Why Every Founder Needs a Story | Replit CEO on a16z

1. 0:00 – 0:52

   Intro

   1. AMAmjad Masad0:00

      Being canceled is a choice. [laughs] You can choose to get canceled and retreat from the public eye. But I think if you're still out there, at some point, honestly, the haters kind of give up.

   2. ETErik Torenberg0:09

      Some people ask, "Hey, how should I think about X versus other platforms?"

   3. AMAmjad Masad0:12

      You have to understand the meta, because the way to go viral is to dress up your argument, your worldview in the current conversation. Twitter's influence is amazing, but it tends to be elite, kind of inside group influence. I think Instagram, Facebook still, YouTube is where you get to the early majority.

   4. ETErik Torenberg0:31

      Does every CEO need to become an influencer now?

   5. AMAmjad Masad0:33

      Look, I think there's so many paths to success. I don't think there's one. Replit would've probably died if I wasn't telling a story that is larger than the company itself. Dario is an example where he's not playing the social media game. The product sort of speaks for itself. So I think it comes down to the-

2. 0:52 – 2:38

   How Going Direct Saved Replit

   1. ETErik Torenberg0:52

      Amjad, thank you for joining us.

   2. AMAmjad Masad0:53

      Of course.

   3. ETErik Torenberg0:54

      So Replit is a ten-year-old company. Uh, for the last two years it's gone a- absolutely vertical. But there was a, a period of time well before that where the company was in the zeitgeist, um, partially because of your go direct efforts. I mean, you're one of the best CEOs o- on X. You're, you're also now get- getting big on, um, In- Instagram and o- other platforms. What is the business impact, uh, been of your, uh, efforts going direct? And does every CEO need to become an influencer now, or h-how have you sort of c-conceived this?

   4. AMAmjad Masad1:23

      Yeah, I, I think Replit would've probably died if, if, uh, if I wasn't telling a story that is larger than the company itself. Like, the company wasn't successful commercially, but we've been very successful at, like, fundraising, recruiting. Uh, and I, I think if, if you build a company that's successful right out of the gate commercially, like, you might not need to do all of that. But if you're trying to meme a dream into reality, I think you have to play that game. And so, um, so yeah, I, I think, I think otherwise we would've, would've not existed because we had to, we had to do that for so many years before... I mean, turns out everything I said was true, but a- at the time it wa- it was, uh, it wasn't real. It was a dream.

   5. ETErik Torenberg2:15

      Yeah. And I mean, you at one point decided to go, go big on this. You weren't always big on Twitter. I mean, you, you started-

   6. AMAmjad Masad2:24

      Yeah

   7. ETErik Torenberg2:24

      ... and a lot of people here, a lot of people, you know, who are CEOs-

   8. AMAmjad Masad2:26

      Yeah

   9. ETErik Torenberg2:27

      ... maybe it doesn't come super naturally to them, and they have to make a decision of like, how do I get g- You know, am I gonna do this? And if so, how do I get good at it? What was your journey to saying, "Hey, I'm really going to invest in this, and I'm gonna get good at this"?

3. 2:38 – 5:20

   Improv, Exposure Therapy & Making Mistakes Early

   1. AMAmjad Masad2:38

      Well, I, I think the journey starts, like outside of Twitter even, is like, how do you, um, how do you get good at communicating? How do you get good at public speaking? Um, so I always wanted to be able to, to be, um, be a influencer, for lack of better words. Uh, and I remember I was in, I was in New York and, uh, when I first came to the States, and I had a terrible stage fright. Like, I'd be sitting here and m- my heart rate would be like a hundred and fifty. I'd be sweating. Uh, and I thought like, like, "How do I deal with this? How do I get better at this?" And I went and I took improv classes in New York and then took a storytelling class, and I'm like a big fan of exposure therapy. Anything you're afraid of, just go do more of it until you're desensitized. And like the best way to get desensitized is to just make a fool of yourself every day doing improv. Um, and I ended up do- doing shows and got, got pretty good at it. Uh, and, um, and, and then I think the benefit that I had is Replit didn't like blow up right out of the gate. It was this like very, like my personal profile had like this very linear growth to it, and so I could make mistakes with, you know, very little attention on me. So I, uh, and I, I made a lot of PR mistakes. I think still, if you go to Hacker News, sort by the top ten, like we had like a PR crisis in Hacker News where I had, uh, where I had an issue with, uh, with, with some ex-ex-intern, uh, at, at Replit where I, I just totally botched that communication on that. But still, that wasn't larger. I was still like within the Hacker News community, which they still hate me, which is fine. They'll hate you anyways.

