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Meta CMO Alex Schultz: Competing Against TikTok & Snap; Why Reels Failed at First | E985

Alex Schultz is the Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Analytics for Meta (formerly Facebook), leading Marketing, Analytics, and Internationalization. Previously, Mark Zuckerberg stood up and said, “Facebook would not be a BN user company without Alex”. At Meta, Alex has pioneered the integration of product and direct response marketing at Meta and helped launch many of the company’s most impactful products and initiatives. Alex is gay and is the executive sponsor of Facebook’s LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group. ---------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 0:35 Who is Alex Shultz? 3:48 Lessons from eBay 5:15 Scaling FB to 1 Billion Users 10:44 Competing Against TikTok and Snap 21:25 Mistakes Made with FB Messenger 22:14 The Move from Direct to Self-Serve Ads 25:35 The Importance of At-bats 26:18 How to Create a Culture of Experimentation 27:14 What do I do with employees who are OK but not great? 31:42 Why Facebook changed its name to Meta 38:08 Metrics vs Goals 45:20 Being a Gay Man in Tech 52:09 Biggest Lessons from Parents 53:42 Quick-fire Round ------------------------------------------------------ In Today’s Episode with Alex Schultz We Discuss: 1. From Paper Planes to CMO of Facebook: How Alex started his career in the world of paper planes and how that led to his getting a role at an early eBay? What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from eBay? How did the role at Facebook come about in 2008? Why did he decide to join the early Facebook? What does Alex know now that he wishes he had known when he started his time at Facebook? 2. The Secret to Scaling to 1 Billion Users: Mark Zuckerberg has said that “Facebook would not be a billion-user company without Alex”. So what does Alex believe are the 1-2 biggest needle movers in FB scaling to 1 billion users? Why does Alex believe that the best leaders are patiently right? How can management be direct and effective but also show they care and be kind? What have been some of Alex’s biggest lessons on people management across different phases of the company? 3. Crucible Moments in Facebook History: Facebook Messenger Split: What was the decision-making process behind splitting Messenger from the core Facebook App? What did they do right and well in the split? What mistakes were made? Rebrand to Meta: Why did Facebook decide it was right to rebrand to Meta? Has the rebrand gone well? How does Alex define success with the rebrand? Reels vs TikTok vs SNAP: Does Alex believe we are moving away from the social graph and moving to content discovery only? How does Alex feel Reels is doing in the race against TikTok? What have they done well? Why does Alex believe SNAP hasn’t innovated in the way people think and copied Kakao in cases? What is the key to turning Reels into a monetization machine for Facebook? 4. Alex Schultz: The Person and Leader: How was the coming out process for Alex in the tech community? How did his parents respond to the news? What does Alex mean when he says, “everyone has to mourn their own version of your future self”? Why when he moved to the states was Alex advised to go back in the closet? Does Alex feel we have a long way to go in equalizing the playing field both for homosexuality and trans-gender participation? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Alex Schultz on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alexschultz Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com ---------------------------------------------------------- #AlexSchultz #Meta #HarryStebbings #20vc

Alex SchultzguestHarry Stebbingshost
Mar 7, 202357mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:35

    Intro

    1. AS

      We were out before YouTube. We were out before anyone except TikTok, with our competitor there, faster than Snap who also cloned and copied TikTok, despite everything they've said about that.

    2. HS

      (laughs)

    3. AS

      But, like, we were out faster than everyone else and we got a couple, our first iteration failed. Second and third, we learnt a lot. Now, we're actually innovating and adding really cool things that people aren't trying other than us. We wouldn't be here if we hadn't iterated two or three times.

    4. HS

      Alex, I'm so excited to make this happen. I have been pestering Shak, Julien Cordonnieu, for many months, but thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

    5. AS

      Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

    6. HS

      Now, I wanna start, uh, Shak actually

  2. 0:35 – 3:48

    Who is Alex Shultz?

    1. HS

      sent me some videos of paper airplanes. (laughs)

    2. AS

      (laughs)

    3. HS

      And I watched them before, and o- other than you being a naturally gifted presenter, I thought, well how-

    4. AS

      And according to the comments, I have old lady hands.

    5. HS

      Oh. (laughs) Yeah.

    6. AS

      When I was, when I was 18.

    7. HS

      I actually skipped those comments, clearly. Um, but how did you go from paper airplanes, first, to eBay?

    8. AS

      Oh, I- I, so I was doing Natsci at Cambridge, specializing in physics. And I was trying to pay my way through university on my own without taking any money from my parents because we'd, um, you know, we'd gone through a- a- a dip as a family and, um, that mattered to me. And I was running these paper airplane sites. Originally, I did GeoCities, before you were born, and, um, on GeoCities, they had Cape Canaveral area and I had fun science projects and I had paper airplanes and I had F Formula One. And paper airplanes did well on AltaVista. The way ... So I got super excited about learning how to rank in SEO, and the way you ranked back then was you just said "paper airplanes" a lot on your page.

    9. HS

      (laughs)

    10. AS

      In white, five pages down, which was how I ranked. So then I built a paper airplane website, and I stopped being just interested in traffic and became interested in monetizing it. And so I started to learn how to make money online. And it was interesting, Google back in the day, they had PageRank, which was using the backlinks. What was the most important face for backlinks? Yahoo Directory.

    11. HS

      Huh.

    12. AS

      You get a link number one in Yahoo Directory, you instantly ranked first in, uh, Google. So I got that link, I ranked first, and then I started trying to make money online. I made it via these ad products, and then I started doing affiliate marketing for eBay. Buying money with my credit, buying ads with my credit card on Google, reselling them to eBay for a profit. Maxing out my credit card. I knew nothing about the fact that you could ask for a higher limit or I would have made a lot more money.

    13. HS

      (laughs)

    14. AS

      But doing that taught me how to do affiliate marketing. I decided, I was thinking of doing a PhD, but I was only gonna do it for rowing, and that was a bad reason to do a PhD.

    15. HS

      (laughs)

    16. AS

      So I attended a milk round that eBay was having, Comptes de Vendée was having at Cambridge and applied to work for them and said, "Oh, I'm an affiliate of yours. Look at the stuff I do." And they offered me a job on the spot, um, 'cause that was exactly what they wanted. And they actually waited a year. They kept the headcount open a year and hired me after a year, a guy called Simon Darling.

    17. HS

      I- I absolutely love that. Can I ask, did it work straight away in terms of the monetization? Like from day one, did you make money or did, were there any mistakes made? Oh.

    18. AS

      Well, day one, I was just enjoying the traffic. So I had this thing where one day, back in the day, you could actually tell from the IP range which US military base was visiting your website.

    19. HS

      (laughs)

    20. AS

      And NORAD one day was the majority of visits to my paper airplane website. And I could imagine all these bored people looking for ICBMs throwing paper airplanes at each other in NORAD. Um, so no, to start with, I just tried to have traffic, and the monetization was a side project so it wasn't like mistakes or not mistakes. And then it started to be a reasonable amount of money, and I started to focus on that. And it wasn't mistakes, but I learnt so much cool stuff.

