How Snap Plans to Win the AR Race | Evan Spiegel on Spectacles

22:40Like we'd maxed out the credit cards. We were like out of money at that point. And we'd gotten some like random investor emails kind of from all over the world, but we got this reach out from Jeremy Liu at Lightspeed on Facebook, actually. And his profile picture was with Obama. And this was before AI. So I was like, okay, like, you know. It's just legit. Yeah, exactly. It must be legit. I'll respond. And so, you know, we met. And at that point, you know, we didn't have a deck or investment materials or anything. We just shared the usage data. So they could see very easily that once folks started using Snapchat to communicate, they just kept on using it.

23:14And I think this was at the time when a lot of people were using like the Facebook graph and Facebook connect to get those like viral hit sort of apps. And so there was a lot of skepticism, I think about these social apps and this kind of thing. But because we had such retentive communication engagement, that's I think what gave Lightspeed the confidence to invest at that time. And you were home, your co-founder. I was at school. So you were still at school while the usage was going crazy? Yeah, I would sit in the back of class and we actually had something called like the snap counter, which would just show how many snaps had been sent.

23:44And it just kept, you know, kept going up. And at the start of the school year, it'd be like, you know, one every hour or two or something. By the middle of the school year, you know, that snap counter, when you'd refresh it, it was like, it was really getting going. So we raised the money. And then literally I was in the back of my machining class in the machine shop checking the Wells Fargo account we'd set up. And as soon as I saw the$485 ,000, I went up to the teacher and I was like, Craig, I'm so sorry. No way. Yeah. In class. Yeah. I was like, I'm so sorry. I got to drop out. I got to focus on this.

24:11You were refreshing me up. And as soon as you saw the money was wired, you went, quit. And I had to go back and take that same class from Craig, you know, five, six years later to graduate because I went back in 2018 to finish my degree. Come on. That's incredible. And did you raise the money to keep up with the server bills or was it to hire people? Yeah, we had to keep up with the server bills. And then ultimately off the back of that, we hired two of our friends from school. And then around that time, we all moved down to my dad's house in LA and started working out of his house. I saw you a couple of weeks ago at the D School 20th anniversary and the David Kelly 50th celebration.

24:48What did you take out from design thinking? And that was early on in Stanford's repositioning around product. Yeah, I could not believe my outrageous good fortune to have David Kelly as an advisor. I mean, what a legend. I still have a screenshot of the first snap he sent me at the time the app was called Pickaboo, you know, and it's like Pickaboo from David Kelly. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, what an incredible guy. I think the most important thing that David teaches is, right, is that creativity is not about like getting hit by lightning. Like it doesn't happen like by accident. There's actually a process you can use to be consistently creative.

25:23Innovation on demand. And it's all grounded in empathy. So if you can really empathize with people and understand the problems they're facing or how they're feeling, then you can design solutions to those problems and you can iterate until you're able to develop a product. And so I think for David to like demystify creativity and to empower everyone to realize that they are creative. So many people, you know, people come to Snap and they're like, I'm not creative. I'm like, oh, you're for sure creative. There's no question you're creative. But, you know, once you create an environment or you provide a process like that, people almost like rediscover their creativity and they realize it's not magic.

25:55It's, you know, it's a predictable process. Are specs going to amplify empathy? The way that they could amplify empathy is that they will bring people together in the real world more often. I mean, when I even, you know, with these huge clunky glasses we have today, our kids, when they use specs, they go outside and they play together and run around. For me, growing up using computers in the computer lab to watching my kids run around using a computer outside together, like that's a huge shift in the way that people will use computers. That's a good visual. When you moved to LA and told your dad what you're doing, and you said, by the way, we're also moving in and we're going to do it here.

26:31Did you get a positive or negative response? You know, I have to give my dad a lot of credit. To my face, he was very supportive. I think to his friends, he expressed some concern, which I found out about later. But he certainly preferred me living at home rather than, you know, when I was first working at Intuit, I had gotten an apartment in San Francisco. And I basically told him, hey, I know I have this great job at Intuit, but I'm actually going to quit that job. And I'm going to like work in this apartment with Bobby. And he was like, I don't really want to like pay for you to have an apartment.

26:57Like, you know what I mean? Like you need to get a job. So if you really want to work on this thing with Bobby, then like, you know, you can come live in my house and do that. But like, I'm not going to like, now that you're not making money from your job to pay for your apartment, like I'm not going to pay for your apartment. So I came back home. He actually invested$10 ,000 himself, but then just gave the equity back to the company. And so we could use it to provide shares to team members and that kind of thing. You might be somebody who actually celebrates Father's Day. My dad's been a hero of mine since I was a kid.

27:21And when I was putting myself in your shoes, like in that moment in time, the Scott Cook reaction of like, this is crazy. must have been more typical than atypical. Yeah, that was the default response. And that's why it was so important that we were able to get far enough to have the data to show that people were just using this to communicate all day long, that it had an important role in their lives. Because like, you know, if it was just a pitch deck or something like that, I don't think it made sense to folks. But that was a great learning experience for me because you could tell, you know, within three seconds of meeting a VC that there was like no way they would ever invest.

