcement learning?
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And can you get the right kind of signal at scale?
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Because you need a lot, a lot of signal.
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And that s kind of fascinating to see which part of a social network can you convert into a reinforcement learning problem.
7
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The fascinating thing about reinforcement learning, I think, is that we now have learned to apply neural networks to guess
7
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you know, Q, like the Q function, basically the values for any state in action.
7
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And that is fascinating because we used to just like, I don t know, have like a linear regression, like hope it worked.
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And that was the fanciest version of it.
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But now you look at it, I m like trying to learn this stuff.
7
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And I look at it, I m like, there are like 17 different acronyms of different ways you can try to apply this.
7
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No one quite agrees, like what s the best?
7
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Generally, if you re trying to like build a neural network, they re pretty well-trodden ways of doing that.
7
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You use Adam, you use Relu, you like, there s just like general good ideas.
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And in reinforcement learning, I feel like the consensus is like, it totally depends.
8
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And by the way, it s really hard to get it to converge and it s noisy.
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So there are all these really interesting ideas around building simulators.
8
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For instance, in self-driving, right?
8
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don t want to actually have someone get in an accident to learn that an accident is bad.
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So you start simulating accidents, simulating aggressive drivers, simulating crazy dogs that run into the street.
8
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Wow, fascinating, right?
8
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My mind starts racing.
8
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And then the question is, okay, forget about self-driving cars.
8
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Let s talk about social networks.
8
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how can you produce a better, more thoughtful experience using these types of algorithms?
8
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And honestly, in talking to some of the people that work at Facebook and old Instagrammers, most people are like, yeah, we tried a lot of things, didn t quite ever make it work.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, for the longest time, Facebook ads was effectively a logistic regression, okay?
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what it is now, but like, if you look at this paper that they published back in the day, it was literally just a logistic regression, made a lot of money.
8
SPEAKER_00
So even at these like extremely large scales, if we are not yet touching what reinforcement learning can truly do, imagine what the next 10 years looks like.
8
SPEAKER_01
How cool is that?
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SPEAKER_01
It s amazing.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I really like the use of reinforcement learning as part of the simulation, for example, like with self-driving cars, it s modeling pedestrians.
8
SPEAKER_01
So the nice thing about reinforcement learning, it can be used to learn agents within the world.
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SPEAKER_01
So they can learn to behave properly.
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SPEAKER_01
Like you can teach pedestrians
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SPEAKER_01
Like you don t hard code the way they behave.
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SPEAKER_01
They learn how to behave.
8
SPEAKER_01
In that same way, I do have a hope, what is it, Jack Dorsey talks about healthy conversations.
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SPEAKER_01
He talked about meaningful interactions, I believe.
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SPEAKER_01
Like simulating interactions.
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SPEAKER_01
So you can learn how to manage that, it s fascinating.
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SPEAKER_01
So where most of your algorithm development happens in virtual worlds.
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SPEAKER_01
And then you can really learn how to design the interface, how you design much of aspects of the experience in terms of how you select what s shown in the feed, all those kinds of things.
8
SPEAKER_01
It feels like if you can connect reinforcement learning to that, that s super exciting.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yep, and I think if you have a company and leadership that believe in doing the right things and can apply this technology in the right way, some really special stuff can happen.
8
SPEAKER_00
It is mostly likely going to be a group of people we ve never heard about start up from scratch, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And you asked if like new social networks could be built.
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SPEAKER_00
I ve got to imagine they will be.
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SPEAKER_00
whoever starts it, it might be some kids in a garage that took these classes from these people, you, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And they re building all of these things with this tech at the core.
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SPEAKER_00
So I m trying not to be someone who just like throws around reinforcement learning as a buzzword.
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SPEAKER_00
I truly believe that it is the most cutting edge in what can happen in social networks.
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SPEAKER_00
And I also believe it s super hard.
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SPEAKER_00
Like it s super hard to make it work.
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SPEAKER_00
It s super hard to do it at scale.
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SPEAKER_00
It s super hard to find people that truly understand it.
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SPEAKER_00
So I m not going to say that like.
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SPEAKER_00
I think it ll be applied in social networks before we have true self-driving.
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SPEAKER_00
Let me put it that way.