    21. HS

      How old were you then as well?

    22. AS

      Uh, when I started to make money on it, about 18.

    23. HS

      Yeah.

    24. AS

      I started the website when I was about 13, I think.

    25. HS

      I got you. So then

  3. 3:48 – 5:15

    Lessons from eBay

    1. HS

      eBay obviously, you join eBay. How does Meta and Facebook come about?

    2. AS

      So I was at eBay for three and a half years. I learned a huge amount there. Um, there's a brilliant boss in the UK called Catherine, uh, Fraher, and then I moved to the States, um, to work for David Knight, um, and finally Jeanie Reith. Um, and Jeanie was an amazing boss. She was so, so smart. Oh, is so smart. And so I really enjoyed my time at eBay. I learnt a lot from eBay. I learned a lot from the people around me. It wasn't, I wasn't out, so it was very hard.

    3. HS

      Wha- wha- what did you learn? If, if I say one or two things that you really take away from that eBay time and the people you worked with, what would you say they would be?

    4. AS

      Data-driven paid search marketing, really understanding affiliate marketing, really understanding on-site merchandising and using targeting data to do CRM, whether that's email or banners on the site, and how to put together a very good deck, 'cause it was run by consultants.

    5. HS

      (laughs) I've never been able to put together a deck. If you ask Shak about my fundraisers for all my funds, he's like, "I would love, Harry, to have a deck, but the dude's been able to raise 150 million without having a fucking deck." And I, I tell him, it's my British charm being from Parsons Green.

    6. AS

      Uh, the, the accent's really, even for me, your accent's good.

    7. HS

      Oh, thank you. Yeah. I- I'm secretly called Rufus.

    8. AS

      (laughs)

    9. HS

      (laughs) Listen, I, I wanna discuss Meta. And I said to you beforehand, I wanted to really kind of give justice to a profile of you, uh, which I think is really important (laughs) because it's been such an incredible journey. And I, I spoke to Julien Cordonnieu before this.

    10. AS

      I love him.

    11. HS

      And I love him too. And he

  4. 5:15 – 10:44

    Scaling FB to 1 Billion Users

    1. HS

      said how bluntly, "Zuck holds you as one of the core people in scaling Facebook to a billion dol- uh, to a billion users." Obviously, many billions now. Um, and I wanted to ask, what would you say are one or two of the single biggest movers in that scaling to a billion? And I know I'm asking for bastardized moments, but I'm just too interested. (laughs)

    2. AS

      Well, I- I think firstly, it's really nice of Mark to say that. And he, and he said it publicly, which is really cool, but you can't A/B test if someone was there. And so you don't know what would have happened. So I always, I always ... Anyway, I appreciate it a great deal, but y- you don't know what would have, what would have happened and you can never miss off Javi and Naomi and people like Brian Hale, who you've had on the show.

    3. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    4. AS

      Danny Ferrante built our entire model for looking at growth. I mean, Dustin Moskovitz personally built, um, phone number registration. Uh, there are so many people, so I- it's nice, but I- I do also think sometimes it's- it's overstated.I think the critical thing was having a data-inspired growth model. So, we really understood what was driving our growth and the first deep insight, and this was Danny Ferrante did it for us, I think he brought it from Yahoo, and we had something like it at eBay, but it wasn't as advanced, super simple, everyone uses it now, growth accounting, number of registrations plus number of res- resurrections minus the number of people who churn equals your net growth. Super simple. But when we implemented it, we thought it was registrations minus a bit of churn. What we didn't realize was that the churn number and the resurrection number were massively bigger than the registration number. And so, we hadn't realized how big a lever reducing churn and resurrecting people to the site was and it totally changed our perspective from acquisition virality at all costs to a focus on retention.

    5. HS

      How did that focus on retention ... It's so interesting you say that 'cause I- I spoke to James Bashara before the show-

    6. AS

      I love him too. (laughs)

    7. HS

      ... and he said, you said to him once, and he says it many, many times a, uh, day, he said, "Retention is king."

    8. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. HS

      Okay. So retention is king and you go then from, hang on a minute, maybe all guns blazing on acquisition is not the right approach and we should switch focus to retention. How does that change what you do? How does that change product decisions? How does that change strategic decisions?

    10. AS

      Well, I'll go- I'll go back to eBay for this one. There was a major strategic change we made at eBay when I was there and that was moving from confirmed registered users, so users who registered and then confirmed their ... We had this concept of the funnel from registered users, people who just registered, confirmed registered users, you confirmed your communications token, phone number or email, activated confirmed registered users, you'd placed a bid or you bought an item or you listed an item. The affiliate program, when I was an affiliate for eBay, was based on confirmed registered users and when you focused on confirmed registered users, you landed people on the registration page 'cause you wanted them to register. So you search on Google for trampoline, we will land you on the registration page. You search on Google for kettle, we will land you on the registration page. We don't care. Registration page. When we flipped it to activated confirmed registered users, it completely changed the way that the affiliate business worked and the entire online marketing business worked, and this is what drives retention. If you sign up for eBay and you do an action, bid, buy or list-

    11. HS

      Mm.

    12. AS

      ... your long-term retention goes up tremendously.

    13. HS

      Mm.

    14. AS

      So what it changed was instead of just having the keyword list prioritized by how many registrations you'd get, you would look at the keyword list prioritized by how many bids you got-

    15. HS

      Mm.

    16. AS

      ... how many items were listed for that keyword, and you would change the landing page from the registration page to the search results page. And that completely changed things 'cause you got way less confirmed registered users, but you actually netted way more activated confirmed registered users and you had a totally different keyword list portfolio.

    17. HS

      How do you determine which actions lead to retained users? 'Cause there are so many different things in any product that one could do.

    18. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    19. HS

      I- I've seemed to remember multiple people telling me before, especially with Facebook, that it was actually once you reached, I think, five connected friends, whatever that number was. Like how do you determine the right user behavior or action that leads to retention?

    20. AS

      You've had so many good people on this podcast, like you've had the best in the industry. You've had Yelena, you've had Brian, you've had Luke, you had that brilliant lady from GrowthHackers who I'd never heard before. She was incredible, so-

    21. HS

      Hila, she's good. (laughs)

    22. AS

      Hila. So you've, like, already heard the best on this. It is a simple correlation, like there's no clever math to it. So for Facebook, it's friending, the whole thing's about friends. For WhatsApp, it's about sending a message to somebody, you know. For Instagram, it's still following, um, and for eBay, it was placing a bid or buying an item, and the way you do it is you just look at the actions people could take and you correlate them to the outcome you want of retention. And the one thing I'd add in is my- my boss, Javi, who ... Javi, Naomi, are like the two people without whom I- I could not have had the job I have at- at- at- at Meta, and I'm very lucky to work with them. And my boss, Javi, always says, "Common sense is the least common of all senses." And just a bit of common sense in there of like, yes, at Facebook, everything's correlated to friending, at Instagram, everything's correlated to following, um, so have some logic about where in the, um, waterfall the thing you're correlating to is. So placing a bid is way higher up the funnel for eBay than actually having bought the action and having it res- been received and having delivered feedback. You could correlate to delivering feedback, but delivering feedback is down the waterfall from placing your first bid.