27:52So I would just like flip it around and like, you know, I'd be having a coffee with someone, I'd flip it around and be like, oh, maybe you can give me some advice on like how to raise money. Right. And I learned a lot that way. How long did it take for you to not feel like this is dumb? I imagine that when everybody else is telling you this is dumb, smart people, like your business idols, it's got to feel like, wait, who's wrong here? Somebody's wrong. It's either me or them. Or did you just know, like come hell or high water, I don't even care if it's dumb. I'm rolling with this. I think having customers is never dumb, you know, and I think that was a big learning for us.

28:27Bobby and I had worked on something called Future Freshman that was designed to help people apply to college. And we had siblings applying to college at the time. They didn't use it. Like the only person that signed up was my mom. It was a total disaster. So to go from that experience to even just having a few of our friends, five of our friends using, you know, Peekaboo and then Snapchat, like that was huge for us. Just that we had a service that people actually wanted to use. So I think it's easy to ignore the narrative when you actually know that you have a product that's making a difference for people that they enjoy using.

28:55Yeah. But you seem like somebody who always found it easy to be popular. And sometimes people that go against the grain have a chip on their shoulder. They like being contrarian. They're a little bit of an outsider. And then suddenly you had this product before you had customers. It seemed a little outsider-ness. Was that a new experience for you? Not at all. Wow. I love that I come off that way. I mean, that's great. I grew up like a total nerd loser. I think like later on by like by by high school, sort of like partway through high school, my parents ended up divorcing. I ended up spending more time living with my dad.

29:31And so I got more freedom along with that. And so I started to be a little more cool kind of by high school and then and then into college. But most of my elementary school, middle school years, I felt pretty isolated. But, you know, both my parents are lawyers. My stepmom is actually a lawyer. Like there was a lot of debate at the dinner table. And so I thought that that was always something that helped me kind of hang on to my sort of point of view because I had to defend my point of view a lot, you know, with my parents and that, you know, that was a good learning experience. At what age could you win arguments with your...

30:01Oh gosh. I mean, I still, I still, I mean, Miranda and I will be at dinner with my dad and she'll just be like, honey, like you got to stop. Like, cause we still, we still love, We love a good debate. I used to ask a lot of my guests what conversation they used to have at the dinner table when they were kids, because it's so formative into how you shape your worldview. Like for me, when I was a kid, my parents were scientists. It was all about, and they used to work at the same place. And so it was always about work. And I remember thinking like, okay, work is important. Like I was just like, I just internalized that that work was important.

30:37And it always felt like work to them. Like it always felt like a job. And I was like, okay, if it's this important, but it is a job to you. Like it felt weird to me. Like I was just like, man, you spend a lot of time complaining about the thing that you do more than anything in your life. And I remember thinking, I don't know what that is, but I do not want that. I want the job part of it, but I don't want it to feel like work. And it sounds very similar in your case. This was the thing that you would talk about all the time with your family. Maybe the drive was the thing that was important to you.

31:08Well, it's funny you mentioned that story about your parents, because one of the success metrics for me with Snap's culture is whether or not people's kids want to work at Snap. So we just had your like, bring your kids to work day. And a lot of kids want to work at Snap when they grow up. And I'm like, okay, we're doing something right. If like the vibe that kids are getting from their parents when they come home after a long day is not like, oh, Snap. It's like, oh, I had a really interesting day. I learned something. I did something challenging. I worked together with a really cool team. So if kids, you know, kids are so perceptive, right?

31:37They feel everything. So if kids are saying, gosh, I want to work at Snap when I grow up, I'm like, okay, we're on the right track here when it comes to the culture. Can you filter that in recruiting interviews? Can you try to figure out who's going to go home and make their kids love Snap? I think it's more about creating an environment where parents feel that even after a long day, a tough day, a long week, you know, if they feel good about the work. Have you gotten any better over the years at interviewing and recruiting new people, figuring out who's going to be great? I hope so, but it's not easy.

32:08As you know, and I think Snap has such a unique culture. You know, we talked a little bit about the size, right? A 5 ,000 person team supporting a community of almost a billion people constantly innovating, constantly inventing new, creating new products. I think it's so hard to set the right expectations, especially when people come from large companies. Like we really, I almost try to talk people out of the job. Like, hey, you know, this is going to be a lot of work. This is going to be really different. you're going to be really expected to be in the details and know your stuff. And like, that's the way you're going to be able to contribute as a leader.

32:37We just hired a fantastic new general counsel. And he was like, Evan, I just feel like my cortisol levels are too low. Like, I really am looking for a 24-7 job. Like, I recognize it will require personal sacrifice. I was like, I think this will be a good fit, actually. Let's argue about this one. Do you still have the juice to rent? Like, you started, how old are you now? 35. And you started the company when you were? 20. 20. And it went public at, yeah, what was it? 27. 27. So it's been eight years since it's been public. Another 10 that you've been running it. You're like almost 80 and dog years.

33:12Yeah. You're like almost at the 20 year mark of running this company. You have four kids now. Yeah. Yeah. Four kids. You've been running this company for almost 20 years. If you're asking other people like an executive, like, Hey, you're going to make a sacrifice at home. Like, can you, can you do that? That means you have to do that. Like, there's no way you can ask for that unless you're revving it up. Can you still rev it up like you used to, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, and I think part of the thing that's so great about working at Snap is it gives me a lot of energy. Like, I love what I do.