8
SPEAKER_01
We could argue about this for a long time, but yes, I agree with you.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think self-driving is way harder than people realize.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, absolutely.
8
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask you, in terms of that kid in the garage or those couple of kids in the garage, what advice would you give to them if they want to start a new social network or a business?
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SPEAKER_01
What advice would you give to somebody with a big dream and a young startup?
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SPEAKER_00
To me, you have to choose to do something that even if it fails, it was so fun.
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SPEAKER_00
We never started Instagram knowing it was going to be big.
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SPEAKER_00
We started Instagram because we loved photography.
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SPEAKER_00
We loved social networks.
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SPEAKER_00
I had seen what other social networks had done and I thought, hmm,
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SPEAKER_00
Maybe we did a spin on this, but nowhere was our fate predestined.
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SPEAKER_00
It wasn t written out anywhere that everything was going to go great.
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SPEAKER_00
I often think the counterfactual.
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SPEAKER_00
What if it had not gone well?
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SPEAKER_00
I would have been like, I don t know.
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SPEAKER_00
That was fun.
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SPEAKER_00
We raised some money.
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SPEAKER_00
We learned some stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
And does it position you well for the next experience?
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SPEAKER_00
That s the advice that I would give to anyone wanting to start something today, which is like, does this meet with your ultimate goals?
8
SPEAKER_00
Not wealth, not fame, none of that.
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SPEAKER_00
Because all of that, by the way, is bullshit.
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SPEAKER_00
Like you can get super famous and super wealthy.
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SPEAKER_00
And I like, I think generally those are not things that
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SPEAKER_00
Again, it s easy to say with a lot of money that somehow it s not good to have a lot of money.
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SPEAKER_00
I think that complicates life enormously in a way that people don t fully comprehend.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I think it is way more interesting to shoot for, can I make something that people love, that provides value in the world, that I love building, that I love working on?
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SPEAKER_00
That s what I would do if I were starting from scratch.
8
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, like in some ways that I will do that personally, which is like, choose the thing that you get up every morning.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re like, I love this, even when it s painful.
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SPEAKER_01
Even when it s painful.
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SPEAKER_01
What about a social network specifically?
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SPEAKER_01
If you were to imagine, put yourself in the mind of some- I can t compete against myself.
8
SPEAKER_00
I can t give out ideas.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay, I got you.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, but it s like high level, you focus on community.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean,
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SPEAKER_00
I said that as a half joke.
8
SPEAKER_00
In all honesty, I think these things are so hard to build that ideas are a dime a dozen.
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SPEAKER_01
You have talked about keeping it simple.
8
SPEAKER_00
Can I tell you- Which is a liberating idea.
8
SPEAKER_00
My model is three circles and they overlap.
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SPEAKER_00
One circle is what do I have experience at slash what am I good at?
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SPEAKER_00
I don t like saying what am I good at because it just like seems like, what do I have experience in, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
What can I bring to the table?
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SPEAKER_00
What am I excited about is the other circle.
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SPEAKER_00
What s just super cool, right?
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SPEAKER_00
That I want to work on because even when this is hard, I think it s so cool I want to stick with it.
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SPEAKER_00
And the last circle is like, what does the world need?
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SPEAKER_00
And if that circle ain t there, it doesn t matter what you work on.
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SPEAKER_00
Cause there are a lot of startups that exist that just no one needs or very small markets need.
8
SPEAKER_00
But if you want to be successful, I think if you re like, if you re good at it, you have, sorry, if you re good at it, you re passionate about it and the world needs it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this sounds simple, but not enough people sit down and just think about those circles and think, do these things overlap?
8
SPEAKER_00
And can I get that middle section?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s small, but can I get that middle section?
8
SPEAKER_00
Um, I think a lot about that personally.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then you have to be really honest about the circle that you re good at and really honest about the circle that the world needs.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I suppose really honest about the passion.
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SPEAKER_01
Like what do you actually love?
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SPEAKER_01
As opposed to like some kind of dream of making money, all those kinds of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like literally love doing it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I had a former engineer who decided to start a startup.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, are you sure you want to start a company versus like join something else?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because being a coach of an NBA team and playing basketball are two very, very different things.