   2. ETErik Torenberg4:24

      [laughs]

   3. AMAmjad Masad4:25

      [laughs] That's like the rite of passage. Hacker News loves you, then hates you, then you become successful. Um, and then, uh, so, uh, so, so you kinda make mistakes and, um, and they're not at the public stage just yet. Uh, and so the stakes gets higher as I'm able... It's sort of a progressive overload in, in power lifting. You're sort of like carrying more weight. You know, it never gets easier, but you're able to do more and more over time. Um, and so, you know, I feel for the founders that are just now kind of like their company's blowing up and they're, they're in the public eye, and you can see founders of big, you know, now trillion-dollar companies-

   4. ETErik Torenberg5:06

      [laughs]

   5. AMAmjad Masad5:06

      ... they're really fucking up [laughs] on a massive stage. But, but getting the reps in has been, has been super helpful.

   6. ETErik Torenberg5:13

      And so is that your advice people wanna get, just exposure therapy, just, you know, like one tweet a day or so, like what, what's the best way to, to get started to get really good at

4. 5:20 – 8:40

   Build in Public & the Power of Authenticity

   1. ETErik Torenberg5:20

      this?

   2. AMAmjad Masad5:20

      Yeah. So I th- I think, uh, a f- a few things. One is, uh, the concept of build in public. It wasn't coined when I started doing that, but the idea is that, uh, look, as, as a CEO, you're gonna do a good amount of, uh, you know, writing and communicating to your employees, to your investors. You can just do it publicly, right? I mean, I've always been this believer that there aren't really a lot of secrets that you need to-

   3. ETErik Torenberg5:49

      Yeah

   4. AMAmjad Masad5:49

      ... to keep inside, inside a company. And so a lot of your otherwise writing that would be in private, you can put it public, and that way you carry people, uh, in the journey with you and you're, you're getting, you're getting the reps in. So whenever there's a piece of communication or story I wanna tell- Uh, and there's a choice between public and private, I might bias towards pr- public. I, I often write something publicly and then paste it on Slack. I just say, you know, "This is what I wrote." And, um, uh, and so, uh, so that, that's been, that's been helpful. The other thing is, um, authenticity. I think, like, being really, being yourself, uh, is, is kind of like a big radical thing that, you know, maybe started happening with Elon maybe 10 years ago. But CEOs were supposed to be this, you know, very polished thing. They had to kinda be filtered through this, um, prism of, of, of PR, uh, and journalists are kind of the way to get to the public. But you see kind of Elon being the first kinda building in public platform, and I think Zuck to some extent as well. Just seeing Zuck, uh, at some point when journalists kind of turned on him, he started going direct, and you, you start following their stories and it's like Zuck changed his, the entire narrative around him by just being himself and actually, uh, talking directly to people. And I think the story of Trump is also very illustrative. Like, I think, you know, Trump was successful despite the negative bias in the, in the press, and it was mostly, mostly Twitter initially.

   5. ETErik Torenberg7:32

      Yeah.

   6. AMAmjad Masad7:32

      Like, people forget that, but Tr- Trump had, like, amazing bangers on-

   7. ETErik Torenberg7:36

      Yeah. [laughs]

   8. AMAmjad Masad7:37

      ... Twitter. What was it? My favorite one, "I've never seen a thin person drink Diet Coke."

   9. ETErik Torenberg7:41

      [laughs] Yeah.

   10. AMAmjad Masad7:41

       Which is true. [laughing] Or Kanye. Kanye-

   11. ETErik Torenberg7:46

       Yeah

   12. AMAmjad Masad7:46

       ... Kanye's, uh, banger is, like, "I hate waking up in the plane and I see a bottle of water in front of me. Now, now I gotta take care of this shit." [laughing]

   13. ETErik Torenberg7:56

       "I don't have a manager I can't be managed."