33:43Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love what I do. And, you know, some days are better than others, obviously. But, I mean, what fun to be around such brilliant people to invent new stuff that totally transforms our industry and the world. I mean, what could be better? It's kind of like the kid test. I was teasing with our kids the other day, you know, oh, maybe I should explore some other job opportunities, that kind of thing. And our kids were like, no, dad, you have the coolest job. Like, definitely not. You know, I was like, oh, OK, you know, so I think even though they see how hard I work, even though obviously, you know, it requires a bunch of sacrifice in terms of my personal life, I think, you know, it's so unbelievably rewarding.

34:19When you say sacrifice and you say hard work, like, can you give examples of what sacrifice means in your day to day or in a year or how you internalize what hard work means and like what those trade-offs are? Yeah. You know, I think the simplest way to put it for a very long period of time, like I would leave our home before our kids were awake and I would get home after they were asleep every day, you know, day in and day out. I mean, this was really in the years sort of leading up to the pandemic, right? Where we were going through a really tough time as a company and it just required those kinds of hours.

34:49And I remember I was just like, I literally asked, I'm like asking God at the time, like, Lord, like find me a path here so I can actually see my kids, you know? And then the pandemic happened. I was like, well, that was like, that's a big change. Yeah. I was like, wow. Okay. It was a, it was pretty profound, but that, that really changed my life and changed my relationship with our kids. And I could, you know, spend a lot more time with them through that really critical period of their lives, you know, when they were very young, that was like an incredible, incredible gift. And now I've tried to get a little more balanced.

35:17You know, I wake up really early to get work done in the morning and exercise, but then I, about five o 'clock usually. And then I take our kids to school. So I get to do school drop off at least in the morning, three or four days a week. I still get home usually after they're asleep, but some days I'm lucky. How similar is your note giving to your employees and product teams, your note giving to your kids? I think sometimes I can be very direct at home as well. And I've gotten feedback on that over the years and I'm trying to evolve. But I also think, you know, my parents were very direct with me.

35:47And I think that's really important. Like having those direct, honest conversations with your kids are really valuable. What's so important is that they know no matter what they do, I love them completely and totally. But I think, you know, it's as a parent, I want our kids to grow. Right. And in order for them to grow, I have to give them feedback. Do they know you want them to grow? How does that conversation and role modeling go? I think for me, it's less about wanting them feeling like I want them to grow. I want them to cultivate that for themselves. Right. Like they have to cultivate a passion for learning.

36:19They have to cultivate a desire to grow and and wanting to learn and try new things. And so it's more about just supporting that for our kids. And when I see that, when I see they want to learn something, I see they want to try something new. You know, this is another thing I learned from my parents. We just try to do that totally and completely. Like my mom was so good. I was like, Mom, I really want to learn how to use the how to play the trumpet. This is in second grade. My mom's like, whoops, great. OK, like rented me a trumpet, signed me up for class like total disaster. I was terrible. And then she didn't make me feel bad at all.

36:47She was like, okay, well, hopefully you find something else that you enjoy doing. And I think we just try to have that with our kids where we try to support them when they want to do new things. Do they talk you into things that you have misgivings about? Well, now our eldest is 14. So we had a long chat about the recent Halloween parties. He wanted to stay out late. And so I think he made it back home by about 1130 on both nights. But that was a conversation. Evan, on the leaving before they wake up in the home, people really glamorize your life. And I don't think they quite understand the tax that it takes to actually live your life.

37:23Giving examples is very useful. When the company is going through a hard time, which is why you have to leave so early and why you have to come home so late. And when you come home and like your wife is asleep or in bed, everybody's asleep. The house is quiet. The business is going through the shitter. and you can't feel good about either of those things. Take me into those moments. Like, what does that feel like? Does it feel that shitty? Do you even have time to feel? Do you even recognize that those things are emotions that you're experiencing in those periods? Well, first, I mean, maybe first of all, like I have been incredibly blessed, right?

38:01Like I have zero complaints. So even on these very tough days, like I lead an extraordinarily blessed life. And I think one of the reasons why that is, is like I met an incredible woman who's my wife. Miranda is an unbelievable 100 % support all the time, you know, the ups and downs, that kind of thing. It's hard to find a perfect co-founder. Yeah. And I got very lucky with Bobby and very lucky with Miranda, both of whom have been incredibly supportive. So I think even in those really, really challenging times, she was unbelievably supportive. And I think a lot of my job as a leader is to absorb that stress for the team.

38:36I've tried to find my own ways, whether that's exercising or going in the sauna or just taking time to meditate, like, you know, over the years, just developing my own ways of managing that stress for myself. But in, you know, in my family and in my job, I want to absorb that stress, right? I don't want to unload that onto people that I care about, whether that's our team or family or wife. Yeah. And you just continue to absorb that until what? Like, at what point does that tip over? Well, I think what's helpful is like, when you live in that environment for such a long period of time, you just get better at managing stress, right?

39:06And so I think like you, it just becomes more normal, right? To live in a rhythm where there are big challenges every day. And like, that's, that's okay. I think, you know, if you look at some of the science behind stress, right? Like a lot of, of course, a huge amount of it is, you know, the way that we frame it, right? So like, how do we, you know, approach stress in our minds? Do we call it out as stress and something that's bad? Or do we say, oh, actually, this is like, this is a gift. This is a learning opportunity. This is a growth opportunity. And a lot of the science shows is that reframing what could be stress as a positive actually has a huge impact on your ability to manage it.

