Evan Spiegel: Turning Down a Billion Dollars

1. 0:00 – 2:01

   Edwin Land Influence

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      [upbeat music] Super excited to talk to you. Uh, we've been talking a bunch before we started recording. I did a podcast on you, like almost 10 years ago. It's episode, I think, 22 of Founders based on this book on How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars. The thing that stuck out to me the most that w- when I read that book, 'cause a lot of that story takes place when you're just like still in college, and you're talking about two of your entrepreneur heroes. And Steve Jobs, makes sense, my entrepreneur hero too. But you mentioned this guy named Edwin Land, and I'm reading this, I'm like, "How the fuck does a 21-year-old kid even know who Edwin Land is?" I've done like-

   2. SPSpeaker0:32

      [laughs]

   3. DSDavid Senra0:32

      ... 10 podcasts on him, read every single biography. Tell me what, like how you discovered Edwin Land, and what you admired about him.

   4. SPSpeaker0:38

      Yeah. I, I think, you know, he's so central to the history of photography, and so, you know, as we've set out to try to reinvent the camera and how people express themselves with the camera, we studied a lot, you know, about the evolution of the camera over time. I mean, one of the funny stories that we found out, the first selfie ever was taken by a guy named Robert Cornelius, and the c- my co-founder, Bobby, his name is Robert Cornelius Murphy. So like we [laughs]

   5. DSDavid Senra0:59

      [laughs]

   6. SPSpeaker0:59

      ... we found just like by un- unpacking like the history of, of photography, a lot of interesting, you know, similarities and parallels, and we've learned a ton from founders like Edwin Land, who transformed photography really by focusing on building amazing products, and thinking about, you know, how to make sure those products fit into people's lives and uplifted humanity. I think, you know, if you look at instant photography and the role that that played in people's lives, Edwin thought of the camera as something that was incredibly personal, right? And, and I think, um, as we've looked at the, the sort of trajectory of technology, over the long arc of time, technology gets more, and more, and more, and more personal. And so I think as technology gets more deeply interwoven in our lives, the founders who are thinking about making technology more personal, uh, and how it, you know, how the, how the things they're inventing like fit into and support humanity, I think that's a real advantage.

   7. DSDavid Senra1:49

      But how does a 21-year-old kid decide, 'cause you even said it in the book, that you're like, "I wanna build a company at the intersection of technology and liberal arts." What was happening that you were interested, like, in doing

2. 2:01 – 3:27

   Art Science Upbringing

   1. DSDavid Senra2:01

      that?

   2. SPSpeaker2:01

      Part of it was my background growing up. So I went to school, uh, in Santa Monica here, uh, you know, and, and, uh, at a, a school called Crossroads. Uh, Crossroads, you know, it's like the, the full name for Crossroads is actually Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. So it actually is, you know, the intersection of science and, and art together. And actually, a lot of what the school is focused on is developing empathy, building empathy, and they have this thing called council, for example, where you sit with about 12 other students and, you know, speak from the heart, uh, and take turns expressing yourself. And the school is really oriented on, on how you build strong relationships, build empathy with other people. And so I, I literally, I, I grew up at a school that was so focused on the intersection of art and science, but then also wrapped all of it in, you know, a commitment to humanity, to understanding one another, to building relationships, you know, to giving back. I mean, the school is very anchored in community service. Uh, our, our ki- three of our kids go there, uh, now, which is fun. Uh, some of the teachers are still there. But I think a lot of it was from my upbringing and that being a real focus. And then, you know, as I, as I got a bit older and I got, you know, into things like graphic design and I built my own computer, I was always sort of working at that intersection of, of art and, and technology.

   3. DSDavid Senra3:11

      Yeah. I think the perception of you is like you're like this cool, like, you know, designer, but you're actually self-described as like a nerd growing up.

   4. SPSpeaker3:19

      Yeah. [laughs] My wife and I always joke it's cool to be uncool. Uh, so I definitely don't think of myself as cool. Uh, and, and my background really was, you know,

3. 3:27 – 5:50

   Computers And Connection

   1. SPSpeaker3:27

      uh, in the computer lab. I mean, I- it's, it's one of the things that also inspired a lot of the work that we do because as I reflect on growing up, one of my frustrations or disappointments with the way that computers have been built over time is that they actually pulled us away from one another. So growing up, you know, during lunch, rather than being on the recess yard running around with my friends, I was so inspired by what computers could do, I was obsessed with computers, so I was in the computer lab all day long. And computers, I think, you know, whether it was the mainframe or the desktop, you know, have, have sort of pulled us away from one another, away from society, brought us indoors, right, into this very like single player, uh, experience. And so a lot of what I've thought about and a lot of what has inspired me is like how do we take all these extraordinary benefits that computing bring to the, brings to the world, but actually use it to support our connections with one another, our connections to the world. Can we build a computer that brings us outside, right? That we use together with friends. Because I think, you know, one of the side effects of my love of technology growing up was that it pulled me away from, you know, more social relationships or, or just running around playing on the schoolyard.

   2. DSDavid Senra4:28

      So wait, you had that philosophy even back then when you were in your 20s?

   3. SPSpeaker4:32

      Yeah. I mean, that, that's a lot of like what inspired how we thought about the evolution of Snapchat. I mean, even basic things like opening into the camera, right? It opens into your experience of the world, right? Not, you know, a feed of content from other people, not a, a messaging feed alerting you to what other people are sending you. It literally opens into your experience. And so from the very beginning, we've thought about like how do we ground your experience of computing, like in what it, what is right in front of you in the present moment, and inspire you to create from that.

   4. DSDavid Senra4:58

      Why do you think that the way computing was before it would just isolate you? So essentially you're just staring at a screen, getting materials pushed to you.

   5. SPSpeaker5:06

      I think the early versions of computers, just given their physical and technological constraints, right, like whether it was a mainframe you had to go to like a building to use-

   6. DSDavid Senra5:13

      Yeah

   7. SPSpeaker5:13

      ... the computer, right? Or a desktop that you had to keep plugged into the wall, I think those physical constraints pulled you out of whatever environment you wanted to be in. I think the laptop and the, and the mobile, you know, mobile phones are representative of this continuum of computing getting more personal. But I think today people feel like, you know, I think they're spending seven or eight hours on average staring at screens, they feel like screens are pulling them out of the moment or away from friends, or when they're at the dinner table, they're looking at a phone instead of connecting with one another. And so to me, there's this big question of like, how do we get all these amazing benefits of computing, but in a way that actually connect us with one another, connect us to the outdoors, connect us to the world? Um, and that's so much of what we're

4. 5:50 – 9:30

   Smartphone Addiction Lens

   1. SPSpeaker5:50

      working on.

   2. DSDavid Senra5:50

      If you like just came to, if you were an alien, you came to Earth, I remember like walking, um, like to pick up my daughter from school, you could either sit in the car line, right, or you could get out and like pick them up. And this is like many years ago. And so I had to, I was like, "I'm gonna walk," and I pass by 30 cars, and every single person in the line waiting to pick up their kid was staring at the phoneI'm like, that's not a-- Like, that's an addiction. Like, th-that is a crazy thing. I was walking on the beach here the other day. This lady almost ran into me. This is a beautiful freaking beach, and she almost ran into me because she was looking at the phone. I was like, "There's mountains and the Pacific Ocean here. What are you doing?" That's a crazy thing to do. Is there anything else from Edwin Land that, like, you-- that inspired you or that you think you, like, you used either in the beginning of Snap or now?

   3. SPSpeaker6:35

      Before we jump into Edwin, two things you said-

   4. DSDavid Senra6:37

      Yeah

   5. SPSpeaker6:37

      ... just, like, really inspired, uh, inspired me. The first was, like, uh, school drop-off. Like, our kids insist that I walk them in every day. [laughs]

   6. DSDavid Senra6:43

      [laughs]

   7. SPSpeaker6:43

      So I'm like, I'm used to doing the long walk in-

   8. DSDavid Senra6:45

      Yeah

   9. SPSpeaker6:45

      ... while everyone's in the, in the carpool line. But I think to your point, what's fun about that is you get to connect with everyone and say hi-

   10. DSDavid Senra6:50

       Yeah

   11. SPSpeaker6:50

       ... to, you know, other parents and teachers and, uh, you know, as I mentioned, some of the teachers that actually taught me when I, when I was there.

   12. DSDavid Senra6:55

       Yeah.

   13. SPSpeaker6:56

       But the second thing you said, which, which is so funny, my daydreaming right now, especially as we think about glasses and the future of computing, is really like, what if aliens are watching Earth right now and they're, like, terrified that smartphones have, like, taken over humanity? That, like, we're spending all day long, like, caring for these things and, like, plugging them in and, like, tending to them and, like, our lives are all oriented around-

   14. DSDavid Senra7:15

       Yeah

   15. SPSpeaker7:15

       ... like, these little screens. Um, and, like, what would aliens do? And so, like, part of my imagination has been like, what if aliens are sending specs, sending these glasses to save people from, uh, you know, their lives that I think have become so oriented around, around screens? So it's funny that you-- It's funny you mention that. I love, I love thinking about that, like the alien perspective-

   16. DSDavid Senra7:33

       [laughs]

   17. SPSpeaker7:33

       ... of, of, uh, humanity right now. I think for, for Edwin Land, I mean, there's a couple other things that, like, really stood out to me. One, he was a statesman, right? And, like, behind the scenes, people really relied on his advice, and he gave it freely. I mean, he was a, a big supporter of the US government, for example, was very thoughtful behind the scenes in providing advice to the US government, including technological advice. And, and so I like that he had a commitment beyond just, like, you know, his customers and creativity and these sorts of things. He really wanted to participate in building a better world, um, and, and took that really seriously. And then I think if you look at a lot of his, um, you know, a, a lot of the, the investments he made around his laboratories and around his innovation, he was, he was famous actually, and, and back then this was quite unique, famous for uplifting women in those research roles, right? And I think, like, he was a real champion of talent. He saw talent very clearly. Um, you know, and I think, uh, you know, at a time when people weren't, weren't as focused on that, weren't investing as much in that, he was really focused on uplifting the best possible talent, regardless of folks' background.

   18. DSDavid Senra8:35

       I was just on stage at an event with my friend Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp. When I looked over to my right, I noticed that on the sleeve of Eric's jacket it said, "We win when our customers win." Ramp is the presenting sponsor of this podcast, and the way that Ramp helps their customers win is by helping you save time, save money, and grow revenue. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by five percent. The median company running on Ramp also grows their revenue by sixteen percent. So when you're running your business on Ramp and your competitors are not, you have a massive competitive advantage that compounds over time. Ramp is the only all-in-one platform designed to make your finance team faster and happier. Many of the top CEOs and founders that I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp, and you should too. Go to ramp.com today to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. That is ramp.com.

5. 9:30 – 13:15

   Building For Humanity

   1. DSDavid Senra9:30

      We're both in LA. We both kind of avoid San Francisco.

   2. SPSpeaker9:35

      [laughs]

   3. DSDavid Senra9:35

      And we were talking, it's like the people I admire the most, like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was trying to create technology that enhanced humanity. Some of these weirdos in San Francisco are creating tech, technology to eliminate humanity. Why is it so important to, for you to, to, to build technology that actually enhances humanity?

   4. SPSpeaker9:54

      [sighs] Well, I, I, I think f- I think fundamentally, like, my source of inspiration is humanity, right? Like, I'm inspired by other people. I'm inspired by, you know, the extraordinary world that humans have, have created. I'm inspired by the relationships between people and my relationships with other people. And so, so much of what motivates me and animates what I like to do is about making people's lives better, right, and solving their, their problems. I mean, that's... You know, we, we all get to choose what we do, and we get up in the morning. Like, that's, that's what I like to do and what I wanna, wanna contribute to the world. And I think, you know, the, the challenging thing, I think, is, you know, sometimes when you're working on new technology, it's so exciting and inspiring that you can lose focus on its impact on, on people. And I think we try to start with people, right, and really listen to people and what they respond to, how they're feeling about the products they're using. I mean, that's, that's one of the... You know, that was the core inspiration of, of Stories, right? Was, you know, people were saying, "Why is my social media feed in reverse chronological order? Why is it permanent? Why am I feeling judged all the time, you know, by how many likes or comments I have?" That made us realize, like, the way that people have told stories forever, right, is in chronological order. Uh, they're not, you know, permanently saved forever and publicly judged and liked and that sort of thing. And so it was just very easy for us to, you know, develop a, you know, a product where, you know, everything, all the images and videos were in chronological order. They deleted after twenty-four hours. You could start your day fresh the next day. Uh, they didn't have these likes and comments which opened up this whole new world of self-expression, right? Because instead of just trying to post what would look pretty or popular or, or perfect, people were sharing this whole range of human emotion. So, so much of what we do and what we're inspired by is just, you know, by the way people feel, what they share with us, and, and really this desire to help people build stronger relationships with one another.

   5. DSDavid Senra11:42

      I read this book about you, the one I did the episode on, you know, eight years ago. I think it's, like, how to turn down a billion dollars or something. It says something funny in, in the-- There's a quote from you in the book. You're like, "Whoever invented the internet, why did they decide to, to make everything permanent?" [laughs] It's completely opposite. It's like the-- This conversation, we happen to be recording it, but the conversation we just had earlier, it's like, that wasn't recorded. It was just a moment in time. We'll have memories of it, like inter- different interpretations of it, but then we just move on to the next.

   6. SPSpeaker12:05

      I think that's a really good example of the way technology ends up shaping human behavior. So if we're not thoughtful enough about the technology we're building, it can have unintended consequences. SoI- in this case, you know, one of the reasons why everything was saved forever is because hard drives, disk-based hard drives, right, were expensive to write over. And so it was actually more expensive to go back and write over something enough to delete it than it was to just leave it there and write over it again maybe sometime in the future when you wanna save something new. And so no one was thinking about, you know, how to, y- how to erase things because it was just much easier to leave it there, uh, and, you know, maybe, maybe write over it when you had something new to save. And so a lot of the early work we even did with Snapchat was asking about how we can be certain that everything is deleted, right, and how we can make sure, uh, that everything is being written over because that wasn't a consideration, uh, for a really long time.

   7. DSDavid Senra12:53

      So in a very Edwin Land-ian, um, way, you seem to, like, observe what everybody's doing, and you have, like, this natural incana- inclination to, like, go your own path. But you had it at the very beginning. How old were you when you started Peekaboo, which turns into Snapchat?

   8. SPSpeaker13:09

      I think I was probably, I think, 20.

   9. DSDavid Senra13:11

      Where did this, this desire to, like, do something different come from?

6. 13:15 – 17:02

   From Internships To Snapchat

   1. SPSpeaker13:15

      My dad was always pushing me to get a job when I was younger. Like, if I was ever around the house, he'd be like, "What are you doing here? Like, get a job," right? So I interned, uh, at Red Bull, for example. I interned at Abraxas Bioscience. I mean, this was back in the day when we were racking GPUs to do, like, early-stage drug discovery. I mean, that was, like, my first experience with GPUs, like, however many... You know, when I was in high school. Um, you know, and then I, uh, uh, I had, I had a couple other really cool internships. But, but really my first, like, more serious job was working at Intuit, um, and working on this service called TextWeb, which was, uh, basically designed to help people with, um, touch, like, touchpad, uh, s- mobile phones build little web, micro websites essentially and access them, uh, primarily in, in India at the time. Um, and so I had learned all these, you know, really interesting things about business during these internships, but fundamentally, I didn't really wanna have a boss. [laughs] But until I saw how possible it was to build something amazing, like with TextWeb, I think there was like three of us on the team. I, I, you know, I did the least out of, [laughs] out of the team members. But the, the three of us on the team or, or four of us on the team were actually able to, like, build and launch a service in India, right? I was like, wow. Like, it's actually a lot easier, uh, than I thought to build things and to, to create things that can reach, you know, millions of, millions of people. And so that really inspired me. And simultaneously, I, you know, I lived across the hall from Bobby, who I ended up starting, uh, Peekaboo, Snapchat with. Um, and he also... You know, he, he had a job at the time too, and, and we both just loved building things. So we started working on this thing called Future Freshman, which was designed to help people get into college. It was, like, a total failure, but we had loved working together.