   14. AMAmjad Masad7:58

       Right. "I can't be managed." Like, you know, you see these people come up and people, uh, start associating with them, and obviously they're, they're very authentic.

   15. ETErik Torenberg8:06

       Yeah.

   16. AMAmjad Masad8:06

       And we're like, okay, there's, there's this shift in people's minds where they crave authenticity.

   17. ETErik Torenberg8:12

       Hunter Biden. I mean-

   18. AMAmjad Masad8:14

       Yeah, yeah

   19. ETErik Torenberg8:14

       ... he could do anything-

   20. AMAmjad Masad8:15

       He's, he's on fire now

   21. ETErik Torenberg8:15

       ... but if you're a good poster, I mean, you can get away with it.

   22. AMAmjad Masad8:17

       He, he can post his way to presidency for sure.

   23. ETErik Torenberg8:20

       [laughs] Yeah. The, um... You, it's, it's funny you mentioned the intern thing because I remember that, but I also remember forgetting it too, and it-

   24. AMAmjad Masad8:28

       Yeah

   25. ETErik Torenberg8:28

       ... it, a lot of people say, "Oh, what if I say the wrong thing? What if I get my company into, into trouble in, in some sort of, you know, uh, controversy or scandal?" You know, is, is it just that attention spans are so short that it's just, like, the, the next situation?

5. 8:40 – 13:21

   Being Uncancellable: Why Retreating Is the Real Risk

   1. ETErik Torenberg8:40

      What, what, what do you say about that?

   2. AMAmjad Masad8:41

      Well, well, you need to... I, I think it's deadly. Like, PR can be, PR crisis can be deadly, uh, if you retreat afterward. Like, if you're not in the news, and I think the thing about, I think, Trump, Elon, et cetera, is that there is the next thing. [laughs] And by the way, the next thing could be worse.

   3. ETErik Torenberg9:01

      [laughs]

   4. AMAmjad Masad9:01

      But just, [laughing] but just the fact that you're still in there, you're still in the game-

   5. ETErik Torenberg9:06

      Yeah

   6. AMAmjad Masad9:06

      ... people will be like, "Oh, we," like, "Oh, this, this, th- this guy's unkillable, uncancellable."

   7. ETErik Torenberg9:12

      Yeah.

   8. AMAmjad Masad9:12

      And so it, it... Being canceled is a choice. Uh, so you can-

   9. ETErik Torenberg9:18

      [laughs]

   10. AMAmjad Masad9:18

       ... you can choose to get canceled and retreat from the public eye. But I think if you're still out there, the... At some point, honestly, the haters kind of give up. They're like, "All right. I guess I can't, we can't do anything to this guy. Let's go to the next guy."

   11. ETErik Torenberg9:30

       Yeah, yeah. There's this great book, So You Think You've Been Shamed, and it chronicles the stories of a number of people who've gotten canceled over the past, like, 15 years, and that's basically the, the takeaway is that the, the people who can- who are truly canceled are just the ones who shut up.

   12. AMAmjad Masad9:45

       Right.

   13. ETErik Torenberg9:45

       They're the ones who retreat. But the ones who just keep going and, you know, it's, it's forgettable. I mean-

   14. AMAmjad Masad9:50

       Yeah

   15. ETErik Torenberg9:50

       ... there's so many people, you know, Brian Johnson is, like, is an ex- who sort of, like, revived their image or just presented a whole new image-

   16. AMAmjad Masad9:57

       Yeah

   17. ETErik Torenberg9:57

       ... and people just forget the thing that they were, you know, almost canceled for.

   18. AMAmjad Masad9:59

       I, I, I will say the mental, uh, aspect of it is pretty difficult.

   19. ETErik Torenberg10:03

       Yeah, I was gonna ask that next.