39:38But then also, I think once you're just in a rhythm of dealing with stressful events all the time, it becomes very normal. And stress is about a response to something unusual. So once it becomes very normal, then I think you just kind of adapt. It becomes unusual. Did you learn from someone else about being a stress absorber? My wife is unbelievable. Under pressure, in difficult situations, and a tough interview. I mean, I remember our earliest days dating and there would be a bunch of like paparazzi harassing her and this kind of thing. And she would just be chatting with them. Oh, hey, how are you?

40:10I'd be like losing my mind. She's like, hey guys, like hope you're having a nice day. You know, she was just so lovely. I was like, wow, to like see how graceful she is under that sort of pressure is very inspiring. And so I think once you like live, I mean, there's no better way to learn something than to just be able to watch, right? And experience that and to be able to live with Miranda, to learn day in and day out from her example of managing stress or managing uncomfortable situations. Quite inspiring. I mean, it's like, I still have a long way to go. She's like pro level, you know, but I'm trying.

40:41Yeah, between the two of you walking around LA, it's about as a power couple as it gets around here, I imagine. Can you even walk, can you walk around in the city? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're fine. It's her, it's her. It's her. I'm Miranda's husband. I mean, that's like, who's that guy? That's right. Can I pull a little bit more on the history of the company and then we can get to present day again. At what point is the company hitting such an inflection point that other players come in to think about acquisition? Like what happened where Zuckerberg and others started to hover around? Like what became obvious to them that was otherwise obvious to you where it started to draw this type of interest from people?

41:20Well, I think now that through some of the, I guess, litigation and whatnot around Meta, A lot of the facts around this are now sort of public knowledge. So they had acquired something called Onavo at the time and, you know, basically had installed a VPN on people's phone and had invested a lot in trying to observe their traffic. Right. And to actually decrypt Snapchat traffic to understand the engagement patterns and these sorts of things. So they really had a front row seat to what people were doing on their phones. And I think it became very obvious that Snapchat was one of those major destinations.

41:51I'm sure you've read like the internal tech memo stuff. Like you can read all the litigation stuff that's come out. It's insane. I should go. I should. Oh, if you want to read about yourself, you should read about the emails that Zuck was firing off internally about, should we buy StumbleUpon? Should we buy Snapchat? Things are going crazy. You can see all this stuff. It's all come out through litigation. When he calls you, by the way, you probably have this effect on people now. So like whatever feeling you had when he probably called you is probably exactly how every other entrepreneur feels when you call them.

42:26And so I'm curious, like, did you think it was real? Did you actually believe that there was an offer on the table when the offer started? Did you like, I'm curious how that played out for you. You're 23 years old. You're probably just like, wrapped up in, I'm just curious, like your reflections on that now. Yeah. I mean, they had done the Instagram deal, which was very obviously a great deal for Meta. At the time too. Oh, for sure. I mean, we were shocked that they sold so early. I mean, we were like, wow, Instagram's about to run away with this thing. And then when they sold, we were like, wow.

42:59Save Facebook's mobile footprint. Save their whole business. I mean, incredible. So we were stunned that they had done that. So it didn't surprise us that they were interested. I mean, they're a very acquisitive company. That was their strategy for a very long period of time. The number reported was$3 billion. At what point do you have to sit down? And the problem is, you tell me if I'm wrong, $3 billion is not just your money. Like, it's your co-founder. It's your early employees. It's not like you just sit in a room and decide, all right, do I want to make a billion dollars or something? It's like you have all of these pretty competing priorities in your business that I'm imagining like, you know, your friends just like dropped out of school or like didn't go to other jobs to like join you on this thing.

43:42And so when you get an offer like that, I have to imagine that you're like, okay, is this just stupid for me to say? Like as much as I want to say no, like, is this just irresponsible? A couple of things that had happened that made it a lot easier to make that decision. The first was that, you know, very early on in our conversations with investors, to your point, you know, when you raise money from venture capitalists, you are signing up to exit the business. So you can either take it public or you can sell it. But like that is essentially the agreement you are making with venture capitalists.

44:15And so going into that, you know, we were clear that we wanted to build an independent company. We had seen the Instagram thing. One of the conversations we'd had with the benchmark team, because they had invested behind Instagram was like, hey, we think they sold really early. Like, we hope you agree because we're trying to build something like bigger here than Instagram. And we were worried that they had traded too early. So I think we had had some conversations around that around the time that we'd raised money. We also, Bobby and I each, you know, were able to sell$10 million of stock at the time before there were any conversations about an acquisition.

44:47So Bobby and I felt like we're set. You're living on house money. Yeah, like, okay, we each took$10 million off the table. We can buy a house. We can support our family. We'll be fine. So that made the conversation a lot easier. So is that the C, the B or the C? When did you take money off the table? Probably C or B, something like that. Yeah, it's funny because it's such a contentious debate in the industry of usually VCs are like... If you want to go long, if you want to play the long game, you kind of have to make it possible. I empathize because a lot of entrepreneurs don't have that option, right?

45:22And so when they are having conversations about whether to exit the business or not, it really is about like, can I get a house for my family, put my kids in school or whatever it is? I think people have to make a lot of decisions. Those decisions were sort of off the table for us because they had allowed us to sell some equity. But then you do have to go around to your other employees. And when they know that it's been passed up, you have a whole new leadership responsibility to get them refired up. Well, I think what was really fortunate for us was that businesses like Meta, to some extent, you know, Google and YouTube had paved the way to show that, hey, if you've got a bunch of people using your service and engaging a lot.