   2. DSDavid Senra14:51

      This is the important part. Can you tell, say why, 'cause I think you took an idea from there for your next, uh, business, why it failed?

   3. SPSpeaker14:58

      Yeah. The... I mean, there were a number of reasons why it failed. I think, first of all, we, we really focused on building the perfect product for way too long before we got feedback. So, you know, I think we worked for like 18 months to build this perfect, full-featured product, which was, like, in direct contravention to, like, how I was always taught to build things, right? Which is, like, build a prototype, build an MVP, get it in front of people, learn as quickly as possible. Um, but we had s- we had spent all this time building this, like, perfect piece of software, and we hadn't thought enough about distribution. And so while we'd built this great piece of software, our competitor at the time, called Naviance, which I think still today is probably the leader in, like, this college application sort of software world, they had secured distribution through all the different, uh, college counselors, right? So, like, what piece of software are you gonna choose to help your kid get into college, the one recommended by the college counselors or the one, you know, from two kids at, at Stanford? I mean, I think it's a pretty easy, it's a pretty easy choice. So we just saw very early that we had no distribution advantage and, you know, even if we loved our software, that people weren't gonna use it, um, because we didn't really have a scalable way to get it in people's hands. And so around that time when we saw the emergence of the App Store on iPhone and all this sort of thing, it was very clear that that was the distribution channel that we could really use and benefit from. Um, but that we also needed to build things that we could build quickly, things that we really were gonna use together with our friends so that we could be the first early customers. Um, and ultimately, ultimately, Peekaboo and, and Snapchat, uh, you know, um, represented that.

   4. DSDavid Senra16:25

      Yeah, 'cause in the book you talked about, "We built a product, no one used it." [laughs]

   5. SPSpeaker16:28

      [laughs] It's, like... It's tough when no one uses it.

   6. DSDavid Senra16:30

      Yeah.

   7. SPSpeaker16:30

      Except my mom, so.

   8. DSDavid Senra16:31

      [laughs] Move on to the next thing. So is Peekaboo, which turns, obviously Snapchat, was that-- was there anything in between those two, or was it-

   9. SPSpeaker16:39

      There were a couple other, like, you know, failed sort of, uh, experiments, I would say, in between that. We were playing around with, like, different ideas for sort of like more private, like, I wouldn't say social networks, but more private, like, groups and social sharing and things like that, you know? But nothing, nothing, uh, that really worked for-

   10. DSDavid Senra16:57

       But it seemed like it was a direct counter to the existing social networks at the time.

7. 17:02 – 18:38

   Snapchat vs. Social Media

   1. SPSpeaker17:02

      Yeah, I mean, it, it... The, the problem that we were experiencing was that, you know, the way that everyone was socializing at the time on, on Facebook, and I think Instagram was sort of just getting started at the time, but the way that everyone was socializing on Facebook was like a giant popularity contest, so it wasn't fun, right? I mean, everyone was competing for how many friends they had, how many likes they had. Everything was about pretty photos. And in college, like, we, we wanted to have fun with our friends, but the alternatives, you know, at the time with text messaging, for example, were so clunky. I mean, if... Sending an... People forget, like, sending an image via text message back then took like a minute, two minutes, right? Like, to send a MMS, uh, you know, it was cra- it was crazy. And so part of the core invention of Snapchat was actually just making it really fast to send images, you know, which, which made a huge difference in people's ability to use images to communicate. Because back then, you know, images were for documenting things. They were for saving memories forever, right? And the reason why, like, photography has exploded and the... You know, I, I think there are more, there are more selfies taken on Snapchat than on iPhone in total, right? Which is a crazy stat. Um, but that's because people are using images to communicate. And so, like, we, we, you know, in, in inventing Snapchat in response to kinda this documentary culture around photography and this feeling of public and public pressure about the way that people were expressing themselves and communicating onlineSnapchat really es- especially because the camera was on the smartphone, transformed the way that people communicate by allowing them to communicate with images.

   2. DSDavid Senra18:30

      So did you think you were building a messaging app or a social network?

   3. SPSpeaker18:33

      A mess- I mean, it's a, it's, it's a messaging service. We, we've-

   4. DSDavid Senra18:35

      But even back then.

   5. SPSpeaker18:36

      Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

   6. DSDavid Senra18:37

      You thought about it as a messaging

8. 18:38 – 22:22

   Stories And Vertical Video

   1. DSDavid Senra18:38

      app.

   2. SPSpeaker18:38

      Yeah. And we talked... I mean, it, it only had messaging for the longest time until we introduced Stories. I mean, it was only a messaging.

   3. DSDavid Senra18:44

      Stories has, like, gotta be one of the best inventions ever in terms of, like, the apps that we use. Like, how... I mean, now, obviously everybody... Like, it's on every single app. Like, you, you were the first one to come up with that, and it's... I think there's, like, Stories on LinkedIn and, like, Pinterest or some shit now. [laughs] Like, it's just places they shouldn't be, it's there.

   4. SPSpeaker19:02

      Going back to, to the early days of the smartphone, if you remember, you know, Apple was really talking about, like, "Hey, when you're gonna watch video on your, your iPhone, you're gonna turn the vide- uh, the, the phone sideways, right, and watch horizontal video." And a lot of the, you know, in the, the first year, you know, several years of, of Snapchat, almost all video online was, like, horizontal video in the feed. And so when we came out with vertical video and we said, "No, we think everyone's gonna watch video the same way they hold their phone all day long, right, vertically," where people were like, "What?" You know, we had to... We spent, you know, a ton of money at back, back then with, without AI, right? Like, just helping advertisers recut their video to make it vertical, and we had to convince them, showing them that, like, the completion rate was nine times higher when they used vertical video instead of these little, like, postage stamp size horizontal videos. But for us, like, it was just obvious, right? That people were gonna wanna watch video the same way they hold their ha- their, their phone. They don't wanna turn their phone to, to, to watch video.

   5. DSDavid Senra19:57

      But do you see what I keep trying to get to? And, like, this is not normal though. Like, you, you, you're very comfortable. I- I'm trying to tr- figure out... 'Cause, like, the whole point of me having these conversations, like, this entire show is just, like, who am I intensely interested in talking to? And there's something interesting, like, I'm, I still don't understand. Where the hell did this, like, confidence in your own judgment and disregard for the need to conform come from? 'Cause it's obviously there, still there today. Like, let me give you some background. I remember the first, uh, version of Spectacles, the ones you, you bought in a, uh, in a vending machine. I bought them.

   6. SPSpeaker20:33

      [laughs]

   7. DSDavid Senra20:33

      I wanted them so badly, and you were out of stock. I bought the, like, the ugly fucking blue color.

   8. SPSpeaker20:37

      [laughs]

   9. DSDavid Senra20:38

      I did not want bright blue fucking glasses. I'm a grown-ass man.

   10. SPSpeaker20:41

       [laughs]

   11. DSDavid Senra20:42

       But I was like, "These are... This is so weird. This is so interesting." And you were, like, 10 years ahead of everybody else. Where the hell does that come from?

   12. SPSpeaker20:52

       You know, I, I'm not su- I'm not sure exactly. You know, I think, like, a lot of this stuff just, like, really appears obvious to me and to us, right? Like, it, it's... It was obvious to me that, you know, if you looked at the evolution of computing, that, like, holding this tiny little screen in your hands was not the future of computers. Like, it makes absolutely no sense, especially for humans that wanna, like, live and work hands-free, right? They wanna be able to see one another and, like, interact with the world. And so I think when, like, things like that just seem so, just seem so obvious. And, and we're fortunate, right, to be able to invest consistently behind that vision because I think, like, the hard part is not necessarily seeing what the future could look like. I think a lot of people have different visions for the future. I think the thing that's been maybe different about Snap or Snapchat is, like, our determination and consistency in pursuing that vision. I mean, with Stories, right, like, the, you know, the first six months of Stories, no one used it. I mean, I remember sitting in a board meeting, and we were like, "We think Stories is gonna be a big thing." You know what I mean? Like, "This is the... Th- you know, we think this is, like, the future of how people are gonna, you know, wanna share, uh, you know, on internet services on Snapchat." And the board's like, "Well, no one's using it," you know? And we're like, "Okay, but it's new, so it's gonna take time. So, like, let's give people time to discover it, to learn about the feature, et cetera." And then, you know, maybe by the next board meeting or the one after that, like, it was growing super rapidly. So I think, you know, the, the hard part is not necessarily having the vision for the future, uh, and, and oftentimes it just seems very obvious. The, the hard part is delivering it, right? Getting there.

9. 22:22 – 28:34

   Uncompromising Kind Culture

   1. DSDavid Senra22:22

      Were you disagreeable when you were a kid?

   2. SPSpeaker22:25

      I think so, probably.

   3. DSDavid Senra22:27

      If I ask him, the people you have working with you, "Is Evan disagreeable?" Would they say yes? [laughs]

   4. SPSpeaker22:32

      Strong opinions, loosely held. No, I think, um, I, yeah, I, I think, uh, like, I, I think I've always felt comfortable seeing something differently or advocating for something different.

   5. DSDavid Senra22:43

      Would people that work with you describe you as uncompromising?

   6. SPSpeaker22:48

      I think so, yeah.

   7. DSDavid Senra22:48

      Okay. There's a Steve Jobs element. [laughs]

   8. SPSpeaker22:51

      Yeah, but, but at the same time, like, we've tried to build a really different culture because, like, one of my, one of my... You know, that, you've mentioned the Walter Isen- Isakson book. Like, that book broke my heart, right? Because I think that that book, you know, that book essentially called Steve a bad father, which I thought was not, not only unfair, but it also, you know, sort of made the case that, like, Steve believed that, like, you could only achieve these sorts of things if you were, you know, uncompromising, but uncompromising with a, a taste of mean-

   9. DSDavid Senra23:23

      Mm-hmm

   10. SPSpeaker23:23

       ... essentially. And for me, watching Steve and seeing how people spoke about him, and, you know, there, there are plenty of stories of, you know, folks who felt really close to Steve and felt really inspired by Steve, and also stories of people who felt like Steve was mean, right? And my big question to our team was, like, could we achieve something really extraordinary? Could we build a culture that was incredibly creative, but at the same time is kind, right? So when, with our three values, it's kind, smart, creative, and kind is the first one for a reason. And what we really wanted to do was create a culture that's uncompromising, but at the same time very kind and supportive because that, we think that that is, you know, the best sort of and most fertile ground for creativity. If people feel afraid, it's very, very hard to be creative. I mean, fear is almost like the, the opposite of, of, of creativity.

   11. DSDavid Senra24:12

       There's actually... Ha- did you ever read Ed Catmull, the founder of Pixar, his, his autobiography called Creativity?

   12. SPSpeaker24:17

       No, I always wanted to. I haven't, no.

   13. DSDavid Senra24:18

       Okay, that's another book.

   14. SPSpeaker24:19

       Okay.

   15. DSDavid Senra24:19

       I just gave you one book.

   16. SPSpeaker24:20

       Okay.

   17. DSDavid Senra24:20

       I'll give you another one. But you can... Uh, w- Ed, Ed, Ed's actually doing the show, and I can't wait to talk to him.

   18. SPSpeaker24:24

       Cool. Yeah.

   19. DSDavid Senra24:24

       'Cause he worked for Steve Jobs, or worked with Steve Jobs, longer, uh, c- more consecutive years than anybody else. I think they worked together for, like, 24 years.I would just buy the book today and just skip to the end. There's a, like, a twenty-page afterword called The Steve We Knew, and his whole point after the Isaacson book came out, he's like, "He wasn't... That's not the Steve I knew." And they-- Well, his point was that in the early in his career, there was a lot of these stories. Yes, he was like that, but he learned and evolved in how to be a better leader. And so in that, like, twenty-page afterword, Ed is telling the story of how he evolved over time. Fucking forty-five-year-old Steve Jobs is not, of course, not gonna be the same as twenty-one-year-old Steve Jobs.

   20. SPSpeaker25:00

       [laughs]

   21. DSDavid Senra25:00

       So I think that's, like, a very important point to make. How do you reconcile though, because, like, there's a lot of people that are famous about this like, uh, uh, Elon. I just heard-- Somebody was telling me a story. Michael Moritz from Sequoia said the same thing. That, like, you actually-- Camaraderie is dangerous and kindness is dangerous for your teammates because you can't deliver honest feedback and, like, tell them if their work isn't up to par or whatever. How do you, how do you balance that? Like, be kind but also honest if the quality of the work isn't there?

   22. SPSpeaker25:29

       Well, I think there's a big difference between kind and nice.

   23. DSDavid Senra25:31

       Okay. Explain.

   24. SPSpeaker25:32

       Huge difference. When you're being kind, it means you really want the best for somebody, right? And sometimes that means a tough conversation. Sometimes that means, this means saying, "We're just not there yet on this project we're working on." Or, "Hey, the way that you deliver that, like, really isn't working," or whatever it is. Nice is about making people feel good, right? Kind is about wanting the best for them. And so I think for us, our culture is oriented around kindness, which is a much deeper expression of care for somebody else and involves tough conversations. One of the great things about having a best friend or, you know, a, a partner is that they're honest with you, right, about your shortcomings and help you evolve and make you better, and that comes from lo- a place of love, right? And so I think kindness in, in many ways is essential because it allows people to hear that feedback. So one of the big problems I think, um, you know, in a more hostile work environment is people are more resistant to feedback because they don't hear it coming from that positive place of wanting you to grow and develop. And I think that expression of kindness for us is, is one of the things that helps people grow fast, right? And ultimately, at a company like Snap, our goal is just help people grow as fast as humanly [laughs] possible, um, you know, so that we can meet the needs of our customers and evolve our business, et cetera.

   25. DSDavid Senra26:43

       Who plays that role for you? Who tells you the truth?

   26. SPSpeaker26:46

       My wife is, uh, brutally honest-

   27. DSDavid Senra26:49

       [laughs]

   28. SPSpeaker26:49

       ... in a very loving way, uh, in a very loving way, and it's super important. But I also... You know, I, I grew up with... Uh, and one of the things I love about being in LA is a lot of my high school buddies are here, right? So I have friends who, you know, I've grown up with, who've always been real with me, and, you know, that's a huge benefit of being here in LA because when I get to hang out with my friends and talk to them about what I'm going through or what's going on, like, I can count on them [laughs] you know, to, to be honest.

   29. DSDavid Senra27:15

       I think of, like, what Charlie Munger said. He says, "Anybody engaged in complex work," this is a paraphrase of his quote. "Anybody engaged in complex work, uh, it's very useful to find somebody to help organize your thoughts with." And I, I think he was referencing really, you know, the, the, the role he played with Buffett where, you know, Buffett was the main guy, obviously was a hundred times richer than, than Charlie, but Buffett knew that Munger was special, and he let Munger shape his mind. Do you have anybody like that? Not like a... High school friends are different. Like, they were more like peers or c- have, like, an understanding. You have a very unique lived experience for somebody that's, you know, still in their mid-thirties.

   30. SPSpeaker27:48

       Yeah. I think, you know, Bobby, who's my co-founder, has really been that for me. Um, and I think we approach the world differently and see the world differently, so I think that's really valuable. But, but I would say, like, I rely on our leadership team and on, and broadly our company to help me do that. I mean, that's, that's the fun part about innovating, is it's a dialogue, right? It's not like issuing commands, like, "Let's go build this." It's like having a, a real intense debate and dialogue about what's best for our customer and what we should do, what we should prioritize. So I think, like, for me, it would be a real shame if I only got that from... You know, maybe if it was Charlie Munger, I'd feel differently, you know?
10. 28:34 – 37:38

    Snap Leadership And Design

    1. SPSpeaker28:34

       hugely valuable.

