David Senra - Evan Spiegel, Snap

Starting point is 00:00:02 I'm super excited to talk to you. We've been talking a bunch before we started reporting. I did a podcast on you like almost 10 years ago. It's episode, I think, 22 of founders based on this book on how to turn down a billion dollars. The thing that stuck out to me the most that when I read that book, because a lot of that story takes place when you're still in college. And you're talking about two of your entrepreneur heroes. And Steve Jobs makes sense. My entrepreneur hero, too.

Starting point is 00:00:25 But you mentioned this guy named Edwin Land. And I'm reading this. I'm like, how the fuck does a 21-year-old kid even know who Edwin Land is? I've done like 10 podcasts on them, read every single biography. Tell me what, like, how you discovered everyone land and what you admired about him. Yeah, I think, you know, he's so central to the history of photography. And so, you know, as we've set out to try to reinvent the camera and how people express themselves with the camera, we studied a lot, you know,

Starting point is 00:00:47 about the evolution of the camera over time. I mean, one of the funny stories that we found out, the first selfie ever was taken by a guy named Robert Cornelius. And my co-founder, Bobby, his name is Robert Cornelius Murphy. So, like, we found just like by unpacking. like the history of photography, a lot of interesting similarities and parallels. And we've learned a ton from founders like Edwin Land who transformed photography really by focusing on building amazing products and thinking about how to make sure those products fit into people's lives and uplifted

Starting point is 00:01:18 humanity. I think, you know, if you look at instant photography and the role that that played in people's lives, Edwin thought of the camera as something that was incredibly personal, right? And I think as we've looked at the sort of trajectory of technology, over the long arc of time, technology gets more and more and more and more personal. And so I think as technology gets more deeply interwoven in our lives, the founders who are thinking about making technology more personal and how the things they're inventing like fit into and support humanity, I think that's a real advantage. But how does a 21-year-old kid decide, because you even said it in the book, that you're like,

Starting point is 00:01:54 I want to build a company at the intersection of technology and liberal arts? What was happening that you were interested in doing that? Part of it was my background growing up. So I went to school in Santa Monica here, you know, at a school called Crossroads. Crossroads, you know, it's the full name for Crossroads is actually Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. So it actually is, you know, the intersection of science and art together.

Starting point is 00:02:18 And actually a lot of what the school is focused on is developing empathy, building empathy. And they have this thing called Council, for example, where you sit with about 12 other students and, you know, speak for you. from the heart and take turns expressing yourself. And the school is really oriented on how you build strong relationships, build empathy with other people. And so I literally, I grew up at a school that was so focused on the intersection of art and science, but then also wrapped all of it in, you know, a commitment to humanity,

Starting point is 00:02:45 to understanding one another, to building relationships, you know, to giving back. I mean, the school is very anchored in community service. Three of our kids go there now, which is fun. Some of the teachers are still there. But I think a lot of it was from my upbringing. and that being a real focus. And then, you know, as I got a bit older and I got, you know, into things like graphic design

Starting point is 00:03:05 and I built my own computer, I was always sort of working at that intersection of art and technology. Yeah, I think the perception of you is like, you're like this cool, like, you know, designer, but you're actually self-described as like a nerd growing up. My wife and I always joke, it's cool to be uncool. So I definitely don't think of myself as cool.

Starting point is 00:03:23 And my background really was, you know, in the computer lab. I mean, it's one of the things that also inspired a lot of the work that we do because as I reflect on growing up, one of my frustrations or disappointments with the way that computers have been built over time is that they actually pulled us away from one another. So growing up, you know, during lunch, rather than being on the recess yard running around my friends, I was so inspired by what computers could do. I was obsessed with computers. So I was in the computer lab all day long. And computers, I think, you know, whether it was the mainframe or the desktop, you know, have sort of pulled us all. away from one another, away from society, brought us indoors, right,

Starting point is 00:04:01 into this very like single player experience. And so a lot of what I've thought about and a lot of what has inspired me is like, how do we take all these extraordinary benefits that computing brings to the world, but actually use it to support our connections with one another, our connections to the world? Can we build a computer that brings us outside, right?

Starting point is 00:04:17 That we use together with friends. Because I think, you know, one of the side effects of my love of technology growing up was that it pulled me away from, you know, more social relationships or just running around on the school yard. So wait, you had that philosophy even back then when you were in your 20s? Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of like what inspired how we thought about the evolution of Snapchat. I mean, even basic things like opening into the camera, right, it opens into your experience of

Starting point is 00:04:41 the world, right? Not, you know, a feed of content from other people, not a messaging feed, alerting you to what other people are sending you. It literally opens into your experience. And so from the very beginning, we've thought about, like, how do we ground your experience of computing, like in what is right in front of you in the present moment and inspire you to create. from that. Why do you think that the way computing was before it would just isolate you? So essentially you're just staring at a screen, getting materials pushed to you. I think the early versions of computers just given their physical and technological constraints, right? Like whether it was a mainframe, you had to go to like a building to use a computer, right, or a desktop that you had to keep

Starting point is 00:05:15 plugged into the wall. I think those physical constraints pulled you out of whatever environment you wanted to be. And I think the laptop and the mobile, you know, mobile phones are representative of this continuum of computing getting more personal. But I think today people feel like, you know, I think they're spending seven or eight hours on average staring at screens. They feel like screens are pulling them out of the moment or away from friends or when they're at the dinner table,

Starting point is 00:05:36 they're looking at a phone instead of connecting with one another. And so to me, there's this big question of like, how do we get all these amazing benefits of computing, but in a way that actually connect us with one another, connect us to the outdoors, connect us to the world. And that's so much of what we're working on. If you like just came to, if you were an alien, you came to Earth.

Starting point is 00:05:54 I remember, like, walking, like, to pick up my daughter from school, you could either sit in the car line, right, or you could get out and, like, pick them up. And this is, like, many years ago. And so I was like, I'm going to walk. And I passed by 30 cars. And every single person in the line waiting to pick up their kid was staring at the phone. I'm like, that's not, like, that's an addiction. Like, that is a crazy thing. I was walking on the beach here the other day.

Starting point is 00:06:17 This lady almost ran into me. This is a beautiful freaking beach. And she almost ran into me because she was looking at the phone. I was like, there's mountains. and the Pacific Ocean here. What are you doing? That's a crazy thing to do. Is there anything else from Edwin Land that inspired you

Starting point is 00:06:32 or that you think you used either in the beginning of Snap or now? Before we jump into Edwin, two things you said just really inspired me. The first was like school drop off. Like our kids insist that I walk them in every day. I'm like I'm used to doing the long walk in while everyone's in the carpool line. But I think to your point, what's fun about that is you get to connect with everyone and say hi to other parents and teachers. and, you know, as I mentioned, some of the teachers that actually taught me when I was there.

Starting point is 00:06:55 But the second thing you said, which is so funny, my daydreaming right now, especially as we think about glasses and the future of computing is really, like, what if aliens are watching Earth right now? And they're, like, terrified that smartphones have, like, taken over humanity, that, like, we're spending all day long, like, caring for these things and, like, plugging them in and, like, tending to them and, like, our lives are all oriented around, like, these little screens. And, like, what would aliens do? And so, like, part of my imagination has been, like, what, if aliens are sending specs, sending these glasses to save people from their lives that I think

Starting point is 00:07:27 have become so oriented around screen. So it's funny that you, it's funny you mention that. I love, I love thinking about that, like the alien perspective of humanity right now. I think for Edwin Land, I mean, there's a couple other things that like really stood out to me. One, he was a statesman, right? And like behind the scenes, people really relied on his advice. And he gave it freely. I mean, he was a big supporter of the U.S. government, for example, was very thoughtful behind the scenes in providing advice to the U.S. government, including technological advice. And so I like that he had a commitment beyond just like, you know, his customers and creativity and these sorts of things.

Starting point is 00:07:58 He really wanted to participate in building a better world and took that really seriously. And then I think if you look at a lot of his, you know, a lot of the investments he made around his laboratories and around his innovation, he was he was famous actually, and back then this was quite unique, famous for uplifting women in those research roles, right? And I think, like, he was a real champion of talent. He saw talent very clearly. You know, and I think, you know, at a time when people weren't as focused on that, weren't investing as much in that, he was really focused on uplifting the best possible talent

Starting point is 00:08:32 regardless of folks' background. I was just on stage at an event with my friend Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp. When I looked over to my right, I noticed that on the sleeve of Eric's jacket, it said, we win when our customers win. Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast and the way that. that Ramp helps their customers win is by helping you save time, save money, and grow revenue. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. The median company running on Ramp also grows their revenue by 16%.

Starting point is 00:09:03 So when you're running your business on Ramp and your competitors are not, you have a massive competitive advantage that compounds over time. Ramp is the only all-on-one platform designed to make your finance team faster and happier. Many of the top CEOs and founders that I know run their business on. I run my business on ramp and you should too. Go to ramp.com today to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. That is ramp.com. We're both in LA. We both kind of avoid San Francisco and we were talking. It's like the people I admire the most like Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs is trying to create technology that enhanced humanity.

Starting point is 00:09:43 Some of these weirdos in San Francisco are creating technology to eliminate humanity. Why is it's so important for you to build technology that actually enhances humanity? Well, I think fundamentally, like, my source of inspiration is humanity, right? Like, I'm inspired by other people. I'm inspired by, you know, the extraordinary world that humans have created. I'm inspired by the relationships between people and my relationships with other people. And so so much of what motivates me and animates what I like to do is about making people's lives better, right, and solving their problems. I mean, that's, you know, we all get to choose what we do and we get up in the morning.

Starting point is 00:10:28 Like, that's what I like to do and what I want to contribute to the world. And I think, you know, the challenging thing, I think is, you know, sometimes when you're working on new technology, it's so exciting and inspiring that you can lose focus on its impact on people. And I think we try to start with people, right? And really listen to people and what they respond to, how they're feeling about the products they're using. I mean, that's one of the, you know, that was the core inspiration of stories, right?

Starting point is 00:10:53 was, you know, people were saying, why is my social media feed in reverse chronological order? Why is it permanent? Why am I feeling judged all the time, you know, by how many likes or comments I have? That made us realize, like, the way that people have told stories forever, right, is in chronological order. They're not, you know, permanently saved forever and publicly judged and liked and that sort of thing. And so it was just very easy for us to, you know, develop a, you know, a product where, you know, everything, all the images and videos were in chronological order. They deleted after 24 hours.

Starting point is 00:11:20 You could start your day fresh the next day. They didn't have these likes and comments, which opened up this whole new world of self-expression, right? Because instead of just trying to post what would look pretty or popular or perfect, people were sharing this whole range of human emotions. So so much of what we do and what we're inspired by is just, you know, by the way, people feel what they share with us. And really this desire to help people build stronger relationships with one another. I read this book about you, the one I did the episode on, you know, eight years ago, I think it's like, how to turn down a billion dollars or something. He says something funny. And there's a quote from you in the book.

Starting point is 00:11:49 You're like, whoever invented it anyway, why they decided to make everything? everything permanent. It's completely opposite. It's like this conversation, we haven't been recording it, but the conversation we just had earlier, it's like, that wasn't recorded. It was just a moment in time. We'll have memories of it, like different interpretations of it,

Starting point is 00:12:04 but then we just move on to the next. I think that's a really good example of the way technology ends up shaping human behavior. So if we're not thoughtful enough about the technology we're building, it can have unintended consequences. So in this case, you know, one of the reasons why everything was saved forever is because hard drives, disk-based hard drives, right, were expensive to write over. And so it was actually more expensive to go back and write over something enough to delete it than it was to just leave it there and write over it again, maybe sometime in the future when you want to save something new.

Starting point is 00:12:31 And so no one was thinking about how to erase things because it was just much easier to leave it there and maybe write over it when you had something new to save. And so a lot of the early work we even did with Snapchat was asking about how we can be certain that everything is deleted and how we can make sure that everything is being written over because that wasn't a consideration. for a really long time. So in a very Edwin-Landian way, you seem to like observe what everybody is doing and you have like this natural inclination to like go your own path. But you had it at the very beginning.

Starting point is 00:13:05 How old were you when you started peek-a-boo, which turns into Snapchat? I think I was probably, I think 20. Where did this desire to like do something different come from? My dad was always pushing me to get a job when I was younger. Like if I was ever around the house, if like, what are you doing here? Like get a job, right?

Starting point is 00:13:20 So I interned at Red Bull, for example, I interned at Braxis Bioscience. I mean, this was back in the day when we were racking GPUs to do like early stage drug discovery. I mean, that was like my first experience with GPUs, like however many, you know, when I was in high school. You know, and then I had a couple other really cool internships, but really my first, like, more serious job was working into it and working on this service called TextWeb, which was basically designed to help people with touch, like touch patterns. mobile phones, build little micro websites essentially and access them, primarily in India at the time. And so I had learned all these, you know, really interesting things about business during these internships, but fundamentally I didn't really want to have a boss. But until I saw how possible it was to build something amazing, like with TechSweb, I think

Starting point is 00:14:13 there was like three of us on the team. I, you know, I did the least out of the team members. But the three of us on the team or four of us on the team were actually able to like build and launch a service in India, right? I was like, wow. Like it's actually a lot easier than I thought to build things and to create things that can reach, you know, millions of millions of people. And so that really inspired me. And simultaneously, you know, I had lived across the hall from Bobby, who I ended up starting peekaboo Snapchat with. And he also, you know, he had a job at the time too.