8
SPEAKER_00
And not everyone fully understands the difference.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think you can kind of do it both.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know, jury s out on that one because they re in the middle of it now.
8
SPEAKER_00
But it s really important to figure out what you re good at, not be full of yourself, truly look at your track record.
8
SPEAKER_00
What s the saying?
8
SPEAKER_00
It ain t bragging if you can do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
but too many people are delusional and like think they re better at things than they actually are or think there s a bigger market than there actually is.
8
SPEAKER_00
When you confuse your passion for things with a big market, that s really scary, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like just because you think it s cool doesn t mean that it s a big business opportunity.
8
SPEAKER_00
So like what evidence do you have?
8
SPEAKER_00
Again, I m a fairly like, I m a strict rationalist on this.
8
SPEAKER_00
And like sometimes people don t like working with me because I m pretty pragmatic about things.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like I m not,
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not Elon.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t sit and make bold proclamations about visiting Mars.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s just not how I work.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m like, okay, I want to build this really cool thing that s fairly practical and I think we could do it and it s in this way.
8
SPEAKER_00
What s cool though is that s just my sweet spot.
8
SPEAKER_00
I can t with a straight face talk about the metaverse.
8
SPEAKER_00
I can t.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s not me.
8
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about the Facebook renaming itself to Meta?
8
SPEAKER_00
I didn t mean that as a dig.
8
SPEAKER_00
I just literally mean like, I m fairly, I like to live in the next five years.
8
SPEAKER_00
And like, what things can I get out in a year that people will use at scale?
8
SPEAKER_00
And so it s just, again, those circles I think are different for different people, but it s important to realize that like, market matters, you being good at it matters, and having passion for it matters.
8
SPEAKER_00
Your question, sorry.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, on this topic in terms of funding, is there by way of advice?
8
SPEAKER_01
was funding in your own journey helpful, unhelpful?
8
SPEAKER_01
Like, is there a right time to get funding?
8
SPEAKER_01
Venture funding or anything, borrow some money from your parents, I don t know.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like, is money getting in the way?
8
SPEAKER_01
Does it help?
8
SPEAKER_01
Is the timing important?
8
SPEAKER_01
Is there some kind of wisdom you can give there?
8
SPEAKER_01
Because you were exceptionally successful very quickly.
8
SPEAKER_00
Funding helps as long as it s from the right people.
8
SPEAKER_00
That includes yourself.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I ll talk about myself funding myself in a second, which is like, because I can fund myself doing whatever projects I can do, I don t really have another person putting pressure on me except for myself.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that creates strange dynamics, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
But let s like talk about people getting funding from a venture capitalist initially.
8
SPEAKER_00
We raised money from Matt Kohler at Benchmark.
8
SPEAKER_00
He s a brilliant, amazing guy, very thoughtful, and he was very helpful early on.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I have stories from entrepreneurs where they raised money from the wrong person or the wrong firm where incentives weren t aligned, they didn t think in the same way, and bad things happened because of that.
8
SPEAKER_00
The boardroom was always noisy, there were fights.
8
SPEAKER_00
We just never had that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Matt was great.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think capital these days is kind of a dime a dozen, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
As long as you re fundable, it seems like there s money out there is what I m hearing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Um, it s really important that you are aligned and that you think of raising money as hiring someone for your team rather than taking money.
8
SPEAKER_00
If capital is plentiful, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
It provides a certain amount of pressure to do the right thing that I think is healthy for any startup.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it keeps you real and honest because they don t want to lose their money.
8
SPEAKER_00
They re paid to not lose their money.
8
SPEAKER_00
The problem, you know, maybe I could depersonalize it, but like, I remember having lunch with Elon.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s only happened once.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I asked him, like, I was trying to figure out what I was doing after Instagram, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And I asked him something about like angel investing.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he looked at me with a straight face.
8
SPEAKER_00
He was like, why the F would I do that?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, why?
8
SPEAKER_00
I was like, I don t know.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, you re connected.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, seems like, he s like, I only invest in myself.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was like, ooh.
8
SPEAKER_00
okay, you know, like, not the confidence, I was just like, what a novel idea.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like, yeah, if you have money, like, why not just put it against your bag and like, enable your visiting Mars or something, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, that s awesome, great.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I had never really thought of it that way.