    2. DSDavid Senra28:34

       What does the leadership team look like?

    3. SPSpeaker28:36

       You know, it's, it's probably on, on, like, the, the Snapchat side, it's, like, roughly ten, ten or so people and, like, you know, it's, it's funny, even in the architecture of our building, right? Like, we, we have a circle table, right, uh, for a reason. I really like everyone to sit around a circle and have a dialogue where we're all talking from an equal position around that table, right? So, like, that, like, it, it's that sort of mentality where, like, everyone is expected to contribute, everyone has an equal seat around the table, that you get that sort of really helpful dialogue.

    4. DSDavid Senra29:06

       Are these people that started at Snap and, like, got through the ranks? Are they former founders? The reason I ask you is 'cause one of the most interesting, um, ideas or surprising ideas I've had, uh, so far in having these conversations is I talked to Tobi Lütke, the founder of Shopify, which was just like that, that conversation blew my mind the way this guy thinks. And he was going through a very difficult time, and he didn't know what to do, and he actually tells the story on the podcast, I think, where he's like he went to the Slack channel, and they had, like, former founders, and he's just like, "I need your help." And he essentially built, very much like Rockefeller did, like, built an, like the team around him is just founders. Is that what yours look like? Is it people that you po- like, poach from other companies? Like, what, w- what does this look like?

    5. SPSpeaker29:45

       I would say it's incredibly diverse set of backgrounds. Some folks are from other companies. Some folks, you know, have, have spent their entire career at Snap, you know, more or less. Uh, some, you know, some folks around the table are, are founders, right, who do, who joined Snap. So, uh, there, there isn't, like, a one, you know, one-size-fits-all model. I think we're really fortunate to draw from lots of different backgrounds.

    6. DSDavid Senra30:07

       Is there a lot of turnover?

    7. SPSpeaker30:08

       I would say at points in Snap's history, there has been a lot of turnover. Uh, not currently. I mean, uh, knock on wood. Um, but the business changed so quickly, right? I mean, there were periods of time when we went from, you know, having 100 people to over 1,000 people in, like, 18 months, right? And, like, the skill sets that... Like, we, we were slow to build what we needed to support, um, uh-You know, that scale of a team. And back then, there weren't the AI tools that are available today that make a lot of those things easier, right, um, to operate at that, at that scale and that quickly. But yeah, there are periods where the company has just changed a lot, and it's required a different skill set. And during those periods of intense change, we have seen turnover. I mean, sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional, because folks, you know, maybe are misaligned with where we're trying to take the company.

    8. DSDavid Senra30:53

       Yeah. The reason I ask, because I think conversations like these, like the other podcast, Founders podcast that I'm doing, I think it's important for entrepreneurs to realize, like, there's not like one right way to do things. Toby told me, he's like, "There's like a hu- there's probably a hundred right answers here. You gotta do the one that's best for you." And so I'm just curious, like, do you have a philosophy on, like, turning over the, the top people of the team? Because, like, if you look at, like, Larry Ellison, you read biographies of him, he thought the fact that he kept the core product team, the core product team on Oracle together for like multiple decades was a huge advantage. His person he mentors, if you ask Elon who he admires, he says Larry Ellison. He's like, "I want fresh blood," [chuckles] I think is the term, over and over again. Do you have a-

    9. SPSpeaker31:30

       Hmm

    10. DSDavid Senra31:30

        ... an opinion here?

    11. SPSpeaker31:31

        I think it's different in different parts of the organization. You know, if you look at the core, like the core product and design team, that's a very small team. I mean, I think it's like currently like nine people. It usually fluctuates between like eight and twelve people, um, at any given time. Many of the folks on that team have been at the company for an incredibly long period of time, and they usually join out of school, like a right out of high school, uh, or sorry, right out of college. I don't think we've had-- We've had some interns, but no one joined right out, out of high school. They typically join right out of college. And, you know, we spend a huge amount of time investing in their growth and building things together and, and so I think it's really important, uh, to have that, you know, longevity because those are folks who really understand how we build products, uh, at, at Snap, and that's something that like I think really has to be learned. I, I haven't found anyone who'd just been able to, like, enter Snap and, you know, uh, and... I mean, certainly folks can contribute right away, but it takes time to learn, you know, what makes Snap.

    12. DSDavid Senra32:26

        Say, say more about that. That's interesting. Why does it take so long?

    13. SPSpeaker32:29

        Because ultimately, like, [sighs] I think the way that we build products at Snapchat is just fundamentally different than anywhere else in the, in the world. And so I've yet to see someone come into Snapchat with all the skills and all the understanding necessary to be able to, like, really deliver value in that role. The closest we come are probably folks out of art school because they're used to such a rapid iteration process and are used to making things in extremely high volume, and so they are a good fit for the d- design culture at Snap, which is really about very rapid idea generation and creation. I mean, every week I'm with our design team for several hours, and we're just looking at new work. I mean, new work every week, hundreds of ideas, right? Hundreds of concepts, you know, iteration, et cetera, and really go, you know, kind of together as a group working through like a critique process. And so I think, um, you know, the art school folks are prob-- adapt the easiest to that culture because they're used to such a rapid velocity of work, but at the same time, we're really trying to overlay that deep empathy for people, right? That deep connection with how our community feels and what they're looking for. Um, you know, we're, we're also trying to cultivate like a, a very positive and fun, uh, environment around that. Like, we're laughing half the time in these design meetings, right? And, and playing around with ideas. And I think creativity can really thrive in that environment of like levity and fun. Um, and so I think that combination and that velocity of, of creativity and product development is something that people have to adapt to typically when they come to Snapchat.

    14. DSDavid Senra34:11

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    15. SPSpeaker35:43

        You would just be looking at a ton of work. I mean, we would just be talking through a r- you know, a huge volume of ideas across the service or maybe even ideas for new services and that sort of thing, um, for a couple hours.

    16. DSDavid Senra35:56

        These last a couple hours.

    17. SPSpeaker35:57

        Yeah.

    18. DSDavid Senra35:57

        You're going over... When you say volume, like can-- like hundreds of ideas?

    19. SPSpeaker36:01

        Yeah. Yeah, easily. Yeah.

    20. DSDavid Senra36:02

        In a few hours?

    21. SPSpeaker36:03

        Yeah, yeah.

    22. DSDavid Senra36:04

        And are you like leading this discussion? Like how do-- W-what-

    23. SPSpeaker36:07

        Yeah, we're all, but we're all contributing, batting stuff around, la- you know what I mean? Laughing and iterating and, you know.

    24. DSDavid Senra36:12

        Why is the volume part so important?

    25. SPSpeaker36:14

        Because the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. It is critical. And the most toxic thing you can have is people attached to, attached to an idea instead of constantly thinking about i- like ideas are, are free, right? There should be an, a zillion of them, and if we can do that and create that culture where there's like just a, an endless flow of ideas, you're very lucky. You're, you're, you're, you're much more likelyTo get lucky by, by finding good ones.

    26. DSDavid Senra36:42

        So how many of these do users of Snap ever see?

    27. SPSpeaker36:47

        A tiny, tiny frac-- I mean, less than one percent probably. Maybe one percent.

    28. DSDavid Senra36:52

        And what's the process? Like, comes up, like, how soon from a, it come, and it comes, an idea comes up in the meeting to you like it, it gets in front of one of your users.

    29. SPSpeaker37:03

        Well, now that's happening incredibly quickly because designers can ship code with, you know, all these new AI tools. So the whole world of design is changing, I think, very rapidly because now, you know, many of our designers are just empowered. If, if they've got something, we think it's cool, let's, you know, let's get it in the app and test it, like, immediately. So I think design to code is happening way faster than ever before.

    30. DSDavid Senra37:25

        So there's an intense design culture at Snap. There always has been. Do you describe yourself as a designer?
11. 37:38 – 41:57

    AI Supercharges Snap

    1. DSDavid Senra37:38

       what you think AI will do to a company like your, yours where it seems to be like a design first culture.

    2. SPSpeaker37:44

       I think AI is, like, probably the best thing that's ever happened to, to Snapchat, which is great. Um, I think the reason why is because we've always had a ton of ideas and a deep connection with our community and our customer, but we've always had very limited resources, and we're up against monopolistic companies. And so we've essentially been engaged in, like, trench warfare with monopolies for fifteen years, right? Uh, and I think what's so funny, like, you know, you look at the last fifteen years, we learned very, very early on that there's no moat in software, which was an incredibly powerful lesson, right? All of our ideas, the things that we invent, people just try to copy right away, and it's easy to do that with software. But what's fascinating about the world today is that it has never been easier, right? I mean, almost instantly you can copy nearly any piece of software. And so because we learned that lesson very early on, we've evolved our business to really focus on the things that are hard to copy, right? A network effects business of people communicating with one another. These platforms, right, like our augmented reality platform or our content ecosystem that are not just pieces of software that you can, you know, easily copy, but ecosystems of people communicating with one another, or creators making content that people are watching, or people building augmented reality experiences, all of those sorts of things are very hard to copy. So from, you know, the, over the last fifteen years, we've really honed our business perspective for this moment, right? Because we saw how easy it was to copy software. So in terms of our business and the way it meets our customers, I think we are well positioned, uh, for the huge transformation that's happening. At the same time, our core business is software development, so we're able to get a lot of the benefits of the extraordinary transformation in software development without the same risk to our core business because we build network effects over time and, and, uh, you know, thought about how to position ourselves, um, for, for this, uh, this moment. So AI is changing every single team at Snap. It's changing the way that everything gets done at Snap. And because our core business is software development, I mean, i-in the last three months, there's been profound change. But to imagine, I mean, eighteen months from now, the way that Snap operates will be completely different than the way it operated last year.

    3. DSDavid Senra39:53

       There's so many founders, and I don't know how many-- almost none of them are saying this on the record-

    4. SPSpeaker39:56

       [laughs]

    5. DSDavid Senra39:57

       ... but they tell me, they're like, "I'm trying to figure out... I should not be running my company anymore. I'm trying to figure out how to build AI to run my company." They are trying to literally replace themselves. They're like, "They're-- it's just gonna be so much better than I am at doing this. It should be doing this. I should not be doing this."

    6. SPSpeaker40:13

       I think that's certainly true in terms of, like, the operational lift. But at the same time, right, like, that, the vision and creativity and connection to your customer has never been more important. And so I think if anything, it's gonna enable founders to run teams that are much more operationally effective and require less of their time to operate the business and instead hopefully, you know, pivot more time towards that sort of creativity and ideation and, you know, meeting customers where they're at.

    7. DSDavid Senra40:39

       What's one of the most surprising ways that AI has changed how Snap operates internally?

    8. SPSpeaker40:45

       I, I don't necessarily think this is, like, a surprise per se, but I do think, you know, and I feel like this is old news 'cause everyone in the world has been saying it, but, like, the change in how software is written since the beginning of this year is profound for... Our core business is writing software. And now, uh, that these models are good enough to write, you know, more and more complex pieces of software on their own, like, the job of a software engineer at Snap is, like, profoundly and forever changed, right? And I think the more that we can embrace that and, you know, make that easier and teach people how to do that really effectively, like, it's just transformational for, for our core business because, as I mentioned, like, we have been up against companies who don't have new ideas but have infinite resources, right? And we've got lots of new ideas, but no-- but very limited resources, and that's been a real challenge. And so it's been hard to see a path forward for Snap up against these giants without AI tools. And now with AI tools, you're like, wow, we could basically have an infinite number of engineering resources? Like, that's a pretty profound change for, for Snap. And the rate at which that, I, I guess I would say the rate at which that has happened ha-has surprised me.

    9. DSDavid Senra41:56

       You said something very

12. 41:57 – 42:31

    No Moat In Software

    1. DSDavid Senra41:57

       interesting. You said you realized a long time ago that software has no moat. The experience that taught you that lesson, was it Stories?

    2. SPSpeaker42:05

       No, the first time that, that, the, the big sort of wake-up call was when, uh, you know, Facebook at the time carbon copied Snapchat to make Poke. Do you remember this?

    3. DSDavid Senra42:15

       Yes.

    4. SPSpeaker42:15

       And Mark Zuckerberg recorded, like, him saying the word poke as the notification sound. He was, like, so excited about this. And we were like, wow, like, okay, this is a good, you know, this is a really good lesson for us. Um, it, it ended up being super helpful to, to Snapchat.

13. 42:31 – 43:50

    Beating the Clone

    1. DSDavid Senra42:31

       In the book you call it the greatest Christmas present you ever received.

    2. SPSpeaker42:34

       Ever. The nervousness going into that holiday period, right? I mean, they literally put a Download Poke at the top of every single Facebook app, right? And it was, it was just a clone of, of Snapchat. And then toOn, you know, on Christmas Day, see Snapchat number one in the App Store in that context was, it was huge, huge for us. Um, but that wa- that was the first time we realized, like, okay, we're gonna have to be really smart about how we build this business and invest in the, the things that are hard to copy.

    3. DSDavid Senra43:01

       Do you remember how old you were when this was happening?

    4. SPSpeaker43:05

       When would that have been? That would've been 2012, 2013, so 22 probably.

    5. DSDavid Senra43:10

       You were super young, super young to take on... That's, that had to be terrifying.

    6. SPSpeaker43:17

       I mean, to be living in my dad's house with, like, three of my buddies from college, you know, and, like, this huge company, you know, set their sights on, on us. I mean, it, you know, it was definitely a formative experience, I would say.

    7. DSDavid Senra43:30

       So then realizing software has no moat, is that direct insight leads to deciding v- uh, bizarre decision, I think correct in hindsight, for a, what people consider a social network app or a messaging app to get into hardware and make glasses. Those two things are related?

14. 43:50 – 44:58

    Messaging Network Effects

    1. SPSpeaker43:50

       Absolutely. And I think, but even before that, right, a real focus on messaging. So the other key, like, the other key foundational insight of Snapchat, um, that really changed the company was at that time, if you recall, people were very focused on, like, a simpl- very simplistic model of network effects. And their very simplistic model was basically the more nodes you have in the network, the more valuable the network is, right? And what we realized was, like, that wasn't really true if you weren't using those network connections. So actually, you know, what reflects the, the value of the network is, you know, are the people that you actually talk to and communicate with, especially the ones you communicate more frequently, are they a part of your network? And if they are, then you can accrue the vast majority of the value in that network very, very quickly without having the same scale or the same size, right? So what Snapchat showed was that if you just have one good friend on Snapchat, right, they, they might represent half of your communication, right? Because they're super important in your life. So you don't need 500 friends on Snapchat. You just need your best friend on Snapchat, and that's what helped the service really grow and take on, you know, these, these much larger, these larger competitors.

15. 44:58 – 45:49

    Camera Out of Pocket

    1. SPSpeaker44:58

       What really prompted the, the work on, on glasses in the beginning was the feeling that we were always competing with that lock screen camera button, right? And so-

    2. DSDavid Senra45:08

       What do you mean?

    3. SPSpeaker45:09

       Do you know on the iPhone there's a lock screen camera button?

    4. DSDavid Senra45:11

       Yeah.

    5. SPSpeaker45:11

       So Snapchat opens to the camera.

    6. DSDavid Senra45:12

       Yeah.

    7. SPSpeaker45:13

       Right? And we always want you to choose to open Snapchat to share a moment with your friends and your family, and you're making a choice between having to unlock your iPhone and go and open Snapchat and take a snap or just using that lock screen camera button, and that lock screen camera button is on your phone, and it's in your pocket. And so, you know, when we were trying to reinvent the camera and change how people were using their camera to help them communicate, one of our fundamental questions was like, how do we get the camera out of your pocket, right, off your phone to make it easier for you to, you know, share and express yourself or communicate your point of view or communicate what you're doing? That was really the prompt that led us to explore glasses because back in the day, the, you know, we just made camera glasses.