    23. HS

      Can I ... I'm sorry, I'm too interested.

  5. 10:44 – 21:25

    Competing Against TikTok and Snap

    1. HS

      I- I think it was Mike Mignano, a partner at Lightspeed who was at Spotify before, he spoke about kind of the, um, removal of the power of, you know, the social graph and the friendship graph and moving to kind of, uh, a content discovery graph and content discovery being so key. We've seen that with Reels now, which I love. I've seen many baby (laughs) videos on Reels, which clearly shows that I need to get moving.

    2. AS

      I feel you use TikTok more. I need to convert you to Instagram Reels.

    3. HS

      (laughs) Listen, I'm a charmer, my friend. (laughs) Uh, but my point being, is it really still friending? Is it really still following given the fact that actually Reels is so dominant, time on site is so dominant? Is it not attention?

    4. AS

      I think it's all of the above. Where do you get your ... So you look at TikTok-

    5. HS

      Mm.

    6. AS

      ... and what they're doing right now. They're focusing very heavily on messaging. They're focusing very heavily on friend graph. Um, so clearly it's important they're bringing it back in. Twitter, Snapchat, these companies focus on following, like how often does YouTube prompt you to still follow an account? I mean, I'm sure you want people to press the little notification budget button. If you haven't, please do.

    7. HS

      (laughs)

    8. AS

      Um, so it's part of the mix. It isn't 100% anymore and you shouldn't treat it like it's 100% anymore. Um, but it's definitely part of the mix, and where do you get that first bit of data on what to show to people? It's who they follow and who they friend and what they like.

    9. HS

      Do you think people are too binary in how they state some of their opinions today? We just had lunch-

    10. AS

      (laughs)

    11. HS

      ... and discussed some which I won't bring up, but like, do you think that people are too binary?

    12. AS

      Yes.... in all ways. I say this as a, as a gay man, everyone's too binary.

    13. HS

      (laughs) Right? Uh- (laughs)

    14. AS

      (laughs) I have a friend who's a VC who would want me to say, "Bi guys exist," you know, it's like-

    15. HS

      (laughs) We're gonna get to it. Um, I, I wanna ask about the Facebook Messenger split, we did touch on it. Like talk to me about that, 'cause that seemed like a pretty pivotal product moment for the company and for the product. Why did you do it, and how did that go down?

    16. AS

      Yeah, I mean, it's a long story and, and probably too long for this podcast. But fundamentally, in the shift to mobile, we'd actually done very well with messaging on the web, um, the product that was built there, I think Chris Putnam built the original version of it, I can't remember, it was, I think it was called Chirp. Anyway, we, we built this chat on the web, integrated, and it did really well, like it grew tremendously. And it was growing, growing, growing, and then mobile came along, and we launched Mobile Messenger, and we were tracking it, and mobile messages were growing great, but we were measuring it the wrong way. We were actually losing market share, because the web was declining faster than mobile was growing for us, and then WhatsApp and iMessage and all of these things were coming along, and actually, the shift of platforms meant even though we were growing mobile messaging, we were growing it slower than the industry, and we were losing market share in the shift to mobile. So, that was when we sort of went, "Oh, actually, this strategy isn't working of the hybrid." We looked at what was correlated with people using messaging the most, and it was them using the Messenger app, and we investigated with user research why, and it was because they knew that when people had the Messenger app, they would respond instantly to their messages, whereas when they were messaging inside an app as DMs within an app, they didn't actually expect to get an instant message. And so our messaging product was being used more like DMs-

    17. HS

      Mm.

    18. AS

      ... than it was being used like a true messaging app. So that showed us that we really needed to have a true messaging app where you knew if someone had a blue dot that they were on Messenger and you knew you could get a response, rather than it being DMs chatting inside an app when you had spare time. That pushed us to say, "What does it take to do this?" We ran experiments, we did it responsibly, we did it by country. Um, so the first countries we did it in were Portugal, I think, and Romania, and we saw a tremendous increase in usage. Initially, there was a dip in usage, and then we saw a rebound and a tremendous increase because people had the expectation they'd get an instant response. We tested it in another set of countries, Hungary, Czech Republic, a set of countries we selected based on different merits of the country to see what it would happen in different types of country.

    19. HS

      Don't you love the way people always think Australia? Everyone's like, "Have we tested Australia?" I'm like, "I'm sure there are other parts of the world which are you could use for testing." I, I have to ask, you mentioned there about kind of those early signs and that little dip, people hate change, fundamentally. Um, I, I remember many times with many different, uh, apps I've used, I think it was, it was actually ever Snap that said a lot about this before. But it's like, if you look at the data, how do you determine between a dip because of expectations changing and a change of, you know, core behavior, versus actually a, "Oh, shit, this isn't working"?

    20. AS

      Well, again, this is why you need to segment and you shouldn't run experiments. I mean, it depends on your scale, right? At that stage, we were a publicly traded company, like we had north of a billion users, it was a very different scale for us versus a startup. In startup mode, you actually have to take a lot more bets without certain data. As a mature company, there are some massive bets you should make, Reels, virtual reality, where it turns out you're gonna take a big risk to do that bet, but it's the right thing to do and you can't do it with numbers.

    21. HS

      Are these really risks? If you actually think about it, like Reels, if it didn't work, it's not a sink-the-boat decision in a Bezos world, is it?

    22. AS

      I mean, I think like it is to some extent because of the limited resources, like you only get to make a few bets, and if you make the wrong bet and you miss the next wave, you're in real trouble as a tech company. Look at how Microsoft languished for a very, very long time. Um, so I, I do actually th- I mean, it's not gonna s- this is the point of absolutes, is it gonna sink your company? No. But it really matters you don't miss lots of different waves as a company.

    23. HS

      Yeah.

    24. AS

      Um, but when you're a bigger and m- more mature company, you can afford to do some longer term experiments. So we did it in these countries and we watched how those countries evolved while we perfected the design and the methodology for the rollout. Personally, I think we took too long, and if I went back and did it again, I would've moved a lot faster, which is weird for a Meta executive to say-

    25. HS

      (laughs)

    26. AS

      ... but I actually think we moved too slowly, and in many ways it was my fault, 'cause I wanted to measure everything. But the data was completely clear, and then we rolled it out globally, and even though we had that small initial dip, we could argue it to everyone whose metrics got hurt and say, "The dip is worth it, because look at Romania, look at Portugal, look at the Czech Republic, look at Hungary."

    27. HS

      Does speed really matter?

    28. AS

      Yes.

    29. HS

      But if you have the data and you can make decisions with more clarity and more awareness and more precision, is it not better to be second?