8
SPEAKER_00
But also with that comes an interesting dynamic where you don t actually have,
8
SPEAKER_00
people who are going to lose that money telling you, hey, don t do this or hey, you need to face this reality.
8
SPEAKER_00
So you need to create other versions of that truth teller.
8
SPEAKER_00
And whatever I do next, that s gonna be one of the interesting challenges, is how do you create that truth-telling situation?
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s part of why, by the way, I think someone like Jack, when you start Square, you have money, but you still, you bring on partners because I think it creates a truth-telling type environment.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m still trying to figure this out.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s an interesting, it s an interesting dynamic.
8
SPEAKER_01
So you re thinking of perhaps launching some kind of venture where you re investing in yourself?
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, is that in the books potential?
8
SPEAKER_00
I m 37 going on 38 next month.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have a long life to live.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not definitely not going to sit on the beach.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I m going to do something at some point.
8
SPEAKER_00
And
8
SPEAKER_00
I got to imagine I will I will like help fund it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
So the other way of thinking about this is you could park your money in the S&P.
8
SPEAKER_00
And this is bad because the S&P has done wonderfully well the last year.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
Or you can invest in yourself.
8
SPEAKER_00
And if you re not going to invest in yourself, you probably shouldn t do a startup.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of the way of thinking about it.
8
SPEAKER_01
And you can invest in yourself in the way Elon does, which is basically go all in on this investment.
8
SPEAKER_01
Maybe that s one way to achieve accountability is like you re kind of screwed if you fail.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
I personally like that.
8
SPEAKER_01
I like burning bridges behind me so that I m fucked if it fails.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s really important though.
8
SPEAKER_00
One of the things I think Mark said to me early on
8
SPEAKER_00
that sticks with me that I think is true.
8
SPEAKER_00
We were talking about people who had left like operating roles and started doing venture or something.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, a lot of people convince themselves they work really hard.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like they think they work really hard and they put on the show and in their minds they work really hard, but they don t work very hard.
8
SPEAKER_00
There is something about lighting a fire underneath you and burning bridges such that you can t turn back.
8
SPEAKER_00
That I think, you know, we didn t talk about this specifically, but I think you re right.
8
SPEAKER_00
You need to have that because there s the self delusion at a certain scale.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I have so many board calls.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, like we have all these things to figure out.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like, this is one of the hard parts about it being an operator.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like, there are so many people that have made a lot of money not operating, but operating, it s just one of the hardest things on earth.
8
SPEAKER_00
It is just so effing hard.
8
SPEAKER_00
It is stressful.
8
SPEAKER_00
It is, you re dealing with real humans, not just like throwing capital in and hoping it grows.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not undermining the VC mindset.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a wonderful thing and needed and so many wonderful VCs I ve worked with.
8
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, like when your ass is on the line and it s your money, it s... Talk to me in 10 years, we ll see how it goes.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but like you re saying that as a source, when you wake up in the morning and you look forward to the day full of challenges, that s also where you can find happiness.
8
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask you about love and friendship.
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the role in this heck of a difficult journey you have been on of love, of friendship?
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the role of love in the human condition?
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, first things first, the woman I married, my wife, Nicole, there s no way I could do what I do if we weren t together.
8
SPEAKER_00
She had the filter idea.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
We didn t go over that story.
8
SPEAKER_00
Everything is a partnership, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And to achieve great things, it s not about like someone pulling their weight in places, like it s not like someone supporting you so that you could do this other thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s literally like,
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, Mike and I and our partnership as co-founders is fascinating because I don t think Instagram would have happened without that partnership.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like either him or me alone, no way.
8
SPEAKER_00
We pushed and pulled each other in a way that allowed us to build a better thing because of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Nicole, sure, she pushed me to work on the filters early on.
8
SPEAKER_00
And yes, that s exciting.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a fun story, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
But the truth of it is being able to level with someone about how hard the process is and have someone see you for who you are before Instagram and know that there s a constant you throughout all of this.
8
SPEAKER_00
and be able to call you when you re drifting from that, but also support you when you re trying to stick with that.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s, I mean, that s true friendship slash love, whatever you want to call it, but also it s for someone not to care.