46:02There's a company there. You can build a big business. And it was pretty clear, even with the rough math, that if we just continued on a modest trajectory, even assuming more competition and these sorts of things that we'd be able to build. So that wasn't a hard stress absorber, confidence builder with your employees. What was the hardest time of picking up the spirits of employees? There was a really tough period of time. It was probably right after we went public. I think that was probably the closest to the real crucible moment we've had as a company because a couple things were happening all at once.

46:35We were transitioning from, I mean, our advertising business we built in the early days was based on insertion orders, like old school television advertising, like you buy impressions at a fixed price. And we went from folks buying impressions at a fixed price to an auction model. I think the pricing went down like more than 90%. So like we were navigating a period of time where we transitioned this auction model. The cost per impression was down 90 plus percent. Instagram had launched stories. We were under a lot of pressure on the Android app at the time, which was putting pressure on users.

47:12So users were coming down. Spotify, Amazon, Zynga, Duolingo, Four out of five of them, 365 days after an IPO, they were 40 % or less below their IPO price. They all worked out okay. Yeah, but that was a huge... I think the stock at that time was... We'd gone public at$17 or something. It traded down to$499 through that period of time. And so that was a real challenging moment. Bezos had a week where it went from$105 to$6. That's a bad week. That stuff. Talking about stress absorbing. That's where I think all CEOs learn that they have to walk around and bulk up confidence to the people around. Do you worry you are moving away from the core age demographic yourself of where Snapchat's a majority of its usage is?

48:01Before you were the ideal profile of a Snapchat user. And now you're like, you know, the dad with, you know, kids and telling dad jokes. Yeah, exactly. Do you feel like you still have feel for who you think the core user is? relative to you just building a product for yourself? So I think one of the most important things is like we don't design for a specific like demographic, right? Like we try to solve problems that people have. And whether that's things like, you know, lenses so that you can augment your images, which lowers the barrier to creativity, whether it's stories that put, you know, your content in chronological order and helps you like start fresh every day, right?

48:40And whether it's a thing like the map that answers the question, like, where are my friends? What are they doing? Like, when are they going to be here? You know, those are common problems that people of all ages experience. So a lot of what we work on on our design team is solving those common problems that everyone experiences of all sorts of different ages. Obviously, I have a different perspective at 35. I think it's quite helpful because, you know, as we continue to grow with our community, right, solving problems for 35-year-olds is an important part of the equation as well. But at the same time, we have, you know, lots of members of our design team joined straight out of school.

49:14I mean, typically our point of view is that designers often get ruined by going to other technology companies first because they don't do design like we do. So we bias towards hiring people directly out of school, usually with like, you know, very limited, if any, actual work experience. And so those folks bring a ton of great new ideas. And what's that ratio of designer to engineer? Do you have a number that you try and keep to? Our design team is very small. The core Snapchat design team is anywhere from like nine to 12 people. It sort of fluctuates. Yeah. That's it? That's it. Nine people out of 5 ,000?

49:46Yep. And it's a flat structure. So everyone's a designer. There's no hierarchy and BS and this kind of thing. And we spend three or four hours a week just looking at ideas. Who do they report to? They report to someone who runs the design team. That's it? That's it. Yeah. Nine? Why? Sometimes up to 12. Because ultimately, once you get beyond a certain size, you then have a lot of coordination overhead. As soon as you have coordination overhead, you have more hierarchy and bureaucracy and all of those things destroy creativity. So if you want to really have generative creativity, like new ideas, I think it's very important that you have a very flat structure with a very, very tight team culture and dynamic because then people feel safe and comfortable being creative and trying new ideas and this sort of thing.

50:39And they're not focused on some sort of weird hierarchy, which typically happens in large organizations. As soon as you have a hierarchy, people become more focused on getting to the next level, right, rather than taking a risk, coming up with a crazy idea, that kind of thing. If we were to sit in a design meeting, how does a design meeting here unfold differently than in places where designers have been spoiled? Well, I've never been to another design meeting, but at Snap, you'd be laughing a lot. I mean, it's super fun. It's really, really fun. And we just go through a huge volume of ideas. I mean, that's really like, so you would see, you know, a hundred new ideas over a couple hour period and you'd laugh a lot along the way.

51:19Is that the thing that you enjoy doing the most at the business still? I really love that. I mean, it's a really fun part of my job, but in general, I love tough problems. And now, you know, given the scale of the company, we've got tough problems everywhere. So while I really do enjoy that and it's a lot of fun, it's a place where I feel like I can add value. I, you know, I enjoy working across lots of people. What do you mean you love tough problems? One of the most fun things to do from an intellectual perspective is to work on very, very complex issues. That could be a complex regulatory issue, right?

51:47That could be a complex issue on one of our, you know, ranking teams when we're trying to think about how do we evolve to next generation ranking systems. So I think that's just something I gravitate to. I really find interesting and fun. Yeah, it's interesting because earlier you were talking about reframing stress. and it's almost like you've reframed the stress of problems into the fact that you love tough problems because at some point you realize that the only thing you're going to be doing is solving tough problems. And so maybe you better start enjoying it or at least pretending to trick yourself into then at least believing that you enjoy solving the tough problems.

