Acquired LIVE from Chase Center (with Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg)

David Rosenthal 0:02 Hey, so, um, I know this isn't, like, the best time to bring this up, but, um, did you bring the thumb drive with the Who Got the Truth MP3 for the sound crew?

Ben Gilbert 0:14 No, why would I bring a thumb- Uh, I did email that, probably like three weeks ago, though.

David Rosenthal 0:21 Uh, well, um, there's 6,000 people out there waiting to hear it. [audience cheering]

Ben Gilbert 0:28 Uh, look, uh, uh, the team is really great. I'm sure they'll think of something. [upbeat music]

Mike Taylor 0:44 Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, hey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, hey! Who got the truth? Yeah. Is it you, is it you, is it you? Who got the truth? Now, now, yeah. Is it you, is it you, is it you? Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth? Yeah. Everybody's talking, nobody's listening. These days, I feel lost, man, lost in opinions. Everybody's fighting, nobody's winning. Take me home, 'cause I don't know what's going on in the world I'm living. San Francisco, please help me welcome to the stage, the creators of the Acquired podcast, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal! [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 1:38 Oh, [laughing] my God!

David Rosenthal 1:39 Whoo!

Ben Gilbert 1:42 Oh, my God.

David Rosenthal 1:44 Hi.

Mike Taylor 1:46 Yeah. Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth? Yeah! Who got the truth? Yeah. Who got the truth?

David Rosenthal 2:03 San Francisco! [audience cheering] Mike Taylor. Woo! We didn't need the thumb drive.

Ben Gilbert 2:13 We didn't need the thumb drive. Welcome to this episode of Acquired, the podcast about... [laughing] [audience cheering] Welcome to Acquired Live at the Chase Center!

David Rosenthal 2:25 Woo! [audience cheering] Wow. This is, uh, [laughing] wow, this is unbelievable. [chuckles] Thank you all for coming.

David Rosenthal 2:38 Uh, we have a very, very special guest and surprise to welcome us all here tonight, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon. [audience cheering]

Jamie Dimon 2:53 Hello, Acquired listeners. Welcome to the Chase Center and to Acquired Live. I'm Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. I'm happy to kick off the show tonight and welcome all of you to one of my favorite arenas. It's been a great partnership all year between J.P. Morgan Payments and Acquired, storytelling and educating about some of the greatest companies in the world. For many of them, just like many of you in the crowd, we're thrilled to call you friends and partners of the firm. Sorry I couldn't be there in person tonight, but I hope everyone enjoys the show. Ben and David, over to you. [audience applauding]

Ben Gilbert 3:28 Thanks, Jamie. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 3:30 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 3:31 Well, a special shout-out and a huge thank you to J.P. Morgan and the whole payments team, especially Dustin Sedgwick, the CMO of J.P. Morgan Payments. Longtime listener, who's been, like, really the driving force behind this whole thing, and his truly world-class marketing team, Hannah, Nick, Vinnie, Amy, and Carly. David and I, for the first time, really now understand what it is like to have a glimpse of what a sort of-

David Rosenthal 3:56 What ha-

Ben Gilbert 3:56 ... real, built-out team would look like, and not just two guys in their basement. So-

David Rosenthal 4:00 Ben and-

Ben Gilbert 4:00 Thank you for an a- amazing partnership.

David Rosenthal 4:02 Ben and I did not put this on ourselves tonight. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 4:06 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 4:07 Uh, so what are we doing tonight?

Ben Gilbert 4:09 Well, as you all know, Mark Zuckerberg is in the house.

David Rosenthal 4:13 Ooh. [audience cheering]

Ben Gilbert 4:18 So tonight, we'll actually have three acts, not one. Uh, Mark will be our third act after intermission, but we bought- got a lot of great segments, you know, in our first two acts here, and, uh, uh, some more f- fun, fun surprises sprinkled in in the middle. So, um, David, what is the format like? Is this an Acquired episode?

David Rosenthal 4:38 Well, um, amazingly, shockingly, we, we tell you all all the time that we make, when we make an episode, we sit in our houses, in our studios, we record all day for nine hours. We turn that nine hours into three or four or five hours that you all hear. Um, and we thought, "Yeah, that's probably not gonna play here," but you keep asking us, you keep emailing us, so we wanna put this request, this question to bed, once and for all, here tonight. Here is what you are missing- [chuckles] ... in the full nine hours of an Acquired recording session. [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 5:15 I've been trying to do a better job getting airflow in here while we're recording, 'cause I think I get dumber at the end of episodes, or at least I get, like... I just get exhausted, and I think part of it's the lack of oxygen.

David Rosenthal 5:25 It's really hot in here, and we've been going for five and a half hours, so [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 5:29 Let, let me finish this thing, and then we'll, uh, take a bathroom break.

David Rosenthal 5:32 Hmm, I had a similar thought. [upbeat music] [burps] Pour some more champagne. Sorry about that. [upbeat music] [laughing] Hey, Blue Angels. [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 6:02 ... Great, only nine minutes and forty seconds of bullshitting before we actually started. That's pretty good for us.

David Rosenthal 6:06 It's a new record. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 6:09 Is this too in the weeds? Let me take a stab at making it more loosey-goosey.

David Rosenthal 6:13 I think I can simplify all this. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 6:15 We gotta advance the story more. The pacing's too slow. Oh, this doesn't make any sense.

David Rosenthal 6:21 Okay, great. We can cut all that then.

Ben Gilbert 6:22 Cut that.

David Rosenthal 6:23 Just cut it. Let's cut all that. Cut that.

Ben Gilbert 6:26 Skip it.

David Rosenthal 6:27 Just skip it. Yeah, let's skip it and keep moving. Ah, okay, I think one of us has our timelines wrong. We've been so stop and start. Do you think we should just restart the whole thing?

Ben Gilbert 6:38 We're thirty-five to forty minutes into this episode, and nothing has happened.

David Rosenthal 6:42 I think I would actually feel better and more in the flow.

Ben Gilbert 6:45 'Cause right now I'm like: What did we cover? What did we not?

David Rosenthal 6:47 I think what you're saying is replace all of what we did before.

Ben Gilbert 6:50 I'm gonna go re-record at least the first part, maybe that whole thing.

David Rosenthal 6:52 I don't recall exactly how we started, though.

Ben Gilbert 6:56 I don't remember the last thing you said.

David Rosenthal 6:58 I don't either. [laughing] Uh...

Ben Gilbert 7:01 I think I've been, like, interrupting.

David Rosenthal 7:04 No, I think it's great. I... No, please keep doing it. No, no, I don't, I don't, I, I don't find it annoying at all. No, the goal is, like, make the best stuff.

Ben Gilbert 7:11 I actually quite like how this is puzzling in. [laughing] Hang on one second. You gotta stop making that face.

David Rosenthal 7:19 Oh, me? Was I making a face?

Ben Gilbert 7:21 And take it without the um.

David Rosenthal 7:23 Um...

Ben Gilbert 7:24 Uh.

David Rosenthal 7:26 Uh...

Ben Gilbert 7:28 Uh.

David Rosenthal 7:29 Uh.

Ben Gilbert 7:30 Totally.

David Rosenthal 7:31 Totally.

Ben Gilbert 7:32 Totally.

David Rosenthal 7:33 Totally.

Ben Gilbert 7:34 Totally. Totally.

David Rosenthal 7:35 Ah, ah, ah. Oh!

Ben Gilbert 7:40 Uh, go for it. [inhaling]

David Rosenthal 7:46 Dude, it is so hard to keep all this information in our heads. Like, I feel like I'm, like, out of RAM. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 7:52 Grr.

David Rosenthal 7:53 What's going on? [beeping] I just heard a beep on your end.

Ben Gilbert 7:58 Okay, well, that wasn't one of their best episodes.

David Rosenthal 8:00 That is how the sausage is made. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 8:05 [laughing] I think that actually is a good way to end it, so-

David Rosenthal 8:10 Are you, are you done or do you have more?

Ben Gilbert 8:13 I'm done. [audience cheering] Thank you all for indulging us. I was not sure if that would play in an arena. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 8:25 This is what Steven has to deal with every month, so-

Ben Gilbert 8:28 Yes.

David Rosenthal 8:28 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 8:29 So obviously, not only are we not doing that, we literally can't. We, we... I mean, there's just fire marshal issues. So, um, David, what are we doing?

David Rosenthal 8:37 Well, tonight, we thought we are going to take the Acquired playbook, and we're gonna throw it out the window, and we are gonna throw a party instead. Uh, it is a celebration of technology, of the San Francisco Bay Area, of... [audience cheering] Woo, San Francisco! Yeah. [audience cheering] Uh, some of the most important businesses of our time, and most importantly, it's a celebration of, of you all. [laughing] We say "you all" on the show, uh, usually you're not here.

Ben Gilbert 9:08 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 9:08 You're here. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 9:09 So-

David Rosenthal 9:09 Uh

Ben Gilbert 9:10 ... tonight, you know, normally we study the, the past, often the far past. Tonight, we're gonna kinda look at the present. It's a little un-Acquired, but, like, you know, once every two and a half years, or however often we do a live show, we want to indulge. So, uh, yeah, we're gonna indulge tonight.

David Rosenthal 9:25 Indeed, we

David Rosenthal 9:26 are. So to start, we wanted to spend a couple minutes at the top of the show here in our, um, first act, uh, just giving you all an update on the state of Acquired. It has been quite a year for us. You and I have lived a lot of life [chuckles] in one year. We've both had kids. Um, the Wall Street Journal wrote about us. [laughing] Woo. [audience cheering]

Ben Gilbert 9:50 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 9:50 Uh, and we've experienced some, some pretty amazing growth.

Ben Gilbert 9:55 Yeah, and so we were thinking, like, you know... David kind of pitched this to me, and I'm like: "What, are we gonna stand up and give a keynote on, like, the state of the union of Acquired? That's not, that doesn't feel right." But a conversation would be great if we were to, you know, the right person to have a conversation with. And we were like: "Who is a big Acquired listener, and kind of gets what we're all about?" Everyone in the audience is gonna be like, "Oh, yeah, that person's one of us," and is, like, you know, the world expert on podcasting. Fortunately, for us and all of you tonight, we are here to welcome, all the way from Stockholm, the CEO and founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek. [upbeat music]

David Rosenthal 10:30 [audience cheering] Woo!

Speaker 10:35 Wow.

Ben Gilbert 10:37 Thank you so much.

David Rosenthal 10:38 Wow. Daniel! [upbeat music]

Speaker 10:50 Wow, this is pretty insane, guys. Uh, I think this probably ought to be, like, the biggest recording of a podcast- [laughing] ... in the world. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 11:01 For you.

Ben Gilbert 11:01 It's a little, kind of, like, a-

David Rosenthal 11:03 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 11:03 Kind of an echoey studio.

Speaker 11:05 Yeah, yeah. W- w- you guys should use this as the studio every time, I think.

David Rosenthal 11:09 Well-

Speaker 11:09 That'd be the perfect-

David Rosenthal 11:10 ... you've been after us to do more video for years.

Speaker 11:13 That is true.

David Rosenthal 11:13 Here you are.

Ben Gilbert 11:14 This is gonna be a video, for sure. [laughing]

Speaker 11:15 All right. Well, well, love that. Love that. And, you know, it, it's, uh, it's really amazing for me to be here and just see, you know, this and all of you guys' success. I remember listening to you guys, uh, as a fan, uh, I think starting twenty nineteen, and see that we're now five years later, uh, from a small base going to something like this, it's pretty remarkable to see. And I, I don't know about you guys, but I, I thought maybe to commemorate this moment, uh, it'd be pretty fun... I, I know you don't wanna tout your success, so I, I thought maybe I could do that for you. So, uh, maybe we can have a look at some of the amazing-... stats and achievements you guys have accomplished?

Ben Gilbert 12:02 Well, thanks. Yeah, I know, uh, you pulled some data, we pulled some data. Uh, this is the updated version up here of, um, the kind of classic Acquired chart that we've been showing, which basically shows from when we started in 2015, the kinda like organic doubling year over year over year, all the way through today. Um, and basically, since we don't market the show, or we don't do any, any paid marketing, the only way the show grows is we make an episode, a friend tells... You know, someone tells their friend about it, and on average, every listener tells one other, one other listener every year, "Hey, you should listen," and that person sticks.

Speaker 12:36 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 12:36 And that's kinda the whole thing.

Speaker 12:40 Yeah, I mean, it, it's pretty remarkable. And on Spotify alone, you guys have now done over five million hours, and it tripled in the last year. Pretty remarkable, right? [audience applauding] Uh, yeah, big round of applause. [chuckles] So, so-

David Rosenthal 12:55 The, the, uh... So, so, so we did the math, or Ben did the math, as he usually does. I believe that is over 400 years of Acquired that was [laughs] ... We feel like it was 400 years making the episodes in the last year, uh, but that was listened to in the past year.

Speaker 13:11 Yeah. What, what is the... Is, is the Nintendo one the longest one you guys have done?

Ben Gilbert 13:16 I think Microsoft Volume 2 was our longest.

David Rosenthal 13:19 Yeah, longest single episode.

Ben Gilbert 13:20 But I... Thank you for pulling this. So the reason- the way this came to be is we asked Daniel, "Hey, y- you know, you have access to data that, um, all podcasters sort of dream of. What is the most interesting insights you can kinda pull out of it?" And the thing that's the craziest to me a- about this chart is that even though Acquired's, uh, here's how many downloads an episode gets, isn't like celebrity status. Like, it's not the craziest, biggest in the world. Because of the volume of our episodes, we all spend a lot of time together. Like, thank you for lending us your ears for all of those moments, 'cause that, that's, that's what that chart is to me, is all the time we spent together.

Speaker 13:55 Yeah, but w- what, what's really cool for me, too, is just seeing the fandom o- of the show. So one thing is, is, you know, obviously seeing the sort of total numbers, but also seeing the fandoms. And you guys, um, added more than 250,000 followers, and that tripled last year, too. So it's over 250,000 followers on Spotify alone now on the Acquired show, which again, is pretty remarkable to see that kind of growth. [audience applauding]

David Rosenthal 14:21 Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 14:21 Um, yeah, there, there's, there's two... I'm like a reformed venture capitalist, so I can't help but, like, point out things on charts. Uh, there's two things that are interesting about that chart. One is we've had, like, ridiculous subscriber growth on Spotify. I mean, it's just been, uh, uh... You guys entering the industry has created a ton of net new audience of people who did not listen to, to podcasters before. The second thing is, uh, if, if you pull the chart back up again, you can see the Wall Street Journal article in May in that insane, uh-

Speaker 14:51 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 14:51 ... you know.

David Rosenthal 14:52 And it's so funny, I know we keep talking about it, but this literally has never happened in the decade of Acquired, where a single event caused a kink in the chart. Uh, and that we see... You guys see it. It's crazy.

Speaker 15:04 Well, it's word of mouth in a new way. But the other part that was really cool to me, uh, as I was looking through the data, I kind of expected this to be sort of an English language thing only, maybe the US, maybe UK, that kind of thing, but you guys have truly grow- grown worldwide. Um, so, you know, look at some of this stuff. Like, you have Mexico growing five times, uh, Hong Kong, Israel, Singapore. Acquired is global. Uh, so it's amazing to see here in, in San Francisco that we got 6,000 people in one place, but I'm pretty sure you guys should take this on the road, and we'll see- [laughing] ... if we can make it in other places, too.

Ben Gilbert 15:41 Right. When, when you see the whole arc of the show tonight, I think you'll say, "Ah, yeah, you can't take that on the road."

David Rosenthal 15:45 Yeah. [laughing]

Speaker 15:46 [laughs] Could be. Could be. Could be. Well, you know, it's maybe a timing question. You guys should be like the new rock stars that tour around. [laughing] That would be the, the great thing to do. Um, and, you know, it, it, it's, I, I wanna really kind of maybe take the moment here and ask you guys how all of this happened. And by way of context, just to put, put it, put this in perspective, in 2019, um, you know, when we got into podcasts, uh, the world around podcast listening in Spotify, there was a few million people, uh, listening to this. And you mentioned this, but, like, our goal was to sort of broaden this whole medium, and today there's over 150 million people listening to podcasts on Spotify. And obviously, your show is a huge success, uh, and something that people... Kind of attracts people to the medium because it's both pretty broad these days, but also very, very deep. Like, w- w- what do you think contributed to that success?

David Rosenthal 16:43 Well, you guys entering the industry [chuckles] for sure. Um, but I think you hit on it with, like, broad, but... Like, when Ben and I started this, we thought, you know, we used to talk about what our TAM was. We were venture capitalists. We're like, "What's the TAM for Acquired?" Not that we even thought about it as a business-

Speaker 16:59 Right

David Rosenthal 16:59 ... or a product, but, um, and we're like, "I don't know, maybe there's- w- what, what's the population of students in business schools out there?

Speaker 17:06 Mm.

David Rosenthal 17:06 Maybe that's our TAM." And then we were like, "Well, I don't know, maybe it's a little bigger than that. Like, maybe, maybe it's, you know, everybody who ever wanted to go to business school or was interested..." And like, okay, like, what, what's that cap out at? Like, a million people, maybe? A million, a million felt like our TAM. And what's happened to us, and, um, I'm, I'm curious, I think you guys have, have probably seen the same thing, is that even though we think we're super nerds and we tell these very esoteric stories, they're just great stories.

Speaker 17:36 Right.

David Rosenthal 17:37 And people of all types wanna listen to them.

Speaker 17:40 Right.

Ben Gilbert 17:41 And the growth of the medium. Like, we just have this ridiculous tailwind where we, we, we got lucky and picked right in 2015. We stayed with it. We got better at the craft. But, like, it turns out people are super interested, thanks to all the wireless headphones that exist now, and, uh, I don't know, it's just this weird cultural norm that's kinda come into fruition, that it's okay to spend hours and hours and hours with someone in your ears talking about something that is interesting to them, and I just don't actually think that was a thing in the early 2010s.

Speaker 18:08 Right.... So, and, and, and one of the things you obviously have done is, um, you know, added video to the format, and, uh, this is my plug of, of hopefully- [laughs]

David Rosenthal 18:16 ... getting you guys to finally add video to Spotify as well. But, um, w- what do you think is next for the show, uh, when it comes to that? Like, what, what do you see the big innovation, uh, of Acquired will be in the future?

