Tech Brew Ride Home - (Bonus) Inventing FaceTime And iMessage With Apple Engineer Justin Santamaria

Episode Date: April 2, 2022

Justin Santamaria was once an Apple lead engineer on iPhone, where he created iMessage, FaceTime, the blue/green text bubbles and even unlocked emojis so people outside Japan could use them. Now, as cofounder of Future, he’s using text communication to pair people with a world-class trainer for unlimited coaching through their phone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Justin Santa Maria, thank you for coming on the TechMame Ride Home, and Justin Santa Maria, thank you for coming on the Internet History Podcast. Thanks, Brian.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Let's just dive right into it. You started at Apple in 2003. Is that directly out of college or what had you been doing before you joined Apple? Yeah. I grew up in El Paso, Texas and came out to the Bay Area to go to college in my next. So in 2003, I joined Apple straight out of college.

I had, I think I interviewed there for six straight months looking for a role at Apple. It was my job coming out of college was to get a job at Apple. So, you know, that's an interesting thing to me. I've only talked to a handful of Apple folks for the Internet History podcast. And most of them were in the era of, is Apple going to make it? the late 90s or whatever. So, you know, you're kind of, you would be right at that period where Apple obviously always had no problem finding talent, hiring talented people because they were Apple and they

had a certain sheen, even in their worst days of, you know, this is where the cool kids are. Sure. But, you know, so when you're joining in 2003, that's right when the iPod is taking off. And Apple is becoming again this sort of. player in the tech world where it kind of wasn't for a little bit, you know? So just a cultural question of what was the energy like? Did you still get the sense of like, okay, we're starting, we're still in a rebuilding period here? What was it like when you got there? Yeah, great question. When I first arrived at Apple, I remember the iPod had launched.

There was not, iTunes was not on Windows yet. So they were using a third party player for all of that. And in fact, my first project, you can imagine my excitement when I joined Apple and my first project is to work on iTunes for Windows. And I was like, oh, that was not what I had expected. But hey, I got my foot in the door and I was more than happy to work on that. The atmosphere at Apple going in was one that I would describe as in transition. What I recall back then were a couple of things. One, Apple was not out of the woods yet, and you could definitely feel that.

One of the big things I remember was that the classic MacOS, the old MacOS, not the current macOS and macOS 10 had been co-developed and i remember macOS 9 uh what was called at the time uh completely winding down and that team being dispersed um and and some uh cuts coming from from that as well and so there was kind of a uh not quite out of the woods because i again ipod was this very niche very successful, right? But still, it was like the experience was for Mac owners at the time. And Apple really starts to stretch its legs a bit after I get there and you can start to feel momentum come from there. But it was still, I would say Apple still felt like a very small company when I joined, if that makes sense. And one that had been through a lot and was still fully

you could still feel the next part of Apple and the old, you know, old Apple, quote unquote, part of Apple when I was there. And I would say through the course of, you know, I was there for 10 years, you felt that kind of melt away over time. You mentioned the interviewing for six months it felt like. Yeah. What was the interview process? It sounds like there were multiple rounds. Well, you know, I think it's one of these things, too, if you recall, I go into college and it's startups and, you know, the famous, you know, Sox.com and web van and all this stuff. And then the next year, you know, come 2000, 2001, it's all gone. It's a wasteland, right? And I was like, oh, this is very volatile. And so I think, you know, I don't think that was just startups. I think the whole tech industry felt that. And so, coming in in 2003, and this was another example of Apple still not out of the woods. It wasn't like how it is today where there's mass hiring going on and you can't find enough

talent. It's like, you know, there's three or four positions open, you know, in software engineering at the company. And it's a real, the belt is still very tight. And in fact, you know, I had been interviewing for different positions. And in fact, the position I got is, was not even software development. It was build engineering, which is basically, the task of assembling the software, making it a reproducible compilation, and then assembling like the help documentation and the read me file and putting all that on a CD to be pressed. And, you know, I was like the person that pushed the button that said, this image is basically ready to go get pressed.