   20. AMAmjad Masad10:04

       Yeah, because, like, I think that, um, you know, this story's been told a trillion times, but, like, in the ancestral village, uh, if, if you become an outcast, that's pretty deadly. Like, you can literally die. You can't find food. And so our limbic system, when you get, you, you get this massive reaction online, you're kind of in this fight or flight and it could, you know, it can really affect you. Like, you can't sleep. You, uh, some people can't eat, and it's g- it, it could get, be, it could be really damaging. But, uh, I think, again, exposure therapy helps a lot. Like, the first one's really hard. The second one is like, "Ah, it'll blow over." Um, but, but also having good principles. Like, I think acting on principles is important. Like I, you know, no matter what people think of what's happening at Anthropic, it's absolutely true, I think, in my mind that they believe everything they're doing. They believe in safety. They believe in their mission. And I think that gives them incredible strength to keep going in, um... And obviously, like, oftentimes principles and, um, self-interest coincide, and you can, a- and that's, that's a good thing, but you, you can ascribe what they're doing to some kind of cynical marketing ploy, but it, the strength that they have is, is based on their principles and that, that really keeps them going.

   21. ETErik Torenberg11:34

       Yeah. Yeah. The, um... I mean, earlier on you were alluding to the stakes are, are really high with these. What advice might you have for, uh, an Anthropic or, or OpenAI in terms of, like, some of the communication challenges or opportunities? [laughs]

   22. AMAmjad Masad11:45

       It's, it's obviously way above my pay. I've never, you know, uh, battled with the United States government. Uh-

   23. ETErik Torenberg11:52

       [laughs]

   24. AMAmjad Masad11:52

       Not yet. Uh, [laughing] one day. Goals. Um, but, [laughing] um, l- look, I, I thi- I, I honestly think it's a kind of a win-win for them. Like, it's really, if you th- if you game out- What's gonna happen with Anthropic? Fable comes back, it's gonna be huge flood towards Fable. It's kind of like, you know, this, this thing was banned by the government. Actually, Steve Jobs, um, once did this ad, uh, they, they had a, they had a Mac, I don't know, the big towers or Mac Pro, I think it's called, where they had a tremendous compute power that was subject to export control.

   25. ETErik Torenberg12:31

       Yeah.

   26. AMAmjad Masad12:32

       So they had this, uh, this ad where it's like military tanks going and, like surrounding the Mac and the Mac in the middle, and it's like showing that this thing is so powerful, the US government doesn't want h- you know, doesn't, doesn't want you to have it, so you should go buy it. Uh, and so it's like a tremendous marketing opportunity-

   27. ETErik Torenberg12:50

       Yeah

   28. AMAmjad Masad12:50

       ... for them. It's already kind of their, uh, their reputation is pretty big. Uh, but, but even if, but even if they can't get Fable back on the, on the market, you know, they still win the PR game of like, "We're a company that's kind of principled and doing the right thing," and all of that. So I, I think just, uh, uh, m- my advice would be not to stress out too much and not to, uh, honestly just sit back and let it play

6. 13:21 – 17:39

   When to Respond & When to Let It Go

   1. AMAmjad Masad13:21

      out.

   2. ETErik Torenberg13:22

      Y- you, you were describing the, the mental game as t- a lot of things we'll hear from CEOs is, "Oh, I don't wanna have to tweet, and then I'm in meetings, now I have to think about the responses, and I have to respond back, and now I'm in this sort of conflict."

   3. AMAmjad Masad13:31

      You don't have to respond back. That's the thing.

   4. ETErik Torenberg13:32

      Right.

   5. AMAmjad Masad13:33

      You don't have to respond back at all. I mean, that's, that's another thing you have to learn is to, is to, like not feed the trolls. It's, you know, that, that reply. It's like, "Oh, I gotta get back." It's like, uh, what's that, I think New Yorker comic who's like, uh, "Babe, come to bed." It's like, "No, something's wrong on the internet."

   6. ETErik Torenberg13:50

      [laughs]

   7. AMAmjad Masad13:50

      Uh, and it's like, it's very tempting, but actually it's kind of the baller thing to do is like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, the plebs can fight in my comments." [both laughing] "I don't need to worry about it." So, uh, so I think it's a trap to think that anything you put out, you need to immediately defend. Obviously, if something is getting, um, a lot of airplay and people are misunderstanding you, I think you should, you should correct it. Uh, and a- again, you should do it in the principled way. You should do it because, "Hey, this is what I actually believe. Uh, here's what you got wrong." But don't be overly defensive about it. Like, don't appear that, oh, this is, this is something that you're getting emotional about. Because again, any time publicly, if you... Any time you show w- weakness publicly, it actually feeds the trolls and feeds the haters because they feel like they can get to you.