    30. AS

      It matters. Um, WeChat took markets, Line took markets. I mean, it, it like, it really, really matters, um-

  6. 21:25 – 22:14

    Mistakes Made with FB Messenger

    1. HS

      um, can you take me to a time when you looked at the analytics, you looked at the data, and you were like, (snaps fingers) "That's it." And you were wrong, and the data led you to a wrong conclusion?

    2. AS

      I mean, I think with, with Messenger I, I took too long. I was like, "No, we need another round of tests, we don't have the answer." And we had the answer, and I should've just gone with the data and I was like, "No, we don't have complete enough data." And I do think moving slowly on that meant that Messenger was nowhere near as successful as it could've been. So that's a, that's a very obvious one, is like, there isn't enough data to make a decision. There was, I was just too scared to make the decision that the data was showing.

    3. HS

      I, I totally get... D'you think it's been a long term though? Like, you've caught up now. Messenger is what it is now. In the long term, did it impact it, the speed?

    4. AS

      I don't know. I don't know and I don't know how to answer that.

    5. HS

      Mm-hmm. I, I spoke to JC again, I had dinner with him and he s- ran me through the most brilliant profile of your career.

  7. 22:14 – 25:35

    The Move from Direct to Self-Serve Ads

    1. HS

      He, he said about the move from direct to self-serve being so transformational and I was like, "Aha, walk me through that." And when he told it to me, uh, it w- it was kind of so momentous but also relatively untold. So tell me about the move from direct to self-serve which was, you know, very much part of your role and, and experience. Like, why did you make the move and how did that go down?

    2. AS

      Well, I mean, firstly, you, you had Brian on here who was my closest partner and really led the work, so y- you've already kinda heard the story on the podcast. Brian Hale, um, told it well. It was, it was m- w- we actually have a lovely blend. It isn't like direct sales to self-serve, it's more like making sure that people can click the button to boost an ad. I think Brian told you the promote... Like, are we gonna give the post a promotion? Is it now a VP versus boost post? People knew what it was. So it was just, like, really basic stuff about presenting to small businesses, "Hey, you can buy a lightweight ad by boosting this post as a sponsored story," putting it in people's pl- way when they're using their own page saying, "Oh, buy an ad." Very, very basic stuff like that that mattered. There was, there was one funny... We m- we mocked up a translation, this was the first wave of this work, and we said, instead of advertise, when we translated it to French we said, "Créer un adre" and in France, we had a much larger rate of advertiser growt- like, really much rather rate- larger rate, like 30%, 40%. We were doing an analytics test with a, with a vendor and they found that France was far higher and we found it was this mistranslation, so we changed everywhere on the site. Instead of saying advertise, we changed it to create an ad, and we step changed up advertiser growth. So we got all these people self-serving in via these different techniques, and then our SMB team would reach out to the most promising leads in that group and they would phone them with our call centers. They might offer them an ad credit to try a new format, they might suggest them, "Oh, you're in retail, why aren't you using shops ads?" That's what they do today. They try shops ads or shopping advantage plus shopping or all these different ad formats we have based on the phone call from SMB, they move up and they'll spend more, then they're supported by mid-market. And so i- it isn't that it's, like, direct sales versus self-service, it is, it is a harmony of us doing sales and product that then gets you onto the funnel with our small business, medium business a-... and then large-scale advertiser support, and you see people ramp up quickly in that and also top out. Um, so it's, it's, it's a hybrid. It's not an ... Again, it's not a binary of, like, all self-serve or sales. No, we need both, um, but self-serve direct response is where our business, I think, is really strong. We have millions and millions of small business advertisers. I think we're the best platform and company on Earth for small businesses. We give them superpowers you could only have as a big business before.

    3. HS

      Should we have psychologists in our product teams and in our brand teams? When you say about creating an ad, being that transformational moment and actually making a, a very significant shift, should we have psychologists and people who understand human behavior much, much better integrated into our teams?

    4. AS

      Maybe. I mean, the lady who used to head our content design, Alicia, who now ... She's head of design and creative and content design for me for a third of the company, amazing lady, she has a psychology degree, and she was an incredible friend and partner in actually getting these tests run.

    5. HS

      Mm.

    6. AS

      Um, at the same

  8. 25:35 – 26:18

    The Importance of At-bats

    1. AS

      time, if we were American, we would say we want a lot of times at bat. We're not looking for home runs.

    2. HS

      (laughs)

    3. AS

      We just want a lot of opportunities at bat, and so I also think you should just be willing to try a lot. If you think ahead of time, you can predict what people are gonna respond to with a button color, a size of button, the words you put on the button, the flow that you've created. Like, Brian gave you examples of this. There are flows where we made them longer by giving people more targeting options, where we got a higher conversion rate and a higher lifetime value-

    4. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. AS

      ... whereas the growth standard is shorten the flow and take out steps. So, I think you need to try more experiments because you are not a genius, and even if you are, you can't predict what every user is going to do or think based on what you say to them.

  9. 26:18 – 27:14

    How to Create a Culture of Experimentation

    1. AS

    2. HS

      What can leaders do, and what do you do, to create a culture where experimentation is encouraged? And actually, Alex, you know what? That didn't work. That's fine. We've got deadlines, and (laughs) I've got someone, you know, calling time, but that's fine. I'm, I'm pleased we're doing this. How do you create that culture of experimentation?

    3. AS

      Well, at our company, I think, um, Sreep, our former CTO, uh, and now s- senior fellow, and Jay Parikh, who ran the infrastructure team, probably deserve a lot of credit for making Meta a culture where you can make mistakes, and we try not to enforce blame. I mean, look, if you do the same thing five times, you muck up the same five ways, you will have a performance conversation with your manager. But broadly, they've built a culture from engineering, where we have these sev reviews when things go wrong, and we try and learn from them, and if you made an honest mistake, that is completely okay, and we want you to step up, do it, say it, and that tries to take blame out of the culture and makes people feel safe to experiment. We try and maintain that across the whole

  10. 27:14 – 31:42

    What do I do with employees who are OK but not great?

    1. AS

      company.

    2. HS

      Can I ask your advice? And I think this show has been successful because I, I do ask for advice. Um, I have s- uh, someone-

    3. AS

      I, I love when you ask these questions. I actually ... I'm kind of a fanboy of the show, so ...

    4. HS

      Uh, well, so, I have someone ... That's very kind. I have someone in the team, um, here, who is, is okay. They're not great. They are not ready to move to the next level, and they are, I would say, reactive and not proactive. I know they're not ready to go from ... We've done zero to one, and they're not ready to go from one to five with me. But they're okay. What do I do with them? Do I get rid of them? Do I layer them? Do I-

    5. AS

      I hope this isn't a live example. Um ...

    6. HS

      (laughs)

    7. AS

      I think you, you have to judge. I mean, like, it, it really matters. I- if it really is true what you say, then probably you need to let them go if, like, that, if that is true-

    8. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AS

      ... but generally, in my experience, you have to ask the question, "Is it skill or is it will?" Um-

    10. HS

      IQ.