16. 45:49 – 48:28

    Specs Market Reality

    1. SPSpeaker45:49

       But I think as part of that journey and as, as, as part of starting to work on camera glasses, not only did we realize, first of all, that the market for camera glass is very small, right? Uh, that ultimately your phone is very good for taking photos. Even if you're on a jet ski or even if you're rock climbing, people still use their phone, uh, you know, to, to take a, to take a photo. So that, that, you know, meant that we had to push way harder and faster to our full vision, uh, for glasses.

    2. DSDavid Senra46:12

       When did you learn the market was small? Because you couldn't even keep these things in stock. I told you I had the big, ugly blue color. Like-

    3. SPSpeaker46:19

       Yeah

    4. DSDavid Senra46:20

       ... it was a fine color, but you know what I mean.

    5. SPSpeaker46:22

       Yeah, but I think even, you know, I think we were shipping, like, hundreds of thousands of, of units. Um, you know, and I think 100,000 units in hardware is kind of like the first threshold of like, okay, you've got a product people are interested in and w- and wanna buy. But even at a couple hundred thousand units, I just didn't see a path to it being like a, you know, hundreds of millions of, of units. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, the bar that we set for any product we develop is that it has to be 10 times better than the next best alternative. And when we looked at how people were using specs at the time, it just wasn't 10 times better than pulling your phone out of your pocket, uh, you know. And maybe in some use cases it was, if you want, really wanted to be hands-free or, you know, that kind of thing, but, but it just wasn't 10 times better than the amazing camera you had on, on your phone. And so we really then set out to try to push towards as fast as we could our, our true vision for computing, you know.

    6. DSDavid Senra47:12

       That was how many years ago when you started this?

    7. SPSpeaker47:14

       That would've been 20-- like 2016, 2017, we were really pressing into, you know, the m- the more advanced parts of, of augmented reality glasses. And I think, you know, if you look at the step-by-step approach we took, the first generation had one camera, right? The second generation had two cameras with depth. The generation after that added a display. The generation after that added an operating system and developer platform. That's the version that's currently in the, in the market today.

    8. DSDavid Senra47:39

       What's the generation I used yesterday?

    9. SPSpeaker47:41

       That came out in 2024.

    10. DSDavid Senra47:42

        That's generation four or five?

    11. SPSpeaker47:44

        Four or five, yeah.

    12. DSDavid Senra47:44

        Okay.

    13. SPSpeaker47:45

        Um, and that was the first time we really offered a developer platform, um, so that folks could start building and creating all these experiences.

    14. DSDavid Senra47:51

        Okay. So can you explain your evolution of glasses? You said basically you don't think of it as glasses. It's just another form of computing?

    15. SPSpeaker47:58

        So to [laughs] to go all the way back, the, the initial thesis was let's get the camera out of your pocket, right? But at the same time, you know, on the phone we were so constrained in what we could build, right? I mean, you have this tiny little screen. We're watching augmented reality just take off on the phone. Hundreds of millions of people every day are using these augmented reality experiences on this tiny little screen.

    16. DSDavid Senra48:18

        Let's pause real quick there 'cause this is another, I think, example of what I was trying to fricking figure out about you earlier, and I kinda went crazy. So-

    17. SPSpeaker48:24

        But we still haven't figured it out. [laughs]

    18. DSDavid Senra48:25

        I know. Well, it might take a few more conversations.

17. 48:28 – 52:14

    AR Platform Explosion

    1. DSDavid Senra48:28

       Uh, you're talking about all these people using augmented reality. They're in... You're talking about f- the filters you added or the lenses and stuff to Snapchat.

    2. SPSpeaker48:36

       Yeah.

    3. DSDavid Senra48:36

       Did you get that idea from another company? Where'd that come from? Were you the first one to do it?

    4. SPSpeaker48:38

       We bought a, a startup called Luxy that was working on those, uh, working on those lenses, and then Bobby really-... push the vision of turning that into a platform. And once we turned it into a platform and built these developer tools called Lens Studio so that anyone could build lenses, then it just took off because-

    5. DSDavid Senra48:54

       That's what got me using Snapchat because I was a little older than, like, your- the, the typical people using it. But did this launch after Stories?

    6. SPSpeaker49:02

       That must have launched after Stories, yeah.

    7. DSDavid Senra49:03

       So how many years into Snap do you think that you've added this other feature?

    8. SPSpeaker49:10

       Probably three or four years, I think.

    9. DSDavid Senra49:12

       Okay. That's actually way sooner-

    10. SPSpeaker49:13

        Five years

    11. DSDavid Senra49:13

        ... than I thought.

    12. SPSpeaker49:14

        Something like that.

    13. DSDavid Senra49:14

        That's way sooner than I thought, 'cause you've been working on Snapchat for how long? 15?

    14. SPSpeaker49:17

        About 15 years, yeah.

    15. DSDavid Senra49:18

        Okay, 15 years. Okay, so go back to what you were saying. Then you found hundreds of thousands or millions of people now using AR?

    16. SPSpeaker49:23

        Hundreds of millions of people are now-

    17. DSDavid Senra49:24

        Hundreds of millions, okay

    18. SPSpeaker49:25

        ... using AR, like, every day.

    19. DSDavid Senra49:26

        But back then, be- this is... They're engaging with AR through this feature, but this is before you did the g- the glasses.

    20. SPSpeaker49:34

        Yeah, sort of concurrent with the-

    21. DSDavid Senra49:36

        Okay

    22. SPSpeaker49:36

        ... sort of concurrent with the, the glasses, and, and may- maybe concurrent with the second generation, I wanna say, by the time we really had an augmented reality, uh, platform. But, you know, the, the original thesis behind creating lenses was just people- a lot of people thought it was weird to just take a selfie, right? Tons of folks were taking selfies to express themselves, but, like, a lot of people were like, "Why would I just take a selfie?"

    23. DSDavid Senra49:55

        Especially if you're ugly.

    24. SPSpeaker49:56

        [laughs]

    25. DSDavid Senra49:57

        I don't wanna be reminded what I look like. [laughs]

    26. SPSpeaker50:00

        Well-

    27. DSDavid Senra50:01

        Could put some dog ears on me. [laughs]

    28. SPSpeaker50:03

        So, so, you know, or vomit a rainbow, right?

    29. DSDavid Senra50:06

        [laughs]

    30. SPSpeaker50:06

        So people, people had a reason to-
18. 52:14 – 54:09

    Vision-Led Product Design

    1. DSDavid Senra52:14

       You used the word vision when we were talking before we started recording. I think this is interesting. You literally see it, see what you want. You said, like, you have a problem designing a product if you can't see it in your mind. Can you explain more about that?

    2. SPSpeaker52:27

       Yeah. I think in general with my life thus far, like I-- like, with the things that we build, I see them very, very clearly even before we've built them, and I kind of know what I want. I know how I want it to, to work, and I also know that if I can't see it, then we're, we're off, we're off track. And so I think really trying to stay true to that, that feeling and that vision and that focus is just so, so im- uh, important. And that doesn't mean not being, like, open to other people's ideas, other people's creativity, et cetera. But, like, I think, you know, um, yeah, I just very, very vividly can see what we're, what we're trying to create.

    3. DSDavid Senra53:10

       I'm gonna explain or describe an experience that I read about. You tell me if it's similar to the one that, that you experienced, where, uh, when that legendary meeting that happened when Edwin Land's 70, Steve Jobs was 25. They're sitting across-- They're in a conference room sitting across a, a table from one another, and they talked about... They're like, they don't really consider themselves inventors. It's kind of funny 'cause Edwin Land had the third-most patents, you know, in human history. They said they, they discovered products, that they would literally be looking at an empty table and see the final form of what they're doing, and then they reverse engineer from that and essentially org- uh, you know, prod their entire organization to invent the technology to invent the product. Is that the similar experience that you're having?

    4. SPSpeaker53:47

       I really, really like that because I think what they're describing is technology in service of a product vision. So instead of chasing a technology, being crystal clear about what you're trying to create and then organizing everyone to invent everything needed to, to create that, uh, to create that product. So yeah, I mean, yeah. Yes, I guess.

19. 54:09 – 59:11

    Why Not Luxottica

    1. SPSpeaker54:09

       Yeah.

    2. DSDavid Senra54:09

       Is that not what you've been doing the last decade for- with the, the glasses? 'Cause you made a choice. You're-- Like, other people are partnering with existing companies like Luxottica, who I think is a very fascinating story. I told you before, I did this crazy episode of Founders Podcast, I think it's episode 394, on Leonardo Del Vecchio, which was just one of the cra- He's an orphan, and he built one of the most, you know, b- to this day, most powerful and, like, such a dominating count- uh, companies in his industry. But you chose not to do that.

    3. SPSpeaker54:37

       There's a lot of reasons why I don't think that's the right-

    4. DSDavid Senra54:41

       Let's go into them. We, we, we don't have a, an end here.

    5. SPSpeaker54:44

       [laughs] Um-

    6. DSDavid Senra54:45

       As much as you can share that, you know-

    7. SPSpeaker54:47

       Yeah. Yeah, yeah

    8. DSDavid Senra54:47

       ... but I'm very interested in your philosophy behind the decisions you're making is what I'm trying to get to.

    9. SPSpeaker54:51

       I think there's, like, a number of, of-Challenges. Obviously, I think it's much more harmful for Luxottica than it is for, for Meta. I think Meta needed to partner with Luxottica because the Meta brand, I think, is not something that people wanna put anywhere near their face. So I think, um, I think that Meta really needed it. I think what's, what's challenging for Luxottica is they took, like, the most iconic, crazy high margin product, and they destroyed the margin, and then they associated it with Meta. So like, I think like that-- Like we'll see if that pans out over, like, a longer period of time, if that was the right brand choice, uh, for them. But I can definitely see why Meta needed-- needs to camouflage their brand, which I think a lot of people don't resonate with and don't like with, you know, the Ray-Ban, uh, brand. But I think people are misreading, I think, the dynamic of, of what's happening when you have Meta Ray-Bans on the shelf next to a regular pair of Ray-Bans, and they're both about the same price, right? A-and it's-- You know, I, I love to just walk into a Sunglass Hut or whatever and talk to them. "Hey, what's going on? What's selling? What's not?" It's like, "Well, you can get the Meta Ray-Bans that have a camera for about the same price as the Ray- regular Ray-Bans. Why don't you, you know, try it out for your upcoming vacation?" I think that, that's a smart s-strategy if you wanna move a lot of volume, but I don't know if that builds a durable business over time. And the reason why I don't know if that builds a durable business over time is if I look at successful hardware companies over a long period of time, we can look at Apple, we can talk about Tesla, for example, early adopter is the wrong term, but they really try to start with premium or even luxury positioning around a very passionate early adopter group that believes in their vision, right? Think like the Tesla Roadster, right, or the early iMac or the early iPhone. And they build a brand by starting with those early enthusiasts who, like, believe, right, in the electrification of the world, the transformation of the power, uh, you know, the power grid, how we're gonna, you know, move things around. Or in the case of Apple, you know, a revolution in the personal computer, right? That everyone's been doing phones wrong and that, like, you know, having this, uh, you know, personal computer in your pocket, you know, would be really transformational. And they really activate that, that passionate group of enthusiasts, and then over time, they work with that really passionate group of enthusiasts to, you know, grow into the mass market while preserving their premium positioning, which means high gross margins. Then they take those high gross margins, and they reinvest in R&D, which widens their lead. And, like, that is the story, I think, of successful hardware companies, and I think it's very, very hard to start with a super broad-based low margin consumer product and try to work your way into premium, uh, positioning. So I think if you look at, at specs and, like, what we've tried to do, even like your early experiences with the, with the brand, right? We're innovative and different and, again, oriented around a, a group of enthusiasts and early adopters who, like, wanna see the world differently, who wanna participate in the cutting edge of technology. And I think if we're able to build the brand that way and build our own brand around that, that will allow us to sustain, you know, our, our margins over time, which will allow us to reinvest, which ultimately will give us a big competitive advantage.

    10. DSDavid Senra57:58

        I wanna go back to wanting to control most of, like, actually building your own hardware. Um, the-- You said something-- Even the marketing, though, I-I think, like, you gotta give you credit to the marketing you guys were doing back in the day for the first spectacles, where, like, there wasn't, like, a store you could just walk into. It's not the, the experience you described. It's like you would, like, airdrop these vending machines.

    11. SPSpeaker58:16

        Yeah.

    12. DSDavid Senra58:16

        And then I remember there was, like, a website. And I'm not a fucking power user of Snapchat. I was just like, "I want these glasses." And I would be, like, refreshing the-

    13. SPSpeaker58:23

        Yeah

    14. DSDavid Senra58:23

        ... the, the website to figure out-- It's like, "Oh, okay, here's a new drop," and you'd have, like, a countdown. Like, "We're-- It's dropping," and you wouldn't say where it is. And I'm in, like, Miami at the time. It's like, "All right, it's dropping in Venice." I'm like, "Goddammit." And then I wind up-- The way I got them is, uh, you did a drop in New York, and a friend of mine, I called him, and he went and stood in line and, and got them for me. It was, like, really unique and fun. Like, you just made it-- I like this idea of-- I was just talking to Brian Armstrong about this, uh, founder of Coinbase, where he's like, "Everybody has shareholder letters. Everybody has to write a shareholder letter. Everybody has to do these analyst calls." And he's trying to find a way to, like, make them fun and, like, k-kinda like internet native, and, you know, they're, they are forms of marketing. They're not just analysts that are reading these things. Like, they could-- Y-if you, if you think about them and, like, a-and think about, like, doing creative marketing, you could just drastically increase the amount of people that are getting information about your

20. 59:11 – 1:03:02

    Owning the Stack

    1. DSDavid Senra59:11

       company. Why is it so important to you, though, to control so much of the hardware that you're making?

    2. SPSpeaker59:18

       Control of the hardware is necessary to deliver an extraordinary customer experience in this space, and the intersection between the hardware and the software to deliver that customer experience is essential. So, you know, as we look at how other people are approaching this space, trying to d- you know, cobble together components from a ton of different manufacturers and get them to all work really well in a super small, lightweight form factor that's incredibly performant is just really, really hard to do. And so I think for us, if we wanna really deliver, you know, this cutting edge, uh, computing experience, uh, d-doing that, um, re-requires us to have a very high degree of control of the areas we can really differentiate. So for example, for us, that, you know, the display components are an area where we really differentiate. We have an incredibly performant waveguide, which is like the glasses part of the, the lens, right? Basically, the lens of the, of the glasses. Uh, and we've developed our own projector that's in-incredibly small that, you know, beams light into this, this waveguide. That's a big strategic advantage for us because the display components draw a lot of power, right? They're really important in terms of having that immersion, uh, and being able to have a very wide field of view when you're using, uh, the glasses, you can interact, uh, with the world. And then, of course, like the resolution, the sharpness, like those are the things that really, really matter. And so for us, in order to push those boundaries, there's no one that comes close to, like, uh, to, to our ability to deliver on that, on that product experience. So by doing it ourselves, I think we've created, uh, you know, a competitive advantage that will show up in, in the product that the consumers will experience.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:00:54

       Say more about that line where you said it's important to control the parts that you can differentiate on.

    4. SPSpeaker1:00:59

       Essentially, like you're gonna burn yourself out if you try to control everything, right?

    5. DSDavid Senra1:01:02

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SPSpeaker1:01:02

       So it's really important to identify very early on, like where are the strategic points where you can create a total unique customer experience by really investing in doing things differently. And for us, we've really thoughtfully picked out where can we play and do something that's really hard and do it differently that creates a sustained competitive advantage because it delivers such an awesome customer experience. So the display components are one, I can talk about that 'cause it's public, but like later this year people will see a lot of these areas where we've invested and, and invented, you know, fundamentally invented, uh, new ways of doing things that I think consumers are gonna love.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:01:35

       Another thing that like Edwin, like again, people should study Edwin Land. They should study all these history's greatest entrepreneurs 'cause you just realize they come up with ideas too. We were talking earlier, it's like he wanted... He realized like if he did not have control, 'cause he started... He, he wanted to be an inventor, not an entrepreneur.