And you know, it was kind of the last gate. So it was a very kind of operational role. But that was, for me, it was seeing, one, the iPod and saying, wow, this is a really cool way to apply technology. But I think for me, it was also seeing that there was this vision that computing could be accessible to everyone. And that the MacOS 10 at the time, I remember being very swayed by, wow, they're putting like a really powerful Unix-based operating system and making it use of, and beautiful and getting people out of the meta work of managing a computer and really just trying to make powerful tools for people to do what it is they want to do. And I was like, that's a really, especially I think back then, a really kind of unique take

on what technology was for. And so I was like, I'm going to figure out how to get into this company. So it wasn't so much that it was a long process because I had a recruiter who kept trying to find the right role for me and believed in me but it was just super competitive because there were so few jobs available so i'd be waiting for a job basically to become available for me to interview for and and try out for and i took the first one i could get well so you mentioned working on the iTunes for windows but also isn't don't you get started on on i chat as well yes So this is to put historical context in this, this is literally the height of aim and sort of like the messaging sort of wars where, you know, they they cut off access to this one to that one.

So interoperability was a key thing or whatever. So tell me, tell me about ICHET. And if I'm right about that, if that's sort of where you make your bones, tell me about that project. Yeah. So my first job, so I was, you know, build engineer, I come out of that doing, working on iTunes. among other projects, and essentially internally moved to the iChat team. And I chat, like you said, the height of AOLONSIT Messenger and Apple had cut a deal so that, you know, basically we get to piggyback off that network and you can sign in to aim with

iChat was huge. That was the communications platform, the computer, I would say the personal communications platform form of its day and certainly the juggernaut. I come into that team and they're not even talking about sending messages to each other. If you recall, eyesight cameras were going to be the thing that was coming out. And I chat was a perfect vehicle to show the power of how you can video conference very simply and easy. easily. And not just video conference one to one, but they were, we were working on what we called internally U plus three, which is you and three other people. I don't know if you remember, but it had kind of the light boxes and they do. They do. It was like a pseudo 3D view. And I remember being a very new engineer on this team. This was, you know, clearly at the time, this is 2004.

a priority of the company. And I remember giving regular demos to Steve and being part of that team. And it's a U-plus-3 demo. So it's you need other people. And so we're sitting, you know, we have Steve where he normally does his, his demos in a conference room. And then I'm in my boss's office with. a teammate of mine and then someone's in another office and then someone's in another office.

So there's literally like four computers set up to go. And I remember being instructed like whatever happens, pretend like it's going well. Because, you know, it's beta software. This is like weeks or even months before release. And sure enough, you know, the call connects, we hit accept and it's just green. We can't see Steve. Steve's just green and you know, hey, hello Steve. How's it going?

And he's saying, you know, hi, did it. OK, let's add another call. And it goes and it does the, you know, the actually, I think FaceTime so had it totally something, the one sound. Yeah. And that's when it would like pop out from the one to one into like the 3D view.

And I remember Steve going. And literally this is my first, this is the opening, Hey, interact with Steve story. Oh my God. I'm going to make the crowd shit their pants. What was really interesting about that is in his mind, he thought so experientially that in this very first demo of like new technology and everything, he's like, how is this story going to go?

How is the demo going to go? How are we going to articulate this to the public? And he's, and it was so infectious. And I think that's something that that I, that I, realized being like, wow, like this guy's into this. He's not just, you know, pretending when he gets on a stage. Like, he's into this and really minding that moment. People always say about him, oh, he was the best showman, whatever.

But to be a good showman is easy if you actually really give a shit. Like if you really, really love the product, then being a showman is about, I can't wait to show you this. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think that was super legit. with Steve. And I mean, I think when you knew he's excited about something you knew, and I think it showed on the stage, right? It means like this landed in the right way.

And no detail was too small. In the early I chat, the U plus three is like, well, how do you know if someone can accept that type of call, a multi-way call versus a single-way call? And you're looking at the different icons and the different options. And it's like, nope, Steve didn't like any of those. or Steve picked this one. I was like, why do you pick that one? And you realize, like, well, he can only pick among what you're giving him. So if you don't like it, don't show him. That's kind of your power as a, as contributor to this team. Like, figure out what you want and figure out three versions of what you want and come to that.