    11. AS

      If it's skill, if the question is skill, then you have to align them with the right role for them, if you're a large enough company to have the opportunity.

    12. HS

      The trouble is, what if their level of compensation, expectation does not align to their level of skill?

    13. AS

      Well, that's a conversation for them. You have to explain to them, like, "This is what you're good at. This is the thing that you can work on. This is what the compensation and benefits are associated with that, and if that's not what you want, that's fine, but we don't have a job for you that looks like what you want." I mean, that's a totally reasonable ... I think the hard thing is people don't like to have direct conversations, and for me, I truly, deeply believe the kindest thing you can do is be direct and honest with somebody.

    14. HS

      Do you not find them uncomfortable? I'm really uncomfortable. And I genuinely, uh-

    15. AS

      I'm horribly uncomfortable. I had to, I had to tell someone I was layering them, and I crashed my car on the way into work because I was so worried about the conversation. I still had the conversation. I, I talked with this lady, Annette Revis, who at the time was my HR VP, who is amazing.

    16. HS

      Oh, yeah. I spoke to her before the show.

    17. AS

      Oh, you did?

    18. HS

      She's so great. I loved her.

    19. AS

      She's great.

    20. HS

      I'm having tea with her in London in a couple of months.

    21. AS

      She is really, really great.

    22. HS

      Yeah.

    23. AS

      But she, um, you know, she coached me through it and, and told me I had to step up and do it. Like, having someone who holds you accountable for having the hard conversation matters, too. But yeah. I'm not gonna say I'm brilliant at it. I sometimes upset people, but I really try and be honest with people, and I ... There are some, there are some others I know who, like, uh, sort of hide it with people, hide it with people, and then they get surprised when they have a bad performance review or whatever, and I think that is ... That's a failing as a manager.

    24. HS

      Can I ask, do you have any tips for me? I, I, I got one tip recently that I loved, which is like, a lot of people say, "Alex, this is really hard for me to do," and it's like, pfft. If it's hard for you to deliver the feedback, like, imagine how it must be for the person who's trying hard-

    25. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    26. HS

      ... and not doing well. Do you have any tips for me in terms of delivering that feedback, in terms of what's worked, what hasn't worked for you? 'Cause, you know, I think people see the shows ... Honestly, Alex, and I'm opening up here, but I'm still figuring this out, (laughs) very much so, and I don't know what I'm doing, especially in these conversations.

    27. AS

      I, I think most 50-year-olds are figuring it out, too. I, I, I just, like ... Experience isn't the be-all and end-all. I mean, firstly, I've never actually had a conversation, for example, where I fired someone where that person hasn't been relieved.

    28. HS

      Hm.

    29. AS

      And hasn't actually been ... And, and generally, we always provide a good packet, and like, that does matter, but I think it's, it's actually very important that you put yourself in the other person's shoes when you're thinking through it. So, the firing is the most extreme. Sort of just giving performance feedback is the least extreme, and if you put yourself in the other person's shoes and know w- where they're standing, and you're like, "Look, this is feedback to make you better."... or like, "Hey, this is work- not working out," and they think you know it's not working out. And again, if it's a surprise, you have mucked it up as a manager and that's your fault. So, if you were, along the way are giving them the actual guidance, like, "I- I think it will work out well," and you have to be ... Again, management is about caring for your people and doing the thing that is, that is really truly caring for people. The people who care for you the most in your life are probably the people who've given you the toughest feedback in your life-

    30. HS

      Yeah.

  11. 31:42 – 38:08

    Why Facebook changed its name to Meta

    1. HS

      one thing that's been very central to your role is being the- the kind of rebrand from Facebook to Meta. I'm too interested by this, man. Like, why?

    2. AS

      Well, just like the media said, I came up with it and we did it in three weeks, uh ... (laughs)

    3. HS

      Yeah, I mean, it take you that long? I mean, it literally did, isn't it? Yeah.

    4. AS

      I shouldn't use sarcasm, 'cause then it just gets te- it gets quoted out of context, and I shouldn't have done that.

    5. HS

      And- and with video your s- I mean, you've got additional ...

    6. AS

      Yeah. Yeah, look, I mean, I think there was ... The- the biggest thing for me is that there was confusion between Facebook the company and Facebook the app.

    7. HS

      Hm.

    8. AS

      And so for consumers there was real confusion when Facebook showed up in their WhatsApp.

    9. HS

      Hm.

    10. AS

      And they were like, "Well, what does that mean?" And we might be, you know, clever executives who know the difference between a company and an application, but realistically, even for us, it's confusing when someone says, "Oh, I talked to Facebook today. Oh, I work at Facebook." Like, "What do you mean? Do you work at Facebook and you're in Instagram? Or do you mean you work at Facebook the app inside Facebook?" And so that confusion really, really mattered, and it showed up, by the way, in things like when we did the WhatsApp privacy policy and said now your data will be shared with Facebook Inc., for the limited amount of data which is shared just for analytics purposes with all the constraints 'cause WhatsApp is hyper-private. Even in that case people got very confused, and it was damaging for the company and it was damaging for those brands. So, distinguishing what the corporate entity was from the app I think was the kindest thing for media, like, politicians, investors, but also just the consumers of the app. So, getting rid of that confusion was one. Two, all the innovative stuff that was going inside the company was really being blocked from flowing to the company brand, because when people saw the company brand they were so dominated by the name that defines social media, that if we're doing something really interesting in virtual reality and they see the word Facebook, it doesn't flow up. Or, on WhatsApp we're doing something super innovative, innovative around encryption and privacy and they see the word Facebook, they instantly think of the app, they don't think of WhatsApp. So, in having something distinct from the individual apps that they could think about meant that the good from Facebook would flow to that, but so would the good from the other apps and you could think of that company as doing more than just, like, one component of what we do, so it was a broadening thing for the brand of the company. So yeah, confusion and broadening the brand of the company I think was really, really important-

    11. HS

      Does-

    12. AS

      ... in the change.

    13. HS

      Does it silo lessons, learnings and people? Like, the one thing that you could say is that it creates more ownership. You are v- when Instagram's killing it and you're in the Instagram team, amazing compared to just, like, Facebook where it's much more homogenous, but does it prevent learnings being transferred and does it create silos?

    14. AS

      No, I mean, that's something you handle internally from, um ... You handle internally from how you run the company. So, like, for example, analytics, we have a pillar leads forum for all the analytics leads of the different apps. We also-

    15. HS

      Uh, oh, what, a pillar lead?