   8. ETErik Torenberg14:45

      Yeah. What, what advice would you give for when companies are being dragged by, by, by someone on Twitter or, or in the, in the press, or w- when to respond versus when, when, when not to engage?

   9. AMAmjad Masad14:56

      Yeah. I, I think that's, that's like a art thing. A- and I think it comes down to, um, like business impact. Like, will it actually have business on, uh, impact on my business? Um, you know, for example, like, uh, last year in July, we had this story with, um, um, the, you know, uh, founder of SaaStr, Jason Lemkin, where, uh, Jason had just started vibe coding, had never vibe coded or coded anything before. And, uh, as he's working with Replit Agent, Replit Agent sort of misunderstood him or something like that, and then deleted the database. At the time, we didn't have production development separation, and so the production database... Now, like we actually separate them by default. Like the, the Replit Agent can't even write to production database. It can only read. Um, and, uh, a- and we, we have backups. We have snapshots. You can go back, you know, to a certain day or time or whatever. So the mi- the mistake that the Replit Agent did was one click away from being fixed, but from his perspective, he didn't know that, and Replit Agent started freaking out. Models at the time like used to get like really anxious, especially Claude. Um, and he, he tweeted the screenshot where Replit Agent was like going kinda nuts. Uh, and you know, it started gaining traction, gaining traction, gaining traction. And I, in my mind, I kn- like we already fixed this issue, but, but like the story has become so massive, and yeah, obviously it's gonna have business impact, and it's gonna be in the press. And so I could, I could go out and fight it and just say, "Well, we did nothing wrong. We had backups." You know, could be, I could say it's a user error, whatever. But I think the right thing to do was to own, own up to it. The fact that we didn't have development production separation is a bad thing, and two days later, we rolled out that fix. And so my, my response got a lot of positive interaction and, and got a lot of airplay because I started with, "Hey, we messed up."

   10. ETErik Torenberg17:10

       Yeah.

   11. AMAmjad Masad17:10

       "And this is what, what we could've, uh, done better." But, uh, sometimes you can give attention to things that you don't wanna give attention to, especially once your profile grows.

   12. ETErik Torenberg17:18

       Especially if you apologize and sort of admit.

   13. AMAmjad Masad17:19

       Yeah, especially if you apologize.

   14. ETErik Torenberg17:21

       Yeah.

   15. AMAmjad Masad17:21

       So I, I, I would say just kind of focus on the business impact.

   16. ETErik Torenberg17:24

       Yeah. The... And you, you mentioned earlier-

   17. AMAmjad Masad17:27

       And by the way, Jason is a huge fan now. He runs his entire SaaStr business, multimillion-dollar business, with him, another employee, and like 10 agents based on, based on Replit agents.

   18. ETErik Torenberg17:38

       That's awesome.

   19. AMAmjad Masad17:38

       Yeah.

7. 17:39 – 19:38

   Does Every CEO Need to Be an Influencer?

   1. ETErik Torenberg17:39

      The-- You, you mentioned earlier that you sort of developed a, a desire for this. For CEOs who are, you know, so locked in, they're just not that interested in, in doing this, would you recommend that they cultivate the desire to do it? Or would you recommend that someone else on the team can do it? Or does it have to be the CEO? Or how would you think about this?

   2. AMAmjad Masad17:54

      Look, I think there's so many paths to, to success. I don't think there's one. Um, like, yeah, there are a lot of companies where this, it's not the CEO that's out there. Like, um, uh, Groq with a Q and, uh, like Sunny is the person on Twitter, but the CEO is kind of not, not on there. Um, and they've, they've done a great job, and obviously- They kind of, uh, the company's great, IP is great, but they also, they memed it into success 'cause I think part of the story that's not being told there is that they actually had a lot of trouble fundraising in Silicon Valley.

   3. ETErik Torenberg18:27

      Yeah.

   4. AMAmjad Masad18:27

      They had to kinda go to Saudi and, and all of that. And so that, that's an example, um, where the CEO's not out there. You, you look at Dario as an example where he's not playing the social media game.