And one of the things that's really interesting is he could say no to something one week. And then the very next week say yes to that thing. And I remember early on being super frustrated being like, why are, Why isn't he consistent about that? And I remember this for the icons where it was like going to be a purple icon versus a green icon. And then it ended up being that it was like an overlay green with like multiple. Like it looks like it was stacked three deep. And the first time you picked purple and I was like, oh, that doesn't make it, you know, that's no good.

And we switched back. And I was like, well, but he already picked purple. And it's like, well, he decided that was the bad idea. That didn't work. look, we changed it. And this idea of like, who cares what my past decisions were with new data and with new kind of insight or having ruminated on it, I changed my mind and there's nothing wrong with that. It's something that I think as a leader, you're, many people often pressured into like consistency. Like, I must be consistent and I must stand by my beliefs. And I think Steve was someone

who was like, if I believe that like we should turn left when the whole time we've been turned right, he was very clear about let's just turn left. And as someone who was very early into his career, that is left to like a huge impression on me in that the right thing to do is the right thing to do, even if you thought differently a day ago or an hour ago. And I see Steve practice that very regularly. And sometimes frustratingly so.

I just tore all that work out of the product. And now I'm putting it back. But it's like, eh, you know, you get paid it either way. Let's make it right. At the risk of yada yottying other projects in your career and things like that. I'm assuming that working on IChat is what sort of when the phone comes along gets you involved in messaging and FaceTime and things like that. So before we get to that, given the famously secretive nature of the iPhone project and things like that, Like you personally, what was your experience with first hearing about it or first hearing

inklings about it before you even know what it is? Give me some of that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I mean, I've been on I chat for about a year at this point. And this is what happens. So we are all on the Infinite Loop campus, right? And I'm, I chat's offices are on the second floor of Two Infinite Loop or IL2 is what we call it.

And one day, it's like, we're moving. We're moving and they're creating this whole lockdown on the second floor of aisle 2. And that's that. You know, and you're like, huh, okay. And again, I'm early in my career. And I think I'm like a, I'm like a terrier where I'm like, well, what's going on? Like, what, like that sounds important.

Like, you know, at the time that that's where Scott Forsell's office is. now his office is behind lockdown. That must be super important, whatever is happening there. Right. And so I'm like, I feel like I'm like just trying to figure out what's going on, what's going on, what's going on. And what I start to see is that one or two people on each team for Mac OS, you know, a couple people from the mail team, a couple of people from, you know, one are the other teams, from, you know, just different teams.

You know, one or two people no longer work on that project, are now working on a second floor of I'll tip. I was like, wow, that's interesting. They're building something new. It's very clear. And they're using one or two engineers from each team to, like, put this thing together. It's like they're rapturing people. It's weird.

It's really weird. Yeah. And for me, I just couldn't let it go, you know? And at some, at some, level, I'm like, I want to be on this team, right? Like, I don't know what it is. I don't know what they're doing. But that seems like if I'm able to, I'm going, I want to go there.

And what's really interesting is ties back into I chat. And this ties back into like how little things at the time make huge differences. I had worked on a feature called Bonjour, Bonjour messaging, which allows you to connect via I chat. you can talk to other computers on your network. And I had worked on it with a very senior guy. We had basically evolved Bonner to be much more better behaved on the network or whatnot. It was like a smallish project, but it was good work that we did. And he had gotten, you know, the call to join this top secret team.

And so one day, and I remember it is a Thursday. And I remember it was, I believe it was WWDC week, because this, There was that still when like stuff was happening out on the, in the main area of the Apple campus when they would bus everybody. So there was kind of a party atmosphere. And I'm sitting at my desk. And I get a phone call. Oh my gosh,

to even say that now. Like I'm getting a phone call on my desk phone that's plugged into the wall, which is a thing back then. And it's, and it's this guy, his name's Jeremy. And he's like, hey, Jeremy, what's up? And he's like, hey, I go, what's up? He's like, you want to come, you want to come work with us?

And like that's implying like I know you know I know the IL2 project you know and I go Can you tell me what it is and he goes no and then go well is it worth it and he's like oh yeah and I was like okay that was it and uh you know I meet uh who my manager's going to be um and and uh you know meet a couple people go through a very informal kind of interview process over the next week. And then, you know, a week later, I'm in those doors of the aisle two, second floor. And with no idea. Like, I remember sitting down and then I'm going, do you know, do you, do you know what we're working on? I go, I have no idea.