Ben Gilbert 18:30 So I think our total addressable market is at least 10 times bigger than it currently is today with our exact same product, if we just keep doing the work and making the product better and shipping one episode a month. And the question is, like, how much more can we do without killing the golden goose? Like, how do you keep the main thing... Actually, can I turn this back on you? Like, y- y- you have massively expanded what Spotify does since the original vision. Uh, how should we, as founders-

David Rosenthal 18:56 I mean, the original vision was you were music on Facebook. [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 18:59 Yeah. H- how should founders think about, like, the only reason that you are allowed to exist is because you're really good at this one core thing, but everyo- you should do other things?

Speaker 19:10 Well, I mean, and I, I think it starts with your audience, right? And knowing your audience. So, like, for instance, we, we launched audiobooks, uh, about a year ago, but the, uh, sort of untold story about that audiobooks launch is, what happened in Germany is all the record companies, uh, started uploading audiobooks to the service. So they started hacking, uh, the system for all these other things, and when they ran out of that, they actually started uploading podcasts. So podcasts turned out to be the easier medium for us to start with, but eventually we added sort of audiobooks, too. So I think y- you know, most amazing things tend to start with people kind of suggesting things or maybe even doing things. So it'd be interesting k- to kind of, like, figure out what people are doing in and around Acquired already, and that will probably be your sort of adjacency.

David Rosenthal 19:56 I think the other, you know, video... Ben and I talk a lot. We'll talk more about video throughout the evening here. Um, you know, we've just always sort of been of the belief of, like, nobody wants to sit and watch us in our studios as talking heads going yak, yak, yak, and, um, but we've started to ask the question of, like, is there, for certain companies we cover, is there a rich visual tapestry that we could do at the same level that we try and create an audio tapestry? [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 20:26 It's, it's an absolute crime that we did four hours on the entire multi-hundred-year history of Hermès, and it was just audio.

David Rosenthal 20:32 Mm. [audience clapping]

Ben Gilbert 20:33 Like-

Speaker 20:33 But, but it was an amazing show, though, right?

Ben Gilbert 20:35 Thank you. But audio is this, like, magic thing where I'm gonna drag my... We're gonna end up doing more video, but I'm gonna drag my feet kicking and screaming all the way there because I feel very passionately that th- the reason that the caliber of person in this room, with all the busy things that you have in your life, the reason that you're open to spending all this time with us is because we don't take your full, undivided attention.

David Rosenthal 20:57 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 20:57 You can run, you can mow the lawn, you can drive, you can, you know, uh, ev- everything that everyone does while they listen to Acquired, uh, I, I, like, I remain unconvinced that we would work as a four-hour video product.

Speaker 21:12 Yeah, I mean, look, uh, uh, I, I don't know, to be honest. I think this is probably the biggest thing that surprised me, is that, um, the, the world just keeps evolving, uh, constantly. So you talked about video, and, and, you know, on Spotify, it's been a huge growth thing. Uh, I would have said to you as well, people probably mostly, "Why would you wanna l- uh, watch any video?" But I think younger consumers, especially, they don't know what the difference is.

Ben Gilbert 21:37 Mm.

Speaker 21:37 They just wanna feel closer presence to the person. And, I mean, we saw it already with the bloopers, right? It's like, this is fun, you... What you guys are doing, and people have a relationship to you guys, too. Hence, why so many people are showing up here tonight. Um, and I, I think video is just a way to express that, whether or not they're watching the full four hours or whether they're diving in and out over a particular type of segment. Um, I, I think just giving the consumer the choice, um, is sort of one of the big things, and that's kind of what we're leaning into as well, is just allowing the creator and the consumer to more directly interact in more and novel ways.

David Rosenthal 22:18 Mm. It's funny, there's um... Y- you know, your question was, what's next for Acquired? Uh, we, uh, we're gonna do a normal episode after this. [laughs] Uh, after tonight. Um, that normal episode probably will focus on a Menlo Park-based technology company. Um, and one of the lessons that we're already starting to learn from that-

Ben Gilbert 22:39 Spoilers! What are you... [laughing]

David Rosenthal 22:40 [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 22:40 We can't take that back now. This is live.

David Rosenthal 22:42 This is live. Um, is just not, not holding the current state of things and vision of what you are too tightly.

Speaker 22:52 Mm.

David Rosenthal 22:52 Uh, and, um, you know, we wanna talk about... I mean, you've learned a lot from Mark over the years. Uh, you, you all have been very close. Um, Spotify started on Facebook, uh, and here you are, you're the biggest podcasting platform in the world-

Speaker 23:07 In music

David Rosenthal 23:07 ... so you didn't hold on to that vision too tightly.

Ben Gilbert 23:09 Right.

David Rosenthal 23:09 Um, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 23:11 Uh, so tr- can I turn that into a question?

David Rosenthal 23:14 Uh, please. I was actually gonna... I wanted to leave you some space before we asked a question. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 23:18 Thank you. I appreciate that. That's what great partnership is all about.

David Rosenthal 23:20 Yeah. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 23:20 Uh, do you remember... So David and I have one way of growing, which is make a good episode and hope people tell their friends.

David Rosenthal 23:26 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 23:27 Do you remember, in the early days of Spotify, when you figured out, "Oh, Facebook is gonna be this unbelievable channel for us?"

Speaker 23:36 Yeah, I mean, uh, it, it's, it's, um... I, I think it starts like so many other things. I think Mark and I just struck this sort of friendship, and we started talking about, um, you know, the, the, the little-told story is, um, if I remember this correctly, I think Mark, even pre-Facebook, was trying to do a music startup.

Ben Gilbert 23:56 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 23:57 And, and then he was like: "Yeah, this feels like a difficult thing," so-

Ben Gilbert 24:00 Wirehog?

David Rosenthal 24:01 Wirehog.

Speaker 24:01 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 24:02 Yeah.

Speaker 24:02 Exactly. And, and so I think he's, like, I think pretty much every great entrepreneur in the Valley tried to do a music startup. Um, and so he, he, he was definitely passionate about it, and then, um, his idea obviously was a social music product.... and he and I, we started talking about it, and I said, in, in the beginning, he started like he wanted mostly Spotify to be more social. And I kind of said, "Well, I don't know that that's-"

Ben Gilbert 24:26 Do you remember how you got introduced? 'Cause Spotify was not like Spotify-

Speaker 24:30 Right

Ben Gilbert 24:30 ... the way, what it is today-

Speaker 24:31 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 24:31 ... a pillar of the world.

Speaker 24:32 Yeah. Well, I, I got introduced to Mark through Sean Parker. Um, and so S- Sean kind of said to, to Zuck, like: "Hey, you gotta meet this entrepreneur from Sweden." And I remember, like, Zuck at the time was living in a very small house, and we went for a barbecue at his house. This is probably, I don't know, 2008 or '9, like s- one of those things. And then we kind of struck a friendship, and we started jamming on various ideas around how to make music more social.

Ben Gilbert 25:04 And you weren't even live in the US yet, I don't think. Or you were just-

Speaker 25:06 We definitely weren't live. Uh, so the sort of secret of Spotify was, uh, we sort of seeded one account at a time to get a bunch of influencers to kind of like it. And I think Sean, in particular, he kinda used it as a social currency, so everyone came to him to kind of try to get-

Ben Gilbert 25:22 Oh, yeah

David Rosenthal 25:23 Oh, the invites!

Speaker 25:24 The invites. Yeah.

David Rosenthal 25:24 Oh, man.

Speaker 25:25 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 25:25 The currency of the in- the Spotify invites. [chuckles]

Speaker 25:28 Yeah. It was a big, big thing for, for quite a few years before we launched, where it was kind of the secret thing if you were in the club or if you weren't. Um, and, um... Anyway, he got Mark on it, and I think Mark kind of wrote this, um, status update, like, "Spotify is so good." A- and then, you know, everyone's like: "How did you get this?" This was kind of the main thing. "When can I get it? How can I do it?" And, um, yeah, then we started jamming around, like, what a social m- music product ought to be, and, uh, we had this sort of idea, wouldn't it be cool, sort of like with, um, um, you know, ICQ at the time, where you had these status updates, like, wouldn't it be cool, um, to be able to check out what your friends were listening to? And we kind of got to work together, built that product, uh, and coincided it with the Spotify US launch.

Ben Gilbert 26:21 And this was when News Feed was really young, right? So you- there was like, you'd be scrolling through your news feed, and it would be giving you these status updates of what your friends were listening to, piped in directly from Spotify.

Speaker 26:29 Exactly right. So you could see all your friends. It, it actually still exists in Spotify product, um, on desktop. So you can kind of see what your friends are listening to real time. It's one of our more popular legacy features that's been around now for like 13 years or so.

Ben Gilbert 26:44 It was the right sidebar, but I feel like I haven't seen it in a while. Maybe I just-

Speaker 26:47 It's still there.

Ben Gilbert 26:48 Okay.

Speaker 26:48 It's still there.

Ben Gilbert 26:49 Okay.

Speaker 26:49 So.

Ben Gilbert 26:49 But this gets at the point of, like, uh, social music listening was this core insight that you had. Mark was on board to kind of build it together and, and, and let you, you know, use the... I mean, he, he got a lot out of it, too, but let you use Facebook to distribute it.

Speaker 27:04 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 27:05 Um, and yet, everyone here who's a Spotify customer today, when I think Spotify, I think, "Oh, that's, like, the easy way to access music, podcasts-

Speaker 27:14 Mm

Ben Gilbert 27:14 ... and now audiobooks," but I don't think, like, "Oh, it's a social listening."

Speaker 27:18 Right.

Ben Gilbert 27:18 So at what point did you kind of like, like, let go of that precious idea and say, "Eh, maybe the social is, like, important, but not that important?"

Speaker 27:25 Well, I, I, I still think, um, social is hugely important. And for instance, we have, um, we have a product now called Jam, which allows you to, uh, be with your friends and actually alter what you're listening to at the same time, and it's growing incredibly rapidly, uh, right now, uh, all over the world. So it's, it's something that, you know, I think very much is a social product. But, uh, while I still think music is very social, I think what we got wrong in the product was this sort of notion that just seeing sort of what all of your friends are listening to may not be the sort of right social prod- product. But if you instead sort of say, like: I wanna work together with my friends, and I wanna have a shared listening, whether we're in the same place or not, that turns out to be a pretty amazing thing. So you see people do it at parties, where you can lit- literally join someone's jam, and you can sort of all queue up songs together. Instead of taking my phone or your phone-

Ben Gilbert 28:17 Mm

Speaker 28:17 ... we could all be sort of working together on something. But what we saw during the pandemic, and that's, like, where Jam sort of started, was we, we started seeing that people were using this to stay connected as well by having sort of this shared, um, you know, consistent music listening, where we're all listening to the same thing at the same time, even though we were sort of apart.

Ben Gilbert 28:36 Mm. It's like the best of linear TV brought to music.

Speaker 28:39 Yeah. So I think we're still sort of, um, you know, definitely playing with the social concepts, um, and, and trying to get that right. But I think, you know, Facebook kind of moved off of this sort of presence-based social aspect for all things, so it wasn't just music, actually. People were doing it for games back then, too, so-

David Rosenthal 28:57 Mm.

Speaker 28:57 - it was like-

David Rosenthal 28:58 Yeah, yeah

Speaker 28:58 ... you know, I've, I've, uh-

David Rosenthal 28:59 [chuckles]

Speaker 28:59 ... created another Farmville.

Ben Gilbert 29:01 Oh, yeah.

David Rosenthal 29:01 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 29:01 You know?

David Rosenthal 29:02 We remember that era. [chuckles]

Speaker 29:03 Yeah. Uh-

Ben Gilbert 29:04 What was it? Uh, it was, like, north of 10% of Facebook's revenue at IPO was from-

David Rosenthal 29:09 Was Zynga.

Ben Gilbert 29:10 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 29:11 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 29:11 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 29:11 What, um... I mean, th- this is all fun history. I'm curious, though, you know, we're gonna talk to Mark later tonight. Um-

Ben Gilbert 29:19 Are you doing research live on stage?

David Rosenthal 29:20 Yeah. [chuckles] Yeah, definitely. Um, you know, y- y- you've had a relationship, a pretty close relationship, for 15-plus years-

Speaker 29:27 Yeah

David Rosenthal 29:28 ... as fellow founders in the trenches. What do y- what have you taken from him that you've brought into Spotify and how you run the company?

Speaker 29:38 Um, ma- man- many things, and I've learned so much from him and, and the rest of the team at Meta, um, as well. But I think specifically from him, um, you know, he's the probably the best learner I've ever seen. Um, you know, you can, you can have a conversation with him a- about a topic, he may not know very much about it, and then the next time he would know more than, I would say, most experts about the subject. Uh, and it's really remarkable just how tenacious he is, uh, sort of about learning and staying curious about things. So that's definitely been a super inspiring thing for me. And I think that this sort of shines through with how he runs the company, too. He has a very cl- sort of clear idea, but he also, you know, takes a lot of feedback and sort of iterates, uh, on that. And, you know, it's everything from-... one, one of the cool things for me has been seeing how he runs meetings, you know. Uh, for instance, I kind of like having relatively small meetings with people. Mark, the average meeting he has is, like, 15 to 20 people in the room, and how you make, um, you know, a product review or discussion productive with 15 and 20 people, still get people to be heard, like, he, he's, he's very, very good at that stuff. And that's just a few of the things that I've learned, which has helped me as a leader as well.

Ben Gilbert 31:00 Hmm. Can I ask, maybe this is a little bit more pointed, um, you are a, a kind person, you are a soft-spoken person, but you are a fierce competitor. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 31:12 [laughing] It's funny.

Ben Gilbert 31:13 Ah. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 31:14 Okay, so we, we haven't told you this. When, when we interviewed you, what, 18, 24 months-ish ago, uh, in Stockholm, um, I'd never been to Sweden before. I don't think you had either. And we left, we thought just like, "What a lovely country, what lovely people. Daniel is, like, the, you know, most generous person we could imagine." You're here tonight, and that guy is a fierce competitor, [chuckles] and there is a reason-

Ben Gilbert 31:43 And-

David Rosenthal 31:44 - why he has built Spotify.

Ben Gilbert 31:46 Yeah. And, and very strategic. Like, I think you're-- you, you see the chess board. Mark is like that, too. Do you feel like your relationship... Do you amplify each other?

Speaker 31:55 Well, I mean, the, the rule I have with Mark is I don't try to go into a competition with him-

David Rosenthal 32:01 [laughing]

Speaker 32:01 - because I know it'll end badly for both of us.

Ben Gilbert 32:03 [laughing]

Speaker 32:04 So, you know, as you know, Mark likes sports. Uh, so one of the things I don't do with Mark is play sport, [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 32:10 [laughing]

Speaker 32:10 - for exactly this reason. You know, uh, what was the last time he sort of, uh, tore his ACL when someone, uh, you know, rather than giving up? So I, I feel like it, it end pretty badly. So I, I, I, I like playing when I know I'll win, so I think it's a pretty good thing to- [laughing]

David Rosenthal 32:28 [laughing]

Speaker 32:28 - not do that.

David Rosenthal 32:30 Oh.

Ben Gilbert 32:30 Yeah, you see, I mean, if I were to characterise, like, why Spotify worked, it feels like there's an incredible amount of tenacity and a willingness to run at a problem that, like, a lot of people had tried and failed at before. But there is also this, like, you kind of bide your time, you kind of wait for the opening, and then you figure out a game you know that you can win, and then you go execute in that game.

Speaker 32:49 Yeah. That, that's, that's pretty much spot on, to be honest. That's, that's... One, one of the things we talk about a lot, uh, that I don't say, uh, that much, but Gustav, who's backstage here, who's our, um, product officer and CTO, is we, we say, "Talk is cheap." Most people talk about execution and speed of execution, "Let's move, let's go." We actually spend a lot of time just discussing and talking. So the internal saying at Spotify is, "Talk is cheap," because we wanna be really deliberate about what it is we're doing and how we're doing it.

Ben Gilbert 33:20 Oh, you mean that as a virtue. Like, talk is cheap, so let's talk a lot-

Speaker 33:23 Yes, exactly right.

Ben Gilbert 33:23 - because it's inexpensive to waste those resources.

Speaker 33:25 Exactly right.

Ben Gilbert 33:26 Huh!

Speaker 33:26 It's more expensive to build than most people think. Um, and so we actually spend a lot of time discussing, and, and people get really confused when they sort of enter our culture. They're like: "But, uh, why don't we just execute? And we- we're still sitting and debating and sort of game theorising how this will play out and getting all the things, uh, working in a certain way." And we have our sort of ways of doing that now, that we've sort of codified across the company, which I think is pretty unique at this point. Uh, but a part of that is also because... So, to set the stage, is because we had to. Because remember, everything, unlike many other products, when you're building a company, you can kind of sort of iterate and do stuff. We had to get the entire industry with us. So if we wanted to do something, we had to convince a bunch of people that it was the right thing to do. Um, and many, in many cases, even making relatively simple changes could take one or two years for us to get licensed. So you better be sure that you're right when you're doing it. And this has kind of now become a thing in how we're doing stuff, is we're probably not gonna be the fastest as in, you know, moving fast and breaking things. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 34:32 [chuckles]

Speaker 34:32 But, uh, we are going to be very deliberate, and we're probably going to be more right when we actually do something.

Ben Gilbert 34:39 You're like the anti-fail fast, the anti-move fast and break things, the anti-ship and iterate. Like-

Speaker 34:45 Well, I like to hope we can also ship and iterate, but- [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 34:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 34:48 Yeah. But, but-

Ben Gilbert 34:49 Fast

Speaker 34:49 ... we won't be the fastest, no.

Ben Gilbert 34:51 Hmm.

David Rosenthal 34:53 Which is funny, coming back to podcasting, um, you didn't enter the business until 2019. [chuckles] Uh, I assume you were thinking about it for a long time after that. And when... I'm sure you know, uh, when did you become the market leader in podcasting?

Speaker 35:11 Oh, well, um, I th- I think it sort of depends on which markets you're kind of looking at it. Um, but, um, we were pretty much-- it started happening in, in quite a few markets already 2020 and 2021. And in 2022, we were pretty much the market leader in most markets around the world.

David Rosenthal 35:30 So three years?

Speaker 35:31 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 35:32 From launch.

Ben Gilbert 35:33 Why? W- why?

Speaker 35:34 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 35:34 Yeah, why? [chuckles] That's, that's the question. And, and did you expect that it would be that fast, given that you were so methodical and working so long to launch it?

