Snap's VP of Product Jack Brody: The Future of AR; Snap Glasses; Evan Spiegel's Product Mind | E1006

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

April 26, 2023

Duration

1h 2m

Channel

The Twenty Minute VC

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Jack Brody is the VP Product @ ⁠Snap⁠. Jack joined Snap in 2014 as a Product Designer, and ultimately helped build out the design organization as the Head of Design before taking on his current role overseeing all of Product for the Snapchat application and Hardware. In his 9 years at Snap, he helped create Memories, the Snap Map, and AR Lenses like Face Swap. --------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Who is Jack Brody? 2:38 How Even Spiegel Hired Jack 6:30 How To Challenge Conventions 12:50 Best and Worst Product Decisions at Snap 19:24 Product: Art or Science? 20:20 How to Encourage Product Innovation 29:38 Product Team Management 35:53 Hiring for the Product Team 43:34 Snap’s Developing World 46:06 Building Product for Different Geographies 48:33 Did Snap copy Kakao stories? 51:19 Snap & Artificial Reality 56:09 Quick-Fire Round --------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Jack Brody We Discuss:

1. The Shortest Internship in Tech: How did Jack get an internship with Evan Spiegel and Snap while he was still at college? How did it turn into the shortest internship in tech history? What are the single biggest product lessons Jack has from working with Evan Spiegel?

1. Product 101: Art vs Science: Does Jack believe product is more art or science? If he were to assign numbers to them, what would they be? How does Jack define creativity? What can founders and product leaders do to ensure their teams are as creative as possible? What is the 3 step framework through which product leaders should prioritize product ideas? Does Jack believe that when the CEO is no longer the Head of Product, the company is dead? Does Jack agree with Gustav Soderstrom, “talk is cheap, so we should do more of it”?

1. The SNAP Hiring Process: What Works and What Does Not: What is the hiring process for the product team at SNAP? What questions are most revealing of 10x product people in the interview process? What case studies and tests does Jack use in the interview process? What other roles and functions does Jack bring into the interview process as part of the decision? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make in the hiring process for product?

1. SNAP, The Future, and The World Around Us: What do Jack and SNAP believe will be the future for augmented reality? What country is SNAP not big in today but will be in the next 5 years? Why that one? Why did SNAP tear down its android app and start again? What has been the impact? Were the SNAP glasses a success? What is their future? --------------------------------------- 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 Jack Brody on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackdbrody 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 Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact --------------------------------------- #JackBrody #Snap #HarryStebbings #productdevelopment

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Jack Brody

  guest

• Harry Stebbings

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of The Twenty Minute VC, featuring Jack Brody and Harry Stebbings, Snap's VP of Product Jack Brody: The Future of AR; Snap Glasses; Evan Spiegel's Product Mind | E1006 explores snap’s Jack Brody on AR, Product Science, and Designing for Humanity Jack Brody, VP of Product at Snap, traces his path from generalist student to product design leader and details how Snap builds products through a highly iterative, science-like design process grounded in problem definition. He explains Evan Spiegel’s product philosophy, Snap’s culture of questioning convention, and how they balance intuition with data, prototypes, and long-running experiments. Brody dives into hiring, performance management, and psychological safety as foundations for repeatable innovation, as well as Snap’s global strategy and lessons from features like Stories, Snap Map, and games. He closes by outlining Snap’s vision for augmented reality, the future of Spectacles, and why AI and AR will increasingly push technology into the background of everyday life.

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