Starting point is 00:14:41 And we both just love building things. So we started working on this thing called Future Freshman, which was designed to help people get into college. it was like a total failure, but we had loved working together. This is an important part. Can you say why? Because I think you took an idea from there for your next business, why it failed. Yeah. I mean, there were a number of reasons why it failed. I think, first of all, we really focused on building the perfect product for way too long before we got feedback. So, you know, I think we worked for like 18 months to build this perfect, full-featured product, which was like indirect contravention to like how I was always taught to, you know, I was always taught to,

Starting point is 00:15:17 to build things, right? Which is like build a prototype, build an MVP, get in front of people, learn as quickly as possible. But we had spent all this time building this like perfect piece of software and we hadn't thought enough about distribution. And so while we built this great piece of software, our competitor at the time called Naviance, which I think still today is probably the leader in like this college application sort of software world, they had secured distribution through all the different college counselors, right? So like what piece of software are you going to choose to help your kid get into college? The one recommended by the college counselors or the one you know, from two kids at Stanford.

Starting point is 00:15:48 I mean, I think it's a pretty easy, it's a pretty easy choice. So we just saw very early that we had no distribution advantage. And, you know, even if we loved our software, that people weren't going to use it because we didn't really have a scalable way to get in people's hands. And so around that time, when we saw the emergence of the app store on iPhone and all this sort of thing, it was very clear that that was a distribution channel that we could really use and benefit from, but that we also needed to build things that we could build quickly, things that we really were going to use together with our friends so that we could be

Starting point is 00:16:17 the first early customers and ultimately Piccaboo and Snapchat, you know, represented that. Yeah, because in the book you talked about, we built a product, no one used it. It's tough when no one used it, except my mom. And move on to the next thing. So is Piccaboo, which turns obviously Snapchat, was there anything in between those two? Or was it? There were a couple other, like, you know, failed sort of experiments, I would say, in between that. We were playing around with like different ideas for sort of like more private,

Starting point is 00:16:49 like I wouldn't say social networks, but more private like groups and social sharing and things like that, you know, but nothing, nothing that really. But it seemed like it was a direct counter to the existing social networks at the time. Yeah. I mean, the problem that we were experiencing was that, you know, the way that everyone was socializing at the time on, on Facebook and I think Instagram was sort of just getting started at the time, but the way that everyone was socializing on Facebook was like a giant popularity contest. So it wasn't fun, right? I mean, everyone was competing for how many friends they had, how many likes they had.

Starting point is 00:17:20 Everything was about pretty photos. And in college, like, we wanted to have fun with our friends. But the alternatives, you know, at the time with text messaging, for example, were so clunky. I mean, if sending it, people forget, like sending an image via text message back then took like a minute, two minutes, right? Like to send MMS, you know, it was crazy. And so part of the core invention of Snapchat was actually just making it really, fast to send images, you know, which made a huge difference in people's ability to use images

Starting point is 00:17:48 to communicate. Because back then, you know, images were for documenting things. They were for saving memories forever, right? And the reason why, like, photography has exploded and the, you know, I think there are more, there are more selfies taken on Snapchat than on iPhone in total, right, which is a crazy stat. But that's because people are using images to communicate. And so, like, But we, you know, in inventing Snapchat in response to kind of this documentary culture around photography and this feeling of public and public pressure about the way that people were expressing themselves and communicating online, Snapchat really, especially because the camera was on the smartphone, transformed the way that people communicate by allowing them to communicate with images.

Starting point is 00:18:29 So did you think you were building a messaging app or a social network? I mean, it's a messaging service. But even back then. Yeah, yeah. You thought about his messaging app. Yeah. we talked, I mean, it only had messaging for the longest time until we introduced stories. I mean, it was only a messaging.

Starting point is 00:18:44 Stories is like, got to be one of the best inventions ever in terms of, like, the apps that we use. Like how, I mean, now, obviously, everybody, like, it's on every single app. Like, you were the first one to come up with that. And it's, I think there's, like, stories on LinkedIn and, like, Pinterest or some shit now. Like, it's just places they shouldn't be. It's there. Going back to the early days of the smartphone, if you remember, you know, Apple,

Starting point is 00:19:08 was really talking about like, hey, when you're going to watch video on your iPhone, you're going to turn the phone sideways, right, and watch horizontal video. And a lot of, you know, the first, you know, several years of Snapchat, almost all video online was like horizontal video in the feed. And so when we came out with vertical video and we said, no, we think everyone's going to watch video the same way they hold their phone all day long, right, vertically, where people were like, what? You know, we spent, you know, a ton of money back then without AI, right?

Starting point is 00:19:37 Like, just helping advertisers recut their video to make it vertical. And we had to convince them showing them that, like, the completion rate was nine times higher when they used vertical video instead of these little, like, postage stamp size horizontal videos. But for us, like, it was just obvious, right, that people were going to want to watch video the same way they hold their phone. They don't want to turn their phone to watch video. But do you see what I keep trying to get to? And, like, this is not normal, though. Like, you're very comfortable.

Starting point is 00:20:03 I'm trying to figure out, because the whole point of me having these conversations, like, this entire show, It's just like, who am I intensely interested in talking to? And there's something interesting. Like, I still don't understand. Where the hell did this, like, confidence in your own judgment and disregard for the need to conform come from? Because it's obviously still there today. Like, let me give you a background. I remember the first version of spectacles, the ones you bought in a vending machine.

Starting point is 00:20:32 I bought them. I wanted them so badly and you were out of stock. I bought the, like, the ugly fucking blue color. I did not want bright blue fucking glass. I'm a grown-ass man. But I was like, this is so weird. This is so interesting. And you were like 10 years ahead of everybody else.

Starting point is 00:20:47 Where the hell does that come from? You know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure exactly. You know, I think, like, a lot of this stuff just, like, really appears obvious to me and to us, right? Like, it was obvious to me that, you know, if you looked at the evolution of computing, that, like, holding this tiny little screen in your hands was not the future of computer. It makes absolutely no sense, especially for humans that want to live and work hands-free, right? They want to be able to see one another and like interact with the world.

Starting point is 00:21:18 And so I think when like things like that just seems so obvious and we're fortunate, right, to be able to invest consistently behind that vision. Because I think like the hard part is not necessarily seeing what the future could look like. I think a lot of people have different visions for the future. I think the thing that's been maybe different about Snap or Snapchat is like our determination and consistent in pursuing that vision. I mean, with stories, right, like the, you know, the first six months of stories, no one used it. I mean, I remember sitting on a board meeting,

Starting point is 00:21:48 and we were like, we think stories is gonna be a big thing. You know what I mean? Like, this is the, you know, we think this is like the future of how people are gonna, you know, want to share, you know, on internet services on Snapchat, and the board's like, well, no one's using it. You know, and we're like, okay, but it's new, so it's gonna take time.

Starting point is 00:22:03 So like, let's give people time to discover it, to learn about the feature. And then, you know, maybe by the next board meeting or the one after that, like, it was growing super, super, rapidly. So I think, you know, the hard part is not necessarily having the vision for the future, and oftentimes it just seems very obvious, the hard part is delivering it, right, getting there. Were you disagreeable when you were a kid?

Starting point is 00:22:25 I think so, probably. If I ask him, the people you have working with you, is Evan disagreeable? Would they say yes? Strong opinions loosely held. No, I think, yeah, I think, like, I think I've always felt comfortable seeing something differently or advocating for something different. Would people that work with you describe you as uncompromising? I think so, yeah. Okay. This is Steve Jobs element.

Starting point is 00:22:51 Yeah, but at the same time, like, we've tried to build a really different culture. Because, like, one of my, one of my, you know, that, you mentioned the Walter Isaacson book. Like, that book broke my heart, right? Because I think that that book, you know, that book essentially called Steve a bad father, which I thought was not only unfair, but it also, you know, sort of made the case that like Steve believed that like you could only achieve these sorts of things if you were, you know, uncompromising, but uncompromising with a taste of mean, essentially. And for me, watching Steve and seeing how people spoke about him and, you know, there are plenty of stories of, you know, folks who felt really close to Steve and felt really inspired by Steve and also stories of people who felt like Steve was me, right? And my big question to our team was like, could we achieve something really extraordinarily?

Starting point is 00:23:45 Could we build a culture that was incredibly creative? But at the same time is kind. Right? So with our three values, it's kind, smart, creative. And kind is the first one for a reason. And what we really wanted to do was create a culture that's uncompromising, but at the same time, very kind and supportive. Because we think that that is, you know, the best sort of end most fertile ground for creativity. If people feel afraid, it's very, very hard to be creative.

Starting point is 00:24:07 I mean, fear is almost like the opposite of creativity. There's actually, did you ever read Ed Catmoe, the founder of Pixar, his autobiography called Creativity? No, I always wanted to. Okay, that's another book. I just gave you one book or give you another one. But you can, Ed's actually doing the show, and I can't wait to talk to him because he worked for Steve Jobs or worked with Steve Jobs longer, more consecutive years than anybody else. I think they worked together for like 24 years. I would just buy the book today and just skip to the end.

Starting point is 00:24:34 There's like a 20 page afterward called The Steve We New. and his whole point after the Isaacson book came out, he's like, he wasn't, that's not the Steve I knew. And his point was that earlier in his career, there was a lot of these stories. Yes, he was like that, but he learned and evolved on how to be a better leader. And so in that like 20 page afterward,

Starting point is 00:24:51 Ed is telling the story of how he evolved over time. Fucking 45-year-old Steve Jobs is not, of course, not going to be the same as 21-year-old Steve Jobs. So I think that's like a very important point to make. How do you reconcile, though, because, like, there's a lot of people that are famous about this. Like, Elon, I just heard somebody was telling me a story, Michael Moritz from Sequoia said the same thing.

Starting point is 00:25:13 Like, you actually, camaraderie is dangerous, and kindness is dangerous for your teammates because you can't deliver honest feedback and, like, tell them if their work isn't up to par or whatever. How do you balance that? Like, be kind, but also honest if the quality of work isn't there. Well, I think there's a big difference

Starting point is 00:25:30 between kind and nice. Okay, huge difference. When you're being kind, it means you really want the best for somebody, right? And sometimes that means a tough conversation. Sometimes that means saying we're just not there yet on this project we're working on. Or, hey, the way that you delivered that really isn't working or whatever it is. Nice is about making people feel good, right? Kind is about wanting the best for them. And so I think for us, our culture is oriented around kindness, which is a much deeper expression of care for somebody else and involves tough conversations.

Starting point is 00:26:00 One of the great things about having a best friend or a partner is that they're honest with you, right, about your shortcomings and help you evolve and make you better. And that comes from a place of love, right? And so I think kindness in many ways is essential because it allows people to hear that feedback. So one of the big problems, I think, you know, in a more hostile work environment is people are more resistant to feedback because they don't hear it coming from that positive place of wanting you to grow and develop. And I think that expression of kindness for us is one of the things that helps people grow fast, right?

Starting point is 00:26:34 And ultimately, at a company like Snap, our goal is just help people grow as fast as humanly possible, you know, so that we can meet the needs of our customers and evolve our business, et cetera. Who plays that role for you? Who tells you the truth? My wife is brutally honest in a very loving way, in a very loving way. And it's super important. But I also, you know, I grew up with, and one of the things I love about being in L.A. is a lot of my high school buddies are here, right? So I have friends who I've grown up with,

Starting point is 00:27:01 who've always been real with me. And that's a huge benefit of being here in LA. Because when I get to hang out with my friends and talk to them about what I'm going through or what's going on, like I can count on them, you know, to be honest. I think of what Charlie Munger said. He says, anybody engaged in complex work,

Starting point is 00:27:18 this paraphrase of his quote, anybody engaged in complex work, it's very useful to find somebody to help organize your thoughts with. And I think he was referencing really, you know, the role he's, he played with Buffett where, you know, Buffett was the main guy, obviously was 100 times richer than Charlie, but Buffett knew that Munger was special and he let Munger shape his mind. Do you have anybody like that?

Starting point is 00:27:39 Not like high school friends are different. Like they were more like peers or have like an understanding. You have a very unique lived experience for somebody that's, you know, still in their mid-30s. Yeah, I think, you know, Bobby, who's my co-founder, has really been that for me. And I think we approach the world differently and see the world differently. I think that's really valuable. But I would say, like, I rely on our leadership team and broadly our company to help me do that. I mean, that's the fun part about innovating is it's a dialogue, right?

Starting point is 00:28:07 It's not like issuing command. Like, let's go build this. It's like having a real intense debate and dialogue about what's best for our customer and what we should do, what we should prioritize. So I think, like, for me, it would be a real shame if I only got that from, you know, maybe if it was Charlie Munger, I'd feel differently. you know, but but I think for me, what's so important is to make sure I'm getting that sort of feedback and having that kind of dialogue with lots of members of our team or mentors as well. You know, that's, that's a hugely valuable. What does the leadership team look like?