Speaker 35:43 W- we, we don't always know how fast this will be, but I th- I think we had a pretty good sense that we could sort of iterate and improve our way, s- s- sort of hill climb from the mountain we were on, when we saw the sort of initial traction. But I think the, the contrarian bet we did, unlike many others did, was, you know, at the time when we launched, it's, uh, it was sort of viewed that you needed to have a different app for everything, right? Like, you had to have a separate podcasting app, and podcasting and music were very different. And for us, it's just listening. And what we realized is, we should use this base of what was then several hundred million people, and today is way north of half a billion people, and just serve them more stuff.... and it turns out that, like, what we saw all the time, it wasn't like our music listeners weren't listening to podcasts, so why not use this experience and also recommend them great other stuff? And we went from there, and then a year ago, we also added audiobooks, 'cause that turned out to be another way to increase people's listening and that they were also spending time doing.

Ben Gilbert 36:47 But, but to your point on being, like, s- slow and methodical, uh, okay, you had a channel to people. Okay, they knew you're for listening, but i- i- if you're stuffing stuff in that channel that is not the thing that they want-

Speaker 36:59 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 36:59 ... then that blows up your core.

Speaker 37:01 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 37:01 And so I think, like, my takeaway at least is though you, you figured out a way to do it, where you made sure that people were gonna be open to using you for this new-

Speaker 37:11 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 37:11 Yeah.

Speaker 37:12 Of, of course, you're right. Obviously, just because you have the distribution advantage doesn't mean it'll work. Um, but I think going back to it, what's so amazing with the platform is every time we try to do something deliberate, sort of top-down, it, it sort of fail, and most of the time, actually, what we see is the inklings of something already existing on the platform and then growing from there. So I mentioned this at the beginning, but Germany was sort of an early indicator for a lot of things for us, both in podcasting and in, in books. And, uh, what I realized even before we launched books, for instance, uh, was, uh, around twenty eighteen, we started seeing books showing up on the top list in Germany, uh, of the most, uh, sort of, you know, uh, listened-to music tracks, right? It wasn't music, it was clearly books, but it sort of made it, uh, all the way up to the top list, and, um, shortly thereafter, we started showing up as the biggest book distributor in the country. But we weren't even trying, and it was actually a pretty horrible experience to listen to books on Spotify. So when your product is being used in spite of it actually being a pretty terrible experience, you kinda know you've got something. So that was the sort of genesis for how we then were able to build and sort of expand.

Ben Gilbert 38:29 It's awesome. Well, that's it for this segment. Are you gonna stick around and watch the rest of the night?

Speaker 38:34 Oh, yeah, for sure.

Ben Gilbert 38:36 Awesome.

Speaker 38:36 I'm so excited.

Ben Gilbert 38:37 Awesome. Well, Daniel, thank you.

Speaker 38:39 Thank you so much-

Ben Gilbert 38:39 Thank you

Speaker 38:39 ... for being here. [audience applauding]

Ben Gilbert 38:41 All right, listeners, this is a great time to tell you about one of our favorite companies in the Acquired ecosystem, Statsig. As you probably know by now, Statsig is the world's first product acceleration platform. Thousands of companies, from OpenAI to Series A startups, rely on Statsig to ship fast, learn more, and make smart decisions. But you may not know about all the ways in which their story is directly tied to Facebook's story that Mark will share with us later this episode.

David Rosenthal 39:09 Indeed, and Mark's most famous catchphrase is probably, "Move fast and break things," but despite instilling this in Facebook's engineering culture, Facebook doesn't actually break very often. How, Ben?

Ben Gilbert 39:21 Well, Facebook invested hundreds of thousands of engineering hours in a set of internal tools. These tools let any engineer set up new metrics, ship new features, and measure performance in real time. So that meant anyone could just ship a new feature, but they always had the metrics to use as guardrails, and they could always roll it back if anything broke.

David Rosenthal 39:40 Totally awesome. You might wish that your team could build products like Facebook did: ship fast, make database decisions, iterate rapidly, but you need the right tools, so you're stuck, right? Well, enter Statsig. Statsig has built the world's first product acceleration platform, combining tools like feature flags, product analytics, experimentation, and observability all in one place, helping you move faster and make smarter decisions.

Ben Gilbert 40:05 And even better, Statsig was literally founded by an ex-Meta team who wanted to help everyone build like the best. Today, many of the world's leading tech companies rely on Statsig, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Notion, Anthropic, Figma, plus thousands of early-stage startups.

David Rosenthal 40:21 So if you're ready to accelerate your growth and democratize product building at your company, just go to statsig.com/acquired, and when you get in touch, just tell them that Ben and David sent you.

Ben Gilbert 40:32 Yes. Now is also a great time to tell you about one of our very favorite companies, the climate-aligned AI infrastructure provider, Crusoe.

David Rosenthal 40:41 Yes, Crusoe is a cloud platform built specifically for AI workloads and powered by clean energy. They build and operate GPU data centers, with each one powered by low-cost, stranded energy that otherwise goes to waste or, worse, gets emitted as greenhouse gases.

Ben Gilbert 40:58 The way this works is completely crazy. When Acquired first started working with Crusoe, uh, last year, it was a cool idea. It, it was an early-stage, very cool, kind of insane concept. Now they are one of the world's most important companies with an AI cloud that is actually superior to the hyperscalers, and a whole bunch of the largest companies in the world are now trusting their AI infrastructure to Crusoe.

David Rosenthal 41:23 Yeah, it's easy to think about AI as like, "Oh, that's a bunch of PhDs over at Meta or OpenAI or Anthropic tinkering with model weights and then going and hitting Compute." But there's this whole other industrial side of AI that's everything that happens after they press go on model training, and that's energy, that's cooling, that's construction. It's literally like steel and pipes and wire. It's all the physical infrastructure behind AI. Crusoe has, like, hundreds and hundreds of construction workers, steel workers, plumbers, electricians, all building and operating data centers in some of the harshest locations on Earth to capture this energy.

Ben Gilbert 42:01 Yeah, the net of all this is Crusoe has gigawatts of power in their development pipeline. That is like nuclear reactor amounts of power for less cost than other providers and with zero, or in some cases, actually negative emissions, and that's super important. If you listen to Mark talk later in this episode or elsewhere about what the bottleneck to AI progress is, it's actually not compute, but energy, and Crusoe is solving that problem.

David Rosenthal 42:28 ... It's just an awesome company. We're super proud to work with them and also to be investors. The other big update that's happened since we started working with them last year is that you can now work with Crusoe either through their managed AI cloud, which you always could, and that's great for startups and enterprises who want a complete AI platform, or directly as a data center customer, which, yeah, several of, like, the biggest companies in the world are now doing. So just go on over to crusoe.ai/acquired. That's C-R-U-S-O-E.ai/acquired, or click the link in the show notes and tell them that Ben and David sent you.

Ben Gilbert 43:05 Thanks, Crusoe.

Ben Gilbert 43:07 [applause]

David Rosenthal 43:08 Well, we've got a little more time before Mark comes on, and we have a couple more surprises planned. Um, I think it's time to talk about the next one.

Ben Gilbert 43:18 Act two.

David Rosenthal 43:18 Act two.

Ben Gilbert 43:20 So David and I are sitting around, we're planning tonight. We're like: What's the thing to do when we've got all these great folks in the room who, who love Acquired? And we're like, ma- rather than ask them, "Hey, what should we do tonight?" We should just check our email and see, like, what do people actually already want when we're not even asking.

David Rosenthal 43:37 Episode requests-

Ben Gilbert 43:38 Episode requests.

David Rosenthal 43:38 Number one.

Ben Gilbert 43:39 Yep.

David Rosenthal 43:39 You go through the Acquired inbox, lot of episode requests.

Ben Gilbert 43:43 The second-biggest request is, "Hey, you did this episode, you were wrong, you need to fix it," or, "You did this episode, and, like, a lot has happened since, and you need to do a follow-up on it." And so we thought, what if we pick, like, three or four of those, and we speed run all of them with the Acquired audience present?

David Rosenthal 44:04 Yep. Add it, update the Acquired canon, and we thought: Who could we do this with? And it just so happens that the perfect person to grill us on everything we got wrong and everything we need to update lives right here in San Francisco. Please welcome, from Bloomberg and The Circuit, Emily Chang. [upbeat music]

Emily Chang 44:30 Hi! Hello.

David Rosenthal 44:33 Hi.

Ben Gilbert 44:33 Hi.

Emily Chang 44:33 Hi, hugs.

David Rosenthal 44:35 Emily-

Emily Chang 44:35 Congratulations.

David Rosenthal 44:36 Oh, thank you so much.

Emily Chang 44:37 Thanks so much. [upbeat music] Congratulations.

Ben Gilbert 44:47 Thank you. Thank you for being our guest.

Emily Chang 44:48 I mean, you guys, this is pretty awesome. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 44:51 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 44:51 Welcome to our, uh, recording studio.

David Rosenthal 44:53 Welcome to our... Yeah. [chuckles]

Emily Chang 44:54 Thank you.

David Rosenthal 44:55 Uh-

Emily Chang 44:55 I'm glad to be here.

Ben Gilbert 44:56 W- I, I, I need to, like, mine you for some research. I know we have, like, a thing that we're doing here over the next nineteen minutes, but, um, you went wake surfing with Mark.

Emily Chang 45:06 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 45:06 Like, the theme of tonight is research and, um, his f-

Emily Chang 45:09 I tried

Ben Gilbert 45:09 ... his Fourth of July video, he is standing there in a tuxedo with an American flag, drinking a beer.

David Rosenthal 45:14 Everybody's seen it.

Ben Gilbert 45:15 Everybody's seen this. Uh, and it, the tuxedo's dry. Like, I've wake surfed a couple times. I start, you know, in the water, and you get pulled up. I would not... So how, logistically, how, how-

Emily Chang 45:27 So-

Ben Gilbert 45:27 Can he, like, step off the boat?

Emily Chang 45:29 As you could probably tell from the episode, I'm not a wake surfer, but I tried. Um, and Mark is pretty good, and what I did not realize is that you can do a dry start, where you, if you're so good, you can just ride the board right off the boat, and voila, tuxedo surfing video. And I can personally attest that I did see him do a dry start, and he can... I, I mean, I think it's real. I think.

Ben Gilbert 45:56 That or he had, like, a lot of tuxedos on that boat [chuckles] to get-

Emily Chang 45:59 Yeah [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 45:59 ... multiple trial runs. [laughing]

Emily Chang 46:00 By the way, Priscilla's pretty awesome, too. They can both shred.

Ben Gilbert 46:04 Well-

Emily Chang 46:04 Just have to say that-

David Rosenthal 46:05 Wow. Woo!

Emily Chang 46:05 ... 'cause she's here tonight, too. Yeah.

David Rosenthal 46:06 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 46:07 All right, Emily.

David Rosenthal 46:08 All right.

Ben Gilbert 46:08 Take us in.

Emily Chang 46:09 Um, so right now, and I, A+, you guys, for self-reflection. We're gonna revisit some of your past episodes, and, uh, we decided on some episodes that maybe were a little controversial. In the early days, you would grade every company that you covered, and you made some good calls, but also some, some questionable calls sometimes. So I thought we would go down, do a little memory lane and start with YouTube, which, David, you gave YouTube a C in 2016.

Ben Gilbert 46:41 This is the acquisition of YouTube by Google.

Emily Chang 46:43 Right.

David Rosenthal 46:44 Yes, yes.

Emily Chang 46:44 And you, you, you, Ben, said it could be as, as bad as a C minus.

David Rosenthal 46:49 [laughing]

Speaker 46:49 [laughing]

Emily Chang 46:50 And I, I just, I just... I have to... I just question that a little bit.

Ben Gilbert 46:55 [laughing] We were young. It was 2016.

Emily Chang 46:57 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 46:57 We didn't know what we were doing.

David Rosenthal 46:58 We were misguided.

Emily Chang 46:59 Okay, okay, but let's just twist the knife a little because we have some quotes here. Uh, Ben, you said, "I'm a little bit bearish on YouTube, primarily because it's not a destination."

Speaker 47:09 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 47:12 [inhales] Oh.

Emily Chang 47:12 And David said, "Like, who goes to YouTube and discovers something?" [laughing]

David Rosenthal 47:18 [laughing] Oh. The sad part is that we actually said that and, and-

Emily Chang 47:23 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 47:23 ... decided to revisit this.

Ben Gilbert 47:25 Uh, so I don't know, it, it may actually be the case that that wasn't a huge behavior yet. Like, the algorithm hadn't become... I know I'm being defensive here. [laughing]

Emily Chang 47:35 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 47:35 Like, [laughing] YouTube-

David Rosenthal 47:37 Ben, this, this is where we fall on our sword.

Emily Chang 47:38 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 47:38 YouTube was, like, the utility that you uploaded a video to, and then you could embed it on your site. It's not like I would, like, start my day by... Maybe I was weird, but, like, I, I couldn't imagine starting my day and going to youtube.com and just watching whatever it served me, the way that now, like, y-

David Rosenthal 47:52 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 47:52 ... it's very easy to do that in the app.

David Rosenthal 47:53 Well, I think, um... Okay, so for me, there's a lot to talk about with YouTube that we got wrong. This is the biggest thing that we've discovered since is, I think literally as we were making that episode, s- AI and social media feed recommenders were happening in that moment, and it was about to lead to everything that is happening today.

Emily Chang 48:15 Mm-hmm.

Ben Gilbert 48:15 Oh, yeah.

David Rosenthal 48:16 And it was YouTube within Google and Meta, then Facebook, buying GPUs and building AI that turned feed recommenders into-... you know, the ultimate destination site, and we just completely had no idea that that was happening.

Ben Gilbert 48:36 Right. AI had its moment a decade ago, where it's all excited about it now, but, like, the use case of recommending you something that should be the next item that you should consume was a killer use case for AI-

David Rosenthal 48:46 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 48:46 - even then. We missed that.

Emily Chang 48:48 Well, today, you have analysts saying if you pulled YouTube out of Google, it would be worth half a trillion dollars, which is almost double where Netflix is. It's on track, YouTube TV, to be the largest cable provider, cable provider in the United States. Um, and I-

David Rosenthal 49:05 It has Sunday Ticket.

Emily Chang 49:07 As you know, I have a house full of kids. In my house, it's the first and the second screen because we have YouTube TV. Um, so the question is, can they really be everything to everyone, right?

Ben Gilbert 49:19 Right.

David Rosenthal 49:20 So here is, here is, I think, our most legitimate defense. Um, Google does not report YouTube profitability, they report YouTube revenue. So when we did the episode, YouTube was doing about five billion dollar run rate revenue. Um, it is now, like, thirty-five to forty billion annual revenue run rate, which is incredible.

Ben Gilbert 49:39 And when it was... And back then, it was way losing money, like it was a money pit.

David Rosenthal 49:42 Yes, and it was losing a lot of money back then. Google does not report today, but here is what is unique about YouTube versus every other platform, is they pay out fifty-five percent of revenue on long form and forty-five percent on shorts directly to creators [chuckles] .

Ben Gilbert 49:58 Which, you know, is great for creators, but that's a tough business to run-

Emily Chang 50:03 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 50:03 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 50:03 ... when every dollar you're getting in, you're giving more than half out, you know?

Emily Chang 50:06 I think-

David Rosenthal 50:06 And it's a direct variable cost

Emily Chang 50:08 -... seventy billion dollars to creators over the last three years, which again, is more than Netflix spends on content.

Ben Gilbert 50:14 So, so I'll go on record, YouTube was an A-plus acquisition-

David Rosenthal 50:17 Yes

Ben Gilbert 50:17 - because of the strategic value. I mean, whether it's the second-largest search engine, second to Google, or the second-largest social media property, uh, you know, it, strategically, very great thing to own. Not to mention going into the land of AI training data. But, like, as a business, it is not clear to me that YouTube makes money.

Emily Chang 50:34 Well, and, I mean, my source is also, I, I-- if they're making money, it's little to no money. But they could, they could obviously change how much they're paying out to creators. They can, you know, turn the spigot on and off.

David Rosenthal 50:45 Right. With the... And the durability that they're building and the affinity from creators, w- we'll, we'll talk about creators on the platform in a minute. Um, yes, is, is... There's a reason why so many creators want to graduate to YouTube.

Emily Chang 50:57 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 50:58 Uh, and this is it.

Emily Chang 50:59 Well, your cr- your, my show's on YouTube, your show's on YouTube. How do you feel about YouTube as creators?

Ben Gilbert 51:05 Strongly, uh [laughing]

Emily Chang 51:08 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 51:08 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 51:09 For everyone listening, thank you for listening to the podcast feed, where we have a direct relationship with you that is not intermediated, uh, by an algorithm. But, like, honestly, it is the craziest thing to see these YouTubers who have built mass followings, tens of millions, you know, hundreds of millions, sometimes, of, of, uh, subscribers, where subscribers and views are uncorrelated.

Emily Chang 51:28 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 51:29 Yeah.

Emily Chang 51:30 Grade today?

David Rosenthal 51:32 W- uh, grade today? Oh, A-plus.

Emily Chang 51:34 Still A-plus.

Ben Gilbert 51:35 Yeah.

Emily Chang 51:35 Okay.

David Rosenthal 51:35 Yeah.

Emily Chang 51:35 Okay, okay.

David Rosenthal 51:36 Well, uh, so here's the other thing we didn't mention, and I think this was true back then, too: YouTube is both the second-largest social media property in the world, uh, and the second-largest search engine in the world.

Emily Chang 51:46 Mm-hmm.

David Rosenthal 51:47 So, yeah, yeah, A, A-plus.

Ben Gilbert 51:48 The way that you should look at YouTube is not what is the, the discounted cash flow of YouTube as an independent business, if you look at their-

Emily Chang 51:56 Mm-hmm

Ben Gilbert 51:56 ... you know, profitability today. It's what was the existential risk to Google of not owning YouTube if YouTube became-

Emily Chang 52:03 Right

Ben Gilbert 52:03 ... a thing somewhere outside of Google, and that is worth paying a lot for.

Emily Chang 52:07 Huge. All right, moving on. The next company we're going to talk about is LinkedIn. You covered it three days after they got bought by Microsoft. You both basically gave it an A. Ben, quote, "How are we both positive on this? I woke up Monday morning being like, 'What?'" Uh-

Ben Gilbert 52:26 Oh, yeah, and then we've got this other one-

Emily Chang 52:27 What about LinkedIn today?

Ben Gilbert 52:29 Yeah, that we said we had no idea how it went because it was too recent.

Emily Chang 52:32 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 52:32 Uh, I think the story with LinkedIn is, it is, it was super unclear that it had the running room ahead of it. Like, what are the numbers on YouTube today, revenue-wise?

David Rosenthal 52:43 On YouTube?