They're like, do you have a guess? And I was like, I think you're working on a phone because that was a thing. Like it was like, I think we're going to work on a phone, blah, blah, but there was no, it was nothing official about that. And they're like, yep, that's what we're working on. And I remember getting my first tour of the phone going, oh, my goodness, this is, you know, what people felt, I think, you know, that day in January in 2007 is what I felt that day. And this is about six months before that, going.

wow, this is very different. And I can't believe we're going to do this. I can't believe we're going to pull this off. This has a lot of work. You know, like immediately, I'm like, oh, my goodness, there's a lot to do here. And it was, it's a point in my life that I'll never forget. I remember very readily the day I joined. Well, and, you know, you had worked on messages in, I guess the word I would use it in a much more stable environment. But for the messaging with the phone, you have to interact with SMS and have to be connected to the network persistently.

And so those are some obvious headaches. But how tough of an engineering project was it compared to just doing messaging on a desktop? Well, it was very different, right? Because what we aren't doing is, figuring out, okay, what our future set needs to be. It's like pretty clear. You need to support SMS messaging and the first one, right?

And abstraction layer had been built. Like, hey, there's, we're going to abstract the idea of needing to know who the carriers or what their particularities are in a lower level framework. And so for me, I think there were two things that were really challenging. It was performance and memory, right? These phones did not have any power. I remember the first time we got an actual working prototype of the first iPhone that wasn't on a breadboard plugged into a volt meter. It had no power management on it.

And I remember it lasted like for eight minutes. You know, it was like something ridiculous. And you realize, okay, there's no matter, you know, the relatively the type of power we're used to dealing with even laptop power on a battery is infinite compared to the amount of a power we have on this. And then, you know, there was this very clear directive that this needs to feel real time. If you scroll and there's a delay, it ruins the illusion. Remember, this is before touch screen, capacitive touch screens aren't a thing, you know. And everybody's experience with touch screens at that point were the resistive kind that were just garbage. Like they would try to do stuff and it's like it's laggy, doesn't catch touches and all that.

It's like we had to be as responsive as possible. So like basically half of the project is optimizing performance and making it. So it feels slick. And then reducing your footprint, your memory footprint, because this is a full multitasking operating system. And, you know, I remember practicing and practicing and practicing for that demo that Steve unveils the iPhone with where. you know, he goes through and does like eight things with the phone, you know, and you're like, oh my God. You know, I did that through my whole Christmas break running through that demo over and over

again. And so did the whole team. When he hits the part that you're responsible for, when he demos the messaging and stuff, is it one of those things where you guys are just sitting there just like, you know, can't breathe? Oh, my. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yes.

Um, there's an excitement. I mean, you're so proud in that moment. Like you're like, you've busted, you know, and I, you know, I've joined the team after a lot of the foundation had got set. They're like ready to really knock out these apps. And so there's people who are sitting next to me, you know, the past several, a couple years of their life have been dedicated to the secret. For me, it was, you know, around six months of my life had been dedicated to the secret. And you're seeing it come out and you're so proud. but at the same time, you have that feeling in your, or I can't speak for everyone, but for myself,

you know, you got the feeling in your gut, right? Like you're incredibly nervous. You're like, I hope this isn't that one in a hundred case where that just doesn't work or that it crashes. And when you get through it, I think it's more when you're past that point where you realized how wound up you were because you feel the wave of relaxation come over you. And it wouldn't be the first time that I had felt that. Maybe that was true because I had done some stuff for I-Chat and stuff that had gotten demoed. It was the first time that it really felt like it counted, but it wouldn't be the last of just absolute gut-wrenching experiences in, you know,

Moscone Center in San Francisco in the second row watching, you know, something you've been working on being demoed to the public for the first time by the most iconic. you know, salesperson of your generation. This is a few years later, but again, in the interest of time, I'm jumping to FaceTime. FaceTime, just give me how that project is even conceived. I'm assuming it's pretty soon after that because, you know, once you put a camera on the front, this is a phone after all, so it's about communicating with people. So how did that project begin?