52:20Yeah, I mean, by the time I'm involved, all the easy stuff is gone. So you better love the hard thing. On the 5 ,000 person question thing, does it freak you out that like, there's a lot of layers before things get to you. And there's a lot of like editing to edit before Evan sees something. And I guarantee you, that's like, you're like, you're probably up at night thinking, I cannot believe people are doing that inside my company. Yet everybody is doing that inside your company. And if you find it, I bet you go crazy because you're like, don't have a meeting to prepare for the meeting with me.

52:54Yet everybody has meetings to prepare for meetings with you. And as you think about like the sluggishness of organizations as they grow, that's generally what tends to happen. Does that drive you nuts? That dynamic's incredibly worrying to me. We have gotten rid of that in most parts of the company, I would say. But, you know, one of the things I observed, this was maybe two, three years ago, I mentioned we, you know, went through this huge transition to diversify our revenue into small and medium customers and to build a lot more features into our advertising platform that would allow them to optimize against lower funnel objectives and that sort of thing.

53:27One of my favorite things to do when going through a major reset moment like that is to just go and walk around and talk to the team. I mean, there's no better, faster way to understand what's going on than to just go walk around and talk to people. So I would spend a lot of time. I mean, usually like every night I would just go, you know, at the end of the day to our monetization building and just walk around and talk to people. And what are you working on? What are you building? And sure enough, you know, I'd talk to folks and they'd say, hey, I'm working on a presentation. You probably won't see this for six weeks.

53:54But, you know, and I'd be like, great, can I just see it now? You talk me through it. And, you know, you learn so much, so much faster by just getting in there with the team. And I think you can start to break some of those sort of patterns. But the culture there at the time was very oriented around very controlled flow of information and presenting information in that very structured way. With a company of our size, that's just too slow, right? Like, I think it's almost impossible to work that way and expect good results. So I think in most areas of our company, we're moving so quickly that there's just no time to like present the information in some fancy way.

54:26I mean, on some of the projects we're working on right now, I get a daily update. There's no time to make it fancy. I just want to see the numbers. I want to see what's going on. I want to see how our community is responding to it. I want you to flag the top issues that are blockers and then we can just keep moving. When you were 21, you found a Scott Cook. Now you're 35. Are you finding any new Scott Cooks? You know, all the time. I really love meeting other entrepreneurs. I learned so much from them. I, you know, I'm a huge fan of this company called Zipline, which is run by my friend Keller who created that business.

54:55It's like the largest autonomous drone network now in the world. They're expanding here in the U.S. after starting in Africa. Like he's incredible. And I learned so much from him. So I love meeting founders. He's big energy. He's big energy. Yeah. That's awesome. And Evan, I'm curious on the, let's say like a pet peeves list. If there was a document that you wrote about like working with me and in one half of the document was like, don't do these things. Like, these are the things that I really don't respond well to. What would those like, okay, like one would be meetings for meetings to meet with Evan.

55:30Do you have other things that you have developed over time that you're like, oh man, these things really rubbed me the wrong way? I have incredible difficulty working with people who are not self-motivated. Like, I think one of the most important things as a leader is to get that source of drive and passion and curiosity from within, right? And I think a lot of people, you know, who maybe grew up in a more typical corporate environment are constantly used to other people, providing feedback, shaping their behavior, right? They're getting a lot of external motivation. And I think for me, as I look at the leaders that I love to work with, time and again, they are the people who are intrinsically motivated, right?

56:08With an internal locus of control. And that to me is really what differentiates great leaders because I don't have to ask them. You know, they're five steps ahead of me already. They're like, Evan, you know. Totally. Like the minute you're coaching somebody to try harder. They're like, it's cute you've caught up, Evan. You know what I mean? Like, you know, we thought about that four years ago. You know what I mean? Like that, you know, but there are people who are just so driven, you know, internally, whether they're motivated by changing the world or serving customers or inventing new things or being a great leader.

56:37Like wherever you get that source of inspiration, that's so important that that's something internal to you and not something you need other people to give you. It's just too difficult in this competitive environment with a team that is full of so many people who are so self-motivated to need that sort of like prod, right? Like I can provide feedback. I can provide my perspective. I can help people solve problems. But if I have to be like your source of motivation, like that's not going to work. So you and Miranda talk about your own kids and you have a high value in intrinsic motivation. How as a parent do you foster intrinsic motivation?

57:12I think intrinsic motivation is almost like a, it's almost a secondary effect of finding what you love to do and what you're passionate about, right? And not everyone is going to find that. But as I mentioned, you know, my parents were great about just supporting me, trying as many things as possible to find something that I love. I mean, we took our kids this weekend rock climbing at like the rock climbing gym. And our seven-year-old just like will not stop talking about rock climbing since going to the gym. When can I go? Can I go again? Is there somewhere closer to our house. Like, you know, he's found something that he really loves and enjoys doing.

57:43And so as parents, like we're trying to figure out, okay, how can we support that? How can we help him after school, you know, get to the rock climbing gym? Because if he can just be like, you know, I'm not trying to force him to go exercise or get out there. He's found something that he loves. And so I think trying to nurture that is so important in our kids. Because once you get hooked on that feeling of finding something you love, getting better at it, learning more, I mean, I think it becomes self-fulfilling and then self-motivating. Have you read the book Open by Andre Agassi? Oh, yeah. He talks about his wig?