    8. SPSpeaker1:01:49

       Hmm.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:01:50

       He had to learn to be an entrepreneur just so he could actually make money on his inventions, so therefore he only wanted to make money so he could invent more things. He was not after, you know, just having piles of money. And anytime he tried to outsource, one, he, he let other companies get in, in between him and the end consumer, which he d- fixed that when he did Polaroid a- and, uh, and, and the cameras. But when he... The manufacturing. He owned... The factories were in Massachusetts, for God's sake.

    10. SPSpeaker1:02:16

        [laughs]

    11. DSDavid Senra1:02:16

        He was manufacturing high-end technology in America, and his whole point was just like, he didn't wanna be a manufacturer, but he needed to control the things, so not only like to get the cost down, but to be able to influence the end unit of the, the, the product.

    12. SPSpeaker1:02:31

        Yeah. People, uh, you know, I think would be stunned to learn that we manufacture core components in the US and the UK, right, in our own facilities, which allow us to do this really advanced R&D that push the boundaries of what's, you know, what's possible with these components.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:02:45

        Yeah, it's the same, same exact idea. So how are you gonna distribute them?

    14. SPSpeaker1:02:48

        I can't share all of our-

    15. DSDavid Senra1:02:49

        That's fine

    16. SPSpeaker1:02:50

        ... our secrets. But I, we can, we can regroup after the, after the launch and, and, and deep dive into all of it.

    17. DSDavid Senra1:02:55

        Okay. But I have a sense that you wanna control that too.

    18. SPSpeaker1:02:58

        Uh, I think it's, it's important in terms of the customer experience.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:03:01

        What a surprise.

21. 1:03:02 – 1:08:04

    Snap the Middle Child

    1. DSDavid Senra1:03:02

       All right.

    2. SPSpeaker1:03:02

       [laughs]

    3. DSDavid Senra1:03:02

       You de- you described, uh, you, you wrote this like, uh, I think it was your annual letter recently, um, and I, I forgot the term you, you're basically the way you're positioning Snap is not, not like a little brother, but you described essentially like you have the scale of some of these big players, but you don't have the trillion dollar market cap, right? And you were, I think of, I think at least once in this conversation, you described that you've been engaged in trench warfare.

    4. SPSpeaker1:03:25

       [laughs]

    5. DSDavid Senra1:03:26

       Why do you call it trench warfare? And tell us some stories about this.

    6. SPSpeaker1:03:29

       Yeah, I, I mean, I, I think the, the, the term I used in my letter was like the middle child, right?

    7. DSDavid Senra1:03:32

       That's what it is.

    8. SPSpeaker1:03:33

       'Cause we're so much bigger than, you know, smaller competitors like, uh, Reddit or Pinterest or something like that, right? But we don't have the-

    9. DSDavid Senra1:03:39

       Did you just call Reddit small?

    10. SPSpeaker1:03:41

        From like a... You know, we're almost a billion folks using our, our service. If you look at like our daily active engagements, about like half a billion folks. So I think like just in terms of the scale of engagement-

    11. DSDavid Senra1:03:49

        So there's, there's half a billion people using Snap every day.

    12. SPSpeaker1:03:52

        About half a billion every day, yeah.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:03:53

        And a billion overall.

    14. SPSpeaker1:03:54

        And a billion, about, about, you know, almost a billion globally.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:03:56

        So how many other services, how many other services are that size?

    16. SPSpeaker1:03:59

        Maybe 10, maybe.

    17. DSDavid Senra1:04:01

        Okay.

    18. SPSpeaker1:04:02

        7 to 10.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:04:02

        Okay.

    20. SPSpeaker1:04:02

        Depends if you include China.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:04:04

        No, we don't. [laughs] America, baby.

    22. SPSpeaker1:04:07

        [laughs]

    23. DSDavid Senra1:04:07

        Um, all right. So wait, you're the... Not the, I keep saying little brother. You're the middle child. Say more about that.

    24. SPSpeaker1:04:11

        We're the middle child, and I, and I think, um, you know, I think what's interesting about that is like, the, the, you know, and it's funny, we've got four kids at home, right? So part of it was like, based on my own experience with our kids where like a lot of attention is paid to the f- the, the eldest child, right? And, you know, um, and they're, they've gotten so much bigger and they've grown up and, you know, our, our 15-year-old, and then the, the baby, right, is growing so fast, it's so exciting. And then I think somewhere in the middle, right, uh, and hopefully this isn't the case in, in our house, there's like this period where, you know, you're changing and evolving and people don't know what are you becoming, right? Maybe in the case for, for Snap, right? People are trying to understand what is this glasses thing they've been doing for 12 years that they're about to like launch to the world. What is the role? You know, Snap's core, Snapchat's core business is evolving. We're growing this huge direct revenue business that's growing really, really rapidly and we're diversifying, you know, our advertising business with small and medium customers. So we're in this period of like very intense change, I think, um, for, for Snapchat. And as I mentioned, we're not as big as the giants and we're, we're not as small as the, or, or smaller, uh, competitors. And so it's that really interesting moment that I think, you know, m- middle children also, uh, you know, maybe e- experience where there's all this change happening and, you know, um, you're, you're sort of stuck in the, in the middle.

    25. DSDavid Senra1:05:26

        Is this a stressful time for you?

    26. SPSpeaker1:05:28

        You know, it, it's so funny. My, my wife like loves the Oura Ring, like she's obsessed. You know, she like, she like s- you know, markets this thing to like everybody, right? Wants to like compare scores and all this kind. So she finally like, um, years and years later was like, "I'm gonna try the Oura Ring." And she was like shocked to learn that like, you know, there's sort of like the relaxed and stress state and I'm just like in the relaxed state like all day long. And so I like wore it for a week, and it basically was like, you know, I, I sleep like seven or eight hours, I'm in the relaxed state all the time. Like, she was like, "How?" Like, "What?" You know, [laughs] like...

    27. DSDavid Senra1:05:59

        [laughs]

    28. SPSpeaker1:05:59

        So, so I think like, I really love like periods of intense change. Like I'm inspired by it. I enjoy it. And so like, while, you know, yeah, it, it is like stressful to some degree, I think like, you know, the, the question is like how do you turn that stress into like opportunity, into growth, into change? But I think what's really important is for our entire team and our organization to know what a high stakes moment this is for our business, right? Like at this moment in time, you know, what will we become? We are in a transitional moment. Um, and, and that's super, super exciting, and it means every second, like every minute counts. I would say more exciting than, than stressful, but like it's, it's a really cool moment for our, for our company.

    29. DSDavid Senra1:06:46

        When you write something like that, obviously like is it more aimed at the broader like investor community or is it aimed for internal like consumption?

    30. SPSpeaker1:06:56

        I always wrote them internally-
22. 1:08:04 – 1:10:02

    Crisis Without Burnout

    1. DSDavid Senra1:08:04

       I had this great conversation with Michael Dell, who's just awesome, like a great human being. Absolute love that I get to spend time with him. I can't believe it. And he has that thing where it's like he actually thinks it's important to, to even if you don't have a crisis, to, like, induce one, like to create one. And he gave this fantastic... You know, he, he, he's reimagined his company. I mean, have you spent any time with him?

    2. SPSpeaker1:08:24

       I have, yeah.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:08:24

       Okay. Yeah. So, like, that's probably-- If I was you, I'd be, like, picking his brain. I, I'm friends with his son, Zach. And, you know, um, everybody has access to, like, the Bloomberg terminal, and Zach's like, "I got the dad terminal."

    4. SPSpeaker1:08:34

       [laughs]

    5. DSDavid Senra1:08:34

       And it's just like, "I could, like, type in any question and get some crazy, you know, response from this forty..." Essentially, he's been, you know, a world-class entrepreneur for four decades. So, like, "I have an issue with supply chain." Well, guess what? [laughs] Dell's seen everything th-th about supply chains, and he, and he's, like, can be very helpful. But his whole point was that he knew that he-- his company was at an inflection point a few years ago, and he stood up and, and gave this, this, uh, I guess this talk. I think it was a talk, and may- he might have wr-wrote it down, but it's just like, you know, "There's a company out there that is, you know, going to, uh, do-- be faster than us, have better products, have cheaper produ- uh, cheap products, and, you know, essentially they're gonna come for us." He's like, "That company's us." Like, "We are going to reinvent. We're gonna figure out our weaknesses, and instead of let- waiting around to be somebody else's meal, like, we're going to figure out how to reinvent our company." And on the podcast, the episode we did together, he was just like, "If you don't have a crisis, you need to invent one."

    6. SPSpeaker1:09:25

       I would say yes with the caveat that, like, I don't want our team to always feel like they're in crisis mode. I think I always try to be really cognizant of, like, where the team is at, and, like, when we should sprint and run hard and, like, when we actually need to take a step back and, you know, adjust. You know, so I think, like, al- like, staying in touch, especially at our size, right? We're like five thousand-ish people. You can really stay in touch with, like, the feeling of the organization and knowing when to, like, really, really push, uh, you know, and, and when it's better to create a little more space for, like, ideation or, you know, experimentation.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:09:59

       So five thousand people serving a billion, uh, billion users.

23. 1:10:02 – 1:12:54

    Snapchat Plus Growth

    1. DSDavid Senra1:10:02

       You mentioned, uh, you have a bunch of different revenue lines or ones that are growing. Like, how does... Can-- Tell me about the ones that, like, are new.

    2. SPSpeaker1:10:10

       One of the new ones is our subscription business, uh, which is growing really, really rapidly, called Snapchat Plus. Um, and I think it's a really good fit for Snap's culture. You know, we, we adopted the advertising model very early on. I think it's, like, well understood it's a huge opportunity, and we have a ton of eng- you know, engagement on, on Snapchat, so advertising is a, a big opportunity for us and allows us to offer our product for free, which is great. Um, but I think, you know, the heart of Snapchat is, and, and our company, is about building stuff that people love and, and, and that they want. And we were getting so many requests for all sorts of, you know, new and different features from our, our-- the most passionate members of our community, and we wouldn't-- we could never really find time to resource and invest in them, um, because we were focused on things that everyone would use, not just, like, our most passionate, uh, not just the most passionate Snapchatters. So we decided to build Snapchat Plus, which is-- essentially gives you access to, like, new, fun features on, on Snapchat. We listen to our community and the things that they, they want, and we'll test stuff and release new things for, for Snapchat Plus. And for, like, four bucks a month, you can join Snapchat Plus and get access to all of these new, uh, these new features. That's now grown to, like, twenty-five million subscribers, which is, like, ESPN scale of subscribers, and I think in the last quarter is growing sixty percent year over year at, like, a bill-

    3. DSDavid Senra1:11:24

       Don't, don't make me do public math. Is that a billion run rate?

    4. SPSpeaker1:11:26

       Uh, we're doing a bi- like, a, yeah, like, a billion run rate growing sixty percent year over year.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:11:29

       That's incredible.

    6. SPSpeaker1:11:30

       And it's a really good fit for what we're great at, which is making new stuff that people love and wanna pay for. [chuckles] So I think it's, it's, like, culturally been a, been a great fit for, for our company.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:11:39

       It kinda ties to what we were talking about in your design meetings earlier, where it's just like we're looking at hundreds... How often are you doing these design meetings, by the way?

    8. SPSpeaker1:11:45

       Once a week.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:11:46

       Okay. So every week you're going through hundreds of new ideas.

    10. SPSpeaker1:11:49

        Yeah.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:11:49

        Some of which wind up for features for Snapch- Snapchat Plus.

    12. SPSpeaker1:11:52

        Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:11:53

        Okay. So that's perfectly in ti- What, what did you say earlier about what else are you gonna do with-- do you think, like, you're gonna add to that or do in the future, if you wanna talk about it?

    14. SPSpeaker1:12:01

        For the subscription business? I mean, we got a, a zillion ideas in the backlog, so we're just gonna keep shipping new, you know, new additions and features.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:12:09

        Do you think you'll eventually increase the price?

    16. SPSpeaker1:12:11

        Uh, maybe, but I think it's-

    17. DSDavid Senra1:12:12

        Or different tiers?

    18. SPSpeaker1:12:12

        ... so early right now. Yeah, we, we have done tiering. So one of the things that has been really popular, we released something called Lens Plus. So I think Snap- Snapchat, the camera itself, it's probably the most used, like, gen AI camera service, like, in terms of, like, image, video generation, this kind of thing, um, just because of how many people are using our camera every day. Um, but we ha- You know, so we release a, a bunch of these, um, gen AI lenses, and we give a, a number of uses for free, um, but then if folks wanna upgrade to Lens Plus 'cause they're loving it and using them all the time, uh, they can do that. And that's, that, that's grown nicely for us too. Um, so Lens Plus is at a slightly higher price tier. And then we have, you know, the platinum plan or whatever that you can get rid of ads and, you know, unlock more features, that kind of thing.

24. 1:12:54 – 1:19:03

    Rebuilding the Ad Engine

    1. DSDavid Senra1:12:54

       What did you change about the advertising business? You said something about you just basically adopted at the beginning of what was, uh, there and available and maybe known, and how has that changed over time?

    2. SPSpeaker1:13:04

       There's been a couple huge shift for-- shifts for us in the past couple years. So you know, the core of our advertising business from the early days really grew around, you know, as a small number in the, you know, in the hundreds of large customers in the United States, really built around a brand business. And it grew very, very quickly throughout the, you know, the, the history of the, the company. But our advertising mix almost looked like the inverse of like a Google or a Meta. So Google or Meta, the vast majority of their revenue comes from small and medium-sized customers, and a small amount of their revenue comes from, you know, large, large customers, especially here in the US. We had like the inverse. We had most of our revenue coming from this small group of, of large customers, and then a very small amount of money coming from small and medium customers. Part of that was because, you know, at the time, many years ago, we didn't have a really robust lower funnel advertising business, you know, where people can optimize against, you know, events that happen in their app or, you know, people making purchases on their website. Um, and you know, we hadn't really built out a lot of like those capabilities, and small and medium customers really care about that. They wanna see their return on ad spend right away. Uh, so despite having this enormous scale and all this engagement, the, the ad offering, especially in the lower funnel, was, was immature. So over the past couple years, we've built out that entire lower funnel advertising offering, so we can really drive performance for, for customers, um, for, for small and medium customers, and we've been really rapidly growing that small and medium, uh, that small and medium customer segment. So we're doing like this really difficult transformation to make our sort of inverted, you know, mostly large US customers advertising around upper funnel and brand goals into like mostly small and medium customers, uh, advertising against lower funnel, funnel goals, and that's just been a transformation of like every part of our advertising business, the way that we go to market on the sales side, the, the, the engineering and product work that's happening.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:14:52

       Yeah. I'd be curious like what that looks like, 'cause if you're doing the inverse, you have these giant brand deals. I'd have to imagine... These giant brands spending a ton of money, right? I'd have to imagine then you have to employ a ton of salespeople, right? In a way that Google and Facebook do not.

    4. SPSpeaker1:15:05

       Yeah, that's certainly one part of it, for sure.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:15:06

       So they'd be more profitable too because they kind of have like a self-service product.

    6. SPSpeaker1:15:11

       Yeah. And, and I think, you know, large customers rightly want a lot of bespoke service as well. So our engineering team was spending a huge amount of time building bespoke solutions for really large customers who wanna measure things in a specific way or want a really unique integration or unique offering. And you know, now our engineering team is spending a huge amount of time serving lower funnel customers at scale, right? And so rather than doing like-

    7. DSDavid Senra1:15:33

       Building a product they need to adapt to.