I mean, Brian, I think you line it up right. This phone's going to have a front facing camera. And yeah, you can take pictures of yourself. There's not even a word for that yet. But who really wants to do that? Like, is that all that you need? You need something more, right? That tells you how quickly things that we take for granted just aren't things to take for granted.

And also that camera. So it's like, what can we do with this front facing camera? And for a long time, we were like, we want to do our own messaging service. We want to do our own video conferencing. We want to do these things. And now it's like, OK, here's a reason to do it. Because what is the feature set for a phone with the front facing camera? It's like, OK, you can take your own pictures.

That's great. What if you could actually video call other people? And so it's like, well, let's figure out how to do this. And the very early cuts of FaceTime are basically a port of what we do on IChat in terms of those connections. And, you know, we have this, you know, basically it wasn't called FaceTime at the time, but, you know, the video calling app. And it's its own app, right? And it has basically like a buddy list like you would for AIM, you know. And so you have people there.

And I remember very vividly that one Friday. So we normally demoed on Mondays to Steve. But on one Friday, I remember my VP or my boss, actually, Honor. And our program manager, Kim, coming to my office, like Steve wants to see a FaceTime demo. And I said, great, well, I'll have it ready for Monday. And they're like, no, like he wants to see it today.

And it was like, you know, 11 a.m. I go, okay, cool. I'll get it set up, you know, this afternoon we'll be ready. He's like, no, no, no, no. He's walking over from aisle one right now and wants to see it. You have about five minutes. And, you know, you're in development. And when you set up a Steve demo, especially on Mondays, you spend, you know,

your Friday's ruined, basically. You're setting up for it. You're like, flapping, you're making sure it's going to go as well as possible. You want the right conversation to happen. Let me put it that way. And I literally have to go into an engineer's office and grab, I'm like, hey, do you have two phones that work? And he's like, well, they don't really, once they're connected, they work. But like the connection's flaky because we were bringing up the push notifications,

this service to like. That's almost nonsensical. These communication devices, once they're connected, you can communicate with that. Right. I mean, that's the irony of working on software that's not built yet, where you're like, okay, there's some glitch here where the phone doesn't wake up when it receives a notification. So you got to keep the phone awake and keep the phone awake, and it usually works. And I'm like, oh, my goodness.

So I'm like, okay, let me just have it. And like, you know, usually Steve deals with pristine devices. And so like, I'm looking, I'm getting a clock. I'm like wiping them down for him and stuff, putting them there. And he comes down the hallway. Oh, hey, Steve, you know, pleasant trees are exchanged. And he's like, well, let's see it. So I hand him the phone.

and I hold the phone and I go into my office, which is right in front of this interaction. He's in the hallway. So I go into my office and I look at the phone and I see Steve on the phone and I go, you know, what I do when I normally test. So I go, I hold my face up, you know, like this and I count and I and I showed the numbers to show the video and audio synchronization. This is like a standard test. So you're going to see if I go one, two, three, and it goes, what are you doing? Talk to me like a normal human. I go, oh, sorry. Hey, Steve, how's it going? How are you doing? He's like, I'm doing well. And I kid you not, Steve's holding his phone like this, which is not the most

becoming angle that anyone's ever seen. And he goes, he's looking down for the, for the listener. Oh, sorry. Yes. Like he's holding it above his belly, essentially. Yeah, essentially. He's got it like at chest level staring down into it. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got this kind of like, you know, the neck, you know, the neck face type thing. And what's funny is I know that, you know, we're all in a hallway. This is, you know, now we've grown bigger and it's all basically the communications team is on this hallway. So all the engineers are kind of at the doors listening.

I'll never forget this. And he goes, I look abominable. And you know, you don't, I'm going to be like, hey, Steve, you're holding it wrong. It's like, okay. Like, let's keep going on with the. the demo. And I remember coming out of that demo and a couple of things happened. One, it was like, okay, we have a lot of work to do. Yes, obviously, this was a completely impromptu demo. But two, he was like, why is it a separate app? He's like, this should just be in the phone.