58:10Yeah, he's like, you know, Andre Agassi is like an amazing tennis player. You should read this book. It's incredible. It's basically his own insecurity chronicle of his entire life. And he just talks so vulnerably about how the external world perceived him as this superstar tennis player, which he was. And all he could think about was, I'm not good enough at tennis. My home life is falling apart. I am losing my hair. So he wore a toupee. All of these crazy things. And, you know, I think like, anyway, I think you might actually really enjoy the book. And I wonder, especially as a young age, being the dude, you must have felt some of that stuff.

58:53Like, man, I can't believe this. Brick Shields was not his Miranda. That's right. He had a second swing. That's right. I think the most helpful thing about starting a company at such a young age is no one expects you to know anything. I mean, like I could just be very transparent. I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never, you know, run a company before. Like, please help, you know? And I think one of the special things about the tech industry, you know, you all have experienced that is how helpful people are, right? I think that was like something that I really love about the tech industry that I experienced firsthand at Stanford.

59:26Just how many people do you reach out and say, hey, can I get your advice? Can I get your help? And everyone in the industry pays it for it. I mean, I still like almost daily get random emails from folks saying like, okay, can I get your thoughts or what do you think about this? Does that pay it forward as much in Southern California and Northern California? LA doesn't have the same density of consumer technology maybe that the Bay Area has. Although here we've got an incredible hard tech ecosystem that's growing really nicely. That's super exciting. You know, over in El Segundo, it's amazing what everyone's building.

59:58So I think that there's enough density there that you can have that sort of community culture. but I got so much of that in the Bay Area where like almost everywhere you turn is somebody who's worked on building a company or, you know, startups kind of thing. I can't stop thinking about your face when I asked you like if you can still rev it up. And it was like, it was like - I was a little offended. It was like I asked you the dumbest question and I can't stop thinking about - Truman's really wondering for himself because he's starting a company in his spare time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can't stop thinking about like that feeling that I had when you like looked at me in the eye and you feel like that was one of the dumbest questions someone's asked me.

1:00:32what I've reflected on as you've been talking is like people like that, like true sickos for the game. Like this feels like a, like I love the game. Yeah. You like love the game. Like it feels like a sports. You just want to play it all the time, right? Like probably how your kid feels about rock climbing right now is how you felt about snap for the last like 15 years. And is there a valve? I have often observed that people like this have a very hard time turning that off because like, why would you want to turn it off? And so like, If you go on vacation or you do these things, it's just the CPU continues to process in your brain.

1:01:06Is that a thing for you? I have no idea. Well, one of the things that really struck me, a couple of years ago, I went to Mayo Clinic. You do the executive checkup. They're like, okay, do you want to talk to somebody about mental health? I'm like, great, I'll talk to somebody about mental health and stress and this kind of thing. And they were like, did you know how the brain relaxes? I said, no, I have no idea how the brain relaxes. They said, if you do a focused activity, I was like, really? They're like, yeah, everybody thinks if you go to the beach and like lie down, you know, to relax, like actually your brain gets more stressed out because it's all over the place thinking about all these sorts of different things.

1:01:41They're like, your brain is in its most relaxed state when you're focused on something. And that's actually how your brain decompresses. I was like, that makes so much sense because the way that I've relaxed is like learning how to become a helicopter pilot. Like I'm a big rebreather diver. I love to do these things that are challenging, require a huge amount of focus. And they've always helped me relax. And I never put it together until apparently the science really reinforces when you have to focus on activity like flying a helicopter, that's when your brain actually calms down. Oh, man, I feel the same way.

1:02:13That's crazy. That's a crazy feeling. There's a book called Chicken Hawk about heli pilots in Vietnam. It's the first person. Check it out. that's more serious flying than what I've gotten up to. I've never heard it framed that way before. Yeah, that was a big like aha moment. Like when you sit on a Zoom, does it drive you nuts? Like for me, if I'm sitting in a meeting, the podcast is the only space where I can actually stay focused for this period of time. If I'm sitting in a meeting for too long, I have to start walking. Like the meeting has to move into a walking format. Otherwise I legitimately, like I start going crazy.

1:02:49Like I start going fully nuts. That's either a plus or a minus. It's probably a little bit of both, but I do think that there's something around my brain feeling very similarly, which is that in order to focus, it needs something else to be focused on. I don't know how else to explain it, but I think you actually did a really good job of it. Yeah, it's amazing. And by the way, your walking meeting, I mean, nothing better than a walking meeting. So good. Yeah, I mean, didn't Steve Jobs design his entire campus around walking meetings? Like, wasn't that the whole principle of how he designed the entire campus?

1:03:19As we wrap here, Are there things that you are looking out over the next five years that you believe that you think nobody else believes yet? I mean, I think that, you know, in our industry, there's so much excitement around AI. I think it's so important that industry leaders pay a lot of attention to the anxiety around AI. Because if you look at the public polling about what does a broad-based subset of Americans think about AI, the majority of them are very worried about it. They're worried it's going to take their job. They're worried about its impact. And I think if you study these huge periods of technological transformation, which, as we discussed, have happened a lot in the past, right, whether it's railroads, semiconductors, the internet, there's a huge amount of change that happens not just technologically, but societally, politically as well.

1:04:08And so I think, you know, leaders, especially technology leaders at this moment in time would be very well served, you know, really listening to and hearing from the broader community, the broader American public, because I think it's going to take some really effective communication and some real forward thinking from the industry to navigate this period of time in a way that can bring the benefits of AI to the broader population. But it's going to require rethinking things like our education system, right, which was developed 100 years ago for an industrial age that is nothing like what workers are entering today.