Starting point is 00:28:36 You know, it's probably on like the Snapchat side, it's like roughly 10 or so people. And like, you know, it's funny. Even in the architecture or our building, right, like we have a circle table, right, for a reason. I really like everyone to sit around a circle and have a dialogue. and have a dialogue where we're all talking from an equal position around that table, right? So it's that sort of mentality where, like, everyone is expected to contribute. Everyone has an equal seat around the table that you get that sort of really helpful dialogue. Are these people that started at Snap and, like, got through the ranks?

Starting point is 00:29:10 Are they former founders? The reason I ask you is because one of the most interesting ideas or surprising ideas I've had so far having these conversations is I talked to Toby Lucke, the founder of Shopify, which is like, that that conversation blew my mind, the way this guy thinks. And he was going through a very difficult time, and he didn't know what to do. And he actually tells a story on the podcast, I think, where he's like, he went to a Slack channel. They had, like, former founders. And he's just like, I need your help.

Starting point is 00:29:34 And he essentially built very much like Rockefeller did, like built it. And the team around him is just founders. Is that what yours look like? Is it people that you, like, poach from other companies? Like, what does this look like? I would say it's incredibly diverse set of backgrounds. Some folks are from other companies. some folks, you know, have spent their entire career at SNAP, you know, more or less.

Starting point is 00:29:54 Some, you know, some folks around the table are founders, right, who have joined SNAP. So there isn't like a one, you know, one-size-fits-all model. I think we're really fortunate to draw from lots of different backgrounds. Is there a lot of turnover? I would say at points in SNAP's history, there has been a lot of turnover. Not currently, I mean, knock on wood. But the business changed so quickly, right? I mean, there were periods of time when we went from, you know, having 100 people to over 1,000 people in like 18 months, right?

Starting point is 00:30:24 And like the skill sets that like we were slow to build what we needed to support, you know, that scale of a team. And back then there weren't the AI tools that are available today that make a lot of those things easier, right, to operate at that scale and that quickly. But yeah, there are periods where the company has just changed a lot and it's required a different skill set. And during those periods of intense change, we have seen turnover. I mean, sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional because folks, you know, maybe are misaligned with where we're trying to take the company. Yeah, the reason I ask is, because I think conversations like these, the other podcast founders, I'm doing, it's thinking it's important for entrepreneurs to realize, like, there's not, like, one right way to do things. Toby told me, he's like, there's probably 100 right answers here.

Starting point is 00:31:04 You got to do the one that's best for you. And so I'm just curious, like, do you have a philosophy on, like, turning over the top people at the team? Because, like, if you look at, like, Larry Ellison, you read biographies at him, he thought the fact that he kept the core product team, the core product team, The core product team on Oracle together for like multiple decades was a huge advantage. His person he mentors, if you ask Elon who he admires, he says to like, I want fresh blood, I think is the term over and over again. Do you have an opinion here? I think it's different and different parts of the organization. You know, if you look at the core product and design team, that's a very small team.

Starting point is 00:31:39 I mean, I think it's like currently like nine people. It usually fluctuates between like eight and 12 people at any given time. Many of the folks on that team have been at the company for an incredibly long period of time. And they usually join out of school, like right out of high school, or sorry, right out of college. I don't think we've had we've had some interns, but no one joined right out of high school. They typically join right out of college. And, you know, we spend a huge amount of time investing in their growth and building things together. And so I think it's really important to have that, you know, longevity because those are folks who really understand how we build products at SNAP.

Starting point is 00:32:12 And that's something that, like, I think really has to be learned. I haven't found anyone who just been able to enter SNAP. And, you know, and I mean, certainly folks can contribute right away, but it takes time to learn, you know, what makes SNAP. Say more about that. That's interesting. Why does it take so long? Because ultimately, like, I think the way that we build products at Snapchat

Starting point is 00:32:37 is just fundamentally different than anywhere else in the world. And so I've yet to see someone come into Snapchat with all the skills and all the understanding necessary to be able to, like, really deliver value in that role. The closest we come are probably folks out of art school because they're used to such a rapid iteration process and are used to making things in extremely high volume. And so they are a good fit for the design culture at Snap, which is really about very rapid idea generation and creation. I mean, every week, I'm with our design team for several hours and we're just looking at new work. I mean, new work every week, hundreds of ideas, right? Hundreds of concepts, you know, iteration,

Starting point is 00:33:18 et cetera, and really, you know, kind of together as a group working through like a critique process. And so I think, you know, the art school folks are probably, adapt the easiest to that culture because they're used to such a rapid velocity of work. But at the same time, we're really trying to overlay that deep empathy for people, right? That deep connection with how our community feels and what they're looking for. You know, we're also trying to cultivate like a very positive and, fun environment around that. Like, we're laughing half the time in these design meetings, right?

Starting point is 00:33:53 And playing around with ideas. And I think creativity can really thrive in that environment of, like, levity and fun. And so I think that combination and that velocity of creativity and product development is something that people have to adapt to typically when they come to Snapchat. Deal will help your business hire, pay and manage any worker anywhere in the world. Deal is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deal is one platform for payroll, HR benefits, and device management across 150 countries. Deal gets you everything you need to run a high-performing global workforce on a single AI-native platform.

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Starting point is 00:35:07 He said, we built 11 Labs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deal enabling us to hire and support exceptional talent anywhere, we can accelerate our innovation and bring more voices, stories, and ideas to every corner of the world. Deal is trusted by over 40,000 customers and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business by going to deal.com forward slash Senra. That is, deal.com forward slash Senra. If I was to sit in on one of these design meetings, you said there's like nine to 10, 12 people and you, like, like, What would I see? You would just be looking at a ton of work.

Starting point is 00:35:45 I mean, we would just be talking through, you know, a huge volume of ideas across the service or maybe even ideas for new services and that sort of thing for a couple hours. These last a couple hours. You're going over, when you say volume, like hundreds of ideas? Yeah, easily. In a few hours. Yeah, yeah. And are you, like, leading this discussion?

Starting point is 00:36:06 Like how to, like, we're all contributing, batting stuff around, you know what I mean, laughing and iterating and, you know. Why is the volume part so important? Because the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. It is critical. And the most toxic thing you can have is people attach to an idea instead of constantly thinking about ideas are free, right? There should be a zillion of them.

Starting point is 00:36:30 And if we can do that and create that culture where there's like just an endless flow of ideas, you're very lucky. You're much more likely to get. lucky by finding good ones. So how many of these do users of SNAP ever see? Tiny, tiny, tiny, I mean, less than 1%, probably, maybe 1%. And what's the process, like, comes up, like, how soon from, an idea comes up in the meeting to, like it, it gets in front of one of your users?

Starting point is 00:37:03 Well, now that's happening incredibly quickly because designers can ship code with, you know, all these new AI tools. So the whole world of design is changing, I think, very rapidly because now, you know, many of our designers are just empowered if they've got something. We think it's cool. Let's, you know, let's get it in the app and test it, like, immediately. So I think design to code is happening way faster than ever before. So there's an intense design culture at Snap. There always has been.

Starting point is 00:37:29 You describe yourself as a designer? Yeah, I think, I mean, that's my background. Yeah, and that's what you described. Like, when you started, that's right. And so talk a little about, like, what you think AI. will do to a company like yours where it seems to be like a design-first culture? I think AI is like probably the best thing

Starting point is 00:37:45 that's ever happened to Snapchat, which is great. I think the reason why is because we've always had a ton of ideas and a deep connection with our community and our customer, but we've always had very limited resources and we're up against monopolistic companies. And so we've essentially been engaged in like trench warfare with monopolies

Starting point is 00:38:04 for 15 years, right? And I think what's so funny, like, you know, you look at the last 15 years, we learned very, very early on that there's no moat in software, which was an incredibly powerful lesson, right? All of our ideas, the things that we invent, people just try to copy right away. And it's easy to do that with software. But what's fascinating about the world today is that it has never been easier, right? I mean, almost instantly, you can copy nearly any piece of software. And so because we learned that lesson very early on, we've evolved our business to really focus on the things that are hard to copy, right? A network

Starting point is 00:38:38 affects business of people communicating with one another. These platforms, right, like our augmented reality platform or our content ecosystem that are not just pieces of software that you can, you know, easily copy, but ecosystems of people communicating with one another or creators making content that people are watching or people building augmented reality experiences, all of those sorts of things are very hard to copy. So from, you know, over the last 15 years, we've really honed our business perspective for this moment, right, because we saw how easy it was to copy software. So So in terms of our business and the way it meets our customers, I think we are well positioned for the huge transformation that's happening.

Starting point is 00:39:15 At the same time, our core business is software development. So we're able to get a lot of the benefits of the extraordinary transformation and software development without the same risk to our core business because we build network effects over time and thought about how to position ourselves for this moment. So AI is changing every single team at SNAP. It's changing the way that everything gets done at SNAP. And because our core business is software development, I mean, in the last three months, there's been profound change.

Starting point is 00:39:45 But to imagine, I mean, 18 months from now, the way that SNAP operates will be completely different than the way it operated last year. There's so many founders, and I don't know how many, almost none of them were saying this on the record that they tell me. They're like, I'm trying to figure out, I should not be running my company anymore. I'm trying to figure out how to build AI to run my company.

Starting point is 00:40:04 They are trying to literally replace themselves. They're like, it's just going to be so much better than I am at doing this. It should be doing this. I should not be doing this. I think that's certainly true in terms of like the operational lift. But at the same time, right, like that the vision and creativity and connection to your customer has never been more important. And so I think if anything, it's going to enable founders to run teams that are much more operationally effective and require less of their time to operate the business.

Starting point is 00:40:32 And instead, hopefully, you know, pivot more time. towards that sort of creativity and ideation and, you know, meeting customers where they're at. What's one of the most surprising ways that AI has changed how SNAP operates internally? I don't necessarily think this is, like, a surprise per se, but I do think, you know, and I feel like this is old news

Starting point is 00:40:52 because everyone in the world has been saying it, but like the change in how software is written since the beginning of this year is profound. Our core business is writing software. And now that these models are good enough to write more and more complex pieces of software on their own. The job of a software engineer at Snap is like profoundly and forever changed. And I think the more that we can embrace that and make that easier and teach people how to do that really effectively, like it's just transformational for our core business.

Starting point is 00:41:26 Because as I mentioned, like we have been up against companies who don't have new ideas but have infinite resources. right? And we've got lots of new ideas, but no, but very limited resources. And that's been a real challenge. And so it's been hard to see a path forward for Snap up against these giants without AI tools. And now with AI tools, you're like, wow, we can basically have an infinite number of engineering resources. Like, that's a pretty profound change for for Snap. And the rate at which that, I guess I would say the rate at which that has happened has surprised me. He said something very interesting. You said you realized a long time ago that software has no moat. The, experience that taught you that lesson, was it stories?

Starting point is 00:42:04 No, the first time that, the big sort of wake-up call was when, you know, Facebook at the time, carbon copied Snapchat to make poke. Do you remember this? Yes. And Mark Zuckerberg recorded, like, him saying the word poke is the notification sound. He was, like, so excited about this. And we were like, wow, like, okay, this is a good, you know, this is a really good lesson for us. It ended up being super helpful to Snapchat.

Starting point is 00:42:30 In the book, you call it the greatest Christmas present you ever received. The nervousness going into that holiday period, right? I mean, they literally put it, download poke at the top of every single Facebook app, right? And it was just a clone of Snapchat. And then to, you know, on Christmas Day, see Snapchat number one in the app store in that context was, it was huge, huge for us. But that was the first time we realized, like, okay, we're going to have to be really smart about how we build this business and invest in the things that are whole. hard to copy. Do you remember how old you were when this was happening? I don't know that at bed. That would have been 2012, 2013, so 22, probably?

Starting point is 00:43:11 Super young. Super young to take on. That's, that had to be terrifying. I mean, to be living in my dad's house with like three of my buddies from college, you know, and like this huge company, you know, set their sights on us. I mean, you know, it was definitely a formative experience, I would say. then realizing software has no moat, is that direct insight leads to deciding bizarre decision, I think correct in hindsight, for a what people consider it a social network app or a messaging app to get into hardware and make glasses. Those two things are related? Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:43:50 And I think, but even before that, right, a real focus on messaging. So the other key, like the other key foundational insight of Snapchat that really changed the company was at that time, was at that time, if you recall, people were very focused on like a very simplistic model of network effects. And their very simplistic model was basically the more nodes you have in the network, the more valuable the network is, right? And what we realized was like that wasn't really true if you weren't using those network connections. So actually, you know, what reflects the value of the network is, you know,

Starting point is 00:44:24 are the people that you actually talk to and communicate with, especially the ones you communicate more frequently, are they a part of your network? And if they are, then you can accrue the vast majority of the value in that network very, very quickly without having the same scale or the same size, right? So what Snapchat showed was that if you just have one good friend on Snapchat, they might represent half of your communication, right,

Starting point is 00:44:46 because they're super important in your life. So you don't need 500 friends on Snapchat. You just need your best friend on Snapchat. And that's what helped the service really grow and take on, you know, these much larger, these larger competitors. What really prompted the work on glasses in the beginning was the feeling that we were always competing with that lock screen camera button. Right? And so, do you know, on the iPhone, there's a lock screen camera button?