Ben Gilbert 52:44 I'm sorry, [chuckles] on LinkedIn.

David Rosenthal 52:44 On LinkedIn?

Ben Gilbert 52:45 Six-

David Rosenthal 52:45 Uh, sixteen billion-plus in revenue today.

Ben Gilbert 52:48 They've five X'd revenue since they were bought eight years ago.

Emily Chang 52:51 Mm-hmm.

David Rosenthal 52:52 Of which five billion comes from advertising and content, which, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist when the acquisition happened. They have built that into a real bus-- I mean, for us, on Acquired, um, you know, I actually went and looked in preparation for this. We have about relatively equal number of followers on LinkedIn as a platform-

Emily Chang 53:12 Mm-hmm

David Rosenthal 53:12 ... versus any of the other social platforms out there, but engagement is, like, five, ten X on LinkedIn. I mean, it's our most important social platform.

Emily Chang 53:20 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 53:20 And if you had said that eight years ago, it would, would have been crazy.

Ben Gilbert 53:24 The, the reason why, uh, this was worth a revisit and that why I think they've been so much more successful than anyone would have thought at the time of acquisition, they five X'd in revenue, which, you know, o- over eight years is great, but not like three standard deviation, four standard deviations from the mean. It's not one of these crazy things in the world. Um, but essentially, they created a hundred billion dollars of market cap.

Emily Chang 53:45 Mm.

Ben Gilbert 53:45 I mean, if you look at what a reasonable multiple would be for LinkedIn, if it were an independent company today, it's a big company. Like, it would be a hundred and... I don't know, over a hundred billion dollar, um, market cap company today, and, like, it's just kind of hanging out inside Microsoft.

Emily Chang 54:01 Um, revisiting this was a little traumatic for me because this was-- if you'll remember, this was an acquisition that, like, no one saw coming. There were no leaks, no reporting on this before it happened, and my producer was apparently, like, calling my phone nonstop in the morning.

David Rosenthal 54:16 No!

Emily Chang 54:16 It was, like, the crack of dawn, and I was not picking up, so she called my husband-

David Rosenthal 54:19 [chuckles]

Emily Chang 54:20 ... who came in and was like, "Microsoft just bought LinkedIn, and you have to interview Satya and Jeff Weiner in an hour." And I was like: "What?" [laughing]

David Rosenthal 54:30 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 54:30 [laughing]

Emily Chang 54:31 Um, so yeah, so that's what I remember.

Ben Gilbert 54:34 ... Was it a good interview?

Emily Chang 54:35 Yeah, I, I mean, I think so. I actually watched [laughs] -

David Rosenthal 54:36 I, I watched it. You said it. Yeah, it was good. It was great.

Emily Chang 54:39 [laughs] My hair wasn't quite fully done, but we made it. We made it through. Um, okay.

Ben Gilbert 54:45 You, you have some new reporting.

Emily Chang 54:47 I do, actually, 'cause I talked to Reid Hoffman, um, who, of course, is the co-founder of LinkedIn. And, you know, it's interesting because Reid joined the board of Microsoft. He's still on the board of Microsoft. He was an early investor in OpenAI, on the board of OpenAI. Shocker, Satya Nadella is on the AI train early. Microsoft is the biggest backer of OpenAI now, and, um-

David Rosenthal 55:08 A- a- and Kevin Scott is the CTO of Microsoft now-

Emily Chang 55:11 Right

David Rosenthal 55:11 ... who came from LinkedIn.

Emily Chang 55:13 So Reid gave me a little quote. He said, "Satya has run Microsoft as a type of founder. You could call it being a refounder or even a late-stage co-founder. The refounder doesn't need to have, have been in the garage from day one. He shifted the company's focus away from a cutthroat culture and competition-only practices towards embracing social networks, collaboration, cloud, and the next wa- wave of AI."

David Rosenthal 55:37 The question is, did he listen to our Microsoft series? [laughing]

Emily Chang 55:41 [laughing] I don't know. You wonder if the AI wars would've played out differently. Um, okay, we're gonna keep moving quickly-

Ben Gilbert 55:46 Great

Emily Chang 55:46 ... because, um, I really wanna make sure we get to the last one. But SpaceX, one of your most popular ep- episodes ever. Luckily, you're in the clear because you didn't grade them. Um- [laughs]

David Rosenthal 55:57 We stopped grading at some point, uh, yeah.

Emily Chang 56:00 But obviously, Starlink is a juggernaut. Ben, you talked about it being potentially a $30 billion business at the time. Can you grade SpaceX today, knowing that Starlink is just even bigger?

Ben Gilbert 56:11 Okay, so yeah, the company was valued at 36 billion in May of 2020 when we did the episode. At that time, they had had 26 successful launches that year. Uh, last year, they did 96 launches, and they're planning to do 118 this year, which is over two a week. It's like an insane growth rate.

David Rosenthal 56:30 They're doing one every three days. [laughs]

Emily Chang 56:31 [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 56:31 But on top of the launch business-

David Rosenthal 56:33 Yeah, the launch business is not the interesting part of the business. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 56:36 They now have Starlink, which is estimated to do $6.5 billion in 2024, and they are reportedly profitable as a business. I'm pretty sure the 7,000 Starlink satellites that are in orbit represent two-thirds of the total satellites orbiting the Earth. And it's not just like, "Oh, we'll see if people want Starlink." People want Starlink. I mean, the business itself, I, I, I think... I'm looking at the subscriber count. It's something like 3 million subscribers.

David Rosenthal 57:03 3 million subscribers, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 57:04 And it's only been three years since it launched, so it is a-

David Rosenthal 57:06 So when we did the episode, uh, S- Starlink was like, like pie in the sky, literally. There was, there was, there was nothing. Uh, and now I'm, I'm, I'm pretty sure Starlink is the entire... Like, SpaceX was valued at 36 billion when we did the episode. Starlink itself is worth way more than 36 billion today.

Emily Chang 57:25 Yes. It's a beast, total, total beast. And by the way, w- nobody else could have saved those astronauts, right? Like-

Ben Gilbert 57:32 [laughs] Fight words.

Emily Chang 57:34 I mean, NASA didn't have a choice.

David Rosenthal 57:35 Fight words, yeah, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 57:36 Yeah.

Emily Chang 57:36 Well, Russia, maybe, but that's complicated, and we don't even know if China could dock at the ISS. I mean, I think that's okay to say still. [laughing] Oh, I didn't just cross the line.

Ben Gilbert 57:45 I will say, uh, so the Starlink execution is just more remarkable than, like, I r- I think 99% of people would have guessed.

Emily Chang 57:54 Yeah. Okay, so now to you- your most requested revisit ever, the Arena Queen. Uh, you gave her an A+, but that was two years ago, before the Eras Tour.

David Rosenthal 58:09 Yeah.

Emily Chang 58:09 So I think you're gonna have to invent a new category.

David Rosenthal 58:12 So-

Ben Gilbert 58:12 Certainly, or stop grading.

Emily Chang 58:14 [laughs]

Ben Gilbert 58:14 That's, that's the real answer.

Emily Chang 58:16 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 58:17 The, um, the context on this is, it, it, it's a little weird 'cause there's no, like, um, enterprise value of Twitter out there [laughs] of, of Twitter, of Taylor out there that you can calculate. [laughing]

Emily Chang 58:30 [laughs]

David Rosenthal 58:30 We're not talking about Twitter.

Emily Chang 58:31 Friand Swift.

David Rosenthal 58:31 I promise. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 58:35 There's no enterprise value of Taylor.

David Rosenthal 58:37 The closest thing was when we did the episode, Forbes estimated her net worth at $550 million. Um, y-

Emily Chang 58:46 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 58:46 Yeah, w-

Emily Chang 58:47 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 58:47 Not woo.

Emily Chang 58:48 Yeah, wow!

David Rosenthal 58:48 Um, by our calculations, we're pretty sure she generated on the order of $550 million of free cash flow this past year.

Ben Gilbert 58:57 This year.

David Rosenthal 58:58 This year, last 12 months. Uh, that's a woo. [laughing]

Emily Chang 59:01 [laughing] So, so is she more than a billionaire?

Ben Gilbert 59:05 So this is-

David Rosenthal 59:06 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 59:06 So David's got, like, an argument on this. So walk us through the y- y- your perceived financial breakdown of Swift Incorporated.

David Rosenthal 59:13 Of, yes, Taylor Swift, Inc. So the big piece that I actually think is the most interesting piece that we got wrong in our episode, Ben did a fantastic primer on the music industry, uh, and, you know, all the challenges for artists and et cetera, et cetera, and, like, it's getting better, and Spotify's doing great, and Daniel's doing great and all that. Um, the latest sort of reported, talked-about numbers was that Taylor was making, like, less than $5 million a year from streaming.

Ben Gilbert 59:45 There was this myth that streaming doesn't pay.

David Rosenthal 59:46 This myth that streaming doesn't pay. Uh, last year, Taylor made over, well over-

Ben Gilbert 59:53 This is reported.

David Rosenthal 59:54 Reported. Reported. This is reported, um, well over $100 million from Spotify streaming alone. Alone. [laughs] Doesn't include any of the other platforms, so, you know-

Emily Chang 1:00:07 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:00:07 ... gross that up. Um, and by nature of what she has been doing, that we talked about in that episode, uh, redoing her masters, like, you think about what of the percentage of those streams that are happening, are they on where she owns all the rights? Like, that is a very, very, very high gross margin number that is coming to Taylor-

Ben Gilbert 1:00:29 Right

David Rosenthal 1:00:29 ... so every year.

Ben Gilbert 1:00:30 So, so that, of that high hundred-plus million dollar streaming number, she actually keeps quite a bit of it because of-

David Rosenthal 1:00:34 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:00:34 ... this strategy that she's, it's not a lot of the labels.

David Rosenthal 1:00:36 So, so, so the amount that she's getting just from streaming, like, the Eras Tour aside, movie aside-... she is getting paid more every year than any Hollywood actor, probably any athlete in the world. Um, she could just sit at home.

Ben Gilbert 1:00:50 Okay, but then-

David Rosenthal 1:00:50 But she doesn't. [laughing]

Emily Chang 1:00:51 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:00:52 But then-

David Rosenthal 1:00:53 But then...

Ben Gilbert 1:00:54 She did an Eras Tour-

David Rosenthal 1:00:55 Yes

Ben Gilbert 1:00:55 ... which is, like, the, the most unbelievable tour that any artist has ever conceived of or executed. How much money did that make last year, David?

David Rosenthal 1:01:03 So last year, the Eras Tour, in calendar year 2023, grossed, I think, $1.1 billion.

Emily Chang 1:01:12 Wow!

David Rosenthal 1:01:13 The previous-

Ben Gilbert 1:01:14 Which is a gross.

David Rosenthal 1:01:14 Gross.

Ben Gilbert 1:01:14 And tours are expensive.

David Rosenthal 1:01:16 Gross. Tours are expensive.

Ben Gilbert 1:01:16 Like, there's a lot of, you know, things- [laughing]

Emily Chang 1:01:18 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:01:18 [laughing] A lot of-

Ben Gilbert 1:01:20 In- involved in making shows. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:01:22 Yes, there are. The previous record for highest grossing tour ever, I believe, was a billion dollars. So Taylor eclipsed that. Over multiple years, that that was earned. So not only did she set the record for highest grossing tour, she did it within 12 months. Obviously, the tour has continued. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:01:39 Yeah, but let's say she operates, like, a very high, uh, you know, a high-margin touring business. Let's assume she's very efficient at it. Call it a 30, 35% operating margin on the business. A lot of artists actually lose money touring because it's a... You know, anyway, uh-

David Rosenthal 1:01:56 That's another-

Ben Gilbert 1:01:57 300

David Rosenthal 1:01:57 ... 300, $350 million in cash flow every year.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:00 Yep, or at least last year.

David Rosenthal 1:02:01 Right.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:01 During the Eras Tour, she is making that money.

David Rosenthal 1:02:03 When she is actively touring.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:05 And then-

David Rosenthal 1:02:05 And then, there's the movie. [laughing]

Emily Chang 1:02:08 Right.

David Rosenthal 1:02:09 So the movie grossed, uh, $267 million at the box office. [laughing] Highest grossing concert film of all time. Um, Taylor went direct to the theaters with the movie.

Ben Gilbert 1:02:25 So paying less middlemen.

David Rosenthal 1:02:26 Less middlemen. Uh, then she did the direct deal with Disney for the streaming rights. That was another $75 million on top of that, so well over $300 million from the mo- obviously, you're not gonna make a movie every year, but, um-

Ben Gilbert 1:02:39 So David, you're, you're kind of getting to the point of, like, your 550 million number of cash flow last year may actually be conservative.

David Rosenthal 1:02:45 I think that is conservative for last year. I think if you were to say, like, "Okay, what is a smoothed out, steady state over a three-year rolling average for Taylor Inc?"

Ben Gilbert 1:02:53 Well, you did used to be an investment banker.

David Rosenthal 1:02:55 Half, half a billion-plus cash flow-

Emily Chang 1:02:57 Wow

David Rosenthal 1:02:57 ... every year.

Emily Chang 1:02:58 Uh, so I re-listened to the Taylor podcast with my kids, driving to Tahoe, and they loved it. You, you have a potential Gen Alpha audience, [laughing] uh-

David Rosenthal 1:03:07 It's our gateway drug

Emily Chang 1:03:08 ... in case you were getting nervous. But here's a question: Is it possible that we're at peak Taylor?

David Rosenthal 1:03:15 Okay, so this is the most important de- debate to all of this, which is, if you're trying to value the enterprise of Taylor, what multiple do you put on that cash flow? [laughing]

Emily Chang 1:03:24 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:03:24 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:03:24 Right? Right. Uh-

Ben Gilbert 1:03:26 Do you believe it is a durable business, like some of the great content businesses of all time, like the one that you put in our model, which is Disney?

David Rosenthal 1:03:34 Yes. Disney trades at 20X free cash flow.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:36 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:03:37 Taylor is 550 million in free cash flow. That's a $11 billion enterprise value for Taylor. Forbes currently estimates her net worth at 1.1, I think.

Emily Chang 1:03:47 And now she's in her NFL era.

David Rosenthal 1:03:49 And that's-

Emily Chang 1:03:49 Like, how do you value that?

David Rosenthal 1:03:50 Yeah. [laughing]

Emily Chang 1:03:52 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:03:52 Right. So okay, but here's the good-

Emily Chang 1:03:54 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:03:54 I think Ben and I differ a little bit on this.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:56 I would-

David Rosenthal 1:03:56 I would argue Disney is the right comp.

Ben Gilbert 1:03:59 Oh, boy. I-

Emily Chang 1:04:01 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:04:02 To look at the single greatest, like, IP holder in the world, that has proven over, you know, a, a, a century, that it can stay relevant, and apply that multiple to a single artist with no diversification, who has had this unbelievable ascent, and you're taking that multiple off of this extreme outlier year... Like, I'm not saying, you know, it should trade at 1 or 2X, but, like, 20X, David, is a little-

David Rosenthal 1:04:31 And-

Ben Gilbert 1:04:32 But, but your point, I think, is a very interesting one, which is wh- when people are looking at, uh, oh, net worth of a person like this, they sort of foolishly don't consider it an enterprise.

David Rosenthal 1:04:44 They value- they've, they've... Their multiple they're using is one.

Ben Gilbert 1:04:47 Right. Like, why are you assuming that they're worth the cash in their bank, when clearly they can produce these incredible returns year over year over year? So I think that's the slept-on thing-

David Rosenthal 1:04:56 So-

Ben Gilbert 1:04:56 ... in Taylor.

David Rosenthal 1:04:57 Are we at peak Taylor? I think, uh, to me, I mean, I think, I think the song that played before we started the movie and walking out here was Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones.

Emily Chang 1:05:07 Yeah. Are we-

David Rosenthal 1:05:08 Taylor is The Rolling Stones. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:05:10 [laughing] Of this generation?

David Rosenthal 1:05:10 Yeah. So that's my take.

Emily Chang 1:05:12 Peak Taylor or just beginning?

Ben Gilbert 1:05:13 Bigger, bigger.

Emily Chang 1:05:14 I'm gonna say no, just because that seems like a safe bet when you're talking about Taylor.

Ben Gilbert 1:05:18 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:05:18 Yeah, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:05:19 Uh, uh, for my own safety, I'm gonna say we are not at peak Taylor. [laughing]

Emily Chang 1:05:23 All right.

David Rosenthal 1:05:23 [laughing]

Emily Chang 1:05:23 You heard it here-

David Rosenthal 1:05:24 Fair

Emily Chang 1:05:24 ... for the record.

David Rosenthal 1:05:25 So-

Emily Chang 1:05:25 Um, I think you guys need another Taylor episode. That's the verdict-

David Rosenthal 1:05:28 I think yes

Emily Chang 1:05:28 ... for the fans. Thank you, guys, so much, and congratulations, and I can't wait to keep listening-

Ben Gilbert 1:05:34 Thanks, Emily

Emily Chang 1:05:35 ... to everything that comes next. [clapping]

David Rosenthal 1:05:35 Thank you, Emily.

Emily Chang 1:05:36 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:05:36 Thank you so much.

Emily Chang 1:05:37 Bye, guys. [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 1:05:50 All right, so, uh, David, we've had Jamie Dimon, we've had Daniel Ek, we've had Emily Chang.

David Rosenthal 1:05:56 Yep.

Ben Gilbert 1:05:57 What else could we possibly have up our sleeve before Mark?

David Rosenthal 1:06:00 We won't keep you waiting too, too much longer, but we do have one more special guest, one more surprise update, in a minute.

Ben Gilbert 1:06:09 Yes. But first, David, this is a great time-

David Rosenthal 1:06:13 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:06:13 ... to tell you a little bit more about our incredible presenting partner, J.P. Morgan Payments. [clapping]

David Rosenthal 1:06:18 Uh, yes, it is. Um, Max and Umar are actually backstage.

Ben Gilbert 1:06:27 Oh, should we do it live?

David Rosenthal 1:06:28 I think we should do it live.

Ben Gilbert 1:06:28 Like, do it with them?

David Rosenthal 1:06:29 I think in the spirit of doing it live, please welcome the global co-heads of J.P. Morgan Payments, Max Neukirchner and Umar Farooq. [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 1:06:48 ... Hey, Umar.

David Rosenthal 1:06:48 Max, thank you. [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 1:06:57 Well, welcome, guys. It is so great to have you here. Listeners have heard us talk about J.P. Morgan Payments all year on Acquired, but could you start maybe just with a quick overview on the business, how big it is, and how important to the world it is?