You should just be able to tap a button and it go from a phone call to a video call. And I'm like, okay, like it's at the end of the day, it's software, right? It's ones and zeros, it's dictionaries, it's strings. that? I guess we could do that. And I remember him like drawing the phone display of the six buttons on a phone call. And I remember going, what's the difference between pause and hold? And there is a difference. Effectively for the user, there isn't a difference, but there is a difference. Pause. You can't hear either side, whereas hold. I'm sorry, not pause and hold. Pause and mute. Pause. Not as I can hear each other mute. You're just, you're just,

just meeting your side, but you can hear the other side. He goes, yeah, we don't need pause. And he exes it out and puts the like little camera icon, we should just put it there. And like, OK. And literally, we had to spend up a whole other project for like, well, how do you bootstrap your phone number or your phone credentials so that you can just have this one button upgrade to FaceTime?

But it was in those moments, it's like, hey, three very crisp sentences, a quick drawing and your project's like totally different now. And I think for the better, I mean, there's no question. That's a much better experience. you mean like, okay, now set up your FaceTime and like have a whole different list and all this stuff where it's just like, it's like making a phone call. And eventually we came out with a separate app and all that stuff. But it was that kind of work where you're just like, wow, like that's that's the kind of person Steve was. And then we had such a team that was like, well, let's figure this out.

Let's ship this. Let's do this. And so within the scope of the thing we were already building within that year, because the hardware has got a ship from the factory on this date and time. we can't slip, you know, we added a huge chunk of scope and we're able to pull it off, which is just, you know, an incredible feat. I kind of have to ask this when FaceTime comes out and Steve does the demo and he says it's it's open standard, industry standard, everybody's going to use this and obviously that's never happened. And you can't speak for the different strategic reasons at different times,

but what are your thoughts on the infamous? industry standard of FaceTime, yeah. Right. You know, I leave Apple around 2013, which is right when this happens,

or a little after this happens, because I do ship I message in the interim. My take on this is it was easy to say and hard to execute. And understanding like what that, how that would look or what that would take

was like very unclear and I actually didn't really, you know, I was very focused on the consumer side of making this work. And so I think there was a whole like, how do we do that? And like, how does that actually end up happening that I think those questions like end up taking a backseat? A lot of stuff happens in the interim. There's actually a lot of turnover of the team and of actually at Apple. I mean, in that in that period, Steve passes away. Scott leaves Apple. And so I think it's one of those things that through time it gets lost. My take is what made, what's interesting about things like FaceTime is the level of flexibility you have in a closed system.

And I think this is like all products experience this about how fast you're able to move. What changes you're able to make? What's a breaking change? How do you get this better and better and better? And when you go to standardize something, you kind of have to set up your stake in the ground for what's the like, what's the base experience and you're, it's really hard to change that. And in many ways, that's why like sending a message across phones via MMS is a terrible experience. You know, it's built for standards that are 30 years old or more. And so how you continue to develop on that and also create an open thing, it seemed, it, it, it's.

It was a tall order and I think, you know, again, I can't speak for Apple, but I think it was, there's still so much more to do over here that I think the open part got lost along the way. I thought of a way of how to do the Steve sort of experience question, and that's to break it into two. If you tell me your best Steve interaction where you're walking away from it on Cloud 9 and also your scariest Steve interaction. where you might have wet yourself. Okay. I don't know if Steve ever caused me to wet myself. I have the lore stories like everyone else. I think that FaceTime experience that I told you,

there was definitely, that could have gone better, but we got a good day. The next demo needs to be better. And I think part of that was preparation. And part of that was, you know, understanding like latency issues and things like that. And I remember going, that could have gone way better.

than it did. The funniest thing, I remember, the thing that left me on Cloud 9, and it's kind of a Zinger story, is actually the launch party of the very first iPhone. It was at, gosh, what was it? Oh, I forget what it was called. But it was the Explorits Hormium in San Francisco, which is kind of this interactive science museum. And, you know, it's the thing.

It's like, oh, you play with the things, and there's like the table of crab or, whatever, you know, and you've got like different stations and people are mingling. And it's a, I mean, it's super exciting, right? Because, uh, the phone, uh, is out. And this is like two days after, right? After the launch. And I see Steve and we are, uh, chatting. And I remember telling him, I go, you know, I know this is going to be big.