Starting point is 00:45:11 So Snapchat opens the camera, right? And we always want you to choose to open Snapchat to share a moment with your friends and your family. And you're making a choice between having to unlock your iPhone and go and open Snapchat and take a snap or just using that lock screen camera button. And that lock screen camera button is on your phone and it's in your pocket. And so, you know, when we were trying to reinvent the camera and change how people were using their camera to help them communicate, one of our fundamental questions was like, how do we get the camera out of your pocket, right, off your phone, to make it easier for you to, you know, share and express yourself or communicate your point of view or communicate what you're doing. That was really the prompt that led us to explore glasses because back in the day, you know, we just made camera glasses.

Starting point is 00:45:49 But I think as part of that journey and as part of starting to work on camera glasses, not only do we realize, first of all, that the market for camera glasses is very small. right, that ultimately your phone is very good for taking photos, even if you're on a jet ski or even if you're rock climbing, people still use their phone, you know, to take a, to take a photo. So that, that, you know, meant that we had to push way harder and faster to our full vision for glasses. When did you learn the market was small? Because you couldn't even keep these things in stock. I told you I had a big, ugly blue color. Like, it was a fine color, but you know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:46:21 Yeah, but I think even, you know, I think we were shipping like hundreds of thousands of, you You know, I think 100,000 units in hardware is kind of like the first threshold of like, okay, you've got a product people are interested in and want to buy. But even at a couple hundred thousand units, I just didn't see a path to it being like, you know, hundreds of millions of units. Because ultimately at the end of the day, the bar that we set for any product we develop is that it has to be 10 times better than the next best alternative. And when we looked at how people were using specs at the time, it just wasn't 10 times better than pulling your phone out of your pocket. you know, and maybe in some use cases it was if you really wanted to be hands free or, you know, that kind of thing. But it just wasn't 10 times better than the amazing camera you had on your phone. And so we really then set out to try to push towards as fast as we could our true vision for computing, you know.

Starting point is 00:47:11 That was how many years ago when you started this? That would have been 20, like 2016, 2017, we were really pressing into, you know, the more advanced parts of augmented reality glasses. And I think, you know, if you look at the step-by-step approach we took, the first generation had one camera, right? The second generation had two cameras with depth. The generation after that added a display. The generation after that added an operating system and developer platform. That's the version that's currently in the... What's the generation I used yesterday?

Starting point is 00:47:41 That came out in 2024. That's generation four or five? Four or five, yeah. And that was the first time we really offered a developer platform so that folks could start building and creating all these experiences. Okay. So can you explain your evolution of glasses? You said basically you don't think it was glasses. It's just another form of computing.

Starting point is 00:47:58 So to go all the way back, the initial thesis was, let's get the camera out of your pocket, right? But at the same time, you know, on the phone, we were so constrained in what we could build, right? I mean, you have this tiny little screen. We're watching augmented reality just take off on the phone. Hundreds of millions of people every day are using these augmented reality experiences on this tiny little screen.

Starting point is 00:48:18 Let's pause real quick there. Because this is another, I think, example of what I was trying to figure out about you earlier. and I kind of went crazy. So we still haven't figured it out. I know why. It might take a few more conversations. You're talking about all these people using augmented reality.

Starting point is 00:48:32 You're talking about the filters you added, the lenses and stuff to Snapchat. Yeah. Did you get that idea from another company? Where did that come from? We bought a startup called Luxury that was working on those lenses. And then Bobby really pushed the vision of turning that into a platform. And once we turn into a platform and build these developer tools called Lens Studio so that anyone could build lenses, then it just took off.

Starting point is 00:48:54 That's what got me using Snapchat because it was a little older than like you're the typical people using it. But did this launch after stories? That must have launched after stories. So how many years into Snap do you think that you've added this other feature? Probably three or four years or something.

Starting point is 00:49:12 Okay, that's actually way sooner than I thought. It's way sooner than I thought. Because you were working on Snapchat for how long? 15? About 15 years. Okay, so go back to what you're saying. Then you found hundreds of thousands or millions of people now.

Starting point is 00:49:23 using? Hundreds of millions of people are not using air like every day. But back then, this is, they're engaging with AR through this feature, but this is before you did the glasses. Yeah, it's sort of concurrent with the, sort of concurrent with the glasses and maybe concurrent with the second generation I want to say by the time we really had an augmented reality platform. But, you know, the original thesis behind creating lenses was just people, a lot of people thought it was weird to just take a selfie, right? Tons of folks were taking selfies to express themselves, but like a lot of people were like, why would I just take a selfie? I don't want to be reminded what I look like.

Starting point is 00:50:01 Could piss some dog ears on me. So, you know, or vomit a rainbow, right? So people had a reason to... I was covering people in flowers. It's fun. Yeah, it's fun. So I think lenses really gave people a reason to express themselves and to share with their friends.

Starting point is 00:50:17 But then, you know, after we built out the Lens Studio developer tools and this kind of thing, the platform just exploded. Now, you know, people have made millions of lenses, all sorts of different ways for people to express themselves, not only with selfies, but also lenses that change the world as you've experienced. And we just found that people were incredibly constrained by this tiny little smartphone screen and needing to use their thumbs to interact with augmented reality. And it was so clear that we needed to embed it in the world for it to be successful.

Starting point is 00:50:44 And we were going to need to create the device to do that because no device even came close to the vision that we had. So we've really just pushed over the last decade to make that vision impossible. And then later this year, you know, we're launching the first consumer version, which will be a big step for us. One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the book zero to one. It says the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places.

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Starting point is 00:52:27 Yeah, I think in general with my life thus far, like with the things that we build, I see them very, very clearly, even before we've built them. And I kind of know what I want. I know how I want it to work. And I also know that if I can't see it, then we're off, we're off track. And so I think really trying to stay true to that, that feeling and that vision and that focus is just so, so important. And that doesn't mean not being like open to other people's ideas, other people's creativity, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:53:01 But like, I think, you know, yeah, I just very, very vividly can see what we're, what we're trying to create. I'm going to explain or describe an experience that I read about. You tell me if it's similar to the one that, that, that you know, experience where when that legendary meeting that happened when Edwin Land's 70, Steve Jobs 25, they're sitting across, they're in a conference room sitting across a table from one another. And they talked about they're like, they don't really consider themselves inventors. It's kind of funny because Edwin Land had the third most patents, you know, in human history.

Starting point is 00:53:29 They said they discovered products that they would literally be looking at an empty table and see the final form of what they're doing. And then they reverse engineer from that and essentially, you know, pro their entire organization to invent the technology to invent the product. Is that the similar experience you're having? I really, really like that because I think what they're describing is technology in service of a product vision.

Starting point is 00:53:55 So instead of chasing a technology, being crystal clear about what you're trying to create and then organizing everyone to invent everything needed to create that product. So yeah, I mean, yeah, yes, I guess, yeah. Is that not what you've been doing the last decade with the, the glasses.

Starting point is 00:54:14 Because you made a choice. You're like other people are partnering with existing companies like Luxottica, who I think is a very fascinating story. I told you before I did this crazy episode of Founders podcast. I think it's episode 394

Starting point is 00:54:25 on Leonardo DeVecchio, which was just one of the crazy, he's an orphan and you built one of the most, you know, to this day most powerful and like such a dominating companies in his industry. But you chose not to do that. There's a lot of reasons why

Starting point is 00:54:38 I don't think that's the right. Let's go into them. We don't have a, an end here. As much as you can share that, you know, but I'm very interested in your philosophy behind the decisions you're making is what I'm trying to get to.

Starting point is 00:54:51 I think there's like a number of challenges. Obviously, I think it's much more harmful for Luxottica than it is for meta. I think meta needed to partner with Luxottica because the meta brand, I think, is not something that people want to put anywhere near their face. So I think that meta really needed it.

Starting point is 00:55:07 I think what's challenging for Luxottica is they took like the most iconic, crazy high margin product, and they destroyed the margin, and then they associated it with meta. So, like, I think like that, like, we'll see if that pans out over like a longer period of time, if that was the right brand choice for them. But I can definitely see why meta needs to camouflage their brand, which I think a lot of people don't resonate with and don't like with, you know, the Rayban brand.

Starting point is 00:55:35 But I think people are misreading, I think, the dynamic of what's happening when you have meta ray bands on the shelf next to a regular pair of ray bands, and they're both about the same price, right? And it's, you know, I love to just walk into a sunglass hut or whatever and talk to them. Hey, what's going on? What's selling? What's not? It's like, well, you can get the meta ray bands that have a camera for about the same price as the regular raybans. Why don't you, you know, try it out for your upcoming vacation? I think that's a smart strategy if you want to move a lot of volume, but I don't know if that builds a durable business over time. And the reason why I don't know if that builds a durable business over time is if I look at successful hardware companies over a long period of time,

Starting point is 00:56:13 we can look at Apple. We could talk about Tesla, for example. Early adopter is the wrong term, but they really try to start with premium or even luxury positioning around a very passionate early adopter group that believes in their vision, right? Think like the Tesla Roadster, right, or the early IMac or the early iPhone. And they build a brand by starting with those early enthusiasts who like believe right in the electrification of the world the transformation of the power you know the power grid how we're going to you know move things around or in the case of apple you know a revolution in the personal computer right that everyone's been doing phones wrong and that like you know having this uh you know personal computer in your pocket you know would be really transformationally

Starting point is 00:56:56 and they really activate that that passionate group of enthusiasts and then over time they work with that really passionate group of enthusiasts to you know grow into the mass market well present preserving their premium positioning, which means high gross margins, then they take those high gross margins and they reinvest an R&D, which widens their lead. And like that is the story, I think, of successful hardware companies. And I think it's very, very hard to start with a super broad base, low margin consumer product and try to work your way into premium positioning. So I think if you look at specs and like what we've tried to do, even like your early experiences with the with the brand, right? We're innovative and different and, again, oriented around a group of enthusiasts and early adopters

Starting point is 00:57:41 who, like, want to see the world differently, who want to participate in the cutting edge of technology. And I think if we're able to build the brand that way and build our own brand around that, that will allow us to sustain, you know, our margins over time, which will allow us to reinvest, which ultimately will give us a big competitive advantage. I want to go back to wanting to control most of, like, actually building your own hardware. you said something even the marketing though

Starting point is 00:58:06 I think like you gotta give you credit to the marketing you guys were doing back in the day from the first spectacles where like there wasn't like a story you could just walk into it's not the experience you described it's like you would like air drop these vending machines

Starting point is 00:58:16 and then I remember there's like a website and I'm not a fucking power user of Snapchat I was just like I want these glasses and I would be like refreshing the the website to figure it's like oh okay here's a new drop and you'd have like a countdown like it's dropping and you wouldn't say where it is

Starting point is 00:58:30 and I'm in like Miami at the time it's like all right it's dropping in Venice I said, God damn it. And then I wind up, the way I got them is you did a drop in New York and a friend of mine. I called him. And he went and stood in line and got him for it. There was like a really unique and fun. Like, you just made it.

Starting point is 00:58:44 I like this idea of, I just talking to Brian Armstrong about this, I found our point base, where he's like, everybody has shareholder letters. Everybody has to write shareholder letter. Everybody has to do these analyst calls. And he's trying to find a way to like make them fun and like kind of like Internet native. And, you know, there are forms of marketing. They're not just analysts that are reading these things. If you think about them and like and think about like doing creative marketing,

Starting point is 00:59:07 you could just drastically increase the amount of people that are getting information about your company. Why is it so important to you, though, to control so much of the hardware that you're making? Control of the hardware is necessary to deliver an extraordinary customer experience in this space. And the intersection between the hardware and the software to deliver that customer experience is essential. So, you know, as we look at how other people are approaching, the space, trying to cobble together components from a ton of different manufacturers and get them to all work really well in a super small, lightweight form factor that's incredibly performant is just really, really hard to do.

Starting point is 00:59:47 And so I think for us, if we want to really deliver, you know, this cutting edge computing experience, doing that requires us to have a very high degree of control of the areas we we can really differentiate. So for example, for us that, the display components are an area where we really differentiate. We have an incredibly performant wave guide, which is like the glasses part of the lens, right? Basically the lens of the glasses. And we've developed our own projector that's incredibly small that beams light into this wave guide.

Starting point is 01:00:22 That's a big strategic advantage for us because the display components draw a lot of power, right? They're really important in terms of having that immersion and being able to have a very wide field of view when you're using the glasses you can interact with the world. And then, of course, like, the resolution, the sharpness, like those are the things that really, really matter. And so for us, in order to push those boundaries, there's no one that comes close to our ability to deliver on that product experience. So by doing it ourselves, I think we've created, you know,

Starting point is 01:00:50 a competitive advantage that will show up in the product that consumers will experience. Say more about that line where you said it's important to control the parts that you can differentiate on. Essentially, like, you're going to burn yourself out if you try to control everything, right? So it's really important to identify very early on, like, where are the strategic points where you can create a totally unique customer experience by really investing and doing things differently? And for us, we've really thoughtfully picked out where can we play and do something that's really hard and do it differently that creates a sustained competitive advantage because it delivers such an awesome customer experience. So the display components are one. I can talk about that because it's public.