   5. ETErik Torenberg18:40

      Yeah.

   6. AMAmjad Masad18:40

      Kind of the product sort of pl- uh, speaks for itself, and he's writing these big essays. So I think it comes down to the predisposition of the CEO. Like, do you actually enjoy it? Do you think you can be good at it? Um, I think forcing people to do it when they, they can come out and be totally cringe and, like, be actually ne- negative on the brand. Obviously, they can learn over time-

   7. ETErik Torenberg19:03

      Yep

   8. AMAmjad Masad19:03

      ... and do it, but, uh, but it, it really depends on the situation.

   9. ETErik Torenberg19:07

      Have you gotten any leverage or way to lower the activation energy in, in terms or any help doing it? And is it possible for others too, or is it just all you, just whenever you think something?

   10. AMAmjad Masad19:16

       Well, I, I s- I think, uh, I have the benefit of this long period of incubation. Um, I think that if your company is already high profile, you don't wanna kind of practice in public, and so maybe getting some, some coaching-

   11. ETErik Torenberg19:36

       Yeah

   12. AMAmjad Masad19:36

       ... earlier on.

8. 19:38 – 22:53

   Platform Strategy: X vs Instagram vs YouTube

   1. ETErik Torenberg19:38

      So some people ask, "Hey, how should I think about X versus other platforms?" You know, maybe their customers aren't on X, et cetera.

   2. AMAmjad Masad19:44

      Yeah.

   3. ETErik Torenberg19:44

      How do you think about that?

   4. AMAmjad Masad19:45

      Well, I, I think, uh, X is very good for the sort of Silicon Valley, for tech, for kind of the in-group messaging, for maybe one hop outside of Silicon Valley, which is kind of the early adopter, if you're targeting early adopters. Uh, and so I would also cluster Hacker News within that as well. Um, but it, it actually, once you wanna go to late adopters or, like, early majority, if you think about this, uh, kind of bell curve of adoption, uh, Twitter becomes actually not very impactful there. It can still be, be very important where, um... Like, you know, just this morning, uh, journalists reached out to me to, to ask to talk to me about a tweet that I made about s- some of the stuff that's happening with Anthropic. Uh, and so, like, Twitter can still be a place where it is, it is the start of stories. And that's another thing, you know, back to the conversation of why this is important, is the landscape shifted so much that journalists report on Twitter. [laughs] So it kinda starts on Twitter. So Twitter's influence is amazing, but it tends to be elite, kind of inside group influence. I think Instagram, Facebook still, you know, YouTube is where you get to the early majority, and I think I was late to, to YouTube, uh, to sort of to Instagram. Like, um, you know, I just started focusing on it in, like, maybe, uh, February or something like that.

   5. ETErik Torenberg21:12

      Yeah.

   6. AMAmjad Masad21:13

      And we're getting tr- insane amount of views-

   7. ETErik Torenberg21:16

      Yeah

   8. AMAmjad Masad21:16

      ... and the followership kinda grew because-

   9. ETErik Torenberg21:17

      You, you started to build this clips machine-

   10. AMAmjad Masad21:18

       Yeah

   11. ETErik Torenberg21:19

       ... of your, your interviews.

   12. AMAmjad Masad21:20

       Yes.

   13. ETErik Torenberg21:20

       The podcast's interesting 'cause it's a medium that can be turned into every other format.

   14. AMAmjad Masad21:23

       Right. Right.

   15. ETErik Torenberg21:24

       Um-

   16. AMAmjad Masad21:24

       So I, I feel like I, I should've maybe done Instagram, like, a year or two ago.

   17. ETErik Torenberg21:30

       Yeah.

   18. AMAmjad Masad21:30

       So I was l- like, a little late on that. I, I thought it was gonna be harder. Well, it turns out-

   19. ETErik Torenberg21:35

       Yeah

   20. AMAmjad Masad21:35

       ... you can just, like, you know, do these clipping and just grow, grow, not just your account, you can grow a lot of different accounts-

   21. ETErik Torenberg21:41

       Yeah

   22. AMAmjad Masad21:41

       ... that way. Um, and but, but, but I would, I would start with Twitter because the... Again, that's where the news starts to happen. This is where you can have outsized influence.