And he goes, why do you think? And I said, well, because my sister, who's infinitely cooler than I am, just waited in line in Austin, Texas for like four hours to get one. It's like she's not going to wait in line for anything. And she waited in line for the phone. And not because I work here. She doesn't actually care that I work here. She just thinks this thing's super cool.

I was like, if you have people like her doing that, like this is a big deal. And he goes, you know, this is the biggest product launch in the history. It's gotten more column space than any other product launch in history. And he goes, and the only thing that allows me to sleep is that unlike when we had the Mac, we have software update. You know? And I laughed and he laughed and we went on. And I was like, oh, that felt good.

You know, I got the cool anecdote chatting. And then I remember later on in the evening, he goes up to address everyone. And he goes, you know, iPhone's going to be the most successful part in the world. And I know this because it's had more call and space than any other product launch in history. And the only thing that allows me to sleep at night is that unlike the Mac, we have software update. And I was like, he was not talking to me at all. He was practicing for what he was going to say up there. And I was a test subject for how I would react. And I thought, did he just say that to everyone for that whole hour that he spoke to?

Probably. Either that or you dog fooded the joke for him. Yeah, yeah. So he got to chuckle so he used it. And I think that's, that's, you know, for me, that moment, the reason I remember that moment, not just for that anecdote, but, you know, Steve is someone who wore his heart honestly. And that was a man who was beaming about the thing that he had built with this team. and just he was nothing but happy in that moment, and it's how I'll remember him. So again, I'm going to just mention that you obviously worked on, you know, car play and, you know, the foundations of Game Center and all sorts of things.

And I want to give credit to your time at Airbnb, too, real quick in this way, which is to say that it occurs to me that, like Apple, Airbnb as a company, that requires an intense commitment to the experience. So I'm curious if, not to put words in your mouth, but if you were able to bring some experience, about experience from Apple to your time at Airbnb. Yeah, you know, Brian, you hit the nail in the head. You know, the signing of leaving a company like Apple,

especially after 10 years, is very difficult. And you don't see a lot of people leaving Apple, especially from that generation of Apple. And what was cool is what I realized is that I had built up a series of lessons and anecdotes and just things about like what makes products great or how did Apple make products great. And like, could I use this in other areas? You know, also I had felt a little bit of I got, I had built this sandbox and now I wanted to play in it. And I think Airbnb was a way to kind of do that, right? Like build a great experiences on a platform that you had been.

working on for so long. And for Airbnb, I think you hit the nail on the head where it's like Airbnb is trying to provide an experience to people and happens to use technology to do that. And I think that's kind of the arc of my career is like, how do you connect people and use technology to do that? And Airbnb has this unique moment when people travel and people take trips, you know, how do you do that? I think for me, the experience piece, you know, Brian, Brian Chesky has in spades. He really, he really echoes that kind of mindset, this, this passionate mindset about what a guest at Airbnb could do and could say and what could be unique about their experience and how do you make that better and how do you instill a sense of confidence by doing a digital

transaction for a real world experience. I think Airbnb had very strongly. I think what I lent to with my time there was how do you get a large group of people to get together and ship something on time and very well? And it's kind of the mechanics of Apple on the inside applied to this like very lofty goals. And it's like how do you take something that's that's experiential and and then break it down into projects and tasks and schedules and put it all together and still have a cogent, coherent experience at the other side. And so I think, you know, my role at Airbnb was very much around some of the things like, I remember in 2014, working on the rebrand of Airbnb from going kind of the website to the

new thing and there was a whole controversy about the logo and stuff back then, but, you know, This was, you know, a 200-person engineering team, a dozen designers, and like kind of we're all going to do this and launch it all at the same time. And, you know, that was something that to date Airbnb hadn't really done before. And I think it was, you know, through some of that experience at Apple, that we were able to pull that off. But also just trying to champion the fact that, you know, just because you're an engineer doesn't mean you don't need to be empathetic

toward what you're building for and who you're building for, whether it be a host or a guest. And I just tried to instill that in the team. So I think my time at Airbnb was very much understanding, you know, for me, working out what were my course skill set and how could I apply there and working on a product that I did feel like was trying to create the connection that I so value via technology. Well, let's wrap it up by bringing it straight to the present and tell me about future. And what is the experience of future? You know, great question.