    16. AS

      A pillar lead, so the pillars of the company. Ads is a ... Analytics pillars of the company, not the pillar. So, ads is a pillar, r- Reality Labs is a pillar, like Facebook app is a pillar, Instagram is a pillar. So those leads meet and they talk about the things that they've learnt. We then do reviews with the VPs, the product group leaders across the company every week where we show interesting insights from analytics. Like, every single week we do this. Once a quarter when the earnings call comes, we actually review all of the data behind the earnings call with all the leaders and what's driven, like, say, an out of, uh, ban success on in-feed recommendations on Facebook and hasn't transferred to Instagram, and we talk about that. We have leaders that run things cross-company. So, Adam Mosseri runs Reels for the company. He also runs Instagram, so he makes sure the Reels learning cuts across the whole comp- he's done an amazing job, by the way. The Reels stuff, uh, cuts across the whole company. So, we have processes to make sure data's flowing between silos, and honestly, it doesn't matter what the company's called as to whether that happens. You can build a kind- culture that does learn and share or a culture that doesn't, and we are one that does learn and does share.

    17. HS

      I'm so pleased we went for lunch beforehand and I feel built a rapport 'cause I can ask a harder question. Why Meta as a name? I think people instantly think of Metaverse, which is transient in terms of consumer excitement. Why- why Meta?

    18. AS

      I think we're mapping out the future that we believe in. Like, we're a company that does connect people. The red thread in our brand, like Meta is about connecting people in innovative and inspiring ways. At the extreme, that's virtual and mixed and augmented reality experiences, but honestly that starts with intimate conversations over WhatsApp. And so our s- our brands in our branded house are Meta, we connect people in awesome and inspiring ways, innovative. Facebook, it's about social discovery. Um, the first thing we ask you is find your friends. People you may know, pages you may like, groups you should join. Social discovery. Instagram is connecting around creativity, whether that's re-sharing your favorite reel or posting a photo with a, with a, with a filter. And WhatsApp is intimacy through privacy. You can only be as intimate as you can possibly be and share the most important things to you if you know there are multiple layers of privacy protecting you. And so all of these things come together as ways people connect virtually. And what is the Metaverse? It is a place where people connect virtually and the end point of it is an embodied space that ideally goes with us the entire time because of augmented reality, but the steps on the way start with 2D interfaces where you are connecting virtually.

    19. HS

      Do you think people jump straight away to Metaverse, glasses, and completely actually misunderstand the very logical ...... universe that you just portrayed.

    20. AS

      Absolutely, but then that's my job as a CMO, right? Like, we need to tell that story, and also we want people to know what the inspiring end point is that we're working towards.

    21. HS

      Has the rebrand gone well?

    22. AS

      I believe so. I mean, you can see Pricewaterhouse releases this, um, report every year, and we've gone from like 49 to fourth. I think that is extreme-

    23. HS

      (laughs)

    24. AS

      ... and short term and won't stay. But they measure the metrics pretty much that we measure, which is around, like, the future potential of this company and, and do you believe in that future potential, and that is what we wanted to unlock. We wanted people to know, as the second point I made, there are all these different things that we do as a company that are exciting and there for the future, and people are knowing it, and that was what we tried to do. Um, so from the perspective of the metrics we're using to measure the goals that we had... Again, metrics and goals are distinct. Goal is what you're trying to achieve, metric is how you're measuring it. And a metric never perfectly describes a goal, but both internally but independent verification like that PwC study, it's

  12. 38:08 – 45:20

    Metrics vs Goals

    1. AS

      much better.

    2. HS

      What do you mean a metric never perfectly describes a goal? 'Cause I often try and we do OKRs as teams, um, and it's, it's actually very challenging to ensure that they are very measurable, they tie exactly to the goal. How do you mean about that kind of metric and tied to the goal?

    3. AS

      Every metric has a flaw. Active users has fake accounts, like Elon Musk has been telling us with bots, but it matters. You have to have the counter-metric.

    4. HS

      Sure.

    5. AS

      So you can easily do something like registrations, right? Like, we... Right at the beginning of our, our interview, registered users, confirmed registered users, active confirmed registered users, monthly active users. There's been this journey of the industry over the last 20 years. It all started with everyone claiming about registered users, but it had the negative side effect of them not being confirmed. Confirmed, they weren't active. Activated, they weren't retained, and so actually, like, every goal has... Uh, the goal is to have lots of people use your service. The way people have measured it is from registered users through to monthly active users through to now we even try and measure people. There are flaws at every step of the way, um, and if you don't acknowledge and understand the flaws, you will succumb to Goodart's law where it's not a good measure anymore.

    6. HS

      Can I be blunt? I don't know if founders... Like, when does this level of precision, clarity of thought, and analysis need to be in place? There's a lot of founder here, and we have 1.6 million listeners per show, 800,000 founders, and they're listening to this going, "Oh my God, that's a lot of steps in the funnel. Fuck, we're, we're five people in a room." Do you need to have that level of thinking at that stage now, bluntly?

    7. AS

      You can skip a lot of steps by just, like, copying what the big teams have done, right? Meta, back when it was Facebook, innovated by moving from activated confirmed registered users to monthly active users-

    8. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AS

      ... and no one talked about that before. They were still talking about their registered user base back then. That's what Myspace talked about. And so you can step on the shoulders of giants just like we did. I learnt from my betters at eBay. You've had Jeff Jordan on this show.

    10. HS

      Yeah.

    11. AS

      And he built the sedimentary layers view of the world with, like, I think Anthony del Vecchio and other brilliant people, and you know, just learn from who's before and skip a bunch of steps. But secondly, I actually think the best founders I meet are actually precise in their thinking. Now, some of them, their superpower is design, some of them it's, it's like hard, deep tech. The hard, deep tech ones tend to get numbers really well. And I do think if you're gonna set metric goals for your company, you should be really thoughtful about them and you should know what Goodart's law is, and you should actually, like, understand that if you set the wrong metric, your team will go charging off in the right direction, and metrics and goals are different things 'cause no metric properly describes a goal.

    12. HS

      When do you change your goal?

    13. AS

      Oh, that's interesting. I don't know.

    14. HS

      So I always thought my g- I told you this at lunch, I always thought my goal was money and, uh, we're all terrified to admit that we're all chasing money, but I, I was always chasing money. (laughs) Um, uh, and then when I was 21, I, I, I was said this before, but I, you know, I made my first million and I realized that actually I was still the, you know, um, sad, uh, quite depressed, lonely individual, uh, that I was, and hopefully l- less so now, but it wasn't my goal and my goal changed then. When should we change our goals?

    15. AS

      I mean, when you have new information is probably a, a trite way to say it. I, I like to say whatever you do for a job shouldn't be economically stupid. You know, if it's stupid that you're doing the job economically, then you should think really hard about it, but if it's not, then focus on the impact, focus on the people around you, like... So I, I, I'm with you on the money thing, there needs to be a base level, but beyond that you should focus on other things. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's when you've got different information, but you should change your goals and your metrics very infrequently. Um, you should know what their flaws are, you should know what their drawbacks are, but you should, you should aspire to not change them very often.

    16. HS

      A final one before we get to you. Uh, whe- when you don't hit a metric or a goal, teams are dejected and they're sad and you kind of want them to b- you want them to feel-

    17. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    18. HS

      ... but you also don't want them to be too demoralized. It's like, "No, we, we, we get on. Next. We push." How do you strike that fine balance between ambition for the next even when you fail on the last?