    8. SPSpeaker1:15:36

       That small... Yeah, that small and medium customers can really easily, you know, sign up for and use.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:15:40

       Are you getting rid of the bespoke? Are you trying to like-

    10. SPSpeaker1:15:42

        We're doing a lot less bespoke, but we also find that these large customers, they wanna drive lower s- lower funnel outcomes too. So a lot of it is teaching our sales folks, you know, who were used to living in this more brand upper funnel oriented world to sell into lower funnel objectives for large customers.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:15:58

        There's actually a weird idea that just came to mind because I just did this episode called How SpaceX Works. So there's this guy named Max Olson who, he still needs permission to, to publish a book, but essentially he's like, "Hey, I wanna tell this story of the history of SpaceX as it happened, and I'm gonna use their internal memos to do so." So he's got access to like the first ten years. I hope SpaceX allows him. I've seen a copy of, like the advanced copy that you can't sell yet. It's called SpaceX Foundation. So he's like, "Well, in the meantime, I'm gonna write an essay that tells the story of why this is important." And so I read the essay like three times, like this is fucking crazy, so I just did an episode of Founders on it. And one of the most interesting thing, things I ever thought of is like essentially the, the, the aerospace industry, everything was bespoke. Everything was custom to the customer. And it's just like, well, if you do that, you can't scale. And Gwynne Shotwell was, y- you know, a huge driver behind this, is like, "We're going to, you know, build a basic good enough launch system that you adapt to." And then it took a while to educate them to adapt to it, but once they're adapted, then they just-- I mean, now they're doing, I think, uh, most launch providers would do two to four launches per year, that they do one every like two days. They did more load last year than every single other launch, uh, provider in like China, Russia, America, everywhere else combined. And that one idea where it's like we can't do bespoke. We have to-- We're-- We have to get this uniform if we're gonna scale this, and we can't get to our goals if we don't scale it.

    12. SPSpeaker1:17:22

        And to take it a step further, they didn't have to deal with all the political pressure that NASA is under to put, you know, a certain factory here or a plant in this state. And [laughs] you know what I mean? Like they-

    13. DSDavid Senra1:17:31

        Yeah.

    14. SPSpeaker1:17:31

        I think like just out the gate, they were able to deliver rockets at a tenth the cost, you know, of a, a NASA or something like that.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:17:37

        Did you intentionally invert, where you're like Google and Facebook are doing it this way, we're gonna try a different way, and then realizing, "Oh, we ma- we need to change"? Like back then, did you make that decision consciously?

    16. SPSpeaker1:17:46

        We saw that like if we really wanted to grow the ads business to be, you know, double digit billions over time, that we needed to have a lower funnel business with a diversified set of small and medium customers.

    17. DSDavid Senra1:17:57

        But did you hope that wasn't true at the time, at the very beginning?

    18. SPSpeaker1:18:00

        No, I just think we grew really fast on, you know, large customer brand advertis- They can move dollars very, very rapidly, right? That's one of the, the benefits. You know, if you're working with a large customer, they can move, you know, millions of, of dollars very quickly. If you have a couple hundred of those customers, you can build a very large advertising business very quickly. The question is like, how do you build a diversified very, very big one over time?

    19. DSDavid Senra1:18:22

        Okay, so you can get big, but you can't get huge without it. Oh, okay. And you needed to get big. At-- That-- Like you-- That was like almost like stage one. You had to do it that way.

    20. SPSpeaker1:18:30

        And, and I'd say almost all of these platforms, stage one looks like that.

    21. DSDavid Senra1:18:33

        Okay.

    22. SPSpeaker1:18:33

        Right? I mean, even Facebook in the early days, it was display advertising, right? Um, and then over time, they built out way more advanced systems, optimizing against lower funnel goals. I'd argue like a, a Reddit or a Pinterest today, I mean, you know, to some degree Pinterest is building out lower funnel objectives and this kind of thing, but a lot of it is still, you know, large customer upper funnel dollars. So I'd, I'd say almost all ad platforms start with that because you can grow very quickly, uh, and then you use that to invest in building out much more sophisticated

25. 1:19:03 – 1:21:14

    Subscriptions Over Ads

    1. SPSpeaker1:19:03

       systems.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:19:03

       Yeah, and at the beginning, you said you, you really thought you were building a messaging app, not a social network. You studied the way messaging apps in other countries-Monetized. I feel like you have a lot of soul, and so you prefer y- I don't know if you can say this, but you would prefer almost if you had like an all subscription business 'cause the incentives are more aligned.

    3. SPSpeaker1:19:21

       I really love the subscription business. I wish we had done it earlier. I, I just ah- I love it. I love the direct connection to our customers. Um, I love that it's directly related to the value that we provide them, and I think it's been really exciting to see that like, you know, I think unlike some of these other internet services, people are getting a ton of value from Snapchat. So much so they're willing to pay for it, right? And I think that's, that's, uh, you know, it's also a sign to me that we're building something that, that's valuable.

    4. DSDavid Senra1:19:47

       I spend a lot of time with the Spotify team, Daniel, Gustav, Alex, the top three, three, three people there, and they just have this like soul in the game, and they're really trying to build an app. Their whole thing is just like, when you're done using Spotify, do you feel good?

    5. SPSpeaker1:20:01

       [chuckles] That's good.

    6. DSDavid Senra1:20:02

       And I'm like, well, you know, I spent an hour listening to music, I feel great. I spent an hour listening to, you know, Founder's Podcast or any other podcast, [chuckles] I feel great. Now they have audiobooks. Do you feel great? They're actually try-- It wouldn't have worked any other way. Like, they obviously have some-- they have somewhat of an ad business, but I think they're, they told me they're, um, the second most paid subscribers in, uh, the world, I think behind Netflix. And you know, they did that in a relatively short amount of time. Like, I'm friends with Jamie Iovine, he was on the, the show, and he told me some outlandish shit. He's just like, "When Apple bought us, Spotify only had three million paid subscriber. I wanna take a run at them." And now they think of like two hundred and fifty million. But there is something about like if you do have this soul, if you are trying to put something good into the world that is not just trying to maximize usage, you know, on an app that's not good for you, it's just more aligned. I j- I didn't ask you that before, but I just got the, the, the sense that that's, uh, that's how you work. Do you have any idea the size that you think it could get to? 'Cause you have how many paid-- You said twenty-

    7. SPSpeaker1:21:00

       Twenty-five million subs.

    8. DSDavid Senra1:21:01

       Over what-- When-- And when did you, like, start it?

    9. SPSpeaker1:21:03

       It was like two, three years ago, something like that.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:21:05

        Still, it's, it's pretty goddamn fast.

    11. SPSpeaker1:21:08

        Let's see. You know, I'm excited. It's obviously grown quite rapidly, and I think it'd be a big, a big, uh, revenue driver for us.

26. 1:21:14 – 1:22:04

    Fighting Giants With AI

    1. DSDavid Senra1:21:14

       All right, let's go back to the more difficult times in Snapchat's history. I wanna know more about this like trench warfare. That's a great line that you had.

    2. SPSpeaker1:21:21

       I think given that we're up against such large monopolistic competitors, like every day is a fight. Every day is about putting one foot in front of the other because they just have so much scale. And I think for us, you know, creativity has been historically the force multiplier that's allowed us to break through and take ground, right? Um, but I think as I look towards the future, what makes me so excited and the, you know, the reason why I brought that up is like creativity combined with AI should allow us to move incredibly quickly in this environment and overcome a lot of the resource constraints that we've had historically. And, and that's something that, that's really different about, you know, the next decade for, for Snap.

27. 1:22:04 – 1:25:29

    Why Hardware Stands Alone

    1. DSDavid Senra1:22:04

       Do you ever s- foresee the hardware being a separate business?

    2. SPSpeaker1:22:09

       It essentially is. So it's, it's a wholly owned subsidiary today. The brands themselves, you know, they're adjacent to one another, but they're different brands. In many ways, it's a different customer, um, although not entirely different. So I, I do think that they'll, they'll grow in different ways, uh, over time.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:22:26

       Why did you make the decision to start a separate company with it?

    4. SPSpeaker1:22:30

       The hardware business at its core is just so different than the internet service business that we operate with, with Snapchat, and, you know, even requires a different execution style. You know, with hardware, like you cannot make a mistake, right? Like the things that we are doing today will show up in two years from now, and if we made a mistake, it's a huge problem, and it'll cost us another year or whatever to, to fix it. I mean, it's-- that type of precision and operational rigor is just night and day different than Snapchat, right? Where if like we break something today 'cause we're moving quickly, like it's fine, we'll fix it this afternoon, right? It'll... And move on. And so culturally, they're very-- they're-- they have to be different companies and different operating styles. And then I think in terms of the brand and where we're trying to take the, the specs brand, I think Snapchat has always tried to be fun and whimsical to make sure that you feel comfortable expressing yourself, right? Snapchat never takes itself too seriously. And while I don't think Specs is going to like take itself seriously, uh, you know, necessarily in a way that's like weird or, or, you know, not true to who we are, what we're trying to do is incredibly serious. Um, you know, we are trying to reinvent the computer. We think that the way that people have, you know, and, and trying to make it more human. And we think the way that people have designed computers for the last fifty years is like robbing us of who we are and like our humanity, and that people are gonna want a new type of computer. They want a computer that allows them to use AI and access AI in different ways, that brings them closer together with their friends and, and, and the world. And so that vision and mission, I think deserves real focus and dedication. And in some ways, while it has-- shares that same root and philosophy and idea that, that animates Snapchat, it's approaching it from a very different perspective.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:24:22

       When did you, in your mind, realize that this had to be two separate companies?

    6. SPSpeaker1:24:27

       Uh, in, in, in a lot of ways, they've operated se- quite separately, right? They have the same sort of GNA support, but Snap Lab, which, you know, uh, y- it was the precursor to, to Specs Inc, has operated as an independent, relatively independent part of, of Snap for, for a long time.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:24:44

       Different location, separate, not shared office space? How did-- Like explain the organization.

    8. SPSpeaker1:24:48

       Yeah. So, you know, s- nearby, it's, uh, in some cases, shared office spaces. Um, in some cases, definitely not, uh, depending on what we're working on. Leadership team, all that sort of stuff, uh, I think, you know, historically has been, has been quite separate.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:25:01

       Yeah. Did you ever read about... I'm, I'm sure you did, but like Steve Jobs was very adamant about when he was inventing something new, it could not be in the same building. Had to be a completely different team. I don't think they separated it out, you know, they-- I don't think it spun out different like entities in- inside of Apple, but he want-- He's like, "You can't even be in the same building." That was like really, really important.

    10. SPSpeaker1:25:18

        Yeah, it make, it makes sense to me because I think focus is just so critical when you're trying to build something new.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:25:24

        And differentiation. You don't want, you know, the opinions of other people outside-

    12. SPSpeaker1:25:28

        [laughs]

    13. DSDavid Senra1:25:28

        ... of,

28. 1:25:29 – 1:25:59

    Snap Lab Origins

    1. DSDavid Senra1:25:29

       you know, the people working on it. What was Snap Lab?

    2. SPSpeaker1:25:32

       Uh, Snap Lab really incubated a lot of the Spectacles and Specs stuff.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:25:37

       Why'd you make the decision to start something like Snap Lab?

    4. SPSpeaker1:25:40

       Well, it was to house all the, the hardware development. I-

    5. DSDavid Senra1:25:43

       Okay, so it's not like Snap Lab was created and then you realized, hey, let's do hardware. It was the vehicle to do hardware? Or like...

    6. SPSpeaker1:25:50

       I think it was sort of concurrent. I mean, when we started working on Spectacles back in the day, that, that was really the genesis of Snap Lab. I mean, that's what it was called initially.

29. 1:25:59 – 1:28:29

    New Apps Beyond Snapchat

    1. DSDavid Senra1:25:59

       Do you still have some kind of, like, R&D separate thing to like dream up new products? Or you just only focus on the app and the glasses?

    2. SPSpeaker1:26:08

       You know, one of the things we're thinking a lot about now, and, and this is sort of what I mean about the sort of force multiplication of AI and creativity, like the core Snapchat business is really well positioned to launch new app categories today, right? Because we have a massive amount of distribution. We've got tons of great ideas and brilliant creative people, and now with AI, we actually have the resources to make that possible. So inside of Snapchat today and in our design team, we're thinking a lot about what types of new apps and services, internet services-

    3. DSDavid Senra1:26:38

       But a separate app from Snapchat or an app within-

    4. SPSpeaker1:26:40

       A separate app from Snapchat. But it... We can use Snapchat as a launchpad for, for these new services because it reaches almost a billion people.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:26:48

       Do you have any other apps? I don't even know.

    6. SPSpeaker1:26:50

       Uh, there's an app called Saturn, which we acquired, which is a totally new way to think of calendaring. So if you, if you look at calendars today, not only are they kind of really entrenched into like the, the business world, but because they are, it makes it almost impossible to easily share calendars with friends, right? And it's all... And calendars are all today oriented around email [laughs] right, rather than your phone number and your text messages. But all of your planning and the way that you're working together with your friends is happening in your text messages, right, and around your phone number. And so the Saturn team has had a lot of really great insights about what the future of a calendar should look like, and so, um, that's a separate app that's now owned by Snapchat, that's inte-integrated with Snapchat, um, and gets distribution through Snapchat, but is a standalone service.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:27:32

       Why would people use it? Like, give me a use case.

    8. SPSpeaker1:27:35

       Because it's a calendar built for your friends. So like I... It is so difficult, I mean, I don't know if you've experienced this with your partner, but with my wife, like, it's so hard to get my work calendar to match with her work [laughs] calendar. It's like almost impossible. And let alone get that to map to our 15-year-old's calendar, right, and, you know, everything he's got going on after school. And so I think all of a sudden there's a solution that like works really well for our 15-year-old who doesn't have like a whole corporate email and whatever, but like wants to share his calendar with, with friends, right? We can have visibility into each other's calendar, and it all works centered around your phone and your mobile number, right? So it's, so it actually is a social calendar rather than being like a work-oriented calendar. That just makes things easier.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:28:17

       How much do you use email?

    10. SPSpeaker1:28:18

        All the time.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:28:19

        I push everything text or WhatsApp.

    12. SPSpeaker1:28:21

        Really?

    13. DSDavid Senra1:28:22

        Yeah.

    14. SPSpeaker1:28:22

        I push everything to email.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:28:23

        Oh. [laughs] Well, you probably have like an army-

    16. SPSpeaker1:28:24

        I use email like text message.

    17. DSDavid Senra1:28:26

        Okay. Oh, no.

    18. SPSpeaker1:28:26

        No, there's no army. No, I use email like text.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:28:28

        [laughs]

30. 1:28:29 – 1:32:14

    Focus And Founder Drive

    1. SPSpeaker1:28:29

       Yeah.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:28:30

       How do you balance focus? Yeah, obviously Snapchat's working, the app. Specs working, and will continue to like grow. How do you balance like inventing new things with, with focusing on what you already have? Like, how do you think about that? Or are you just, that's just... You, you just need to invent new things. That just... You have like a compulsion for this.

    3. SPSpeaker1:28:52

       Um, it's, it's a, it's a really great question. I see a huge amount of opportunity in the, the products and services that we have today, and I think we need to continue to constantly iterate and evolve them and make them better. Um, and that ultimately that's what our customers, our community expects, right? They want us to constantly innovate for them to, you know, make their lives, their lives better. So I think we have to tirelessly do that. At the same point, there's nothing more valuable than focus. Like, focus is... I mean, arguably my primary role in our company is helping to drive focus and prioritization, so I almost don't see them necessarily as, as like trade-offs, but like as just an ongoing part of running our business, right? Making sure that we're being really clear about focusing on the areas where we see the biggest opportunity.

    4. DSDavid Senra1:29:42

       Yeah. If, um, somebody were to ask, uh, uh, ask me like, "Okay, you've read 400 of, uh, biographies on history's greatest entrepreneurs," they always wanna like, "Give me like a top 10 idea list." And I was like, "I can do one better. I can distill everything down to one single word, 'Focus.'" And so while you were talking, I was just looking up-

    5. SPSpeaker1:29:57

       Wow

    6. DSDavid Senra1:29:57

       ... 'cause I save all my notes and highlights for every single book I read. I have a personal AI that, that-

    7. SPSpeaker1:30:01

       Uh

    8. DSDavid Senra1:30:01

       ... uh, is only trained on all the transcripts for my podcast, every single highlight from every book, every single note. And Edwin Land, one of my favorite quotes of his, he says, "My whole life has just been trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had."