And future is a digital platform where we connect people with real expert personal trainers to help people meet their goals in fitness and in health. And it sounds very simple on the surface. But for me, the key unlock here is that, we have a fundamental belief that it's actually people who help people in this area and achieve their goals and not stuff and not technology. But these things enable an experience to happen. I'm not like a fitness guy. And that's something interesting. So my co-founder and I about five years ago, this is after me at Airbnb, we sit down and Rishi Mandel, who's our our CEO, and I'm the CTO. We're co-founders. We start talking about, you know, the state of health

in America and talking about how, you know, every year millions of Americans resolve to try and get fit. And by the end of the year, 80% of them have failed. And that most of the solutions out there are about content and about kind of putting the onus on the person in terms of, hey, if this doesn't work out, it's not because the plan was wrong. It's because you didn't get it done. And for us, it's like, and for me, it's a very self-reflective journey because I was like, I'm a busy person. I've done great stuff in my career.

I have a wife. I have children now. I've had a hard time with my fitness, you know, and I've stopped and started. I've been on diets. I've done all sorts of stuff. And what the realization is, is like, I lacked an infrastructure to, like, help me succeed. And if I could have someone who could provide me accountability, who could have provided me expertise and could also understand, like, they needed to meet me where I was.

You know, it wasn't me being like, you told commit to something, but me being told, hey, I get it. You're busy stuff changes. Your kid gets sick. You have to work late. All this stuff. We'll figure out a way to make this work. And maybe some days it's a stretch and maybe some days it's go run for.

miles, but the point is we're going to just get you into on a journey, basically, and we're going to do it together. You have support. You have a person. And so future is really about connecting coaches, expert coaches all over the country with our members who do everything from get off the couch for the first time to already working out seven days a week. And the cool thing about futures, we meet them where they're at. And this is the kind of digital hospitality that I learned at Airbnb, combined with this understanding that this is all done asynchronously with text chat through an app. And this understanding that now more than ever, you don't need to be physically co-located with someone to really receive the service that you need. And fitness, we believe, is no exception.

And you can still have a highly personalized, highly engaging experience in doing so. Well, I mean, you know, I'm sure you've thought of this, but the through line to all of this is it's messaging. Because, you know, I was looking up that, you know, people I think are texting their trainers like four times a day on average and things like that. So this is the through line through all of that is that the technology is just the communication, right? That's right. It's about connecting people with other people. You know, I'd like to say my whole career isn't about figuring out, you know, building a new technology and figuring out, how to apply it, but rather taking the building blocks that the internet and technology and communications and messaging provides and how do we connect people in a way with future?

What's really interesting is when a coaching client relationship goes, well, yes, you're talking about your exercises and what your workouts are and whatnot, but it ends up becoming much richer because messaging is such an open medium that your coach gets to know about you and who you are, what your motivators are, what your blockers are, and it really becomes a relationship. a connection there. And what we do on the technology side is how do we empower the coach to actually not have to pour over all the data being generated by your watch and actually digest that and really give actionable insight to our coaches so that they can provide a highly personalized experience at a scale that we aspire to be at. And that's actually a really intense technical problem

that presents itself very simply to our members, which is like a very Apple thing, too. It's like it just kind of works, but there's just a lot going on behind the scenes to enable it all. Because what we want to do is take things like wearables and take the data that comes from there. And instead of making you the arbiter of that, you the individual, you get that, you give that to an expert who can actually reflect that data and incorporate what they're seeing into your workouts or into your plan and understand that. that in a way that I think right now we all feel kind of on an island trying to figure out what am I supposed to do for my health? I know it's important. What do I do? We're trying to take all that stuff and make it actionable by putting a human in the loop. And it's actually a really different way of looking at fitness and especially connected fitness and technology.

Well, so everybody check out the app future, get in shape. Yeah, go ahead. It's about the journey. I think it's, I think that's the thing. It's like everyone starts somewhere and we're here to wherever you're at, even if it's like not in shape, but it's like get moving. Get moving. That's fine. Just get going. Everyone's got to start somewhere. Yeah. Justin Santa Maria, thank you so much for coming and sharing all those memories with us and telling us about future and all that good stuff. Brian, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.