    19. AS

      One of the best things that Sheryl actually said in my entire time working with her was, "The saddest thing is when a team fails having hit all its goals on the way down." I, and it really, it stuck to me-

    20. HS

      How does that work? Sorry. If you-

    21. AS

      Because people are not... Because people worry about everyone being sad and so you do a forecast and you set the goal off the forecast, but the goal is a losing path. Like, you need to set a goal that puts you on a winning path at the absolute base level. If your goal... If you hit it and you repeatedly hit them, the metric that you're using to describe it, the goal that you've set out, and you're sad, then you've set the wrong goal. I- if you set the right goal and you miss it, then the team should be sad 'cause you've set the right goal and the right metric. Like, get it right.

    22. HS

      That's fascin- That's fascinating. So, uh, God, I'm so personal, but fuck it. Uh, uh, one of our team's goals that I was doing with him this morning is number of companies he meets per week. It's a good indication of visibility and marketing coverage, but actually he could hit all of his goals and still be very unhappy 'cause we could make no investments-

    23. AS

      Yes.

    24. HS

      ... for 10 weeks.... and he's met 20 companies a week.

    25. AS

      And speaking of Goedert's Law, it's a very easy, easy, easy metric to game. Like, "I met BP, I met Shell, I met Price Waterhouse." (laughs) Like, if it's just number of companies, I can get a lot of meetings. Like-

    26. HS

      Well, then help me out h- that, that y- you sh- really, send me an invoice for the consulting (laughs) fee. Um, w- h- how do I change it then? I change it to investments? But I don't wanna... If I change it to investments, he can, he can game that too. He can just write a fucking check. I don't want him to do that. That would be...

    27. AS

      Well, presumably, you have a partner meeting before you make an investment to make sure everyone's bought in.

    28. HS

      Oh, c- oh no. A consensus decision-making, I think at the pr- very early stages, actually leads to poor-

    29. AS

      Interesting.

    30. HS

      ... and very average thinking. Uh, a- and she, data shows that, you know, very often, ideas like justin.tv which turned into Twitch, I mean, who, you know, respectfully to Justin Kan, like (laughs) strapping, strapping a camera to yourself and videoing 24 hours a day, bizarre decision. Like, why would you invest in that? Most, most brilliant companies started that way.

  13. 45:20 – 52:09

    Being a Gay Man in Tech

    1. HS

      decision-making or not? You mentioned earlier about being a gay man in tech.

    2. AS

      (laughs)

    3. HS

      Um, I, I, I would love to understand this. Like, when did you come out and why did you decide that was the right time?

    4. AS

      I came out twice. So I came out at university because I had a boyfriend and I, I suddenly realized that being gay wasn't about sexual attraction, you could actually be in love with someone and it sort of changed everything and then he dumped me.

    5. HS

      Correct.

    6. AS

      And that was very bad.

    7. HS

      Right.

    8. AS

      Very, very bad. Um...

    9. HS

      Always remember your first love. You know what-

    10. AS

      Yeah.

    11. HS

      ... mine now says, "I used to go out with Harry" and I'm like, "Yeah, fuck you." (laughs)

    12. AS

      I, I, I, I don't know. I still re- I, I really like him still. I saw him in Barcelona a couple of years back, but every gay man, man I know, the first one seems to have been really bad 'cause it was the thing that made you come out, and then you broke up and it was like, "Oh, I've devastated half my life one way, and now the thing I devastated for has ended. Wow, I'm an idiot." Um...

    13. HS

      (laughs)

    14. AS

      So, so I came out and then, then I went to work and eBay, uh, I mean, look, Meg Whitman went and campaigned on banning gay marriage in California. I was advised on moving to the States that it wouldn't be good for me to be out at the company, and so I went back in the closet, um, which was a really bad experience personally. I, I don't know if it was true-

    15. HS

      Was that really, was that really hard for you? I mean, like you-

    16. AS

      It was awful. I, I, like, I was scared of going to the Castro and going on dates 'cause I was worried I'd see someone from work. Which is really stupid 'cause why would they be at the gay bar? (laughs)

    17. HS

      (laughs)

    18. AS

      Like, I, I mean, it was stupid but as a 20-something year old-

    19. HS

      Hey, Alex. (laughs)

    20. AS

      Yeah. And, and it, well, I mean, it was actually bad for my life and I, I, I think it's a really bad thing-

    21. HS

      Just psychologically, um, yeah.

    22. AS

      Yeah. If you can't feel out, feel comfortable being out at a, at a, at your workplace, which for some people they can't, it can be really destructive 'cause I was so scared of someone finding out I was gay and it hurting my career. I mean, I was 6,000 miles from home, I knew nobody in the state. Anyway, stupid. So I went to, um, e- uh, went from eBay to Facebook because I thought Facebook was gonna be amazing. Terrified my parents. They were like, "Why would he leave a stable job at eBay for this startup?" Um, and I'm like, "It's gonna be big, Mum." Um...

    23. HS

      I feel it. (laughs)

    24. AS

      Yeah, no, I know you know this journey. I was there for a year, and then Blake Ross, the founder of, of Firefox, who was an incredible, uh, colleague, he wrote this lovely post about Prop 8, for me as a gay man, about like, how supportive he was of the community. And I jumped on the thread and there was a secret mailing list for those of us that were gay but we were in the closet. And I jumped on the thread and I, I said, "It's really great to see you posting this. I agree," whatever. And then one of his friends said, "You are attacking Mormons. Like, we don't believe in this. We're funding this, like, you're a terrible person," to me, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, it's Blake Ross, he's director of product, he's really important." So I deleted my comment and sent him an apology. The next moment, this chap Mark Slee, who's a v- like 10X programmer, now lives in the UK, he posted, um, how supportive he was of the gay community. And then one after another, loads of other colleagues posted and said that. And I suddenly went from feeling that I, I didn't know how people thought, it was an early company, it was brotastic, there was nobody who was openly gay at the company, I suddenly felt I could be out. And that was what tipped me over to being out at the office, and now obviously I've done lots of stuff with, whether it's the rainbow filter or whether it's same sex relationships on the product or, you know, other gender options or various things where I've, I've helped sponsor that happening in our product because of the community that we've built. And I'm exact sponsor for now for the Pride Ad community. It was that moment of feeling that there were a bunch of people in the company that supported the LGBTQ community that tipped me from being like in the closet to being out. And it's the first sporting or professional, like really serious place in my life I have felt comfortable to be openly gay and, and see it go well for me.

    25. HS

      I hope this is again, were you nervous that people would treat you differently internally?

    26. AS

      Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that, that's why it took until I saw a bunch of people supporting the community for me to be like, "Oh wow, these people," Blake, "these really important people," who, um, you know, he's director of product. He was the most senior person in product after Matt Coler, I think jointly with Chris Cox. I, I mean that, that he was really, really important and he'd founded Firefox. And to see him and then Slee, who was like one of the most respected engineers at the whole company, those two-... you know, it was, it was life-changing for me.