Max Neukirchen 1:07:10 Yeah. Hello, everyone. Great to be here with you, and, you know, Dave and Ben, great to share the stage with you. It's been a fantastic partnership. You talk about so many successful companies. Look what you have created here. Now, J.P. Morgan Payments, in brief, we basically help companies receive money, hold money, send money, safeguard money against fraud, and take the insights from all of this to, to grow their business. That takes many different forms. We help the coffee shop around the corner have a point-of-sale solution, so they can take credit cards. We work with marketplaces or e-commerce platforms, and we work with many large multinational companies and even other banks. We're in hundred and sixty countries, and we move about ten trillion dollars, ten trillion dollars every day. That is, I think, one in every four dollars that moves around the globe. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:08:10 Wow!

David Rosenthal 1:08:11 Wow.

Max Neukirchen 1:08:11 So it is, I think, probably the largest payments business in the world. And as a result, we don't only become the backbone of many companies, but sometimes of entire economies, which means we have, of course, in our DNA, creativity and problem-solving, but we also focus on stability, resiliency, and safety. And this is why so many companies that you feature in Acquired are actually our clients, and, you know, they simply can't outgrow us. We are with them every step of the way, from startup all the way to sitting here on the chair.

Ben Gilbert 1:08:51 The last payment solution you will ever need. [chuckles]

Max Neukirchen 1:08:53 Yeah, exactly.

David Rosenthal 1:08:54 Well, okay, so speaking of, we're here in San Francisco, in Silicon Valley, the tech and AI capital of the world. How is J.P. Morgan Payments keeping pace with the innovation that is happening in this room all around us, the businesses that you all are building?

Umar Farooq 1:09:09 As Max said, it's part of our DNA. We have to innovate to survive. We are building stuff for next five, ten, twenty, hundred years. We, within our Onyx business unit, have the largest financial blockchain live ecosystem on the planet. Uh, we do bigger transactions than any blockchain, including the crypto blockchains. Um, we basically have pretty extensive embedded finance solutions, where you might be interacting with the platform, but really, it's our rails that are seamlessly serving you. And then the list goes on and on. And even in AI, which you cannot not mention anymore in the world, um, we use AI to catch fraud, which you can imagine, you know, you've got to go up some-- against some AI systems on the other side, you need to have some AI of your own. So, uh, the- we are building stuff at a, you know, different scale and scope. When I think of J.P. Morgan Payments, we perform miracles in magnitude every single day.

David Rosenthal 1:09:58 Ah, great. Well, thank you so much for the great relationship.

Umar Farooq 1:10:01 Thank you for having us. Really appreciate it.

David Rosenthal 1:10:02 Thank you. [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 1:10:14 All right, so we alluded to one more thing before-

David Rosenthal 1:10:17 Wait

Ben Gilbert 1:10:17 ... intermission. We have a-

David Rosenthal 1:10:19 We have one more thing before one more thing. [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:10:21 Uh, a special treat from a past Acquired guest. So one of the things that happened in the insane, you know, year that we've had, uh, was that we had this, like, viral clip from an episode. This never happened in the land of Acquired, and it got, like, tens of millions of views, and it got picked up by Forbes, and Fortune, and The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. It actually went so nuts that w- we felt like it was kind of misunderstood, and we felt bad. We pulled the clip down 'cause we felt like it just wasn't really explaining what the person meant correctly. And so we wanted to correct the record and have that person back, via video, to kind of say it straight and say what he meant. So everyone, Jensen Huang. [audience cheering]

Jensen Huang 1:11:05 Hi, everybody. It's great to join you at Acquired Live. Wow, this is, this is really something. I, I still remember when I met Dave and Ben, uh, they interviewed me right here on this stage, uh, at NVIDIA's headquarters, and now this podcast, it's attracted an in- incredible audience, and so I'm really proud of them. And one of the questions that they asked me was, was, uh, you know, if I, if I knew what I know now, I think, or something like that, you know, would I start NVIDIA all over again? And, and I said, "Absolutely not." Of course, I... It was taken out of context, uh, because I was asked about that several times after that, and of course, I would start the company if I knew it would turn out this way. The reason why I said what I said was, was- has everything to do with being an entrepreneur. Building a company is insanely hard. Uh, the, the number of things that you have to know, uh, the, the amazing people that you have to surround yourself with, um, the ad- adversaries, uh, that, and all the smart things that they're gonna do, uh, and, and, uh, and the adversities, uh, that you're gonna, you're gonna, uh, be confronted with over time. The mountain of it, in the course of thirty-one years, if I were to take all of that, um, all the challenges and all the hardship and all the pain and suffering of the last thirty-two years, and I were to compress it into the brain of a twenty-nine-year-old, there is no way that that person would have started the company. And, and I-- my point there is, is the super point of, of, um, entrepreneurs, which is your superpowers are partly your ignorance, that, that you don't know how hard it is.

Speaker 1:12:57 ... and so, I mean, that's what I meant. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:13:00 [laughing] Everybody, Jensen Huang! [clapping]

David Rosenthal 1:13:04 Hey. [clapping]

Ben Gilbert 1:13:07 Nice to have that fixed.

David Rosenthal 1:13:09 Yes, yes.

Ben Gilbert 1:13:09 Feels good.

David Rosenthal 1:13:10 We can officially correct the record

David Rosenthal 1:13:12 on that one.

Ben Gilbert 1:13:12 Yes. All right, we have finally arrived, the main event. Tonight has featured some incredible founder-led companies: Jensen from NVIDIA, Daniel from Spotify, and next we have the iconic founder/CEO of our time, Mark Zuckerberg. [upbeat music]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:13:38 Hey! Let's go, man. How's it going? Yeah. Ah.

David Rosenthal 1:13:54 Mark. [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:13:55 Hey.

David Rosenthal 1:13:56 It's great to have you here.

Ben Gilbert 1:13:57 Whoo! [clapping]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:13:58 It's great to be here. You know, I was watching, I was watching Jensen's video correcting the record, and I was thinking to myself, "We might need to book the next one of these for all the things I'm going to have to apologize for- [laughing] ... that I'm going to say tonight." [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:14:10 [laughing] Well-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:14:11 Nah, just kidding.

David Rosenthal 1:14:12 Well, uh-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:14:13 I don't apologize anymore. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:14:16 [laughing] We've noticed. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:14:18 Uh, well, okay, wait, wait, here's the question: if you knew what you knew today, w-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:14:22 What's that?

David Rosenthal 1:14:23 If you knew what you know today, would you have started Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:14:27 Oh, God. Um, I mean, I... Look, I, I think-

Ben Gilbert 1:14:30 Coming out hot, David. [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:14:31 Yeah, no, I mean-

David Rosenthal 1:14:32 Wait, he started it. [laughing] Literally.

Ben Gilbert 1:14:34 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:14:34 I, I think there's something to Jensen's original sentiment, which is that n- the entrepreneurial journey is very challenging, especially the early days when you're running a startup, and, you know, there's this sense that what you're doing could just die at any moment, and, you know, the volatility, everything is just getting thrashed so much. And it's, it's not... You know, you, you obviously, you look back, and you have all these fond memories, but it was not the most fun part of the journey or, you know, the part of my life that I, like, wish I could go back and relive. So, I mean, I, I do think that there's something to what Jensen was saying that I thought was very honest, and that when I heard him say it the first time, I was like: "Yeah, I get that." Right? It's like, I think, I, I think there are a l- like, a lot of people for whom, you know, if you knew how painful, uh, it would be along the way, you wouldn't get started. But then, you know, I think that that's one of the things that's good about human nature is you can underestimate how painful things are going to be, so that way you can go and do good things.

Ben Gilbert 1:15:38 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:15:39 Well, um, [laughing] on that topic, we have a lot to talk about.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:15:44 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:15:45 I think this is actually very appropriate. First, we have to ask you about your shirt and what you're wearing.

Ben Gilbert 1:15:52 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:15:52 Yeah, you know, I, um, I started, uh, working with people to design some of my own clothes.

Ben Gilbert 1:16:04 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:16:04 And, um, so I figure, you know, look, we're gonna design eyewear, we're gonna design other stuff that people wear. Let's get, let's get good at this. And, um, so, so this one, I actually... I worked with this great fashion designer, Mike Amiri, and, um, he's got a great story, so I, I, I wouldn't be surprised if you're doing one of these with him one day. Um, and this one is... So I've, I've, I've kind of started working on this series of shirts with my, some of my favorite classical sayings on them. So this one is "pathē mathos," uh, learning through suffering.

Ben Gilbert 1:16:42 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:16:43 It's a little family saying, and-

David Rosenthal 1:16:46 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:16:47 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:16:47 Also Aeschylus.

David Rosenthal 1:16:50 [laughing] Was, uh, uh, was that your family saying growing up, or is that your family now?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:16:53 Uh, no.

David Rosenthal 1:16:53 No. [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:16:53 I'm just learning my sister's saying. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:16:56 [laughing] L- uh-

Ben Gilbert 1:16:58 Well, no, let's, let's pull that thread.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:17:00 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:17:01 Uh, no pun intended, I promise. [laughing] Uh, what does learning through suffering mean to you?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:17:08 Um, well, I think you learn what matters to you and what's important and kind of your place in the world through repeatedly hitting your head against different challenges. And, I mean, I think that that is sort of... That's the journey, right? I mean, that's the, the entrepreneurial journey. It's also, I think, part of the beauty of building things. But, you know, this is something that Jensen talks a lot about, too, right? It's like I, I, I feel like you... You know, when you go to start a company, you... You know, everyone kind of writes down what they would like their values to be, but values are not what you write down on the wall. It's, like, your lived behaviors, and you only really learn what you care about when you have to make hard trade-offs and face challenges. So, yeah, you learn the most important things through facing challenges.

David Rosenthal 1:17:58 Speaking of facing challenges, we want to talk about a number of those because I, uh, I mean, w- we counted, by our count, I think you have faced more existential challenges than any meaningful company in history through your first 20 years. First, though-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:18:13 It's a dubious distinction. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:18:16 We, we will make our case to you of why-

David Rosenthal 1:18:18 Well-

Ben Gilbert 1:18:19 ... w- and enumerate them.

David Rosenthal 1:18:20 You're still here.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:18:20 That's good.

Ben Gilbert 1:18:20 Um, but first-

David Rosenthal 1:18:22 But first-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:18:22 I, I kind of think my... You know, like, that old Nike Michael Jordan ad, where he's talking about how he's failed over and over and over again, and that's how he succeeds? That one really resonates with me, too.

David Rosenthal 1:18:32 So, um, thanks to you guys, I got a pair of these this summer, um, and I genuinely love them. Tell us the story of how these came to be.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:18:46 Yeah, so... Thanks. I'm, I'm, I'm excited about them, too. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:18:52 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:18:52 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:18:52 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:18:53 So, you know, we... At Meta, we've been building social experiences for 20 years now.... and originally it took the form of a website, then mobile apps. But the thing is, I, I, I never thought about us as a social media company, right? We're not a social app company, we are a, a social connection company, right? I mean, I, I, we talk about what we're doing as building the future of human connection, and that's not only gonna be constrained over time to what you can do on a phone, right, on a small screen. So when you think about... You know, when we got started, okay, we're like a handful of kids. You know, we weren't able, we didn't have the resources at the time to go define whatever the next computing platform is. And also, you know, Facebook originally got started around the same time as, you know, a bunch of the early smartphones and those platforms got started, so we didn't really get to play any role in developing that platform. And one of the big themes, I think, for the next chapter of what we do, is I, I wanna be able to build what I, what I think are sort of the ideal experiences. Not just what you're allowed to build on some platform that someone else built, but, like, what is actually, if you can think from first principles, what is the ideal social experience? So I, I think what you'd like to have is not a phone that you look down at, um, that kinda takes your attention away from the things and the people around you. You know, not just a small screen. I think what you'd ideally have is glasses, and th- through the glasses, uh, there's one part of it where the glasses, you can- they can see what you see, and they can hear what you hear, and in doing so, they can be kind of the perfect AI assistant for you because they have context on what you're doing. But then part of that is also that the glasses can project images, basically like holograms, out into the world, and that way, your social experiences with other people aren't constrained to these little interactions you can have on a phone screen. You know, in the, in the not-so-distant future, you can imagine, um, because you guys have demoed some of the stuff that we, that we, that we've done, a, like, a, a version of this where we're having a conversation like this, but, you know, maybe, like, one of us isn't even here. They're just, like, a hologram, and we have glasses, and it really... Y- there's the question of delivering a realistic sense of presence. There's something magical in the realm of building social experiences around the feeling of human presence and, like, being there with another person and this physical perception, right? Where, you know, we're very physical beings, right? Um, people like to intellectualize everything, but a lot of our experience is very physical, and the, this physical sense of presence that you are with another person doing things in the physical world is something that you're gonna be able to do through holograms, through glasses, um, without being taken away from, you know, whatever else you're doing, just kind of have that mixed in with the rest of the world. Um, it's gonna be, I think, the ultimate digital social experience, and I think it's also gonna be the ultimate incarnation of AI because you're gonna have conversations where it's like, all right, there's some people. It's like, maybe like, I'm physically here, there's, like, a person, you're, you're like a hologram there, there's an AI that is kind of embodied as someone who's there, and the glasses will enable this. So, okay, so how are we going after this, building this? This is, like, some, some huge project. We've been working on it for 10 years, um, and there are a lot of different challenges to solve to get there. There's like, you have to build a novel display stack, right? It's not... These aren't just screens, like the kind that are in phones. There's this long lineage. They, they're, they're connected to the screens that have been in TVs and monitors and things for a long time. There's been this massive optimization of the supply chain. There's, like, brand-new display stack around holographic displays that basically need to get created, and then they need to be put into glasses, they need to be miniaturized. And the- you also, in the glasses, need to fit chips, microphones, um, you know, speakers, cameras, eye tracking to be able to understand what you're doing, batteries to make it last all day.

Ben Gilbert 1:23:02 Operate on-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:23:03 Right, so then there's like-

Ben Gilbert 1:23:04 New, novel RF protocols.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:23:06 Yeah, it's, it's like... Okay, it's a pretty big challenge. So we're like, "All right, let's go try to go for the big thing," right? And, and we, we've been working on that for a while, and we're pretty close to being able to show off, um, kind of the first prototype that we have of that, and I'm really excited about that. At the same time, we also came at it from this lens of, all right, so that's, like, a lot of new technology that needs to get developed. Um, a lot to pack into a form factor, 'cause the glasses have to be good-looking too. So what if we just constrain ourselves to, like, we're gonna work with a, a great partner, EssilorLuxottica, they make Ray-Ban, they make a lot of the iconic glasses. Let's see what we can fit into glasses today and make them as useful as possible. And, you know, I, I actually, I kinda thought when we were getting started with those, that it was almost like a practice project for like, for the, the ultimate AR.

Ben Gilbert 1:24:01 Which, let's be clear, that's what you thought Facebook was.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:24:04 That's true. That's true. [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 1:24:06 [chuckles]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:24:06 Yeah, I did.

Ben Gilbert 1:24:06 Like, for your real startup someday.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:24:08 That's true. Yeah, no, this is... Yeah, let's go on a tangent there for a second.

Ben Gilbert 1:24:10 [chuckles]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:24:10 When, when- so I started Facebook in school, came out to Silicon Valley with Dustin and, and a handful of people working on it at the time. And we did that because Silicon Valley is where all the startups came from. And I remember we got off the plane, we were driving down 101, we're like: "Wow! eBay, Yahoo! Like, this is amazing. The- all these great companies. One day, we're- maybe we'll build a company like this." And I'd already started Facebook, and I was like, S- surely the project that we're working on now is not a company. It's like-

Ben Gilbert 1:24:38 And Facebook had, like, some scale at this point.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:24:41 Oh, no, no, it was a great project. I just didn't have the ambition to turn it into a company at the time. That just kind of happened. Um, but anyhow, um-

David Rosenthal 1:24:48 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:24:50 Uh, yeah, I mean, a lot of hard work, obviously, but, but it's... But I, I just, at the time, I was kinda like, "Yeah, no, I don't, I don't, I don't think this is it."

David Rosenthal 1:24:58 Well, that's your answer of would you have started it? You actually-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:01 Would you have started [chuckles]

David Rosenthal 1:25:01 ... didn't try to start Facebook. [chuckles]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:03 Yeah. [chuckles] I didn't, no. Um, so yeah, so I mean, the, the, the glasses, though-... you know, we thought that this was like, all right, we, we wanna get working with EssilorLuxottica so we can start building more and more advanced glasses. And then, you know, they're really good. They look good, and then AI, like, the massive transformation in AI.

Ben Gilbert 1:25:19 So-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:19 And I, I remember-

Ben Gilbert 1:25:20 Let's, let's, for listeners, let's just be really clear. You guys shipped this product that I'm holding before LLMs, or at least before the-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:29 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:25:29 ... public consciousness was aware of-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:31 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:25:32 ... you know, the ChatGPT moment.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:33 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:25:33 And these were not manufactured and shipped as an AI device.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:37 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:25:37 That came later when they were already in market.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:25:40 Yeah, a few years ago, I would've predicted that AR holograms would've been available before kind of like full-scale AI, and now I think it's probably gonna be the other order. So now it's like: All right, great, well, this is actually a great product because it's got, it's got the cameras, so it can see what you see. It's got the microphone, it's got the speakers. You can talk to it. I, I remember calling Alex Himel, the, the guy who runs the product group that's-

Ben Gilbert 1:26:04 That's exactly the story

Mark Zuckerberg 1:26:04 ... running it, and I'm like: Hey, you know, I, I think we should probably pivot this and make it so that, um, that Meta AI is the primary feature of it. And then, like, I remember I came in the next week, and they'd built a prototype of it on Tuesday, and it was like: All right, good. Yeah, no, this is good. This is gonna be a very successful product.

David Rosenthal 1:26:19 He told us a much more high-stakes version of that story. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:26:23 It's like, so I was-

Speaker 1:26:23 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:26:24 I was on the highway with my kids, and I get this call on a Saturday from Mark, and he's like, "Those glasses, could we put Meta AI in them running on device and, like, ship that soon, so we can see if that's a good idea or not?"

Mark Zuckerberg 1:26:38 Yeah, that's, that tracks. That's what I just said. [laughing]

Speaker 1:26:42 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:26:45 Sounds right.