Starting point is 01:01:25 But like later this year, people will see a lot of these areas where we've invested and invented, you know, fundamentally invented. new ways of doing things that I think consumers are going to love. Another thing that, like, Edwin, like, again, people should study Edwin Land. They should study all these histories because entrepreneurs because you just realize they can come up with ideas too. We were talking earlier. It's like he wanted, he realized, like, if he did not have control, because he started, he wanted to be an inventor, not an entrepreneur. He had to learn to be an entrepreneur just so he could actually make money on his invention. So therefore, he only wanted to make money so he could invent more things.

Starting point is 01:01:56 He was not after, you know, just having piles of money. And any time he tried to outsource, one, He let other companies get in between him and the end consumer, which he fixed that when he did Polaroid and the cameras. But when the manufacturing, the factories were in Massachusetts, for God's sake. He was manufacturing high-end technology in America. And his whole point was just like he didn't want to be a manufacturer, but he needed to control the things. So not like to get the cost down, but to be able to influence the end unit of the product. Yeah, people, you know, I think would be stunned to learn that we manufacture core components in the U.S. and the U.K., right, in our own facilities, which allow us to do this really advanced R&D that push the boundaries of what's, you know, what's possible with these components.

Starting point is 01:02:44 Yeah, it's the same exact idea. So how are you going to distribute them? I can't share all of our secrets, but we can regroup after the, after the launch and deep dive into all that. Okay, but I have a sense that you want to control that, too? I think it's important in terms of the customer experience. What a surprise. All right, you described, you wrote this like, I think it was your annual letter recently. And I forgot the term you're basically the way you're positioning snap. It's not like a little brother, but you described essentially like you have the scale of some of these big players,

Starting point is 01:03:17 but you don't have the trillion dollar market cap, right? And you were, I think at least once in this conversation, you described that you've been engaged in trench warfare. Why do you call it transfer warfare and tell us some stories about this? Yeah, I mean, I think the term I used in my letter was like the middle child, right? Because we're so much bigger than, you know, smaller competitors like a Reddit or a Pinterest or something like that, right? But we don't have to- You just call Reddit small? From like a, you know, we're almost a billion folks using our service.

Starting point is 01:03:44 If you look at like our daily active engagements, about like half a billion folks. So I think like just in terms of the scale of engagement. So there's half a billion people using SNAP every day? About half a billion every day, yeah. And a billion. And a billion about, you know, almost almost a living. So how many other services? How many other services are that size?

Starting point is 01:03:59 Maybe 10, maybe. Okay. Seven to 10. Depends if you include China. No, we don't. Maracle, baby. All right, so wait, you're the, not the, I keep saying little brother. You're the middle child.

Starting point is 01:04:11 Say more about that. For the middle child. And I think, you know, I think what's interesting about that is like that, you know, and it's funny, we've got four kids at home, right? So part of it was, like, based on my own experience with our kids where, like, a lot of attention is paid to the, the, the eldest child, right? And, you know, and they've gotten so much bigger and they've grown up and, you know, or 15 year old. And then the baby, right, is growing so fast. It's so exciting.

Starting point is 01:04:36 And then I think somewhere in the middle, right, and hopefully this isn't the case in our house, there's like this period where, you know, you're changing and evolving and people don't know what are you becoming, right? Maybe in the case for Snap, for Snap, right, people are trying to understand, what is this glasses thing they've been doing for 12 years that they're about to like launch to the world. What is the role? You know, Snap's core, Snapchat's core business is evolving. We're growing this huge direct revenue business that's growing really, really rapidly. And we're diversifying, you know, our advertising business with small and medium customers. So we're in this period of, like, very intense change, I think, for Snapchat. And as I mentioned, we're not as big as the giants,

Starting point is 01:05:10 and we're not as small as the, or smaller competitors. And so it's that really interesting moment that I think, you know, middle children also, you know, maybe experience where there's all this change happening and you know um you're you're sort of stuck in the in the middle is this a stressful time for you you know it's so funny my my wife like loves the aura ring like she's obsessed you know she like she like you know markets this thing to like everybody right wants to like compare scores and all this kind so she finally like years and years later with like i'm going to try the or ring and she was like shocked to learn that like you know there's sort of like the relaxed and stressed state and I'm just like in the relaxed state like all day long. And so I like wore it for a week and

Starting point is 01:05:52 it basically was like, you know, I sleep like seven or eight hours. I'm in the relaxed state all the time. Like she was like how like what? So I think like I really love like periods of intense change. Like I'm inspired by it. I enjoy it. And so like well, you know, yeah, it is like stressful to some degree. I think like, you know, the question is like, how do you turn that stress into like opportunity into growth and to change? But I think what's really important is for our entire team and our organization to know what a high stakes moment this is for our business, right? Like at this moment and time, you know, what will we become? We are in a transitional moment. And that's super, super exciting. And it means every second, like every minute counts. I would say more exciting.

Starting point is 01:06:42 than stressful, but like, it's a really cool moment for our company. When you write something like that, obviously, like, is it more aimed at the broader, like, investor community or is it aimed for internal, like, consumption? I always wrote them internally, but then they kept leaking and people like them. So then I was like, you know, we'll just publish it publicly going forward. Brad Jacobs has started eight separate billion-dollar companies. He said, I've come to know a lot of extremely successful people in my life. and they all have one thing in common.

Starting point is 01:07:14 They think differently than most people. All of them, to a person, have rearranged their brains to prevail at achieving big goals in turbulent environments where conventional thinking often fails. What Brad noticed is that great business leaders are pattern spotters, but you can't spot patterns if you can't see all of your data. Most businesses only use 20% of their data. Why? Because 80% of customer intelligence.

Starting point is 01:07:42 is invisible. It's hidden in emails, transcripts, and conversations. That's where HubSpot comes in. With HubSpot, all of your data comes together so you can see the patterns that matter. This is important because when you know more, you grow more. And that is a pattern that never fails. Visit HubSpot.com today. That is HubSpot.com. I had this great conversation with Michael Dell, who's just awesome, like a great human being, absolute love that I get spent time with them. I can't believe it. And he has that thing where it's He actually thinks it's important to, even if you don't have a crisis, to, like, induce one, like, to create one. And he gave this fantastic, you know, he's reimagined his company.

Starting point is 01:08:23 I mean, have you spent any time with him? I have, yeah. Okay, yeah. So, like, that's probably, if I was you, I'd be, like, picking his brain. I'm friends with his son, Zach. And, you know, everybody has access to, like, the Bloomberg terminal. And Zach's like, I got the dad terminal. And it's just like, I can, like, type in any question and get some crazy, you know, response from this 40, essentially has been, you know, world-class

Starting point is 01:08:41 such a river for four decades. So like, I have an issue with supply chain. Well, guess what? They'll seen everything about supply chains. And he can be very helpful. But his whole point was like he knew that his company was on inflection point a few years ago. And he stood up and gave this, I guess, this talk.

Starting point is 01:08:57 I think it was a talk. And he might have wrote it down. It was just like, you know, there's a company out there that is, you know, going to be faster than us, have better products, have cheaper products. And essentially they're going to come for us. It's like that company's us. Like, we are going to reinvent. we're going to figure out our weaknesses.

Starting point is 01:09:14 And instead of waiting around to be somebody else's meal, we're going to figure out how to reinvent our company. And on the podcast, the episode we did together, he was just like, if you don't have a crisis, you need to find one. I would say yes with the caveat that, like, I don't want our team to always feel like they're in crisis mode. I think I always try to be really cognizant of where the team is at and like when we should sprint and run hard

Starting point is 01:09:37 and like when we actually need to take a step back and adjust. So I think like staying in touch, especially at our size, right, we're like 5,000-ish people, you can really stay in touch with like the feeling of the organization and knowing when to like really, really push, and when it's better to create a little more space for like ideation or experimentation.

Starting point is 01:09:59 So 5,000 people serving a billion users. You mentioned you have a bunch of different revenue lines or ones that are growing. Like how does, tell me about the ones that are new. One of the new ones is our subscription business, which is growing really, really rapidly, called Snapchat Plus. And I think it's a really good fit for Snap's culture. You know, we adopted the advertising model very early on. I think it's like well understood.

Starting point is 01:10:24 It's a huge opportunity. And we have a ton of, you know, engagement on Snapchat. So advertising is a big opportunity for us. It allows us to offer our product for free, which is great. But I think, you know, the heart of Snapchat is, and our company is about building stuff that people love and that they want. And we were getting so many requests for all sorts of, you know, new and different features from our, are the most passionate members of our community. And we wouldn't, we could never really find time to resource and invest in them because we were focused on things that everyone would use, not just like our most passionate, not just the most passionate Snapchaters. So we decided to build Snapchat Plus, which essentially gives you access to like new fun features on Snapchat.

Starting point is 01:11:04 We listen to our community and the things that they want and we'll test stuff and release new things for Snapchat Plus. And for like four bucks a month, you can join Snapchat Plus and get access to all these new, these new features. That's now grown to like 25 million subscribers, which is like ESPN scale of subscribers. And I think in the last quarter is growing 60% year every year. Don't make me do public bath. Is that a billion run rate? We're doing a bit like a, yeah, like a billion run rate growing 60% year every year. That's incredible.

Starting point is 01:11:30 And it's a really good fit for what we're great at, which is making new stuff that people love and want to pay for. So I think it's like culturally been a been a great fit for our company. It kind of ties to what we were talking about when your design meetings earlier. We're just like we're looking at hundreds. How often are you doing these design meetings with the way? Once a week. Okay. So every week you're going to hundreds of new ideas, some of which wind up for features for Snapchat.

Starting point is 01:11:52 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. So that's perfectly in time. What did you say earlier about what else are you going to do with, do you think like you're going to add to that or do in the future if you want to talk about it? For the subscription business, I mean, we got a zillion ideas in the backlog. So we're just going to keep shipping new, you know, new additions and features. Do you think you eventually increase the price?

Starting point is 01:12:11 Maybe, but I think it's so early right now. Yeah, we have done tiering. So one of the things that has been really popular, we release something called Lens Plus. So I think Snapchat, the camera itself, it's probably the most used, like, Gen A.I camera service, like, in terms of like image, video generation, this kind of thing. Just because of how many people are using our camera every day. But we have, you know, so we release a bunch of these Gen AI lenses. And we give a number of uses for free. but then if folks want to upgrade to Lens Plus

Starting point is 01:12:40 because they're loving it and using them all the time, they can do that. And that's grown nicely for us too. So Lens Plus is at a slightly higher price year. And then we have the platinum plan or whatever that you can get rid of ads and unlock more features and that kind of thing.

Starting point is 01:12:54 What did you change about the advertising business? You said something about you just basically adopted at the beginning of what was there and available and maybe known. And how has that changed over time? There's been a couple huge shifts for us in the past couple years. So, you know, the core of our advertising business from the early days really grew around, you know,

Starting point is 01:13:13 as a small number in the, you know, in the hundreds of large customers in the United States, really built around a brand business. And it grew very, very quickly throughout the, you know, the history of the company. But our advertising mix almost looked like the inverse of like a Google or a meta. So Google or meta, the vast majority of their revenue comes from small and medium-sized customers. And a small amount of their revenue comes from, you know, large customers, especially here in the U.S. We had like the inverse. We had most of our revenue coming from the small group of large customers and then a very small amount of money coming from small and medium customers.

Starting point is 01:13:45 Part of that was because, you know, at the time many years ago, we didn't have a really robust lower funnel advertising business, you know, where people can optimize against, you know, events that happen in their app or, you know, people making purchases on their website. And, you know, we hadn't really built out a lot of those capabilities. And small and medium customers really care about that. They want to see their return on ad spend right away. So despite having this enormous scale and all this engagement, the ad offering, especially in the lower funnel, was immature. So over the past couple of years, we built out that entire lower funnel advertising offerings. We can really drive performance for customers, for small and medium customers.

Starting point is 01:14:23 And we've been really rapidly growing that small medium customer segment. So we're doing like this really difficult transformation to make our sort of inverted, you know, mostly large U.S. customers advertising around upper funnel and brand goals into like mostly small, medium customers advertising against lower funnel goals. And that's just been a transformation of like every part of our advertising business, the way that we go to market on the sales side, the engineering and product work that's happening. Yeah, I'd be curious like what that looks like. Because if you're doing the inverse, you have these giant brand deals, I'd have to imagine as giant brands spending a ton of money, right? I'd have to imagine then you have to employ a ton of

Starting point is 01:15:01 salespeople, right, in a way that Google and Facebook do not. Yeah, that's certainly one part of it for sure. So they'd be more profitable too because they kind of have like a self-service product. Yeah, and I think, you know, large customers rightly want a lot of bespoke service as well. So our engineering team was spending a huge amount of time building bespoke solutions for really large customers who want to measure things in a specific way or want a really unique integration or unique offering. And, you know, now our engineering team is spending a huge amount of time serving lower funnel customers at scale, right? And so rather than doing like... Building a product they need to adapt to.