8
SPEAKER_00
I remember Nicole saying, hey, like, I know you re going to do this Instagram thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
You should, I guess it was bourbon at the time.
8
SPEAKER_00
You should do it because, you know, even if it doesn t work, we can move to like a smaller apartment and it ll be fine.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like we ll make it work.
8
SPEAKER_00
How beautiful is that, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s almost like a superpower.
8
SPEAKER_01
It gives you permission to fail and somehow that actually leads to success.
8
SPEAKER_00
But also she s like the least impressed about Instagram of anyone.
8
SPEAKER_00
She s like, yeah, it s great, but like, I love you for you.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, I like that you re like a decent cook.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s beautiful.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s beautiful.
8
SPEAKER_01
With the Gantt chart and Thanksgiving, which I still think is a brilliant effing idea.
8
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
8
SPEAKER_01
Big ridiculous question.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re old and wise at this stage, so have you discovered meaning to this whole thing?
8
SPEAKER_01
Why the hell are we descendants of apes here on Earth?
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the meaning of it?
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the meaning of life?
8
SPEAKER_00
I haven t.
8
SPEAKER_00
So the best learning for me has been no matter what level of success you achieve, you re still worried about similar things, maybe on a slightly different scale.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re still concerned about the same thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re still self-conscious about the same things.
8
SPEAKER_00
And actually that moment going through that,
8
SPEAKER_00
is what makes you believe there s got to be like more machinery to life or purpose to life and that that we re all chasing these materialistic things but you start start realizing like um it s almost like you know the truman show when he gets the edge and he like knocks against it he s like what like
8
SPEAKER_00
there s this awakening that happens when you get to that edge that you realize, oh, like, sure, it s great.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s great that we all chase money and fame and success.
8
SPEAKER_00
But you hit the edge.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I m not even claiming I hit an edge like like Elon s hit an edge, like there s clearly larger scales.
8
SPEAKER_00
But what s cool is
9
SPEAKER_01
you learn that like it doesn t actually matter and that there are all these other things that truly matter.
9
SPEAKER_01
Um, that s not a case for working less hard.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s not a case for taking it easy.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s not a case for the four day work.
9
SPEAKER_01
We, what that is a case for is designing your life exactly the way you want to design it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Cause I don t know.
9
SPEAKER_01
I, I think we go around the earth, you know, the sun a certain number of times and then we die and then that s it.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s me.
9
SPEAKER_00
Are you afraid of that moment?
9
SPEAKER_01
No, not at all.
9
SPEAKER_01
In fact, or at least not yet.
9
SPEAKER_01
Listen, I m like a pilot, like I do crazy things and I like, no, I like, if anything, I m like, ooh.
9
SPEAKER_01
I gotta choose mindfully and purposefully the thing I am doing right now and not just fall into it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Because you re gonna wake up one day and ask yourself, why the hell you spent the last 10 years doing X, Y, or Z?
9
SPEAKER_01
So I guess my shorter answer to this is doing things on purpose.
9
SPEAKER_01
because you choose to do them.
9
SPEAKER_01
So important in life.
9
SPEAKER_01
And not just like floating down the river of life, hitting branches along the way, because you will hit branches, right?
9
SPEAKER_01
But rather like literally plotting a course and not having a 10-year plan, but just choosing every day to opt in.
9
SPEAKER_01
That, I think, has been more, like, I haven t figured out the meaning of life by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly isn t money, and it certainly isn t fame, and it certainly isn t travel, and it s like, and it s way more of like opting into the game you love playing.
9
SPEAKER_00
Every day, opting in.
9
SPEAKER_01
Just opting in.
9
SPEAKER_01
And like, don t let it happen to you, opt in.
9
SPEAKER_00
Kevin, it s great to end on love and the meaning of life.
9
SPEAKER_00
This was an amazing conversation.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was a lot of fun, thank you.
9
SPEAKER_00
You gave me a light into some fascinating aspects of this technical world, and I can t honestly wait to see what you do next.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much.
9
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for having me.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Kevin Systrom.
9
SPEAKER_00
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
9
SPEAKER_00
And now, let me leave you with some words from Kevin Systrom himself.
9
SPEAKER_00
Focusing on one thing and doing it really, really well can get you very far.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.