    9. SPSpeaker1:30:16

       That's awesome.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:30:16

        He was obsessed with focus.

    11. SPSpeaker1:30:18

        That's awesome.

    12. DSDavid Senra1:30:18

        The reason I ask you this is because, uh, you spent, uh, any time with Tony from DoorDash?

    13. SPSpeaker1:30:22

        Not a lot, no.

    14. DSDavid Senra1:30:23

        Okay. Uh, we just recorded this intense conversation, and I'm gonna have to do it again like every six months 'cause I still can't... The guy has got so many ideas. I don't buy individual stocks. I don't really give a shit about anything but making, you know, podcasts and try to do this intense focus, so I don't think about investing, I don't think about anything else, just do what I'm doing every day, wake up and do it seven days a week. But I don't know anything about the finance of DoorDash. All I can tell you is he's, I think, 41 years old. I've never come across another person that gives me like young Jeff Bezos vibes. And I'm so tempted to just like back up the truck and be like-

    15. SPSpeaker1:30:52

        [laughs]

    16. DSDavid Senra1:30:53

        ... I'm just gonna... There's a vibe. I'm gonna vibe invest just because everybody's like, "Oh yeah, you know, you got 60% of..." I think right now he has 60% market share of food delivery. You're out of your goddamn mind if you think that that guy is just thinking about food delivery. He is... He's gonna build, and he already is, I think they launched six new products, including their own hardware. There's something about this conversation that's reminding me of this, where it's just like he's gonna be focused on, you know, what they're excellent at, but he's got grandiose ambitions.To the point where like he j- just like, there's no way in hell Bezos was gonna stick with books and CDs and movies. Like he j- he's-- it's impossible for that kind of personality type to, to be that way. Um, so yeah, I was just curious if like you, if there was something in you that y- you basically like your level of ambition.

    17. SPSpeaker1:31:44

        I think ambition is the wrong word.

    18. DSDavid Senra1:31:45

        Okay.

    19. SPSpeaker1:31:45

        I do think like... I think like creation and problem-solving is really what I, what I love to do.

    20. DSDavid Senra1:31:54

        I think you're right, ambition is the wrong word. It's like there's, they see a series of problems, and they think they can solve it better than anybody else.

    21. SPSpeaker1:32:01

        Yeah, and I, I think there's like something so incredibly gratifying about doing that. It's awesome, you know? And to see the way it, it makes people's lives better, the way they respond to it, like it... That's, that's like the best. It's, it's awesome.

31. 1:32:14 – 1:36:08

    Surfacing Problems Fast

    1. DSDavid Senra1:32:14

       Your focus basically every day when you wake up is like you're attacking what you feel is like the biggest problem in Snapchat. Is that how you organize your day? Like, how do you go about this? 'Cause I heard you on another podcast say that like you kinda get turned on. You didn't use these words, but like-

    2. SPSpeaker1:32:28

       [laughs]

    3. DSDavid Senra1:32:28

       ... you're like attracted to hard problems, like you want like difficulty. You want to spend your time solving the hardest problems.

    4. SPSpeaker1:32:36

       I think it's absolutely essential for us to go after solving, uh, hard problems, especially as we look at like the long-term success of the, the business. I think that ultimately like that is where value is created, so I think a huge amount of what I'm, I'm thinking about is like how can we make our community, our customers' lives better, and, you know, what are some really, really hard problems that we think we can uniquely solve?

    5. DSDavid Senra1:33:00

       I meant more about like the existing problems in like how you spend your time, how you allocate your time is a better word. Like the existing problems in the business.

    6. SPSpeaker1:33:09

       How do I allocate my time-

    7. DSDavid Senra1:33:10

       Yeah, exactly, like-

    8. SPSpeaker1:33:10

       ... to solve the existing problems?

    9. DSDavid Senra1:33:11

       So, so no, so like the like Elon's famous for like what is the f- the bottleneck here?

    10. SPSpeaker1:33:15

        Mm.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:33:15

        And like I'll find out in my entire empire where the bottleneck is, I'm going physically there, and I'm gonna sit there and like dedicate all our resources. In that, uh, essay I told you I, I read about the history of SpaceX, the, they, they just... The- there's a NASA guy, a guy from NASA, um, visiting SpaceX, and they're like, like when there's a problem, there's like a flash mob appears, so Elon has a very specific way. And I heard you on another podcast saying like you're attracted to problems, so I'm just curious like I'm not talking about problems you could solve like in future product development.

    12. SPSpeaker1:33:41

        Yeah.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:33:41

        I'm saying literally like there's a... You're running a giant company. There's all types of sh- stuff that's not going well.

    14. SPSpeaker1:33:47

        Yeah, so, so my Monday morning, for example, is like two to two and a half hours in the specs business going through the risks and dependencies, red, yellow, you know, red, orange, yellow, green. What are we doing to solve it, right? And what progress are we making, and how can I help? I mean, that's the, that's, that's how I start my week.

    15. DSDavid Senra1:34:08

        You and I were looking at this book I, I gave you before we started recording, and it was a photographic history. I think it's called like Fearless Genius or something, or Ferocious Genius, and it's about Steve Jobs. And you open to a page, and Steve had a shit list. [laughs]

    16. SPSpeaker1:34:21

        [laughs]

    17. DSDavid Senra1:34:21

        And you're like, "I have a shit list too." It's like the five hardest problems he's gotta solve, and there, and many of them don't have solutions yet, so it's similar to that.

    18. SPSpeaker1:34:29

        Yeah, and I think what's most important for me is creating a culture where people are raising their hand and bringing those problems early and often, right? Like that is mission critical across the organization, right? Like we can't solve a problem that we don't know about. We can't solve a problem that someone isn't escalating quickly, you know, and so I think it's, it's really beyond just like making sure that we're staying focused on the, the issues that we need to get resolved and, you know, launch blockers or whatever they are. Culturally, we have got to make sure that like that is, you know, how the team is operating all day, every day throughout the organization.

    19. DSDavid Senra1:35:00

        How do you ensure that information gets to you, though?

    20. SPSpeaker1:35:02

        I think one of the things that's really... I stole this from Walmart, which I thought was great. They have a Friday meeting called In It to Win It. They have their leaders from across the company, not just like super senior leaders, but leaders from across the company around the world all get together for about an hour, and they essentially raise their hand and say, "Hey, the shopping cart ball bearing is not working properly. We gotta get this thing fixed," right? And who's ever in charge of the shopping cart ball bearing can raise their hand and give a response, or they can say, "I'll get back to you," or whatever it is, but that's multiplied across the entire company, and the thing that they found was like their leaders would go out into the, you know, into stores, into the community, and they would hear about problems, and then they'd solve the problem just for the store, but they wouldn't solve it for the company, and so In It to Win It allows them to solve these problems company-wide, and so we do the same thing for specs, for Snapchat, like bring the problems forward, right? I mean, you can also, the, the even simpler way to do it, I love to just walk around and talk to our people, right, and just hear about what's going on, hear about the issues impacting them, but I think you, unless you create these like structures and processes in the company to actively surface it and build that culture, uh, it's hard to, it's hard to do that, and I think, you know, it's just so important.

32. 1:36:08 – 1:39:36

    Flat Culture Meritocracy

    1. DSDavid Senra1:36:08

       So I heard you describe the design team as like a very flat, just like no hierarchy. Is the rest of the company like that? Like, how is it, how do you actually organize?

    2. SPSpeaker1:36:18

       I'd say the rest of the company is certainly flatter than most, but, you know, the design team is actually flat, right? Uh, everyone's got the same title, like that kind of thing. But I think what's so important for Snap is that we're like a ruthless meritocracy. You know, we, like in the beginning of the early days, uh, you know, this is kind of silly now, but in the early days, we would just make up people's titles, like just make them hilarious. Like, you could come and join Snap and like make up whatever you wanted to be called because the whole point was like who cares about your title, and if you're focused on your title, you're focused on like the exact wrong thing, right? Like that, like we are gonna die if like we are a company that's focused on title and hierarchy and, you know, uh, getting ahead, right, rather than focusing on the customer. I mean, I think that's like a huge, huge problem. So I'd say like the, the company, yeah, of course, you know, we've, we've got great leaders. We invest a lot in our leaders, but one of the things that I think makes Snap so unique is like no matter who you are, where you are in the company, you can have a huge outsized impact. I mean, it was, it was fun. I, I got some great like intern feedback. One of our interns like came to me and was like, "You know, it's funny, like I came to Snap, and like it wasn't even really clear like who my manager or leader was 'cause everyone was so helpful, and everyone was like guiding me and providing mentorship and working together with me," and so I think that sort of like one teamFeeling is, is really important.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:37:31

       So how do you make sure that anybody in the company can make a major impact though?

    4. SPSpeaker1:37:35

       First of all, setting that expectation, like that's, that's what we expect at Snap. It's not just like, you know, that we try to enable it, that's like if you see a problem and you can fix it, you can solve it, like we're gonna celebrate that and lift that up and not be precious like, "Oh, this is my thing, my territory." Like that's, that, that is, I think, you know, I, I think people respond really negatively to that in our, in our culture. So I think, you know, sometimes that creates problems 'cause the swim lanes are less clear. I mean, people are solving problems across the organization, across teams or working together, and I think, um, you know, just making sure that we have culture and leaders who are rewarding that and reinforcing that behavior is so important.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:38:14

       Have you studied how Jensen organized his company?

    6. SPSpeaker1:38:16

       Not in depth. I mean, you would, you would be the expert, I'm sure.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:38:19

       Not nearly, but I did do two podcasts on him. There's a great book called Nvidia Way, uh, that goes into this. But yeah, I, I haven't found anybody else that at that, especially at that size, that has like a completely flat, you know, as, as flat an organization as possible. Um, I think he's got like 60 direct reports.

    8. SPSpeaker1:38:34

       Yeah.

    9. DSDavid Senra1:38:34

       Like, I mean, it's pretty wild. And he describes this as like people are worried about like being able to manage like s- AI that's smarter than them, and AI agents that are smarter than them. He's like, "I do this every day. My, all my 60 direct reports are smarter than me in their domain, and I'm able to manage them and orchestrate them perfectly." [laughs] It's just, it's like very fascinating. Like, I'm always curious, again, I think the, uh, the founder of like companies are a reflection of the personality of the founder. Like the founder is the guardian of the company's soul, and it only works if it is like built around who you are and the philosophy that you have.

    10. SPSpeaker1:39:03

        Yeah, and I think, you know, generally speaking, I would expect the world to move towards flatter structures and much larger spans of control because like the communication and organization tax today is like night and day what it was 20 or 30 years ago. Like, so I think companies are still thinking in this like sort of industrial mentality where communication was very high friction. That doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of the way that companies are organized and operate today. So I, I would imagine that more people will move to much, much l- wider spans of control, much flatter organizations, and I think that'll be helpful.

33. 1:39:36 – 1:41:15

    Last Company And Giving Back

    1. DSDavid Senra1:39:36

       I'm not really interested in people's first company, I'm interested in their last company. Is-- You feel like this is your life's work, this is your last company?

    2. SPSpeaker1:39:44

       I think Specs is probably my last company, I would, I would guess. I always said I would never do it again, and now I find myself doing it again with Specs, and, uh, it's just, you know... I, I hope that like in the not too distant future, I can also think about more ways to like give back to society. I mean, our family does a lot. We have like a family fund. We've got, you know, the Snap Foundation. We like are constantly thinking about how to, you know, support LA, uh, you know, and, and hopefully in the future like, you know, more broadly.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:40:17

       I love charity, but the best way to be charity is to build a company and a product to make somebody else's life better.

    4. SPSpeaker1:40:23

       I think that's like one way to contribute, for sure. Um, but I think like, I think there are lots of ways to, to contribute to making the world better and, and I think, um, I think Specs... Like o- the biggest problem that I see today is people spending seven or eight hours a day on their computer and spending their life operating a computer. I think that is like a disaster for our society, and I think like we have to change that. Uh, and if we don't, like we are headed in a really bad direction. So I think Specs sh- if we can attack that problem and even shift two hours of the eight hours a day you're spending hunched over like this to you looking out at the world and going for a walk and spending time with your friends and playing together with them, like that, that's massive for the world. So I think like I really wanna like land the solution to that problem for sure. But I think like there's a lot of problems out there, and I think, um, you know, uh, over a longer period of time, I, I wanna think about like more ways that I can make an

34. 1:41:15 – 1:48:51

    Turning Down Billions

    1. SPSpeaker1:41:15

       impact.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:41:15

       You're just reminding me, I wanna go back to this interesting decision for you to go in on AR at a time when almost everybody was thinking that VR was the path, and I've heard some funny, uh, uh, you, you, you say some funny things about that. But so not letting me forget that, but I guess this line of questioning that I'm on right now is really what I'm trying to get to is just like you're famous for turning down billions and billions of dollars real fast to sell the company. I think the book that I read on you eight years ago was called How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars or some-something [laughs] like they made reference to it. I'm trying to get at like what is motivating you? Like, you know, I, I study entrepreneurship, obviously. My entire life is founders. Every during the day I make Founders podcast. At night, I hang out with founders. This is my whole life. And I think the common misconception is that entrepreneurs are driven by money, and I would argue they're driven by control. And if you're talented and you wanna build a product that makes somebody's else life better and you maintain control, you wind up with money anyways. But their primary motivation is not money. Clearly, your primary motivation was not money. I think there's a line in the book said that you would never work for anybody else. Like take us through the decision of just like, "I don't give a shit about your billions of dollars. I want to do this."

    3. SPSpeaker1:42:23

       Well, I think, you know, I sh- I would never like underestimate the fact that like Bobby and-- Our investors were smart. They allowed Bobby and I to both sell ten million bucks of stock very early on. Obviously, that would've been worth maybe a lot more now, but like-

    4. DSDavid Senra1:42:38

       [laughs]

    5. SPSpeaker1:42:38

       But very early on, which meant that like, you know, we were able to see a, to s- you know, support a family, buy a house, like whatever it was, right? So I think like very early on, money like was no longer a consideration.

    6. DSDavid Senra1:42:51

       But ten million's not a billion.

    7. SPSpeaker1:42:54

       But ten million is more than enough money to live-

    8. DSDavid Senra1:42:55

       Yeah, I-

    9. SPSpeaker1:42:56

       ... a really great-

    10. DSDavid Senra1:42:56

        Yeah

    11. SPSpeaker1:42:57

        ... comfortable life.

    12. DSDavid Senra1:42:57

        But you see what I mean here? Like it's still an unusual decision on your part, especially when you were-- How old were you when you make, the first time you turned down a multi-billion dollar acquisition offer?

    13. SPSpeaker1:43:08

        Probably twenty, uh, I don't know. You know, long, young twenties. Yeah.

    14. DSDavid Senra1:43:12

        Okay. Don't downplay. Like that's ano-another, uh, see we've, we've gone over a series of [laughs] unusual decisions that you keep making. So like e-explain to me like why-- I wouldn't do it either. Like I'd hope I wouldn't do it because my, I guess my, the, the work I'm trying to do on Founders Podcast, to give you, like I, I, I wanna like, to the degree that there is any influence that the podcast has on future generations of entrepreneurs, it's likeRight now, the entrepreneurship ecosystem, they celebrate, because the incentive structure's fucked up, they celebrate start, scale, sell.

    15. SPSpeaker1:43:42

        Hmm.