Starting point is 01:15:36 That small, yeah, that small medium customers can really easily, you know, sign up for unused. Are you getting rid of the bespoke? Are you trying to like... We're doing a lot less bespoke, but we also find that these large customers, they want to drive lower funnel outcomes too. So a lot of it is teaching our sales folks, you know, who were used to living in this more brand upper funnel oriented world to sell into lower funnel objectives for large customers. It was actually a weird idea that just came to mind because I just did this episode called How SpaceX Works. So there's this guy named Max Olson, who he still needs permission to publish a book.

Starting point is 01:16:07 But essentially, he's like, hey, I want to tell this story of the history of SpaceX as it happened, and I'm going to use their internal memos to do so. So he's got access to, like, the first 10 years. I hope SpaceX allows him. I've seen a copy of, like, the advanced copy that you can't sell yet. It's called SpaceX Foundation. So he's like, well, in the meantime, I'm going to write an essay that tells the story of why this is important.

Starting point is 01:16:27 And so I read the essay three times like, this is fucking crazy. so I just did an episode of founders on it. And one of the most interesting things I never thought of is like essentially the aerospace industry, everything was bespoke. Everything was custom to the customer. And it's just like, well, if you do that, you can't scale. And Quinn Strottwell was, you know, a huge driver behind this.

Starting point is 01:16:47 It's like, we're going to, you know, build a basic, good enough launch system that you adapt to. And then it took a while to educate them to adapt to it. But once they're adapted, then they just, I mean, now they're doing, I think, I think most launch providers would do two to four launches per year. That they do one every like two days. They did more load last year than every single other launch provider in like China, Russia,

Starting point is 01:17:12 America, everywhere else combined. And that one idea where it's like we can't do bespoke, we have to, we have to get this uniform if we're going to scale this and we can't get to our goals if we don't scale it. And to take it a step further, they didn't have to deal with all the political pressure that NASA is under to put, you know, a certain factory here or a plant in this state. And you know what I mean? Like, I think, like, just out the gate,

Starting point is 01:17:32 they were able to deliver rockets that attempt the cost, you know, of a NASA or something like that. Did you intentionally invert? We're like, Google and Facebook are doing it this way. We're going to try a different way and then realizing, oh, we need to change.

Starting point is 01:17:43 Like, back then, did you make that decision consciously? We saw that, like, if we really wanted to grow the ads business to be, you know, double-digit billions over time, that we needed to have a lower funnel business with a diversified set of small... But did you hope that wasn't true at the time at the very beginning?

Starting point is 01:18:00 No, I just think we grew really fast on, you know, large customer brand advertising. They can move dollars very, very rapidly, right? That's one of the benefits. You know, if you're working with a large customer, they can move, you know, millions of dollars very quickly. If you have a couple hundred of those customers, you can build a very large advertising business very quickly. The question is, like, how do you build a diversified, very, very big one over time?

Starting point is 01:18:22 Okay, so you can't get big when you can't get huge without it. Oh, okay. And you needed to get big. at that was like you that was like almost like stage one you had to do it that way and i'd say almost all these platforms stage one looks like that okay right i mean even facebook in the early days it was display advertising right um and then over time they built out way more advanced systems optimizing against lower funnel goals i'd argue like a reddit or a Pinterest today i mean you know to some degree Pinterest is building out lower funnel objectives and this kind of thing but a lot of it is

Starting point is 01:18:52 still you know large customer upper funnel dollars so i'd say almost all ad platforms, start with that because you can grow very quickly, and then you use that to invest in building out much more sophisticated systems. Yeah, and at the beginning you said you really thought you were building a messaging out, not a social network. You studied the way messaging apps in other countries monetized. I feel like you have a lot of soul, and so you prefer, I don't know if you could say this, but you would prefer almost if you had like an all subscription business because the incentives are more aligned. I really love the subscription business. I wish we had done it earlier. I just said I love it. I love

Starting point is 01:19:26 the direct connection to our customers. I love that it's directly related to the value that we provide them. And I think it's been really exciting to see that like, you know, I think unlike some of these other internet services, people are getting a ton of value from Snapchat. So much so, they're willing to pay for it. Right. And I think that's, that's, you know, it's also a sign to me that we're building something that's valuable. I spend a lot of time with the Spotify team, Daniel, Gustav, Alex, the top three, three people there. And they just have this like soul in the game. And they're really trying to build an app.

Starting point is 01:19:58 Their whole thing is just like when you're done using Spotify, do you feel good? And I'm like, well, you know, I spend an hour listening to music. I feel great. I spent an hour listening to, you know, founders' podcasts or any other podcast. I feel great. Now they have audio books. Do you feel great? They're actually trying, it wouldn't have worked any other way.

Starting point is 01:20:14 Like they obviously have some, they have somewhat of an ad business. But I think they told me their second most paid subscribers. in the world, I think, behind Netflix. And, you know, they did that in a relatively short amount of time. Like, I'm friends with Jimmy I Bean. He was on the show. And he told me some outlandish shit. He's just like, when Apple bought us, Spotify only had 3 million paid subscriber,

Starting point is 01:20:34 I wanted to take a run at them. And now they think of like 250 million. But there is something about, like, if you do have this soul, if you are trying to put something good into the world, that is not just trying to maximize usage, you know, on an app that's not good for you. it's just more aligned. I didn't ask you that before, but I just got that the sense that's how you were.

Starting point is 01:20:54 You have any idea the size that you think it could get to? Because you have how many page? You said 25 million subs. And when did you like start it? Was it two, three years ago, something that? Still, it's pretty goddamn fast. Let's see. You know, I'm excited.

Starting point is 01:21:09 It's obviously grown quite rapidly, and I think it could be a big revenue driver for us. All right, let's go back to the more difficult times in Snapchat's history. I want to know more about this like trench warfare. That's a great line that you had. I think given that we're up against such large monopolistic competitors, like every day is a fight.

Starting point is 01:21:28 Every day is about putting one foot in front of the other because they just have so much scale. And I think for us, you know, creativity has been historically the force multiplier that's allowed us to break through and take ground, right? But I think as I look towards the future, what makes me so excited And the reason why I brought that up is like creativity combined with AI should allow us to move incredibly quickly in this environment and overcome a lot of the resource constraints that we've had historically. And that's something that that's really different about the next decade for SNAP. Do you ever foresee the hardware being a separate business?

Starting point is 01:22:09 It essentially is. So it's a wholly owned subsidiary today. The brands themselves, you know, they're adjacent to one of the ones. another, but they're different brands. In many ways, it's a different customer, although not entirely different. So I do think that they'll grow in different ways over time. Why did you make the decision to start a separate company at the time? The hardware business at its core is just so different than the internet service business that we operate with Snapchat and even requires a different execution style. With hardware, like, you cannot make a mistake, Right. Like the things that we are doing today will show up in two years from now. And if we made a mistake, it's a huge problem. And it'll cost us another year or whatever to fix it. I mean, it's that type of precision and operational rigor is just night and day different than Snapchat, right? Where if like we break something today because we're moving quickly, like it's fine. We'll fix it this afternoon. Right. It'll move on. And so culturally, they're very, they have to be different companies and different operating styles. And then I think in terms of. of the brand and where we're trying to take the specs brand, I think Snapchat has always

Starting point is 01:23:22 tried to be fun and whimsical to make sure that you feel comfortable expressing yourself, right? Snapchat never takes itself too seriously. And while I don't think specs is going to like take itself seriously, you know, necessarily in a way that's like weird or, you know, not true to who we are, what we're trying to do is incredibly serious. You know, we all. We all are trying to reinvent the computer. We think that the way that people have, in trying to make it more human, and we think the way that people have designed computers

Starting point is 01:23:52 for the last 50 years is like robbing us of who we are and like our humanity, and that people are gonna want a new type of computer. They want a computer that allows them to use AI and access AI in different ways that brings them closer together with their friends and the world. And so that vision and mission, I think,

Starting point is 01:24:10 deserves real focus and dedication. And in some ways, while it shares that same root and philosophy and idea that animates Snapchat, it's approaching it from a very different perspective. When did you, in your mind, realize that this had to be two separate companies? In a lot of ways, they've operated quite separately, right? They have the same sort of GNA support, but SnapLab, which, you know, it was the precursor to Spex, Inc, has operated as an relatively independent part of Snap for a long time.

Starting point is 01:24:43 different location, separate, not shared office space? How did that explain the organization? Yeah, you know, nearby, in some cases shared office spaces, in some cases definitely not, depending on what we're working on. Leadership team, all that sort of stuff, you know, historically has been quite separate. Yeah, did you ever read about, I'm sure you did, but like, Steve Jobs was very adamant about when he was inventing something new, it could not be in the same building.

Starting point is 01:25:08 Had to be a completely different team. I don't think they separated it out, you know, that I don't think spun out different like entities inside of Apple, but he's like, you can't even be in the same building. That was like really, really important. Yeah, it makes sense to me because I think focus is just so critical when you're trying to build something new. And differentiation. You don't want the opinions of other people outside of, you know, the people working on it.

Starting point is 01:25:30 What was Snap Lab? Snap Lab really incubated a lot of the spectacles and specs stuff. Why did you make the decision to start something like Snap Lab? It was to house all the hardware development. Okay, so it's not like SnapLab was created and then you realize, hey, let's do hardware. It was the vehicle to do hardware? I think it was sort of concurrent. I mean, when we started working on spectacles back in the day, that was really the genesis of SnapLab.

Starting point is 01:25:57 I mean, that's what it was called initially. Do you still have some kind of like R&D separate thing to like dream up new products? Or you just only focus on the app and the glasses? You know, one of the things we're thinking a lot about now, and this is sort of what I mean about the sort of force multiplication of AI and creativity. Like the core Snapchat business is really well positioned to launch new app categories today, right? Because we have a massive amount of distribution. We've got tons of great ideas and brilliant creative people. And now with AI, we actually have the resources to make that possible.

Starting point is 01:26:32 So inside of Snapchat today and in our design team, we're thinking a lot about what types of new apps and services, internet services. But a separate app from Snapchat? A separate app from Snapchat. But we can use Snapchat as a launchpad for these new services because it reaches almost a billion people. Do you have any other apps? I don't even know. There's an app called Saturn, which we acquired, which is a totally new way to think of calendaring. So if you look at calendars today, not only are they kind of really entrenched into like the business world, but because they are, it makes it almost impossible to easily share calendars with friends. And it's all, and calendars are all today oriented around email, right, rather than your phone number and your text messages.

Starting point is 01:27:12 But all of your planning and the way that you're working together with your friends is happening in your text messages, right, and around your phone number. And so the Saturn team has had a lot of really great insights about what the future of a calendar should look like. And so that's a separate app that's now owned by Snapchat that's integrated with Snapchat and gets distribution through Snapchat but is a standalone service. Why would people use it? Like give me a use case? Because it's a calendar built for your friends. So it is so difficult. I mean, I don't know if you've experienced this with your partner, but with my wife, like, it's so hard to get my work calendar to match with her work calendar. It's like almost impossible. And let alone get that to map to our 15 year old's calendar, right? And, you know, everything he's got going on after school. And so I think all of a sudden there's a solution that like works really well for our 15 year old who doesn't have like a whole corporate email and whatever, but like wants to share his calendar with friends, right? We can. going to have visibility into each other's calendar, and it all works centered around your phone and your mobile number, right? So it's, so it actually is a social calendar rather than being like

Starting point is 01:28:14 a work-oriented calendar. That just makes things easier. How much you use email? All the time. I push everything to text or WhatsApp. Really? I push everything to email. Oh, you probably have like an army. I use email, like text message. Okay. Oh, there's no army. No, I use email like tech. Yeah. How do you balance focus? Obviously, Snapchat's working, that app. specs working and will continue to like grow how do you balance like inventing new things with with focusing on what you already have like how do you think about that are you just that's just you just need to invent new things that just you have like a compulsion for this um it's it's a it's a really great question i see a huge amount of opportunity in the the products and services that

Starting point is 01:29:04 we have today and i think we need to continue to constantly iterate and involve them and make them better. And that ultimately that's what our customers, our community expects, right? They want us to constantly innovate for them to, you know, make their lives their lives better. So I think we have to tirelessly do that. At the same point, there's nothing more valuable than focus. Like focus is, I mean, arguably my primary role in our company is helping to drive focus and prioritization. So I almost don't see them necessarily as like tradeoffs, but like as just an ongoing part of running our business, right? Making sure that we're being really clear about focusing. on that area is where we see the biggest opportunity.

Starting point is 01:29:42 Yeah, if somebody asked me like, okay, you've read 400 of biographies on history skills entrepreneurs. They always want to, like, give me like a top 10 idea list. And I was like, I can do one better. I can distill everything down to one single word. Focus. And so while you were talking, I was just looking up because I saved all my notes and highlights

Starting point is 01:29:58 for every single book I read. I have a personal AIA that is only trained on all the transcripts for my podcast, every single highlight from every book, every single note. And Edwin Land, one of my favorite quotes of his, He says, my whole life has been trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had. He was obsessed with focus. The reason I asked you this is because you spent any time with Tony from DoorDash?