1:04:44And I think the more proactive industry can be in solving these problems and the more attuned to the way people feel industry can be, I think we'll all be better off for it. You know, it's hearing you say that Palmer Luckey, speaking of Segundo here, was giving an interview and the interviewer was asking him, are your kids going to go to school? And his answer was so, I've never heard an answer like this that was so honest. He was like, listen, I'm a billionaire. Can I not figure out better ways with the technology today and the resources that I have to figure out how to educate my children in a way that's not the same as the last like hundred years?

1:05:20And I'm like, that's a really interesting framing for like how you think about it. And I, you probably think about it the same way. Like you have the resources, you are obviously on the bleeding edge of technology. As you think about the next generation, whether it's your kids or otherwise, like you're probably like, all right, are there things that we can just like reimagine that have just not, that have been the way this, because they've been this way. They don't have to be that way. I think there's so much opportunity to do that. I think California is a great place to focus on it as well, because we have such incredible strengths in technology.

1:05:51We're the fourth largest economy in the whole world. But at the same time, we also have, you know, middling educational outcomes. We have the highest poverty rate in the country tied with Louisiana, the highest unemployment rate in the country. And so California has a lot of these big challenges that I think this community of innovators and technologists and the broader public can work together to solve. So I would love to see California lead not only in technology, but lead in thinking about ways to apply that to these broader societal issues. Could Snap's platform be a platform for learning by doing?

1:06:31I think that's a huge role that specs will play. I mean, that's one of the areas of greatest interest to us. I mean, if you look at on-the-job training, if you look at the ability to use AI to actually solve problems in the real world, I think specs will be transformational. I love the notion of learning by doing. I think it's the best way to learn and augmented reality can help make that a lot more accessible. So Reid Hoffman did a Read AI and he did a video interview of himself at the LinkedIn Series B talking to himself today. And they went in two directions. One, Reid Hoffman AI, the young Reid Hoffman had questions for the old Reid Hoffman.

1:07:10Basically, what did I get wrong? And the old Reid Hoffman wanted to hear from the young Reid Hoffman. Remind me, what was I like back then? What did I think about? What would your 21-year-old self want to know from you today? How would you advise your 21-year-old self? And then if you were with your 21-year-old self, what would they remind you of that you might be at risk of forgetting? I mean, I always think that I would tell my younger self, don't worry about it. You know, I mean, I think we all spend a lot of time worrying about things that we, you know, can't necessarily control. And so just, you know, reminding myself, it's all going to, it's all going to work out, I think would be the first thing I would do.

1:07:43But I think there are so many benefits, we touched on this earlier, of not knowing, right? And I think bringing that beginner's mindset of not knowing, of curiosity and asking questions, never assuming has been one of the most important things in my life. And so I think, you know, I always try to put myself back in that, you know, 20 year old, 20 year old shoes and look at any problem we're facing. And, you know, without, you know, of course it's been great to build all this experience, but if I approach this from a totally fresh perspective, how would I think about it differently? Are you hiring?

1:08:17It's funny. I like, this is whatever five plus years on this show. Okay. I always ask the same two closing questions. The first is, are you hiring? And the second is when you hear the word grit, what do you think of? Until like the last year and a half, it was basically, I just assumed if I asked the hiring question to a growing tech company, the answer was, yeah, we're hiring for basically everything. Now, I'm not totally sure I'm going to get that answer anymore, which is a little bit weird. So maybe with that caveat, are you hiring? We are hiring. Okay. Are there anything specific you were hiring for?

1:08:49Not designers, clearly. or like if there is like if there is it's one one every couple years it was so funny we got this like escalation i guess uh because our people team was very concerned that our hiring process was broken for design because for every 1 000 candidates we reviewed we hired one so they were like this is a huge disaster do we have the spec wrong like what's going on you out of a thousand candidates you all review you hire one person we were like no no it's working like it's definitely working. So I think, yeah, we are always hiring for designers and always trying to find great people.

1:09:23It's just, you know, we're looking for one in a thousand, I guess. Are you in all the design hiring? I meet every single. You meet every single, every single candidate. Not a thousand. No, not a thousand. But like everyone that filters through. You're meeting them all. Now our team is pretty good at saying, I think we got somebody special. You should meet them. And how much are you selling in that interview versus how much are you interviewing? doing? I'm usually trying to talk them out of the job, if anything. But I'm really just trying to assess one thing. Because for the design team, we make our hiring decisions only on the portfolio, only on your work.

1:09:55We don't care where you study this, that, or the other thing, where you worked, whatever. What have you made? And then I want to hear from you, how did you think about making it? Why did you make something the way that you did? Why did you make this choice? And I really just want to hear, like pick a couple of things you made and tell me how and why you made them. Doesn't sound like a filter for laughter. Well, I think. Where does the laughter come from? If not in the. You know why? Because they're stoked because they're one of one of 10 that made it through the gauntlet. They're laughing their way through the system.

1:10:26Let me tell you about that. Yeah, exactly. That's what they're laughing about. Thank you for doing this. Last question. When you hear the word grit, what do you think of? I think of not giving up. Thanks, man. This is fun. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Really fun. Thank you, guys. Thank you. That's it for now. If you liked the episode, please leave us a review or go back into the archives where we've done more than 200 episodes with some fantastic folks. This podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production, and I'm Juven. Thanks for listening.