    16. DSDavid Senra1:43:42

        You started, you scaled, you didn't sell. The four hundred biographies, I- there's not a single biography that I've read where it's like guy started a company, two years later he sold it for billions of dollars-

    17. SPSpeaker1:43:52

        [laughs]

    18. DSDavid Senra1:43:52

        ... and he spent the rest of his life as a-

    19. SPSpeaker1:43:54

        Ugh.

    20. DSDavid Senra1:43:54

        As an investor. I'm sorry, almost threw up in my mouth at the thought of this. They don't write books about that. Why do you take yourself out of the game? Like, the whole point-- Like, Elon's the richest person on the planet. You think he'd ever do that? No. He, like, puts his chips back in there. He wants to build shit.

    21. SPSpeaker1:44:06

        Yeah.

    22. DSDavid Senra1:44:07

        This is one, one of the things I admire about you. So, like, why- how the hell do you make that decision at twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four?

    23. SPSpeaker1:44:12

        Well, I think we, we loved what we were doing. I mean, Bobby and I just loved working together. We loved making stuff. We saw a huge opportunity for the service. And fundamentally, the service was so different than what else was out there, and it was very clear that, like, we would have had to compromise on our vision and values if we sold the company. I mean, you think about almost every choice was the opposite of what was happening at the time, right? It was, like, permanent public social media on a feed. We were doing, like, private messaging, private ephemeral messaging, right? Uh, no public likes and comments, right? With, like, opening into the camera, not a feed, investing in things like augmented reality when everyone was investing in virtual reality, thinking that people were actually gonna, like, wear a TV on their face. Like, it's insane. Like, it was insane. And I think, like, you know [laughs] it makes no sense. And I think, like, we looked at that and we were like, "Wow," like, you know? If that, like if that's, like, the direction people wanna go, like, that's scary for the world. Now, it's great in many ways that, like, all of these services have a- adopted our inventions. I mean, when we talked about, I mean, in 2012, like 2013, the importance of privacy, people looked at us like we were insane. I mean, literally. They were like, "What are you talking about, privacy? Like, what?" Like, that... Remember, that was, like, the, the world... Remember Mark Zuckerberg being like, "The world's gonna be open and connected. Everyone's gonna share everything." Like, w- what? Like, a- and it was just so wrong in terms of the direction of the world and, like, what people actually wanted. And so I think, like, you could imagine a world without Snapchat, without these inventions, like, I think the world would be, like, a w- a worse place. You- it's so, it's so interesting right now there's a lot of concern about social media and the way that it makes people feel, right? What's fascinating is when Snapchat is studied separately from social media, there's study after study, independent studies, that show that Snapchat makes a positive impact on people's friendships, on their wellbeing, a- that is fundamentally different from social media. 'Cause in those same studies it shows that Instagram, TikTok, whatever, make people feel bad, right? And so what I find so interesting is that, like, Snapchat itself represents something different and a connection to your friends and family that actually makes your life better. And so even though it's challenging to continue operating a business, to compete with these folks, you know, who have a very different worldview and, and a, you know, a very different direction for how they wanna, how they want the world to, to move, I, I, I worry about a world without Snapchat. I worry about a, you know, a world that doesn't try to fight for this different set of values and this different way of thinking about things.

    24. DSDavid Senra1:46:32

        One of the benefits of reading a biography is you see, like, the evolution of an idea over time, where, like, your decision not to sell as a young man in his early twenties, right? You might have had, like, a, a, a faint idea that, you know, first of all, you, I think you, you love being an entrepreneur. Like, entrepreneurs need businesses. What is an entrepreneur that sold his business? It's like nothing. You're just sitting on the sidelines doing nothing.

    25. SPSpeaker1:46:54

        Yeah.

    26. DSDavid Senra1:46:54

        So, like, you shouldn't sell your, ever, ever sell your best idea. That's what I said, um, back in 2018 when I made the first podcast about you. It's just like this is the be- I think you even said this, like, "I don't think I'm gonna come up with a better idea than this."

    27. SPSpeaker1:47:04

        [laughs]

    28. DSDavid Senra1:47:04

        So I'm gonna now dedicate my life to working on my second-best idea? How the hell does that make sense? For money that I'm gonna get anyways in the future, and most of which I won't even spend in my lifetime.

    29. SPSpeaker1:47:13

        [laughs]

    30. DSDavid Senra1:47:13

        But you had that kernel of the idea. But now the, you, you just did this great articulation of that. It's just like that idea almost, like, grew and solidified over time, and then there's things in the future that had to happen that you didn't know were going to happen and you realize that was the right choice. Such as social media gets a really bad rap. It has terrible PR. Um, you know, I, I, the, all the, the polling is just, like, you know, people even though they're addicted to these things, they seem to not, you know, make their lives better. Where, like, you actually se- if you separate that out and, like, you've built something where, like, people are actually happy and feel good about using the product, that's worth more than money.
35. 1:48:51 – 1:51:24

    Snapchat Funds New Computing

    1. SPSpeaker1:48:51

       I think for me, like, I see Snapchat as the best possible vehicle to reinvent the computer. So if you think about Snapchat, we have this core, cash-flowing, profitable business, right, in Snapchat, that we're able to then use to reinvest in what has been a very long-term speculative project to reinvent the, the computer. And Snapchat has really been, in addition to changing the world in its own way, a real vehicle for enabling this evolution of computing. And so I think for me, that's one of the real benefits of running and controlling Snapchat today, is that we've been able to very consistently in- invest in advanced technology and R&D over an incredibly long period of time to build a real competitive advantage, but also to build a world-class product that we wouldn't have been able to do without Snapchat.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:49:34

       Oh, I never even thought about that like that.So you view Snapchat as a means to reinvent computing?

    3. SPSpeaker1:49:41

       It's an incredibly important part of it because without a hugely profitable cash flow, I mean, Snapchat's almost a seven billion dollar revenue business, right? Almost in the Fortune five hundred. People, you know, uh, make fun of us for not being profitable enough. We're taking a lot of that core cash flow from Snapchat and using it to reinvest in winning this future of computing. What's very unique about Snapchat is we've been able to do that now for-- You know, we've invested in glasses for twelve years. We've been able to very consistently invest in a way that no VC would ever in a million years support.

    4. DSDavid Senra1:50:10

       Would there ever have been a world where you only built software?

    5. SPSpeaker1:50:13

       Um. [sighs]

    6. DSDavid Senra1:50:19

       There's too much of, like, this art design background with you, and then I'm sitting here as you're talking and describing this to me, and I didn't even think about your business in those terms yet, which is why it's valuable to sit down and have conversations like this. Uh, it's like this guy's two heroes built the best hardware of all time in both of their industries.

    7. SPSpeaker1:50:35

       Yeah, I, I think ultimately-

    8. DSDavid Senra1:50:36

       And Jobs is famous for saying, "If you want to build great software, you have to control the hardware."

    9. SPSpeaker1:50:40

       A hundred percent. Yeah, I, I think ultimately, if you think about the, the customer experience you're trying to create or the-- what you're, what you're trying to create in the world, ultimately you realize that hardware is a necessity in realizing that vision, essentially.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:50:55

        So the answer is no. There is no world in which Evan only builds software.

    11. SPSpeaker1:51:00

        Think about how early we started doing it. I mean, this was back in twenty fourteen we started investing in hardware.

    12. DSDavid Senra1:51:07

        Yeah, I think you're really misunderstood. [laughs] 'Cause like I, I did an entire podcast about you. I've listened to all your interviews, and I'm still, like, learning things right now from talking to you.

    13. SPSpeaker1:51:16

        No, it's fun, right?

    14. DSDavid Senra1:51:17

        Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely a lot of fun, but, like, we need to do a better job of telling this story, man. [laughs]

    15. SPSpeaker1:51:21

        [laughs] Well, I think the best way to tell the story is through the product,

36. 1:51:24 – 1:53:56

    Crucible Year And Schedule

    1. SPSpeaker1:51:24

       right? And I think that's what's so exciting about this year and why I articulate it as a crucible moment. Because, like, we are inflecting and transforming Snapchat at the same time that we're launching a whole new product category that we've invented. You know, so this will be a, a seminal year for our, our company.

    2. DSDavid Senra1:51:38

       So what does your schedule look like during a year like this? I've heard, like-

    3. SPSpeaker1:51:41

       It's insane.

    4. DSDavid Senra1:51:42

       Yeah, okay.

    5. SPSpeaker1:51:42

       So it's completely insane.

    6. DSDavid Senra1:51:44

       Tell us more.

    7. SPSpeaker1:51:44

       Un-untenable. No, it's, it's a-- This is like a seven-day-a-week job, you know?

    8. DSDavid Senra1:51:49

       How do you balance that though? Because you have young kids at home, and I heard in very intense times you were talking about sometimes you had to get up before they were awake, and you went home every day after they were asleep.

    9. SPSpeaker1:52:02

       There's a lot of days like that right now. I mean, I'm back in-- definitely in that mode. I always try to keep Sunday protected. You know, we go to church as a family, we go to brunch, and then I spend the afternoon with our kids, and that's super important to me. Um, but other than that, uh, you know, it's, it's full on.

    10. DSDavid Senra1:52:20

        So early mornings, late nights all the time.

    11. SPSpeaker1:52:23

        Yep.

    12. DSDavid Senra1:52:23

        And your biggest issue is that you're redesign-- like you're inventing new hardware. 'Cause is that-- Like, I don't wanna diminish Snapchat, but it sounds like it's at scale, it's profitable. You're adding a lot of product features.

    13. SPSpeaker1:52:35

        With Snapchat, we do need to re-accelerate the advertising business, but I think given the transformation we've undertaken over the last three years of the advertising platform like that, that is coming, right? We're seeing the growth in the small and medium customers. We're diversifying the advertising business. We've built this direct revenue business. So I look at Snapchat and, like, I see a path, you know, to a lot more revenue over the, over the coming years. And so I think that's-- that certainly has been a huge focus of the last several, uh, years. And then I think, you know, the core specs business this year will mark the real beginning, you know, of the next chapter of that story as we transition from being, you know, a developer platform to a consumer product, which is really challenging thing to do.

    14. DSDavid Senra1:53:13

        All right, so you have an insane schedule. I have a feeling based on you have like this simmering intensity about you. Like, are these actually your favorite times to be running the company?

    15. SPSpeaker1:53:25

        Absolutely. Yeah.

    16. DSDavid Senra1:53:27

        Why?

    17. SPSpeaker1:53:28

        Because every decision, the way you spend every minute really matters, and I think that's exciting because I think it's a-- we're at a real inflection point in the company in terms of, you know, if you think about the last twelve years of my life that I've invested in, you know, creating this new vision for what a com-computer can be and, you know, and I, I almost said the number of days. In, in some number of days, we're about to share that with the world and, like, that's incredibly, incredibly exciting.

37. 1:53:56 – 1:56:09

    Stress Reframed Meditation

    1. DSDavid Senra1:53:56

       How do you handle the stress, though?

    2. SPSpeaker1:53:58

       Huge on meditation. Kriya meditation changed my life.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:54:01

       What's it called?

    4. SPSpeaker1:54:02

       Called Kriya.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:54:03

       Okay.

    6. SPSpeaker1:54:03

       Unbelievable. Meditation was like never like a fit for me. You know, I always like, they're like, "Try TM." Like, "Learn your mantra." Like it just like never clicked. Kriya is like incredibly energizing. You know, involves like breathwork and it's like, to me it's like, uh, I mean, wow. You know, it's like it's super powerful.

    7. DSDavid Senra1:54:20

       Is this like a daily practice?

    8. SPSpeaker1:54:21

       When I can, yeah. And I, I try to exercise every morning, Kri- you know, Kriya as much as I can, you know, a couple days a week. Um, and obviously playing with our kids and hanging with my wife, like that's the, that's the stress management regime. [chuckles]

    9. DSDavid Senra1:54:36

       Yeah. I-I feel like all the great entrepreneurs, it's like the, the, the, the best quote I've ever heard describe this kind of mentality was this guy named Herb Kelleher, who was the founder of Southwest Airlines. Was the most successful airline. And think about it. He's selling commodity product, right? Uh, most successful airline of all time. I think it was profitable for forty straight years.

    10. SPSpeaker1:54:53

        That's awesome.

    11. DSDavid Senra1:54:53

        And he was asked one time, they're like, "How do you handle the stress?" He's like, "I don't handle it. I like it." He's like, "I'm, I'm not doing this." Like, I wouldn't start a company in a hugely competitive environment if I wanted like to take an easy path through life.

    12. SPSpeaker1:55:07

        But I think what he did there and like how he explained that, what's really powerful about that, and I think this is what a lot of founders do, is they reframe it, right? Like, if you can reframe stress as an opportunity, it's gonna, it's gonna be great. I mean, in the early day, like I hated speaking publicly when we created our company. I didn't like it. Like my, my innate nature, I mean, this goes back to like growing up in the computer lab, right? Like I just did not wanna do public speaking. I didn't wanna do company-wide Q&A. You know, I'm like, "If I wanna communicate with the company, I'll send an email," kind of thing, right? Like crazy. And like one of our board members was like, "Evan, like it's your job. Like too bad. Figure it out." And literally I was like, okay. I'm gonna learn how to love it. Like I'm gonna learn how to love public speaking. I'm gonna learn how to love doing a, you know, live Q&A with our team. And I do now. Like I love it. I love doing Q&A.With our team. And so I think that ability to like reframe things that like a-appear like a challenge or feel like something you're uncomfortable with, like that's, that's really important.

    13. DSDavid Senra1:55:58

        Yeah. You'll see this in the history of entrepreneurship, Thomas Edison, Henry Kaiser, Edwin Land, they viewed as prob-pro- problems are just opportunities in work clothes [laughs] . It's like, "This is an opportunity. We just have to get to work to actually

38. 1:56:09 – 1:57:07

    Explainer In Chief

    1. DSDavid Senra1:56:09

       do it." There's been this new, um, thing that's popped up where I-I'm glad you-you're- you like actually developed a skill set, uh, and to tell your own story to communicate this because companies are trying to hire like a, a chief storyteller. It's like, yeah, that's the founder [laughs] . Like Edwin Land, go back ... Again, we talked about Edwin Land and Steve Jobs a lot today. It's like they would tell you the person that is best able to te- And it's not even gonna have to be that articulate. It's just you care more about it than anybody else. You know more about it than anybody else. Just educate us on what it's ... Why your product exists and what makes it special. And the, uh, who else could do that but the person that was there when it was just one person, two people, and a laptop?

    2. SPSpeaker1:56:46

       Yeah. I'll, I'll never forget, like I, I, when I was a lot, uh, younger, I was starting the company, I had the opportunity to meet, uh, President Clinton, right? And his advice was like, "The job is explainer in chief.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:56:56

       [laughs]

    4. SPSpeaker1:56:56

       That is the job. Like, you gotta go around and explain this stuff to everybody so they understand, you know, their role at Snap or Snap's role in the world, and I think that that's super valuable.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:57:04

       Well, you're doing a good job. I appreciate you taking the time for

39. 1:57:07 – 1:58:24

    Closing

    1. DSDavid Senra1:57:07

       this. I do wanna end on one of my favorite quotes. This is from the book that I read, uh, about you f- uh, almost a decade ago. The, the, the, I guess I'll give a little context here. You dropped out of Stanford with five classes, six classes left, but you decided to walk with an emp- for an empty diploma, right? And you regretted it, and then you told this beautiful ... This is a direct quote from you. It says, "It only recently occurred to me while preparing this, how totally absurd this whole charade was. It reminded me that oftentimes we do all sorts of silly things to avoid appearing different. Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. We want to be accepted by our peers. We wanna be part of the group. It's in our biology. But the thing that makes us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction." It's very obvious that you listen to the whisper of your soul. I'm very glad that people like you exist. Thank you very much for taking the time to have this conversation.

    2. SPSpeaker1:57:59

       Thanks so much for having me.

    3. DSDavid Senra1:58:00

       Yeah. Awesome, man.

    4. SPSpeaker1:58:01

       Thanks.

    5. DSDavid Senra1:58:02

       I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:58:25