Starting point is 01:30:22 Not a lot, no. Okay. We just recorded this intense conversation. And I'm going to have to do it again, like, every six months because I still can't get the guy who's got so many ideas. I don't buy individual stocks. I don't really give a shit about anything about making, you know, podcast and try to do this intense focus. So I don't think about investing. I don't think about anything else.

Starting point is 01:30:36 Just do what I'm doing every day. wake up and do it seven days a week. But I don't know anything about the finance of Georgia. All I can tell you is he's, I think, 41 years old. I've never come across another person that gives me like young Jeff Bezos vibes. And I'm so tempted to just like back up the truck. I'm like, I'm just going to vibe. I'm going to vibe invest just because everybody's like, oh yeah, you know, you got 60% of,

Starting point is 01:30:59 I think right now he has 60% market share of food delivery. You're out of your goddamn mind if you think that that guy is just thinking about food delivery. He is he's going to build and he already is I think they launched six new products including their own hardware There's something about this conversation that's reminding me of this where it's just like he's gonna be focused on you know what they're excellent at But he's got grandiose ambitions To the point where like he just like there's no way in help Bezos was gonna stick with books and CDs and movies Like he's it's impossible for that kind of personality type to be that way So yeah I was just curious if like

Starting point is 01:31:35 you, if there was something in you that, basically like your level of ambition. I think ambition is the wrong word. I do think like, I think like creation and problem solving is really what I love to do. I think you're right. Ambition is the wrong word. It's like there's they see a series of problems and they think they can solve it better than anybody else. Yeah, and I think there's like something so incredibly gratifying about doing. doing that. It's awesome. You know, and to see the way it makes people's lives better, the way they respond to it. Like, that's, that's, like, the best. It's awesome. Your focus, basically every day when you wake up is, like, you're attacking what you feel is, like,

Starting point is 01:32:19 the biggest problem in Snapchat? Is that how you organize your day? Like, how do you go about this? I heard you on another podcast say that, like, you kind of get turned on. You didn't use these words, but, like, you're, like, attracted to hard problems. Like, you want, like, difficulty. You want to spend your time solving the hardest problems. I think it's absolutely essential for us to go after solving hard problems, especially as we look at like the long-term success of the business. I think that ultimately like that is where value is created. So I think a huge amount of what I'm thinking about is like how can we make our community,

Starting point is 01:32:53 our customers' lives better and, you know, what are some really, really hard problems that we think we can uniquely solve? I meant more about like the existing problems in like, how you spend your time, how you allocate your time, is a better word, like the existing problems. How do I allocate my time across the existing problem? So, you know, so like, Elon's famous for, like, what is the bottleneck here? And, like, I'll find out in my entire empire where the bottleneck is.

Starting point is 01:33:18 I'm going physically there, and I'm going to sit there and, like, dedicate all our resources. In that essay, I told you, I read about the history of SpaceX. There's a NASA guy, a guy from NASA visiting SpaceX. And they're like, when there's a problem, there's like a flash mob appears. So Elon has a very specific way. And I heard you on another podcast saying, like, you're attracted to the problem. So I'm just curious, like, I'm not talking about problems you could solve. Like, in future product development, I'm saying literally, like, you're running a giant company.

Starting point is 01:33:44 There's all tons of stuff that's not going well. Yeah. So my Monday morning, for example, is like two to two and a half hours in the specs business going through the risk independencies. Red yellow, red, orange, yellow, green. What are we doing to solve it? and what progress are we making and how can I help. I mean, that's how I start my week. You and I were looking at this book I gave you before we started recording

Starting point is 01:34:11 and it was a photographic history. I think it's called like Fearless Genius or Something or ferocious genius. And it's about Steve Jobs. And you opened to a page and Steve had a shit list. And you're like, I have a shit list too. It's like the five hardest problems he's got to solve. And many of them don't have solutions yet.

Starting point is 01:34:28 So it's similar to that. Yeah. And I think what's most important for me is creating a, culture where people are raising their hand and bringing those problems early and often, right? Like, that is mission critical across the organization, right? Like, we can't solve a problem that we don't know about. We can't tell a problem that someone isn't escalating quickly. You know, and so I think it's really beyond just like making sure that we're staying focused on the issues that we need to get resolved and, you know, launch blockers or whatever they are. Culturally,

Starting point is 01:34:54 we have got to make sure that like that is, you know, how the team is operating all day, every day throughout the organization. How do you ensure that information gets to you, though? I think one of the things that's really, I stole this from Walmart, which I thought was great. They have a Friday meeting called In It to Win It. They have their leaders from across the company, not just like super senior leaders, but leaders from across the company around the world all get together for about an hour. And they essentially raise their hand and say, hey, the shopping card ball bearing is not working properly. We got to get this thing fixed.

Starting point is 01:35:23 And who's ever in charge of the shopping cart ball bearing can raise their hand and give a response or they can say, I'll get back to you or whatever it is. But that's multiplied across the entire company. And the thing that they found was like their leaders would go out into the, you know, into stores, into the community and they would hear about problems. And then they'd solve the problem just for the store, but they wouldn't solve it for the company. And so in it to when it allows them to solve these problems company-wide. And so we do the same thing for specs, for Snapchat, like bring the problems forward, right? I mean, you can also, the even simpler way to do it, I love to just walk around and talk to our people, right, and just hear about what's going on, hear about the issues impacting them.

Starting point is 01:35:56 But I think unless you create these like structures and processes in the company to actually, actively surface it and build that culture, it's hard to do that. And I think, you know, it's just so important. So I heard you describe the design team as like a very flat, there's like no hierarchy. Is the rest of the company like that? Like how is, how do you actually organize? I'd say the rest of the company is certainly flatter than most, but, you know, the design team is actually flat, right?

Starting point is 01:36:24 Everyone's got the same title, like that kind of thing. But I think what's so important for Snap is that we're like a ruthless meritocracy. We, like in the beginning of the early days, you know, it's kind of silly now, but in the early days, we would just make up people's titles, like, just make them hilarious. Like, you could come and join Snap and, like, make up whatever you wanted to be called because the whole point was, like, who cares about your title? And if you're focused on your title, you're focused on, like, the exact wrong thing, right? Like that, like, we were going to die if, like, we were a company that's focused on title

Starting point is 01:36:52 and hierarchy and, you know, getting ahead, right, rather than focusing on the customer. I mean, I think that's, like a huge, huge problem. So I'd say, like, the company, yeah, of course, you know, we've, we, we, we're, we're We've got great leaders. We invest a lot in our leaders. But one of the things that I think makes Snap so unique is like no matter who you are, where you are in the company, you can have a huge outsized impact. I mean, it was fun.

Starting point is 01:37:12 I got some great intern feedback. One of our interns came to me and was like, you know, it's funny. Like I came to Snap and like, it wasn't even really clear like who my manager or leader was because everyone was so helpful. And everyone was like guiding me and providing mentorship and working together with me. And so I think that's sort of like one team feeling is really. important. So how do you make sure that anybody in the company can make a major impact, though? First of all, setting that's what we expect at Snap. It's not just like, you know, that we try to

Starting point is 01:37:41 enable it. That's like, if you see a problem and you can fix it, you can solve it. Like, we're going to celebrate that and lift that up and not be precious. Like, oh, this is my thing, my territory. Like that's that. That is, I think, you know, I think people respond really negatively to that in our, in our culture. So I think, you know, sometimes that creates problems. because the swim lanes are less clear. I mean, people are solving problems across the organization, across teams, they're working together.

Starting point is 01:38:06 And I think, you know, just making sure that we have culture and leaders who are rewarding that and reinforcing that behavior is so important. Have you studied how Jensen organized his company? Not in depth. I mean, you would be the expert, I'm sure. Not nearly, but I did do two podcasts on them.

Starting point is 01:38:20 There's a great book called InVideo Way that goes into this, but yeah, I haven't found anybody else that, especially that size, that has like a completely flat, you know, as flat an organization is a way possible. I think he's got like 60 direct reports like it means it's pretty wild and he describes this as like people are worried about like being able to manage like AI that's smarter than them and AI agents are smarter than me. He's like I do this every day. All my 60 direct reports are

Starting point is 01:38:44 smarter than me in their domain and I would be able to manage them and orchestrate them perfectly. It's just it's like very fascinating like I'm always curious again I think the founder like companies are a reflection of the personnel of the founder like the founder is the guardian of the company's soul and it only works if it is like built around who you are in the fly that you have. Yeah, and I think, you know, generally speaking, I would expect the world to move towards flatter structures and much larger spans of control because, like, the communication and organization tax today is, like, night and day what it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Starting point is 01:39:17 Like, so I think companies are still thinking in this, like, sort of industrial mentality where communication was very high friction. That doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of the way that companies are organized and operate today. So I would imagine that more people will move to much. much wider spans of control, much flatter organizations. And I think that'll be helpful. I'm not really interested in people's first company.

Starting point is 01:39:38 I'm interested in their last company. You feel like this is your life's work. This is your last company. I think specs is probably my last company. I would guess. I always said I would never do it again. And now I find myself doing it again with specs. And it's just, you know, I hope that like in the not too distant future,

Starting point is 01:40:00 I can also think about more ways to like give back to society. I mean, our family does a lot. We have like a family fund. We've got, you know, the Snap Foundation. We like are constantly thinking about how to, you know, support L.A., you know, and hopefully in the future, like, you know, more broadly. I love charity, but the best way to be charity is to build a company and a product that makes somebody else's life better.

Starting point is 01:40:23 I think that's like one way to contribute for sure. But I think like I think there are lots of ways to contribute to making the world. better. And I think, I think specs, like, the biggest problem that I see today is people spending seven or eight hours a day on their computer and spending their life operating computer. I think that is like a disaster for our society. And I think, like, we have to change that. And if we don't, like, we are headed in a really bad direction. So I think specs, if we can attack that problem and even shift two hours of the eight hours a day you're spending hunched over like this to you looking out of the world and going for a walk and spending time with your friends and playing

Starting point is 01:40:59 together with them. Like that, that's massive for the world. So I think, like, I really want to, like, land the solution to that problem for sure. But I think there's a lot of problems out there. And I think, you know, over a longer period of time, I want to think about, like, more ways that I can make an impact. You just reminding me, I want to go back to this interesting decision for you to go in on AR at the time when almost everybody was thinking that VR was the path. And I've heard some funny, you say some funny things about that. But so don't let me forget that. But I guess this line of questioning that I'm on right now is really what I'm trying to get to

Starting point is 01:41:33 is just like you're famous for turning down billions and billions of dollars real fast to sell the company. I think the book that I read on you eight years ago was called How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars or something like they made a reference to it. Trying to get like what is motivating it. Like, you know, I study entrepreneurship.

Starting point is 01:41:51 Obviously my entire life is founders. During the day I make founders podcast, at night I hang out with founders. This is my whole life. And I think the common misconception is that entrepreneurs are driven by money. And I would argue they're driven by control. And if you're talented and you want to build a product

Starting point is 01:42:05 that makes somebody else life better and you maintain control, you wind up with money anyways. But their primary motivation is not money. Clearly, your primary motivation was not money. I think there's a line in the book said that you would never work for anybody else. Like, take us through the decision of just like, I don't give a shit about your billions of dollars.

Starting point is 01:42:20 I want to do this. Well, I think, you know, I should, I would never like, underestimate the fact that like Bob, you know, our investors were smart. They allowed Bobby and I to both sell 10 million bucks of stock very early on. Obviously that would have been worth maybe a lot more now, but like, but it's very early on, which meant that like, you know, we were able to see, just, you know, support a family, buy a house, like, whatever it was, right?

Starting point is 01:42:46 So I think like very early on money like was no longer a consideration. But 10 million is not a billion. But 10 million is more than enough money to live a really great, comfortable. But you see what I mean here? Like it's still an unusual decision on your part, especially when you were, how old were you when you were,

Starting point is 01:43:03 the first time you turned out a multi-billion-dollar acquisition offer? Probably 20, I don't know. Young 20s, yeah. Okay. Don't downplay. Like, that's another, we've gone over a series

Starting point is 01:43:17 of unusual decisions that you keep making. So, like, explain to me, like, why I wouldn't do it either. Like, I'd hope I wouldn't do it because I guess the work I'm trying to do on Founders Podcasts, to give you, like, I want to like, to the degree that there is any influence that the podcast has on future generations of entrepreneurs, it's like, right now the entrepreneurship ecosystem, they celebrate, because the incentive structures fucked up, they celebrate start, scale, sell.

Starting point is 01:43:42 You started, you scale, you didn't sell. The 400 biographies, there's not a single biography that I've read where it's like, guy started a company two years later, he sold it for billions of dollars, and he spent the rest of his life as a, as an investor, I'm sorry, almost throw up in my mouth at the thought of this. They don't write books about that. Why do you take yourself out of the game? Like the whole point. Like, Elon's the richest person on the planet. You think he'd ever do that? No, he puts his chips back in there.

Starting point is 01:44:05 He wants to build shit. Yeah. This is one of the things I admire about you. So, like, how the hell do you make that decision at 22, 23, 23, 24? Well, I think we loved what we were doing. I mean, Bobby and I just loved working together. We loved making stuff. We saw a huge opportunity for the service.