    27. HS

      How much further do you think we have to go to really make everyone feel like they can come out when they feel they want to and feel welcome in whatever way they are? Like, I think there's, uh, you know, people talk a lot about, you know, "I, I feel I can now." I don't actually feel that that's the case at all in a lot of companies.

    28. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    29. HS

      Do you feel that we have a long way to go still?

    30. AS

      Yeah, I mean, I think that the trans community has it the hardest. So, like, to be completely blunt, uh, as a white cis gay man, I've got it, you know, relatively easy compared to many people in the community. Um, at the same time, I've said that on stage before, and people have corrected me that everyone has their own journey, and so it's not that it's straightforward. You know, look around. How many boards do you serve on where there's another gay board member? How many investor conferences do you ever see someone gay on stage? Senior ex- How many people have you had on this show who are openly gay who are a senior executive at a tech company? There's still a gap, and that alone should tell you that there is still a problem, and, you know, I'm, I'm very lucky I work at a company. Mark had a gay board member with Peter, he had a gay co-founder with Chris. Like, I know he supports our community and I feel very grateful for it. Sheryl too. And I feel that from my colleagues. But it's also, like, still very lonely. Um, in the senior teams I'm on, in the boards I've served on, like, I'm always the only gay guy. So yeah, there's a, there's a gap and we have a long way to go. And I talk to many LGBTQ people, and again, look, trans people, way, way harder than where I stand, and many of them say to me, "I can't be successful in my job and I can't be out in my work." And I always say, "That is your decision, and you should judge the situation you're in, but personally I'd try and get out of that situation 'cause of how hard it was for me and what I saw."

  14. 52:09 – 53:42

    Biggest Lessons from Parents

    1. HS

      Speaking of those parents, what have been your biggest lessons when you look back on your relationship with them? Like, my mother, she's the light in every room, I always say, and I always want my meeting with someone to be hopefully one of the highlights of their day, 'cause I want them to be happy as well, which is also challenging as a leader. You can't always have that.

    2. AS

      (laughs)

    3. HS

      Thanks, Mum. (laughs) But I, I, I really try and be the light in the room. What are yours?

    4. AS

      Well, when I come back earlier to that point on being kind of long-term kind, I actually think that's, that, I got that from my parents. My parents, I think my parents do the right thing even if it's hard for them, and I think I've learned that from them, uh, no matter what the scenario is. Like, my mum, my dad, they try and do the smart thing, they try and do the right thing, and I try... A- and that's very much a value in our family. Like, huge value. So that's huge. And then being patiently right, I, I think that fits with my dad. Um, he's, like, he doesn't bang his chest, he isn't sort of the, the, the, trying to make a, a big deal of himself, but, like, he's quiet, and when he says something, he's generally right, um, and you wanna listen. And I've also learned a lot about how to actively listen by having a father who English isn't his first language, and I have a boss now for whom English isn't his first language. He has brilliant English, both of them. But actually listening carefully, I think I learned that from my dad, um, from that, so... But yeah, I think, I think, like, long-term kind, doing the right thing, if you believe it's the right thing, even if people are annoyed at you or it's really hard to do it, uh, that is something I've learned from both of my parents.

    5. HS

      Alex, I love this. I wanna move into a quick fire. So I say a short statement and you give me a-

    6. AS

      I will try

  15. 53:42 – 57:14

    Quick-fire Round

    1. AS

      and be quick.

    2. HS

      Okay. You just mentioned patiently right. I always say speed of execution is the most important thing in startups. Is speed of execution the most important thing in startups, or is patiently right?

    3. AS

      It is, and that's why you need to be patient about being right. You need to allow people to move and make their mistakes.

    4. HS

      What's the one word that will be on your tombstone?

    5. AS

      Loyalty.

    6. HS

      What Facebook story do not many people know about but you think more should?

    7. AS

      Uh, we stopped growing in twe- 2007 and that's why we created the growth team.

    8. HS

      (laughs) What did you believe about growth five years ago that you no longer believe? That's James Pajara.

    9. AS

      Acquisition is hard.

    10. HS

      (laughs)

    11. AS

      Look at TikTok.

    12. HS

      I love that. Who's your mentor and what have you learned from them?

    13. AS

      I've had a lot of mentors. Annette was a really, really important mentor, and I learnt a ton from her about the fact that, um, I need to adjust my tone to the room I'm in and I need to think of the other person, even if they are way more senior than me, and making sure they hear me, they don't just listen to me.

    14. HS

      How do you do that?

    15. AS

      It's really hard, and you focus on the actions they take based on it, and you look at what they respond to rather than you.

    16. HS

      Got it. Why does the growth team never ring the gong?

    17. AS

      Yeah, where did you get this one from? Um...

    18. HS

      I can't remember. (laughs)

    19. AS

      (laughs) We didn't. You're, you're right.

    20. HS

      Are you, so you, so you, you know you mentioned you liking the growth episodes? We have all of those people in a WhatsApp group, and I was like, "Alex is coming on. What do we ask him?" And then they were like, "Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing." And this was one of them.

    21. AS

      Yeah, I mean, I, I, I just think shipping isn't the thing you celebrate. You celebrate succeeding, you don't celebrate shipping, and if you build a culture that only celebrates shipping, you don't build a culture that celebrates winning, and so we never rang the gong.

    22. HS

      You are great at X. You can choose X. Why are most people not great at X?

    23. AS

      I'd say keeping people with me a long time. I've had multiple people report to me for a decade plus, or be one level in, lower in my organization for a decade plus, and I think it's because I do f- focus on sharing feedback and really care about making people better and doing the long-term kind thing, even if it's, like, really hard to share in the short term, and the people who appreciate that get that I'm looking out for them over the long term, but it doesn't work with everyone.

    24. HS

      Next five years for Alex. We are 2028. You'll be 20 years at Facebook then?

    25. AS

      Uh, yeah, yes.

    26. HS

      Fuck. Okay. I w-

    27. AS

      And I probably will be.

    28. HS

      So what do, what do we wanna have done in the next five years?

    29. AS

      I think that we wanna turn Reels into a really major monetization engine, not just, uh, an engagement engine. I think that we want to have a much firmer understanding of the success that the metaverse will allow for people, um, probably grounded in virtual and mixed reality with augmented reality further on the horizon, but a proof case out there. And I think, like, yeah, we want to have put to bed a bunch of the things that we're discussing around social media, uh, in the public sphere where the public realm has to make decisions about what they want on content moderation, what they want on well-being. We need the appropriate laws in place, and then we need to be moving to a place of compliance with those laws, because society has settled some of the decisions about what they want out of social media, and that's okay.

    30. HS

      Alex, I can't thank you enough for this. I can't thank you enough for your advice on, on my people problems. (laughs) You are fantastic, Alex.

Episode duration: 57:14

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