Ben Gilbert 1:26:46 [laughing] Okay, so thank you for opening up with a story.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:26:53 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:26:54 The question that I would like to try to answer tonight is: Why has Meta worked as spectacularly well as it has? I mean, one of the most valuable companies in the world through multiple iterations, multiple technology waves, fighting off, you know, maybe l- let's name all the waves in which people said, "Oh, Facebook and Meta are so screwed," and yet that is not the way it looks today.

David Rosenthal 1:27:21 Uh, MySpace, Twitter gen one-

Ben Gilbert 1:27:25 Yep

David Rosenthal 1:27:25 ... um, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, TikTok.

Ben Gilbert 1:27:32 Apple app tracking-

David Rosenthal 1:27:33 ATT-

Ben Gilbert 1:27:34 transparency

David Rosenthal 1:27:34 ... you could put in its own whole category, um, and now ChatGPT. That's nine.

Ben Gilbert 1:27:40 And, like, there is a widely held public narrative every single time Snapchat discovers Stories, or th- there's something where people are like: Oh, the cool thing that Facebook the company did is just obsolete now, and they're gonna go away. You very much haven't gone away. What do you think is the through line of the DNA of the company that allows you to keep winning?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:28:03 Um, I think it's that we're a technology company that is focused on human connection, not a specific type of app. So, like, we never thought about ourselves as a website or a social network or anything like that. For, for me, building this kind of glasses to enable the future of people being able to feel present with another person, no matter where they actually physically are, is the natural continuation of the kind of apps that we build today, but it depends on how you define what you are. And then you need to figure out, well, how do you build-- how do you give yourself the competence to actually go do that? And that's where I think being a strong technology company comes in. Because, you know, a lot of companies, I think, think about themselves too narrowly in terms of, okay, well, we're this kind of one thing, and the reason why we can build all these things is because we are, have a really strong technology foundation. And some of that is just me and how I think about stuff, and I, I was an engineer before I got started. I mean, I, like, mostly took, like, systems engineering-type classes when I was in college. So, you know, you talk about, like, Friendster and MySpace and all the scaling challenges they had doing the graph calculations of like, all right, uh, do you know this person? Should you show them an ad?

Ben Gilbert 1:29:27 Friends of friends of friends.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:29:28 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:29:28 Yeah, actually, and can you take us back? And, like, we wanna ask you the story of that time. I mean, um, it seems quaint now, Friendster, MySpace, but you studied computer science, graph networking, social graphs. That is a very-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:29:43 Yeah

David Rosenthal 1:29:43 ... very difficult computational calculation.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:29:44 So, so I think it's a combination of, of a, a product question and a technology question. I think you can define the product in a such a general way that the technology becomes basically impossible to solve. Um, so you wanna have a smart product definition, but then you wanna be competent and better than everyone else at the technology. And I, I think that that's something that we've held ourselves to and built a good organisation around. And it's, it's one of the things that I, I observed as soon as I came out to the Valley, that all these companies that called themselves technology companies were not really set up that way, right? It's like the, the companies I was talking about, it's like they, you know, they... the CEO wasn't technical, the board of directors had no one technical on it. They had, like, one dude on the management team who was the head of engineering, who was technical, and, like, everyone else wasn't. And it's like, all right, if that's your team, then you're not a technology company. So I, I think one of the things that I've always been pretty careful about is I, I actually, like, want, like, the, a lot of the people on our, on our management team, it's like, you know, split. It's mostly people running, um, either these big product groups who've come up through different technical pathways at the company, and I think that there's, like, a balance, right? It's like you don't want everyone to be an engineer because there's other things that matter, too, but if you don't have enough of your kind of share of the company as engineers, then you're not a technology company. And I think that that also is important to the board-... and, and I, I think just like in terms of how you weigh decisions, and culturally, things inside the company matters a lot. But, but I, I think that that's one of the things that has been really fundamental, right? It's like we're able to kind of go from platform to platform and do these different things because we've invested and cared about the underlying technology. The product experiences that we build on top of that are an implementation, and they matter. And for that, I think we also, I think, are a pretty curious and learning-focused organization, where, you know, I view the product strategy less as any one specific thing and more as how do we iterate and learn as quickly as possible, how to make each thing better for, for the people we're trying to serve, right? So, like, I define our strategy as if we can learn faster than every other company, we're gonna win. We're gonna build a better product than everyone else because we're gonna get it out first or early. We're going to, uh, have a good feedback loop. We're gonna get, get a bunch of feedback. We're gonna learn what people like better than other people, and then over time, by the time you get to, you know, whether it's version three or four or five, I mean, they're not even discrete versions because we- you ship so frequently, it's, um, you just, uh, you learn faster. So I think that's basically the formula: be a technology company, build good foundation, like, learn from what, what people are, are kinda focused on in the world, and l- and just iterate as quickly as you can.

Ben Gilbert 1:32:40 In one of my research calls to prep for this, someone, uh, uh, described you as a master strategist, which like, uh, uh, it's- we, we all sort of acknowledge that at this point, but that the-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:32:50 I mean, except for, like, all the stuff that I just thought was not gonna be that important, that ended up actually being the most important. It's- [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:32:56 [chuckles]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:32:57 But you're very, um-

Ben Gilbert 1:32:58 Well, but but that's the thing is-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:32:59 Part of it is like, okay, you, you wanna set up the game, so that way, you optimize- you create your luck.

Host 1:33:04 This is what Jensen told us. Like, the apple's gonna fall from the tree in some direction, and if you just set up the game that you have a hand close enough to catch it...

Ben Gilbert 1:33:15 The comment that someone made to me was: The reason Mark is such a good strategist is because he, he plays the company as if it's a turn-based strategy game, and he just makes sure he gets more turns than anybody else, and he makes sure that he learns more from each turn than the next player does. Do you feel like that encapsulates, like, Meta's product development?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:33:36 I, I do like turn-based strategy games. [chuckles]

Host 1:33:38 [chuckles]

Ben Gilbert 1:33:39 But it does kind of feel like the way that you make bets is like, I, uh... Well, if we have great engineering, then that can kind of take care of the speed part. That's like m- m- you know, many iterations or multiple at bats, and then the, the-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:33:52 Well, great engineering and speed and iteration are actually two different values. They're not necessarily at odds, but I think, like, there are a lot of great engineering organizations that try to build things that are super high quality and have good competence around that. But I don't know, there's, there's a certain personality that goes with kind of taking your stuff and putting it out there before it's fully polished. And, and look, I, I'm not saying that our strategy or approach on this is the only one that works. I think in a lot of ways, we're like the opposite of Apple, and clearly, their stuff has worked really well, too, right? But, I mean, they take this approach, it's like: We're gonna take a l- like, a long time. We're gonna polish it. We're gonna put it out. Um, and maybe for the stuff that they're doing, that works. Maybe that just fits with their culture. But for us, I, I think that there are a lot of conversations that we have internally where you're almost at the line of being embarrassed about what you put out. You wanna put stuff out early enough so you can get good feedback. You obviously wanna test things that are reasonable hypotheses, so if it's, like, so ineffective, then you're not testing a good hypothesis. That doesn't work. But I, I do think a lot of the conversations that we have are, are like: Okay, well, we can get this to be a lot better if we work on it for, like, another couple of months or whatever. And, and I, I, I do just think that, like, you wanna really have a culture that values shipping and, and getting things out and getting feedback, um, more than needing always to get great, positive accolades from people when you put stuff out. Because I, I think, like, if you wanna wait until you get praised all the time, you're missing a bunch of the time when you, you could've learned a bunch of useful stuff and then incorporated that into the next version you're gonna ship.

Ben Gilbert 1:35:35 And it's just about making sure that the- what the thing that the company's known for or its brand can withstand all the little damage that you do to it by shipping stuff that's not quite ready.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:35:45 Well, I would, I would like to hope that it's not damaging to the brand, um, but, um-

Ben Gilbert 1:35:50 Well, but it, uh, innately, it is. Like, when you're like: "Oh, I feel bad 'cause I s- I shipped a product that wasn't good enough," you're, you're sort of-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:35:58 Yeah, no, I, I don't wanna overstate it. I mean, we don't ship things that we think are bad, but we also don't take... We wanna make sure that we're shipping things that, that are kind of early enough that we can get good feedback to see what they're gonna be most used for. Like, I think a lot of the AI stuff that we're building now, for example, it actually, you know, it's, it's pretty clear that AI is going to be transformative for a lot of different things.

Host 1:36:19 Mm.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:36:20 It is actually less clear what are gonna be the initial use cases for, for a lot of these things that, that are, that are super valuable. And so, okay, part of it is like, okay, you've put something out, you wanna kind of collect feedback and, and what people are actually, what, what it's, um, you know, where it's resonating. Now, if, if what you put out is bad, then you're not gonna collect good data because people aren't gonna use it for anything 'cause it sucks. So but, but I do think that you, you have hypotheses for what people might really wanna use it for, and they're not all gonna be right, and you wanna kind of go early enough on that is, is more. Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:36:52 So I'm building to this question of, uh, uh, to you, is product creation an act of invention or discovery? Like, is David always inside that marble, and you just need the very best tooling and ability to get things in market and get feedback to discover-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:37:13 Mm

Ben Gilbert 1:37:13 ... the statue of David, or do you conceive of David in your head, and I'm like, "I'm going to make this and put it in the world?"

Mark Zuckerberg 1:37:20 ... Does it have to be one or the other? I mean, I think it's a combination. I think you're basically taking some kind of values, either kind of like values that you have, or a value for something that you believe should exist in the world, and trying to build something that's aligned with that, while trying to match it up with what is, is going to resonate the most with people, right? I think if you, if you just do the latter, then I think you just don't have enough conviction to see through hard things. And if you just do the former, then you probably don't get to product market fit or optimize what you do, because you're not focused enough on your customers. So, um, I think, I think both probably matter. Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:38:04 As I pore through all these historical examples, there's, uh, like the market discovers... Some other participant in the markets discovers the stories format, and suddenly the whole world is like-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:38:14 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:38:14 ... "Oh, my God! That is the way that we all- that's the social interaction mechanism." And that's, like, a pretty pure discovery, where y- you have products that have stories-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:38:25 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:38:25 ... they perform very well. Uh, that's been discovered. But there's other times it feels like everything you're trying to do in Reality Labs, all, you know, fifty-plus billion dollars that you've put into it is like, "We're gonna freaking will this thing into existence, because I have an idea of the way that I want the world to be. I'm not really, like, asking for that much feedback. I'm putting it in the world."

Mark Zuckerberg 1:38:46 Well, it's a combination. I, I mean, I, I think that there's, there's certainly a lot of things that we've invented or created for the first time. I mean, like in 2006, when we built the first version of News Feed, right? The... Like, before that, social networks were basically profiles, and then we were like: Hey, like, people actually kinda wanna get the updates, and let's, like, show them that. And if we rank them, then we can... You know, there's so many updates that this can help people parse through that quickly. And today, it's, like, hard to imagine any social product without a feed. So I think that that's obviously, there are some of these things are sort of seminal, uh, I don't wanna call it an invention, but like patterns that we, that we basically established first. And then some of them are ones that other people did, where we take pride in learning from what is working in, in the, i- i- in the world. Um, you know, I, you know, we're not embarrassed about learning from things that other people, like, discovered that were good first, and, and then we build a better version of it. And, um- [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:39:42 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:39:42 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:39:43 I mean-

David Rosenthal 1:39:44 Yeah.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:39:45 I think that that's... You know, no one company is gonna invent everything, right? I think if you don't invent anything, then it's hard to, to kind of be a successful company. But, um, but I, I do think that there's a mix of this. There are more smart people outside of your company than inside your company. If you're not learning from what's going on in the market, then you're missing a lot of opportunities to get valuable signal from, from people in the community and customers about what they want you to be doing.

David Rosenthal 1:40:11 Which speaks to the thesis of Facebook as a technology company. Um-

Ben Gilbert 1:40:15 Meta.

David Rosenthal 1:40:17 Meta is a technology company. Uh, we'll get to that later. Um, Ben and I have been, uh, having a conversation. I wanna take this, uh, to open source, um, and open source technology, and its importance to you. And Ben posited, first to me, and then to many other people in our calls over the last couple weeks, that Meta has been the largest-

Ben Gilbert 1:40:42 Beneficiary

David Rosenthal 1:40:42 ... beneficiary of open source technology in the modern world. And I'm curious if you would agree with that, and if you would comment on-

Ben Gilbert 1:40:51 Hmm

David Rosenthal 1:40:51 ... your relationship to open source.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:40:54 Well, I think almost all of the major technology companies at this point are primarily using open source stacks. So yeah, I mean, I don't- we wouldn't have been able to get built without open source. I think probably that's true for any new company that's been created since like, I don't know, 19, the late 1990s or something. Um, for us, open source has been important and valuable, um, partially-

David Rosenthal 1:41:21 I mean, you were the first big company built on the LAMP stack.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:41:24 Yeah, yeah. No, and it's, it's great. Makes it super easy to develop stuff quickly and iterate quickly. But we've also had an interesting relationship this, with this, because sequentially, as a company, we came after Google. So Google was the first of the g- great companies that built this distributed computing infrastructure. So they came first, so they were like: All right, let's keep this proprietary, 'cause it's a big advantage for us. And then we're like: All right, we need that, too. But we built it, and then we're like: Okay, not an advantage for us, because Google already has that, so, uh, we might as well just make it open. And by making it open, then you basically get this whole community of people building around it. So, you know, it wasn't gonna help us compete with Google for any of the stuff that we were doing to te- have that technology, but what we were able to do with things like Open Compute, were, um, get it to become the industry standard. So now you have, like, all these other, you know, cloud service platforms that, you know, basically use Open Compute, and because of that, the supply chain is standard around- standardized around our designs, which means that it's, like, way more supply, way cheaper to produce. We've saved billions of dollars, and the quality of the stuff that we get to use goes up. So all right, that's like a win-win. But I, I think in order for this to work... We do a lot of open source stuff, we do a lot of closed source stuff. I'm not like a zealot on this. Um, I think open source is, is very valuable, but I also think it sort of makes sense for us because of our position in the market. And the same for AI, I mean, around Llama-

David Rosenthal 1:42:49 Yeah. Well, okay, this is where we were going with this.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:42:51 Yeah, it's, um, you know, sim- similar deal. Um, you know, we wanna make sure that we have access to a leading AI model, right? I think just like we wanna build the hardware so that we can build the best social experiences for the next twenty years, I don't think that... You know, for, for us, it's like we've just been- we've been through too much stuff with the other platforms to, to fully depend on, on anyone else. And we're a big enough company at this point that, like, we don't have to, right? We can build our own core technology platforms, whether that's gonna be AR glasses or mixed reality or AI. So I think that's somewhat of an imperative for us to, to go do that. But, you know-... these things are not like pieces of software that are monolithic, they're ecosystems. They get better when other people use them. So for us, there's a huge amount of good, and it philosophically lines up with where we are, where like, I mean, look, wh- I, I, I, I definitely, you know, firsthand have a lot of experiences. We were, like, trying to build stuff on mobile platforms. The platforms are just like: "Nah, you can't build that."

David Rosenthal 1:43:54 Well, okay, uh-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:43:55 That's frustrating. So-

David Rosenthal 1:43:56 Can we take a real quick detour?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:43:57 What's that?

David Rosenthal 1:43:58 I really wanna ask you something.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:43:59 We can, we can take a detour.

David Rosenthal 1:44:00 Okay.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:00 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:44:00 You took a detour, we're gonna take a detour. Um, help us with our research here. Uh, the eve of the IPO.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:08 Yeah, this is quite a detour.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:09 Wait. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:44:10 Quite a detour.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:11 Wait, David, you-

David Rosenthal 1:44:11 I know, I know.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:11 Did you just-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:12 You're really grabbing the wheel here. I'm sorry.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:13 Is this connected, or did you just decide that it was your turn to talk? [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:44:18 I'm sorry.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:19 I was, like, really, like, wound up.

David Rosenthal 1:44:21 I know!

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:21 Like, open source and AI-

David Rosenthal 1:44:23 We'll get back.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:23 Like, we are right in virtual heads.

David Rosenthal 1:44:23 It's gonna take tough to get back to this. [laughing] I think it's related.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:26 All right, let's do it.

David Rosenthal 1:44:27 I do. I really genuinely do. Facebook on mobile is HTML5.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:33 Uh-huh.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:33 In twenty...

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:35 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:35 Twelve.

David Rosenthal 1:44:35 Twelve.

Ben Gilbert 1:44:35 May of twenty twelve.

David Rosenthal 1:44:36 May twenty twelve.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:36 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 1:44:37 Yeah. I wanna ask you what you were thinking going into the IPO with Facebook on mobile being HTML5, and what happened? You IPO at a hundred billion dollar market cap, over the next three months, you have a fifty percent drawdown, probably because of that.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:44:54 Mm-hmm.

David Rosenthal 1:44:54 Um, but I, the, I guess the related question to what we're talking about now is: how much is that informing your approach here with AI?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:45:05 I think it was a pretty different, different technical issue. So I mean, our legacy was building on web for websites, and we were very used to building one thing and being able to continuously deploy it, and it fits with our iteration style and all that. So now all of a sudden, this, like, app model comes along, and it's like we have to build, like, different ones for each phone? And, like, you have to go through s- approval to get it shipped, and we have to wait, like, weeks before it can ship. It's like, this sucks! So we're like: "All right, we have an idea. Let's build this platform where we can get a web-based platform." So you basically build a native shell, and you build this web-based platform in it, and we'll be able to just update our apps every day, and we'll ship one thing once, and we'll update our apps across Android, and iPhone, and BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile, and all the stuff that existed at the time because it, it hadn't gotten consolidated yet. And, um, we're like, that's gonna be... That's w- we're like, basically, whatever downside we are gonna have from not having the most native thing, we're gonna make up for in velocity and by having, like, way more of our energy focused on one platform. Well, we were wrong. It turned out that, you know, having the native integration was actually critical for having the interactions feel good, and, a- and that... So we basically went through this period where we had to go rewrite our apps from scratch, and that coincided with mobile growing dramatically. And mobile, we didn't have any revenue, um, because it may seem like it's pretty similar, but there's a very big difference. On, on desktop, you basically have the app, and you have a column on the side that we could put ads. And on mobile, we needed to figure out what does it mean to put ads into the experience, right? So-

Ben Gilbert 1:46:52 The, like, let's be clear, the feed ad had not been invented yet.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:46:55 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:46:55 Like, the unit of our time.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:46:55 No, that was... Yeah, that was something that the team did. Yeah, and it's-- and, like, advertisers have, like, specific formats that they like working with, and the idea that we were just gonna be like: "All right, now your ad is gonna look like a feed story," was a big challenge for advertisers. And the idea that now for people, you were gonna have this organic feed that was the most important part of the product, and now we're just gonna start putting ads in it, was a challenge for, for, for the people who are using the product. So we needed to figure that out, and we needed to get the apps to be better. And we basically took, I think it must have been, like, a year or something, we're just like: "Look, we're gonna pause feature development of the company because it's hard enough to do a rewrite," right? So if you, you look at, like, the history of the tech industry, there are all these examples like Netscape and, you know, all these things that, like, they tried to do a rewrite, they needed to reestablish their technical platform, and they also tried to add features. They basically just, like, never terminated. So that's a, a real risk, right? When you're, like, r- like, completely changing your underlying platform, that there's n- you're, you're gonna miss it. Um, it's like, all right, we gotta minimize the chance that that happens, so we're not gonna ship any new features. We're just going to rewrite it, make it faster. Um, but while we're doing this, like, basically, mobile's growing, so the percent of our traffic that is monetizable is shrinking because web is basically shrinking, and, and mobile's growing.