   23. ETErik Torenberg21:54

       And are you, are you bullish on the platform? Do, do you think that in the next, you know, three to five years that that will stay the same?

   24. AMAmjad Masad21:59

       I, I think it is actually kind of risky, uh, because the algorithm changes so much and, you know, you might do something that angers the power that, powers that be and, you know, very, you know, without anyone knowing, things might change for you in terms of your reach on X. And so I think there's, like, [laughs] less transparency than Twitter 1.0. Um, so it is, it is a little, it is a little risky, but I think the platform has so much staying power.

   25. ETErik Torenberg22:33

       Yeah.

   26. AMAmjad Masad22:33

       Like, it's really hard to replace. Like, you can, you can change the name, you can [laughs] destroy the brand, and you, and the platform will still be-

   27. ETErik Torenberg22:42

       Yeah

   28. AMAmjad Masad22:42

       ... very valuable. Like, it is, it is, uh, it is, it is one of those things that I think there's no way you can avoid it.

9. 22:53 – 25:58

   Understanding the Meta: How to Actually Go Viral

   1. ETErik Torenberg22:53

      Who, who are some CEOs or leaders, um, that inspire you in terms of how they go direct or that you've learned from looking at what would they do?

   2. AMAmjad Masad23:04

      Obviously, we were all s- uh, you know, in the school of Balaji, Balaji and Lulu. We had this group in the pandemic. What was it called? The Going Direct.

   3. ETErik Torenberg23:13

      Yeah, I think Going Direct.

   4. AMAmjad Masad23:14

      Yeah.

   5. ETErik Torenberg23:14

      Yeah.

   6. AMAmjad Masad23:14

      And so we, we kind of talked about strategies and, and kind of critiqued, uh, some of our approaches or other people's approaches, so that was, that was very, very useful. I think, uh, Balaji was, like, kind of early to this stuff. I think where I might disagree with Balaji is that I, I don't think you should be antagonistic to reporters. [laughs] There's no reason to.

   7. ETErik Torenberg23:35

      [laughs]

   8. AMAmjad Masad23:36

      Like, you, you could actually be friends with them, and they can be positive towards you. You can, you can help them out. They're just humans at the end of the day, and they respond to incentives. Um, and I think we've done pretty well in maintaining our relationships with, um... And obviously, Shahrnaz recently joined us, and that upleveled our game, um, with, uh, with reporters and, and more of that type of media. Um, so, uh, so, so I, I think, uh, but studying that is, is very important. I think there's enough content out there, uh, to get started with. Um, but let's see. Who else?

   9. ETErik Torenberg24:17

      Palmer, Alex Karp, Elon.

   10. AMAmjad Masad24:20

       Obv- obviously, I m- I mentioned Elon. Um, you know, I think it, I think Satya's doing such a great job.

   11. ETErik Torenberg24:27

       What, what about what he's doing you, you admire?

   12. AMAmjad Masad24:28

       I, I think it is much less tweet length, uh, things, but he's able to put out very well-reasoned arguments that play into the zeitgeist in a very smart way and advance their point of view. Like the, the essay he put out over the weekend, you know, got 20, 30 million views. Like v- you know, very few essays kind of get, get that much attention. But it, it comes at a time where everyone is thinking about token costs. Everyone's thinking about... And this is an important thing about going direct. You can go direct and get zero views. Like, it's really easy to, like, not, not pay attention to you. You have to understand the meta, and I think that's the thing that's more time-consuming than posting. Posting is not time-consuming. The thing that's time-consuming is understanding what is the larger debate, because the way to go viral is to couch or dress up your argument, your worldview in the current conversation.

   13. ETErik Torenberg25:30

       Yeah.

   14. AMAmjad Masad25:31

       Um, a- and I thought that, uh, what Satya did with his essays is very much at the heart of, like, what the discussion is today, and then he advanced the point of view of, of Microsoft.

   15. ETErik Torenberg25:43

       Yeah. I think it's a good place to, to wrap. Uh, please give it up for Amjad.

   16. AMAmjad Masad25:47

       Thank you.

   17. ETErik Torenberg25:47

       Bye. [audience applauding] Thanks, Amjad. Appreciate it. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 26:14