Starting point is 01:44:19 And fundamentally, the service was so different than what else was out there. And it was very clear that, like, we would have had to compromise on our vision values if we sold the company. I mean, you think about almost every choice was the opposite of what was happening at the time, right? It was like permanent public social media on a feed. We were doing like private messaging, private ephemeral messaging, right? No public likes and comments, right, with like opening into the camera, not a feed, investing in things like augmented reality when everyone was investing in virtual reality, thinking that people were actually going to like wear a TV on their face. Like it's insane. Like it was insane. And I think like it makes no. It makes no. It makes

Starting point is 01:44:57 No sense. And I think like we looked at that and we were like, wow, like, if that's like the direction people want to go, like that's scary for the world. Now, it's great in many ways that like all of these services have adopted our inventions. I mean, when we talked about, I mean, in 2012, 2013, the importance of privacy, people looked at us like we were insane. I mean, literally, they were like, what are you talking about privacy? Like what? Remember, that was like the world, remember Mark Zuckerberg being like, the world's going to be open and connected. Everyone's going to share everything. Like, what? And it was just so wrong in terms of the direction of the world and what people actually want it.

Starting point is 01:45:32 And so I think, like, you can imagine a world without Snapchat, without these inventions. Like, I think the world would be like a worse place. It's so interesting right now. There's a lot of concern about social media and the way that it makes people feel, right? What's fascinating is when Snapchat is studied separately from social media, there's study after study independent studies that show that Snapchat makes a positive impact on people's friendships, on their well-being, that is fundamentally done. different from social media because in those same studies it shows that Instagram, TikTok, whatever, make people feel bad, right? And so what I find so interesting is that like Snapchat itself represents something different and a connection to your friends and family

Starting point is 01:46:09 that actually makes your life better. And so even though it's challenging to continue operating a business to compete with these folks, you know, who have a very different world view and, you know, a very different direction for how they want to, how they want the world to move, I worry about a world without Snapchat. I worry about a, you know, a world that doesn't try to fight for this different set of values and this different way of thinking about things. One of the benefits of reading a biographies, you see, like, the evolution of an idea over time where, like, your decision not to sell as a young man in his early 20s, right, you might have had, like, a faint idea that, you know, first of all, I think you love being an entrepreneur.

Starting point is 01:46:48 Like, entrepreneurs need businesses. What is an entrepreneur that the sole business? It's like, nothing. You're just sitting on the side of that. It's doing nothing. So, like, you shouldn't sell your ever, ever sell your best idea. That's what I said back in 2018 when I made the first podcast about truth. I think you even said this.

Starting point is 01:47:02 I don't think I'm going to come up with a better idea than this. So I'm going to now dedicate my life to working on my second best idea. How the hell does that make sense for money that I'm going to get anyways in the future? Most of which I won't even spend in my lifetime. But you have that kernel of the idea. But now just this great articulation of that. It's like that idea almost like grew and solidified over time. And then there's things in the future that had to happen that you didn't know we're going to happen.

Starting point is 01:47:26 and you realize that was the right choice, such as social media gets a really bad rap. It has terrible PR. You know, all the polling is like, you know, people, even though they're addicted to these things, they seem to not, you know, make their lives better, where, like, you actually set, if you separate that out and, like, you've built something

Starting point is 01:47:46 where, like, people are actually happy and feel good about using the product. That's worth more than money. 100%. Yeah. And you have to have an impact at the scale of a billion people around the world who use our service to talk with their friends and family, build stronger relationships. Like that's inspiring to me. There was two conversations I had on this podcast that surprised me.

Starting point is 01:48:08 The first one was a Daniel Ruk of Spotify. And the next one was Toby Lukai of Shopify. Get those back, confused all the time. Daniel said something interesting where he was even willing at the beginning. He thought Spotify needed to exist in the world that he didn't want to sell it. But if he thought selling it would increase it, would increase. the likelihood that it continues on this world, then he was willing to do so.

Starting point is 01:48:30 And then, so that shocked me. And then Toby Lukay said something that was fascinating where he thought if it was not further, it's this new invention of AI in its current format, that he was close to find, he didn't think he would be the best CEO of Shopify, so he'd find somebody else to do that. Because all, in both cases,

Starting point is 01:48:48 they wanted what was best for the company. I think for me, like I see Snapchat as the best possible vehicle to reinvent the computer. So if you think about Snapchat, we have this core cash flowing profitable business, right, in Snapchat that we're able to then use to reinvest in what has been a very long-term speculative project to reinvent the computer. And Snapchat has really been, in addition to changing the world in its own way, a real vehicle for enabling this evolution of computing.

Starting point is 01:49:17 And so I think for me, that's one of the real benefits of running and controlling Snapchat today is that we've been able to very consistently invest in advanced technology and R&D over an incredibly long period of time to build a real competitive advantage, but also to build a world-class product that we wouldn't have been able to do without Snapchat. Oh, I never even thought about that. I like that. So you've used Snapchat as a means to reinvent computing. It's an incredibly important part of it because without a hugely profitable cash flowing,

Starting point is 01:49:45 I mean, Snapchat's almost a $7 billion revenue business, right, almost in the Fortune 500. People, you know, make fun of us for not being profitable enough. we're taking a lot of that core cash flow from Snapchat and using it to reinvest in winning this future of computing. What's very unique about Snapchat is we've been able to do that now for, you know, we've invested in glasses for 12 years. We've been able to very consistently invest in a way that no VC would ever in a million years support.

Starting point is 01:50:09 Would there ever been a world where you only built software? There's too much of like this art design background with you and then I'm sitting here as you're talking and describing this to me and I didn't even think about your business in those terms yet, which is why it's valuable to sit down and have conversations. like this. It's like this guy's two heroes built the best hardware of all time

Starting point is 01:50:33 in both of their industries. Yeah, I think ultimately... And Jobs is famous for saying, if you want to build great software, you have to control the hardware. 100%. Yeah, I think ultimately, if you think about the customer experience

Starting point is 01:50:44 you're trying to create or what you're trying to create in the world, ultimately you realize that hardware is a necessity in realizing that vision, essentially. So the answer is no. There was no world in which Evan only builds

Starting point is 01:50:58 software. So think about how early we started doing it. I mean, this was back in 2014. We started investing in hardware. Yeah, I think you're really misunderstood. Because, like, I did an entire podcast about you. I've listened to all your interviews, and I'm still, like, learning things right now

Starting point is 01:51:15 from talking to you. That's fun, right? No, it's definitely a lot of fun, but, like, we need to do a better job with telling this story, man. Well, I think the best way to tell the story is through the product, right? And I think that's what's so exciting about this year

Starting point is 01:51:26 and why I articulate it as a crucible moment because, like, we are inflecting and transforming Snapchat at the same time that we're launching a whole new product category that we've invented. You know, so this will be a seminal year for our company. So what does your schedule look like during a year like this? I've heard like... It's insane.

Starting point is 01:51:42 Yeah. Okay, so it's completely insane. Tell us more. Untenable. No, it's a, this is like a seven-day-a-week job, you know. How do you balance that, though, because you have young kids at home? And I heard in very intense times, you were talking about sometimes,

Starting point is 01:51:56 had to get up before they were awake and you went home every day after they were asleep. There's a lot of days like that right now. I mean, I'm back in definitely in that mode. I always try to keep Sunday protected. You know, we go to church as a family. We go to brunch and then I spend the afternoon with our kids and that's super important to me. But other than that, you know, it's full on. So early mornings, late nights all the time. And your biggest issue is that you're redesigned, you're inventing new hardware. Because I don't want to diminish Snapchat, but it sounds like it's at scale, it's profitable,

Starting point is 01:52:32 you're adding a lot of product features. With Snapchat, we do need to re-accelerate the advertising business, but I think given the transformation we've undertaken over the last three years of the advertising platform, like that is coming, right? We're seeing the growth in the small and medium customers. We're diversifying the advertising business. We've built this direct revenue business.

Starting point is 01:52:48 So I look at Snapchat and, like, I see a path, you know, to a lot more revenue over the coming year. And so I think that certainly has been a huge focus of the last several years. And then I think, you know, the core specs business this year will mark the real beginning, you know, of the next chapter of that story as we transition from being, you know, a developer platform to a consumer product, which is really challenging thing to do. All right. So you have an insane schedule. I have a feeling based on you have like the simmering intensity about you. Like, are these actually your favorite times to be running the company?

Starting point is 01:53:24 Absolutely. Yeah. Why? Because every decision, the way you spend every minute really matters. And I think that's exciting because I think we're at a real inflection point in the company in terms of, you know, if you think about the last 12 years of my life that I've invested in, you know, creating this new vision for what a computer can be. And, you know, and I almost said the number of days. And in some number of days, we're about to share that with the world. And like, that's incredibly, incredibly exciting. How do you handle the stress, though? Huge on meditation.

Starting point is 01:53:59 Crea meditation changed my life. What's it called? Called Crea. Okay. Unbelievable. Meditation was like never like a fit for me. You know, I always like, they're like, try TM, like, learn your mantra. Like, it just like never clicked.

Starting point is 01:54:10 Crea is like incredibly energizing, you know, involves like breath work. And it's like, to me, it's like, I mean, wow. You know, it's like, it's super powerful. Is this like a daily practice? When I can, yeah. And I try to exercise every. morning, you know, Korea as much as I can, you know, a couple days a week. And obviously, playing with our kids and hanging with my wife. Like, that's the stress management regime.

Starting point is 01:54:36 Yeah, I feel like all the great entrepreneurs, it's like the, the best quote I've ever heard described this kind of mentality was this guy named Herb Keller, who was the founder of South Coast Airlines. Which the most successful airline. I think about it, selling commodity products, right? Most successful airline of all time, I think it was profitable for 40 straight years. And he was asked one time, they're like, how do you handle the stress? Like, I don't handle it. I like it. I like, I'm not doing this. Like, I wouldn't start a company in a hugely competitive environment if I wanted to take an easy path through life.

Starting point is 01:55:07 But I think what he did there and like how he explained that, what's really powerful about that. And I think this is what a lot of founders do is they reframe it. Right. Like if you can reframe stress as an opportunity, it's going to be great. I mean, in that early day, like, I hated speaking publicly when we created our company. I didn't like it. Like, my innate nature, I mean, this goes back to, like, growing up in the computer lab, right? Like, I just did not want to do public speaking.

Starting point is 01:55:29 I didn't want to do company-wide Q&A. You know, like, if I want to communicate with the company, I'll send an email kind of thing, right? Like, crazy. And, like, one of our board members was like, Evan, like, it's your job. Like, too bad. Figure it out. And literally, I was like, okay, I'm going to learn how to love it. Like, I'm going to learn how to love public speaking.

Starting point is 01:55:45 I'm going to learn how to love doing a, you know, live Q&A with our team. And I do now. Like, I love it. I love doing Q&A with our team. And so I think that ability to reframe things that, like, appear like a challenge or feel like something you're uncomfortable with. Like, that's really important. Yeah, you'll see this in the history of entrepreneurship. Thomas Edison, Henry Kaiser, Edwin-Land.

Starting point is 01:56:02 They viewed as problems are just opportunities and work close. It's like, this is an opportunity. We just have to get to work to actually do it. There's been this new thing that's popped up where I'm glad you actually developed a skill set and to tell your own story to communicate this because companies are trying to hire, like, a chief storyteller. like, yeah, that's the founder. Like Edwin Land, go back, again, we talked about Edwin Land and Steve Jobs a lot today. It's like they would tell you the person

Starting point is 01:56:29 that is best able to tell. And it's not going to have to be that articulate. It's just you care more about anybody else. You know more about anybody else. Just educate us on why your product exists and what makes it special. And who else could do that but the person that was there when it was just one person,

Starting point is 01:56:44 two people and a laptop. Yeah, I'll never forget, like when I was a lot, younger, I was starting the company, I had the opportunity to meet President Clinton, right? And his advice was like, the job is explainer in chief. That is the job. Like, you got to go around and explain this stuff to everybody. So they understand, you know, their role at SNAP or SNAP's role in the world.

Starting point is 01:57:02 And I think that's super valuable. Well, you're doing a good job, I appreciate you taking the time for this. I do want to end on one of my favorite quotes. This is from the book that I read about you almost a decade ago. The, I guess I give a little context here. You dropped out of Stanford with five classes, six classes. left, but you decided to walk for an empty diploma, right, and you regretted it, and then you told this beautiful, this is a direct quote from you. It says, it only recently occurred to me

Starting point is 01:57:30 while preparing this, how totally absurd this whole charade was. It reminded me that oftentimes we do all sorts of silly things to avoid appearing different. Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. We want to be accepted by our peers. We want to be part of the group. It's in our biology. But the thing that makes us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction. It's very obvious that you listen to the whisper of your soul. I'm very glad that people like you exist. Thank you very much for taking the time and have this conversation.

Starting point is 01:57:59 Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, awesome, man. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review and make sure you listen to my other podcast founders for almost a decade. I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs searching for ideas that you can use in your work.

Starting point is 01:58:16 Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.

David Senra - Evan Spiegel, Snap

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