David Rosenthal 1:48:16 And that's your only business model.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:48:18 Yeah, and I was like: "All right," like, okay-

Ben Gilbert 1:48:19 And you're now recently quarter of the report.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:48:20 You know, but the thing is, it was actually pretty clear what we needed to do.

Ben Gilbert 1:48:23 Oh.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:48:23 Yeah, I think strategically, a lot of the time, it's, um, it's somewhat harder to know what to do when you're winning. Like, when stuff is going well, it's like, what is the next move to, like, go from winning to winning more? Um, but when you're losing, it's usually pretty clear what you have to do. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:48:40 Yeah. [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:48:40 And, and I think a lot of it is like, is, is just do you have the pain tolerance to go do it? So a lot of this was like, all right, the team was like: "Okay, um, well, we're going public and, you know, it's... investors really aren't gonna like this if we are, like, not making money for a year and a half." And it's like: "Well, a year and a half is short in the grand scheme of things. Let's do this." And, and we did it, and it was a painful year and a half, and then we came out of that, and we were in great shape. So I, I, I think, like, people inside the company, it felt a lot better sooner because it was pretty clear to people that we were doing the right thing. Um, and they, they knew that we were executing it in a responsible way, um, and, and, and basically focused, and we're doing the right thing. But I, I think it's actually when you have something that's working well, and you're on one local hill, and you need to jump to another hill, that's the stuff that's really culturally hard. Um-... but this one I think was, it was, it was not fun. There have been a period, a, a series of periods throughout the company that were not, I don't know, not, not the, not the most fun periods. But, um, although that one, in retrospect, is, you know, looks pretty good in retrospect. [laughing] It's, like, not that bad. It's like your market cap only got cut in half for a year and a half? Like, great! [laughing] Great. Yeah, I'll take that. Um, [laughing] anyway, where were we?

Ben Gilbert 1:50:07 Well, well, maybe could I, uh, so could I connect... So D- so David asked, "Hey, can you help us with, with our research?" Can I follow that thread that you just said, "Hey, that, that one wasn't so bad"? Um, there's been a lot of amazing things the company has done. There's also been, like, a lot of criticism. If you were to be self-critical-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:50:24 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:50:24 ... of your own company, of your own creation, of all the criticisms that have happened over the years, which do you believe is the most legitimate, and why?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:50:32 I mean, there's so many things that we've messed up, um, that there are many criticisms that are legitimate. But if that was a year-and-a-half mistake, uh, I think, you know, one of the things I reflect on over the last, like, ten years or so was, you know, the, the political environment just changed dramatically, right? It's like before 2016, there was, like, not a month that went by, except for maybe this IPO period, where the sentiment about the company was anything but positive. And then after 2016, after the election, basically there was not a month for a while where the sentiment about the company was positive. And we... I, I think so much of this stuff is correctly understanding your place in the world and in history. And, you know, so I think, you know, we talked about before how it's like, I, I think we understood that we are a technology company, and that you have to be a technology company to build this kind of thing. Um, I think we understood that we're not a social network company, we're a human connection company, and that will take different forms over time. Um, the political environment, I think I, I didn't have much sophistication around, and I think I just fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. So I, I, I think that there was this basic challenge, and there were a lot of things. I don't want to simplify this too much. I mean, there were, there were a lot of things that we did wrong, there were some things that we did right. But I think one of the things that I, I look back on and regret is, um, I think we accepted other people's view of some of the things that, you know, they were asserting that we were doing wrong or were responsible for, that I don't actually think we were. And, you know, uh, that's, it's, um... There were a lot of things we did mess up and we needed to fix, but I, I think that there's this view where when you're a company and someone says that there's an issue, I think the right instinct is to, like, take ownership for it, right? Say like: Okay, like, maybe, maybe it's not like, maybe it's not all our thing, but we're gonna fully own this problem, we're gonna take responsibility for it, we're gonna fix it. But when it's a political problem, I actually think a lot of the time, sometimes there are people who are operating in good faith who, who are identifying a problem that wants something to be fixed, and there are people who are just looking for someone to blame. And I, I think to some degree, if you, i- if, if you take responsibility for things because you think it's a corporate crisis, not a political crisis, um, and your view is like, okay, I'm, like, I'm gonna take responsibility for all this stuff. Like, if people are basically like, like, blaming social media and the tech industry for, like, all these different things in society, and if we're saying, "Okay, we're gonna really, like, do our part to go fix this, like, this stuff," I know there were a bunch of people who just took that and were like: "Oh, you're taking responsibility for that? Let me, like, kick you for more stuff." And, and honestly, I think we should have been firmer about, and, and clearer about which of the things we actually felt like we had a part in and which ones we didn't. And my guess is if the IPO was a year-and-a-half mistake, I think that the political miscalculation was a twenty-year mistake. And I... So it started in 2016, and I think that we have been working super hard to fix a lot of issues and to figure out kind of what the right tone is for navigating what is a very kind of fraught political dynamic across both the country and multiplied across all these places around the world. And I think we've sort of found our footing on, and like, like, what, what, what the principles are, like, where we think we need to improve stuff, but where, um, you know, where people make allegations about the impact of the tech industry or our company, which are just not founded in any fact, that I think we should push back on harder. And I think it's gonna take another ten years or so for us to kind of fully work through that cycle before our brand and all of that is back to kind of the place that it maybe could have been if I hadn't messed that up in the first place. So, but look, in the grand scheme of things, twenty years isn't that bad either. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:54:39 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:54:39 And we'll get through it, um, and, and I think we'll come out stronger. Um, but I do think that is one of the kind of more interesting critiques that I think people got. And we get critiques on both sides on that. There are people who don't think we've taken enough responsibility, but, um, but I, I think certainly there's one line of critique which is, you know, you, you kind of bought into too much of the stuff that you shouldn't have. And, um, yeah, I think it's gonna take us a long time to dig out of that.

Ben Gilbert 1:55:07 Do, do you have a reasonable framework at this point for like: Okay, here's the stuff where I feel like we actually do want to take responsibility for it, and here's the stuff where we're like: No, that's not our fault.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:55:17 Yeah. I mean, at this point, I think a lot of the stuff has been studied.

Ben Gilbert 1:55:20 Hmm.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:55:20 So I mean, I don't want to go rehash all the different things, but, um, but I, I think at this point, there's been, like, years of academic research on a lot of these things. And, you know, part of the thing that's challenging is, and one of the things that we've learned, is we actually should-... be trying to support more academics and doing more of this research ahead of time. Because, like, when you get to a point where you're being kind of accused of something, you're not super credible just standing up yourself and being like, "I don't think we did this one." [laughing] Um, you know, it's, like, so i- but what has worked over time is, like, you know, you do the research in advance, and, and you get kind of third-party academics, respected folks, who get to debate all these different issues. And then it's like, "Oh, no, actually, like, the evidence just does not show that social media is correlated with this kind of harm at all."

Ben Gilbert 1:56:02 Mm.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:56:02 So I, I, I think that, like... Or, or it's, you know... So I, I think that's, um, I think that that's, it's, it kind of cuts, it cuts both ways.

David Rosenthal 1:56:10 To me, this brings up another topic we wanted to talk about with you. [chuckles] And you just, you know, you said, "Well, that's- twenty years isn't that long." [chuckles] Um...

Mark Zuckerberg 1:56:19 I'm young.

David Rosenthal 1:56:20 You- you're young. You're young. Uh, we all are. Um-

Ben Gilbert 1:56:22 This is the advantage of being a college dropout founder of one company.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:56:24 Yeah, no, it is.

David Rosenthal 1:56:25 Yeah.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:56:25 When you start when you're nineteen-

David Rosenthal 1:56:26 Yeah

Mark Zuckerberg 1:56:26 ... it's like, hopefully, we have more than twenty years left to do this.

Ben Gilbert 1:56:28 And hopefully, you have, like, Buffett duration.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:56:30 Yeah. Uh, you know, maybe. Hopefully.

David Rosenthal 1:56:32 You, you set up the company in a, especially at the time, truly unique way, uh, where you can operate the company and take that, you know, take that approach. Um-

Ben Gilbert 1:56:45 Do you mean super voting shares?

David Rosenthal 1:56:47 Super voting shares is like, you know, the technical aspect of it. There are... I think there are a bunch of technical aspects to it that we're not going to get into in this conversation. But effectively, you can take that perspective in a way that if you are a CEO, non-founder, you know, without a structure that you've set up, you just, you just can't. And I think, you know, in doing all the research for this, a thesis we've developed is that, like, that is just one of the core fundamental advantages that Meta has. Um, so as you were setting up the company, [chuckles] you know, when you were so young, even when you went public, you were so young, like, why was that so important to you?

Mark Zuckerberg 1:57:23 Well, in 2006, Yahoo! wanted to buy the company for a billion dollars, and everyone on our management team wanted to sell it, and the board tried to fire me. And everyone-- and basically in the next year, everyone else on the management team left because they... I hadn't done a good job communic-- I mean, I don't want to blame them. I, I, like, I hadn't done a good job communicating the long-term vision because I didn't, I wasn't thinking about that at the time. I, like, wasn't thinking in terms of this as a company. I was just like: This is a great project. It's awesome. Like, a lot of people like what we're doing. I think this will probably continue for a while. I think it's going to be pretty important in the world. Um, but I didn't, I didn't, like, know how to think in terms of, you know, like, long-term financial plans or, um, um-

Ben Gilbert 1:58:04 Like, make a case to them-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:58:05 Someone-

Ben Gilbert 1:58:05 -why it would be worth more than a billion.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:58:06 Yeah, yeah. Or, or just like, "Look, we're doing this for the long term. We're not planning on selling the company." So it's like, w- without having made that case, it was understandable that basically, Yahoo! comes around. A lot of people, it's like this is, like, all their start-up dreams come true. You gotta take this offer. Um, because I, I, like, I just wasn't in a place where I had the sophistication to basically articulate a lot of the stuff around where we were going longer term. It probably wasn't super confidence-inspiring to them when I was like: Hey, I think we should turn this down because, uh, we're going to do this. So, um, so after that, I was like: All right, well, I don't want to get fired- [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:58:44 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:58:45 -from my own company for wanting to build it, so let's, uh-

David Rosenthal 1:58:48 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:58:49 ... try to set up a governance structure that makes it somewhat harder to do that. Um, so-

David Rosenthal 1:58:55 Wow!

Mark Zuckerberg 1:58:57 Learning through suffering. [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 1:59:00 [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:59:01 Wow.

Ben Gilbert 1:59:01 A- and being very cash generative very early, such that you had a very real going concern on your hands, and you just-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:59:09 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:59:09 ... didn't, didn't need to cut off your arm and sell it to someone in order to-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:59:13 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:59:13 ... build your business.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:59:14 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 1:59:15 Like, I think, I think this is a fundamentally misunderstood thing about-

David Rosenthal 1:59:19 Oh, yeah

Ben Gilbert 1:59:19 ... uh, Facebook, the start-up. I- it is the-

David Rosenthal 1:59:24 The-

Ben Gilbert 1:59:24 - prototypical

David Rosenthal 1:59:25 - iconic start-up

Ben Gilbert 1:59:26 start-up.

David Rosenthal 1:59:26 You are the iconic start-up founder

Ben Gilbert 1:59:28 ... of this century. And there's a lot of people that want to start a start-up for a lot of the glamorous reasons of starting a start-up. You hated being a start-up and wanted to stop being a start-up as fast as possible and be a, like, going concern.

Mark Zuckerberg 1:59:44 Yeah, I mean, I think we're having a lot more fun now. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 1:59:48 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 1:59:49 I get to work on all this stuff. It's awesome.

Ben Gilbert 1:59:51 But, uh, like, what is your advice to all these founders who sort of romanticize the idea of, of starting a company and kind of-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:59:57 I, I don't know

Ben Gilbert 1:59:58 ... raising all this money and-

Mark Zuckerberg 1:59:58 Obviously, starting a company is not bad, right? I mean, I, I think that there's different schools of thought on how to do it. I think some people think, Okay, I want to go start a company, so I'm going to, like, go dive into this idea. And I just think that that's a little bit dangerous because there's this issue, which is you have to be able to be nimble and pivot around until you can, like, figure out what works, right? It's-- I mean, part of the reason why I didn't think Facebook was g- gonna be the company early on was 'cause when I was in school, I built, like, twelve different things, right? That I... were just things that I wanted to exist. And it was like: All right, this is fun. Okay, let's build another thing. It's like, okay, this one's fun. People are still using that. I'll, like, help upkeep this one. But I had, like, a bunch of other ideas for stuff I was gonna build, too. So I just, like, I didn't, I didn't, like, know how to think about what a company was gonna be. And, and it was... So, um, I think there's something about maintaining flexibility that's, that's helpful. Um, you know, once you hire a bunch of people, you know, it's a lot easier when you can just have meetings in your own head about what direction you want to go in. [laughing] Um, and it's like, and there's a lot less pride and, like, people dug in when you're just like: Okay, I'm gonna change direction. It's like, you know, people haven't, like, invested their ego in like, "No, we were going in this direction, and, like, now I must be convinced." It's like, nah, just... So I, I, I do think that that's a thing, where you wanna, like, keep things lean and, and, and be able to do that. And that's one of the reasons why we tried to get the company back to being, you know, whatever the leanest version of a large company is that we can, we can be. But, but I do know there's something to that, where it's like, y- y- it's obviously, it's not, it's not super fun not having the resources to do what you want to do, but I think it also is problematic to have more people working on something than you should have for the stage that it's at. Because then the people who are working on it don't have the agency to actually, like, make the changes and do the things that they need to, which is less fun, and then you can't attract the best people to go work on those things because it's less fun. And so I, I do think you've gotta, you just have to dial it right.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:53 ... you're spending a gajillion dollars on Reality Labs [laughing] and-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:01:57 [chuckles] It's the technical term.

Ben Gilbert 2:01:58 It's not making that much money. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna play Mark back to you-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:02:02 Yeah, sure

Ben Gilbert 2:02:03 ... of it's not appropriate to have all these people and resources working on things for more than the stage warrants.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:02:08 Mm-hmm.

Ben Gilbert 2:02:08 I'm being a little facetious here, but I'm curious how you th- w- why you categorize it differently?

Mark Zuckerberg 2:02:13 I mean, well, I think some of the stuff, by the time you're at the scale that we're at, is also just about, like, what do you want to do over the next 10 to 20 years? And what do you think are gonna be important? And, you know, we were talking about, like, making your own luck and all that, and how... You know, it's like I think there are some broad strokes that we can have a sense of where things are going. I'm pretty sure glasses and kind of like holographic presence and AR is going to be a completely ubiquitous product, right? It's just like everyone who had a phone before replaced it with a smartphone, and then a lot of more people got smartphones. If all we get is all the people in the world who already have glasses upgrading to glasses that have AI in them, then, like, this is already going to be one of the most successful products in the history of the world. So, um, and I think it's gonna go a lot further than that. So, I know there's that. There is the thing about controlling our own destiny. Um, it's strategically valuable. You know, we did this calculation or estimate at some point, where it's like, how much money do we lose from our core family of apps to the various, like, taxes that the platforms have, to, like, when they tell us we can't run the ad business the way that we think we should be able to, when they tell us we can't ship certain products, so that way, like, people use the things less or like them less? And, um, I, I- it's hard to exactly estimate it, but I think we might be, like, twice as profitable if we own the platform or something. So I think from that perspective, that's worth a lot, just from, like, a pure, like, dollars perspective, which is not primarily how I come at this stuff. But even, like, now, I've learned a thing or two since the Yahoo days, so now I at least am able to, like, like, um... I might not be able to convince the, all the investors that we should be investing to the extent that we are in Reality Labs if I didn't control the company, but at least I can sort of articulate a case for why I am confident that it's going to be good over time. But for me, it's always been way more about the product experience and what you can enable and build. And, you know, o- one of the shifts, and th- this is sort of like a values shift, um, over time, is... You know, one of the things that, um, and one- some of the early Oculus guys used to say to me, that there's a difference between building good things and awesome things. And, and, like, good is good, right? It's helpful, it's useful, it's things that people use on a day-to-day basis because it adds something to their lives. But awesome is different. Awesome is uplifting and inspiring, and i- just, like, leads you to just be way more optimistic about the future, and is, is just, like, this uplifting thing about humanity. And so I, I, I think a lot of what we've done with social media so far is, is very good, where we've got- we've built these products, more than three billion people use them on a, you know, near-daily basis, right? It's like-

Ben Gilbert 2:05:09 I mean, it's like three point three-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:05:10 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 2:05:10 ... billion on a daily basis.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:05:11 Yeah, d- yeah, so yeah, and so that's- and they use it because it is useful in their life, right? And i- in, in all these different ways. I mean, o- obviously, people vary. People use it for different things, but it's useful. And it helps people, and it, it helps people stay connected, it helps people build businesses, it helps people form communities. It's good. There aren't that many people on a day-to-day basis who get out of bed and are like, "Fuck yeah, social media!"

Ben Gilbert 2:05:37 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 2:05:37 Like, like, that's... Right? It's, I mean, that's not, like, um... So I, I kind of think for the next, for my next stage, right, for the next stage of the company, the next, like, 15 years, I want us to build more things that are awesome in addition to things that are good. And I think that they both matter, um, but, uh, to me, this is, like, a little bit of a kind of the next stage of what I want our company to stand for and be. And so I think a lot of the Reality Lab stuff that we're doing is gonna be in that bucket. Um, a lot of the AI stuff that we're doing, I think, is gonna be in that bucket. There are a bunch of things in the apps that are gonna be in that bucket too, um, new apps, too. But, um, but I don't know. I think that there's, there's just something that's, like, fundamentally pretty good about that. And that's... M- maybe it's also just, like, where I am in my life, right? I'm, I'm, like, like to think I'm young. I'm a little older, right? But it's, but it's like, I, I, I do think that at this point, you know, it's not just a meta thing. Also, you know, in my, like, personal life, a lot of what I personally value is doing things that are inspiring with people who I find inspiring, right? And you know, so there's the personal version of this. It's, like, I get to work on, you know, i- interesting science problems with, like, Priscilla, my wife, and, like, and a bunch of awesome people. You know, I get to, you know, design shirts with, like, some of the best fashion designers in the world, right? It's like I am-

Ben Gilbert 2:07:11 Statues.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:07:13 S- yeah, sculpture-

Ben Gilbert 2:07:14 [chuckles]

Mark Zuckerberg 2:07:14 ... of, of my wife. Bring back the Roman tradition of designing sculptures of people you love. Um-

Ben Gilbert 2:07:20 I'm not at all being facetious. Like-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:07:22 Yeah, no, I-

Ben Gilbert 2:07:22 ... it's really cool.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:07:23 It's... No, I, but, I mean, I think Daniel Arsham is, like, a really talented guy, and I was like: That's a person who I'd love to work with on something. Let's go find a project. You know, building... You know, I have- one of my side projects is, you know, we have this cattle ranch in Kauai, and I'm trying to see if we can raise the highest quality beef in the world. And there's, like, all this stuff. It, like, starts with, like, it's, it's awesome. We got, we got this steer, Chunk. He's, like, he's- [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 2:07:51 Chunk.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:07:51 He's just the man. He's the man. We're having a hard time-... keeping him on the ranch because we, every time we put him in a steel enclosure and he sees a female cow, he busts through the steel enclosure. [laughing] But I feel like that's the kind of bull that you want to make the highest quality beef in the world. [laughing] And we're just working with, you know, trying to do really high quality, awesome things with awesome people. That's like, if, if that's what I get to do for the next 15 or 20 years, then, like, it's gonna be a good 15 or 20 years.

Ben Gilbert 2:08:27 I- Was, was there a moment... Like, what changed? Like, when did this become your priority, and why? I can't- It feels so radical that it- how could it have possibly been gradual? Or was this just, like, Mark all the time, and we just couldn't see the real Mark?

Mark Zuckerberg 2:08:43 I don't know. I, I think that there might have been something around the way the company shifted in operations around COVID. I mean, it's like the, you know, COVID, like, all these tech companies went remote temporarily, and it was an interesting period to just, like, get some more time, like, a step back. I'm a pretty introverted person, and I do think it's... I, I need to be careful where, like, I get a lot of value, and energy, and ideas from being around other people, but I also need time with myself. And with COVID, I, I kind of got that, and I... It was a time of reflection, um, where I, I was able to think about this stuff. And we were also going through this very difficult political time in the country, and, and our company was at the center of a lot of those things. So that, that was a cause of a bunch of reflection. And then I think that a bunch of the things that we'd spun up earlier, but it's smaller scale, right? So the Reality Labs stuff that we started in 2014, really. Um, the FAIR stuff around, you know, fundamental AI research, um, that, yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:09:51 2012, '13?

Mark Zuckerberg 2:09:52 2012, 2013.

Jensen Huang 2:09:52 Alex Net-ish timeframe.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:09:53 S- sometime around then. These things, they, they kind of got started, and they were growing, and it was- it kind of reached this moment, which is like, are we gonna double down on this and do this, or are we gonna kind of like, do this as a hobby? And I was like: No, I think we should do this. Right? So I mean, this is, I think that this, like, this is gonna be a really important part of what we do. And we had to make a really important set of decisions, where we knew it was gonna be really painful, you know, to go double down on those things and build out the AI infrastructure that we needed to, and scale up some of the Reality Lab stuff. And I knew that a lot of the investors would hate it, at least in the short term, before it's clearly the right thing to do. Um, the- what I didn't know was that, at the time, I thought they were gonna not like it, but I thought it was gonna be okay because I didn't think there was also gonna be a recession at the same time. Um, so that, like, really, it's like, I mean, look, like, like, you learn who you are through challenges, right? It's like we, we had like a really... You know, it's like, okay, like, losing half of your market cap is, is quaint compared to losing 80% of your market cap [laughing] or whatever it was, right? It's, um, but so, I mean, these are all intentional decisions, right? It's like, I mean, there were a lot of conversations that we had, which are like, should we go forward with this? And the answer that I came out with is yes. I- th- this is what I believe in. I think this is gonna be important for the world. I think it's gonna work over time. We're no stranger to going through painful periods. In some ways, it makes the company better. Let's do it!

Jensen Huang 2:11:30 Oh, well. [applauding]

Ben Gilbert 2:11:36 We're, we're start- we're starting to enter, uh, looking at the clock, like, conclusion, lightning round territory.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:11:44 All right.

Ben Gilbert 2:11:45 I've had one, like, lurking in the back of my head.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:11:47 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:11:48 It makes sense to me that you would rebrand the company something that is not Facebook, given how broad the family of apps was, that you've got... L- let's imagine you were gonna rebrand it today.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:11:58 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:11:58 You've got AI going on, you've got AR going on, you've got VR going on. Um, would you pick the name Meta if you were going to rename the company today?

Mark Zuckerberg 2:12:08 I like Meta. [laughing]

Jensen Huang 2:12:11 [laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 2:12:11 It's a good name. You know, finding good, short names... I mean, this actually was a thing that we talked about for a while, 'cause it was pretty clear that, you know, Facebook is continuing to grow in importance in the world, which I think a lot of people don't appreciate, and it's kind of mind-boggling at the scale that it's at. But the, the other is, I mean, when it- You know, we went through a period where it's like we had Facebook and a handful of small apps, and now we have like, you know, four apps that have a billion people or more using them. You know, hopefully in the next few years, five, with Threads, if that continues scaling. And, um, this was a conversation that we had a bunch, where it's like: Does it make sense for the name of the company to be one of the apps as the other apps, as, as it's really becoming a family of apps? And it was important to me, this was also coinciding with a lot of, a lot of the challenges that we were having, right? The political brand challenges, different things. And a lot of people were proposing that from the perspective of running away from the Facebook brand, right? They, they were like: "Oh, well, like is the- does the Facebook brand have issues? Do we need a new brand?" And I was like: We don't run away from that. Right? It's like, w- like, it might make sense one day to not have Facebook be the lead brand for the company because we do so many different things, but I'm only gonna do this when we come up with a brand that is going to be evocative of the future that we're trying to build, because we run towards something, we don't run away from things. And when we got to Meta, then I was like, "All right, we're here." And it was around the time when we were doubling down on the investment and where there was all the controversy, and it's like, look, like if we're doing this, we're gonna lean into this, and we're gonna do it, so let's do it.

Ben Gilbert 2:13:52 And if I were to make the case to you, I feel-... the core competency of Meta is you are able to discover products in the world. You have great ideas, you work on them, you discover interesting products, and you, Mark, are not someone who wants to define yourself by anything. You, you wanna have, like, your hands on a bunch of great controls and maximize your degrees of freedom, see where the world's going, and then have the best freaking spaceship possible to go maneuver your way over there.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:14:22 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:23 It seems like I would pick a brand that almost doesn't pigeonhole me into a specific future. I, I might be looking for something that's more like, "Look, I, I wanna maximize my, uh, maneuverability."

Mark Zuckerberg 2:14:36 Yeah. I get it. Um, but I don't know. That's just... I, I- we align around a vision and a mission of what we're trying to do, and we run towards it. That's always been how we've operated. Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:52 And in many ways, doing what I just suggested would kind of be running. It's like, "Well, we don't believe in it that much," and you're like, "No, we-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:14:58 Yeah.

Ben Gilbert 2:14:58 "We believe it."

Mark Zuckerberg 2:14:58 No, I, I mean, we're, we're a company that, like, puts a flag down around what we're doing, and we're gonna go do it. It's like, put a wall in front of us, there's gonna be a Mark-shaped hole in the wall. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 2:15:08 [laughing] Uh, [chuckles] speaking of lightning rounds and Mark-shaped holes, um, you are accelerating what used to be your annual challenges. I always... I mean, when, when we were all kids, uh, [chuckles] and, and we didn't know each other, I mean, I was so inspired. You would do your annual challenges-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:15:29 Mm-hmm.

David Rosenthal 2:15:29 You would post about them, and I was like: Wow, that's, like, pretty damn cool. And then we all get a little older-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:15:35 Mm-hmm

David Rosenthal 2:15:36 ... and we all have kids on the stage now, and we all have companies on the stage now, and there's-

Ben Gilbert 2:15:43 Some large, some small

David Rosenthal 2:15:44 ... the demands on your time, like it, for me especially, I think lots of people, that's like that space gets sucked, and you have expanded it. How?

Mark Zuckerberg 2:15:58 What do you mean?

David Rosenthal 2:15:59 Well, you used to do annual challenges, and I feel like you're now doing weekly challenges.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:16:02 Yeah, no, I was doing annual challenges, but I stopped whenever-

David Rosenthal 2:16:02 You're, you're designing T-shirts, you're making sculptures, you're raising cattle.

Ben Gilbert 2:16:05 I feel like you have a lot of challenges.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:16:05 I just like I'm trying to, trying to do inspiring things. I mean, that's, uh, yeah, I don't know. Um, I'm also really competitive.

David Rosenthal 2:16:16 [laughing] Who's your competition for this?

Mark Zuckerberg 2:16:20 What do you mean? Oh, I was just thinking about pr- uh, about, about other things that I'm doing. I'm like: What if I, what if I start doing? I, like, got into all these, like, more extreme sports and fighting and stuff, and like... I don't know. I mean, there's, uh, there's- we face a lot of competition and a lot of different aspects of what we do. Um, some, there's the social media competitors, there's the platform competitors. I think Apple is a bigger competitor than people realise. They kinda think, hey, they're doing a different type of thing. But I don't know, I think over the next ten, fifteen years, I, I think that kind of like battle over- ideological battle over what should the architecture be of the next set of platforms? Are they gonna be the closed, integrated Apple, m- a model that Apple has always done? Which, again, I mean, like, there's multiple... there are multiple good ways to build things, right? So I, I think if you look at the different generations of computing, um, PCs, mobile, they've all had sort of a closed, integrated version and an open version. And the thing that I think there's just a ton of recency bias around is because iPhone basically won. Y- you know, I, I know that there are more Android phones out there, but I mean, but iPhone is sort of like the intellectual leader-

Ben Gilbert 2:17:38 Probably

Mark Zuckerberg 2:17:38 ... and by far, like, has all the market share.

David Rosenthal 2:17:39 Let's take it as a conceit.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:17:40 Yeah.

David Rosenthal 2:17:41 Yeah.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:17:41 Um, and then there's the recency bias, and probably, like almost everyone here has an iPhone. And right, I, I think because of the recency bias, there's sort of this view that's like, "Oh, no, this is just the superior way to do things." But I, I, I don't actually think that's a given, right? In, in the PC era, Windows with the open ecosystem was the leader, and part of my goal for the next ten, fifteen years, the next generation of platforms, is to build the next generation of open platforms and have the open platforms win. And I think that that's gonna lead to a much more vibrant tech industry. Now, there are advantages of, of doing a closed and integrated model. I think Apple will have a place for sure. I expect them to be our primary competitor, and I think it will not be just a product competition. I think it's like a, in some ways, very deeply values-driven and ideological competition around what the future of the tech industry should be, and, you know, how open these platforms, whether it's things like Llama and AI or, um, the glasses or different things, should be for developers. Like an individual, someone getting started in their dorm room like me, to not have to ask for permission to go build the next set of awesome things.

Ben Gilbert 2:18:56 I've got a closing question-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:18:57 Yeah

Ben Gilbert 2:18:57 ... if you're- [applauding]

David Rosenthal 2:18:59 Please. Thank you.

Ben Gilbert 2:19:02 So, so we have a lot of builders in the audience tonight, a lot of founders. Uh, we're in probably the most interesting technology environment since the early mobile days, in terms of opportunity. It's been twenty years, you may have to go back a little bit, but what advice do you have for founders today on something that's different than trying to pattern-match Mark Zuckerberg from 2004, given we live in a different world today?

Mark Zuckerberg 2:19:31 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, just do something that you care about, and, and, I mean, if, if you're trying to run our strategy, try to learn as quickly as you can. But, but I mean, if there's... Like, I think part of what I'm trying to say is, I think there are different ways to build stuff, right?

Ben Gilbert 2:19:48 Mm-hmm.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:19:48 It's like, our way worked for me and our team. You know, it's, uh, different things have clearly worked for other companies.... I don't know. One day, one day my daughter went to, we went to, took her to a Taylor Swift concert, and- [audience cheering]

David Rosenthal 2:20:06 [laughing] Woo!

Mark Zuckerberg 2:20:06 She, she was like, "You know, Dad, I kinda wanna be like Taylor Swift when I grow up."

David Rosenthal 2:20:11 Hell yeah.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:20:12 I was like, "You, you ca- but you can't. That's not available to you." [laughing]

David Rosenthal 2:20:17 [laughing] [audience laughing]

Mark Zuckerberg 2:20:17 I was like, "But..." And she, and she thought about it, and she's like, "All right. When I grow up, I want people to wanna be like August Chan Zuckerberg."

David Rosenthal 2:20:26 [laughing] [audience applauding]

Mark Zuckerberg 2:20:28 And I was like, "Hell yeah. Hell yeah." So I, I think that that's, um... Yeah, I don't know. I, I think it's like, look, learn from other people's successes and failures, but do your own thing.

Ben Gilbert 2:20:44 I love that.

David Rosenthal 2:20:44 Great, love that. Well-

Ben Gilbert 2:20:46 Well... [audience applauding]

David Rosenthal 2:20:48 [clears throat] That is the perfect place to leave things. Um-

Ben Gilbert 2:20:53 W- w- we made you something that... You already have a very amazing, well-designed shirt. [audience laughing] Uh, I hope you have room in your life for more than one.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:21:02 I, I do. You know, I'm-

Ben Gilbert 2:21:04 So D-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:21:04 I used to only wear one type of shirt, now I've moved on. [laughing]

David Rosenthal 2:21:10 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 2:21:10 So David and I made you a custom one-of-one shirt-

Mark Zuckerberg 2:21:15 Aw.

Ben Gilbert 2:21:15 - that represents tonight.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:21:16 Thank you. [audience applauding] Awesome.

Ben Gilbert 2:21:20 It is size Zuck.

David Rosenthal 2:21:22 [laughing]

Ben Gilbert 2:21:23 So no one else can, you know, there's... It can never be made again, and we've got these coordinates on the back. The first one-

David Rosenthal 2:21:30 GPS coordinates.

Ben Gilbert 2:21:31 GPS coordinates. The first one represents Kirkland House, where you wrote the first line of code for Facebook, and the second one is the Chase Center.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:21:39 Awesome.

Ben Gilbert 2:21:39 So thank you for joining us here tonight.

Mark Zuckerberg 2:21:40 Thank you for joining us. [audience applauding] Thanks. [upbeat music]

Ben Gilbert 2:22:20 Everyone, thank you so much.

David Rosenthal 2:22:22 Thank you so much.

Ben Gilbert 2:22:22 Huge thank you to Mark Zuckerberg.

David Rosenthal 2:22:23 Woo! [audience applauding]

Ben Gilbert 2:22:27 Thank you all for making something tonight, something that we will never, ever forget.

David Rosenthal 2:22:31 Ever.

Ben Gilbert 2:22:32 We have some thank yous.

David Rosenthal 2:22:33 We have a whole lot of thank yous. Making tonight happen has taken our entire summer. It's taken the entire summer of dozens of people. There were about 1,000 people working on tonight, and I just wanna give them all-

Ben Gilbert 2:22:46 Like, literally

David Rosenthal 2:22:46 ... a big hand. Thank you so much. [audience applauding]

Ben Gilbert 2:22:50 Woo!

David Rosenthal 2:22:50 Uh-

Ben Gilbert 2:22:51 Thank you to Mark and the entire Meta executive team that we got to talk to, to prep for this. Daniel and the Spotify team, uh, Emily and Lauren from Bloomberg and The Circuit, Jensen, Mylene, uh, Janine, everyone from the whole NVIDIA team, to Hermès for dressing us tonight-

David Rosenthal 2:23:05 Thank you, Hermès

Ben Gilbert 2:23:05 ... so we look quite presentable.

David Rosenthal 2:23:06 [laughing] Woo! [audience cheering]

Ben Gilbert 2:23:08 To our families and our lovely wives, thank you so much.

David Rosenthal 2:23:11 Most importantly-

Mike Taylor 2:23:13 Thank you!

David Rosenthal 2:23:13 Thank you to our wives.

Ben Gilbert 2:23:14 And of course, thank you to Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase, J.P. Morgan Payments, for making this whole evening possible. It's been a dream partnership. We are so grateful. Listeners,

Ben Gilbert 2:23:26 we will see you next time.

David Rosenthal 2:23:26 We'll see you next time.

Ben Gilbert 2:23:28 And thank you, Mike Taylor!

David Rosenthal 2:23:30 Woo. [audience cheering] [upbeat music]

Mike Taylor 2:23:41 Yeah! Ben and David, thank you so much. Yeah, yeah. Who got the truth? Yeah. Is it you, is it you, is it you? Who got the truth now, now? Is it you, is it you, is it you? Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth now? Everybody's talking, nobody's listening. These days, I feel lost, man, lost in opinions. Everybody's fighting, nobody's winning. Take me home, 'cause I don't know what's going on in the world I'm living. Everybody break, break, breaking up the dinner. Oh, baby. Through all the smoke, I need to know who got the truth. Hey, is it you, you, you? Yeah, who got the truth now, now? Is it you, is it you, is it you? Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth now? Not here for the cheap talk. It flip-flop like a seesaw. Not free under these laws. Now the world see what we saw. People wonder what to do now. It took a body cam to get the truth out. Hit the streets trying to move out. We got so much to lose now. Everybody break, break, breaking up the dinner. Oh, baby. Through all the smoke, I need to know who got the truth. Yeah. Is it you, you, you, you, you? Who got the truth now, now? Is it you, you, you? Sit me down, say it straight. Another story on the way. Who got the truth now? Who got the truth? Yeah. Acquired live from the Chase Center. [upbeat music] Who got the truth? Yeah. Yeah! Yeah, get it. Hey, hey. Let's get it.