YC Root AccessLecture 11 - Hiring and Culture, Part 2 (Patrick and John Collison, Ben Silbermann)
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55 min read · 11,244 words- 0:01 – 1:33
Defining culture: hiring, daily habits, communication, and celebration
- SASam Altman
Part 2 of Culture and Team, and we have Ben Silbermann, the founder of Pinterest, and John and Patrick Collison, the founders of Stripe. Um, ye- founders that have obviously sort of some of the best in the world at thinking about culture and how they build teams. So there's three areas that we're gonna cover today. One will just be sort of general thoughts on culture as a follow-up to the last lecture, and then we're really gonna dig into what happens at the founding of these companies and, and building out the early team, and then how that changes and evolves, uh, as these guys have scaled their companies up to, you know, 100 plus... I don't even know how many people you have now, but quite a lot. These very large organizations and how you adapt these principles of culture. Um, but to start off, I just wanna, uh, ask a very open-ended question, which is, w- what are the core pieces of culture that you found to be most important in building out your companies?
- BSBen Silbermann
I'll start with that. Sure. What are the, what are the most important parts? Yeah, it's on. It's recording. Oh, it's on. Um, yeah, I mean, I think, I think for us, like, we think about it on a few dimensions. Like, one is, like, who do we hire, and what do those people value? Um, two is what do we do every day? Like, why do we do it? Um, three is what do we choose to communicate? Uh, and then I think the fourth is what we choose to celebrate, and I guess the converse of that is, like, what you choose to punish. But, uh, in general, I think running a company based on what you celebrate is more, more exciting than what you punish. But I think those four things, um, kinda make up the bulk of it for us.
- 1:33 – 2:55
Stripe’s transparency-first culture and the tooling needed to support it
- JCJohn Collison
One thing that we've placed a hu- a large emphasis on as Stripe has grown and probably more than other companies is, uh, transparency internally. Uh, and I think it's something that's been really valuable for Stripe, uh, and also a little bit misunderstood. Uh, all the things people talk about, like, you know, hiring really great people or giving them a huge amount of leverage, uh, transparency for us plays into that. Uh, we think that, you know, if you are aligned at a, a high level about what Stripe is doing, if everyone really believes in the mission, and then if everyone has, uh, really good access to information and kind of has a good picture of the current state of Stripe, uh, then that gets you a, a huge amount of the, of, of the way there in terms of working productively together. Uh, and it, it kind of forgives a lot of the other things that tend to break as you, as you grow a startup. A- and so we've, as we've grown, you know, we s- we started off two people. We're now over 170 people. We've put a lot of thought into the, the tooling that goes around, uh, transparency because, you know, at 170 people, there is so much information being produced that you can't just consume it all as a fire hose. Uh, and so how we, you know, use Slack, how we use email, things like that, we can go into it more later. Uh, but I think that's one of the core things that's helped us work well.
- 2:55 – 5:23
Culture as an answer to founder bandwidth limits—and why early hires compound
- PCPatrick Collison
Um, I think culture to some degree is basically kind of the, the resolution to a bandwidth problem, uh, in the sense that, uh, y- you know, when, when you start out working on something, you're sort of coding all the time, but you can't code all of the things that you think the product might need or the company might need or whatever, and so you, you decide to work with, with more coders, right? Um, and, uh, a- and, and so, you know, the, the organization gets larger, and maybe in some idealized world, I, I don't think this is actually true, but kind of ideally you could be involved in every single decision, in every single sort of m- moment of the company, in everything that happens. But obviously you can't, or maybe you can at two people, but you certainly can't at, at even, like, five or 10. Kind of that, that point comes very quickly. Then by the time you're 50, it's completely hopeless. And so culture is kind of how you, uh, uh, kind of what the, the, the strands are that you sort of want to have, the, the invariance that you want to kinda maintain, uh, a- as you can get specifically involved in sort of fewer and fewer decisions over time. Um, and, uh, and I think when you think about it that way, it, it, you know, may- maybe its kind of importance becomes sort of self-evident, right? Because a- a- again, like, the fraction of things you can be involved in directly is, like, diminishing, I mean, almost exponentially, sort of assuming your, your, your headcount growth is sort of on a curve that looks like, you know, one, one of the, the great companies. Um, and, uh, yeah, that, that's, that's super important. And, and it kind of, it, it manifests itself in a, a, you know, bunch of, you know, different ways. Like, for example, uh, in hiring, uh, I think a large part of the reason why the, maybe the first 10 people you hire, why, kind of, those deci- decisions are so important is because you're not just hiring those first 10 people. You're actually kind of hiring 100 people because you should think of kind of each one of those people as bringing along sort of another 10 people with them, uh, and sort of figuring out exactly what sort of, what 90 people, uh, you would like those first 10 people to bring along i- is obviously, uh, you know, it's, it's gonna be quite consequential for, for your, uh, for your company. Um, but really briefly, I think it's, it's largely about sort of, uh, abstraction.
- SASam Altman
S- so one thing that a lot of speakers in this class have touched on is how, uh, hiring those first 10 employees, if you don't get that right, the company basically, uh, will never recover. But no one's talked about how to do that. So, so what, what have the three of you looked for, um, when you've hired th- these initial employees to get the culture of the company right? How, how have you found them, and what have you looked for?
- 5:23 – 7:36
What to look for in the first hires: integrity, low ego, curiosity, and ambition
- BSBen Silbermann
Uh, sure. So I guess this answer is different for every, every company, and I, I'll say for, for us it was very inductive. So I literally looked for people that I wanted to work with and that I thought were talented. Um, I think I've read all these books about culture because when I don't know how to do something, I first go read things, and everyone has all these frameworks. And I think one bi- big misconception, um, that someone said once is that people think culture is like architecture when it's a lot more like gardening. Uh, you know, you plant some seeds, and then you pull out weeds that aren't working, and they sort of expand. So when we first hired people, um, we hired people that were like ourselves, um, and, uh, I often looked at, like, three or four different things that I, I, I really valued in people. You know, I looked for people that worked hard and seemed high integrity and low ego. Um-
- PCPatrick Collison
Um, I looked for people that were creative, and that usually meant they were really curious and they had all these different interests. Um, some of our first employees, uh, are probably some of the quirkiest people I've ever met. Um, they were engineers, but they also had all these crazy hobbies. Like, one guy had made his own board game, uh, with this elaborate set of rules. Another guy was really into magic tricks, uh, and he had coded not only, like, this magic trick on the iPhone, but he had shot the production video and the preview. Um, and I think that, that, that quirkiness has actually been a little bit of a calling card, and we find that really creative, quirky people that are excited about many disciplines and are extraordinary at one, um, tend to build really great products. They tend to be great at collaborating. Um, and the last thing is, you know, we really looked for people that wanted to... They just wanted to build something great. And, and they weren't, they weren't arrogant about it, but they just felt like it'd be really cool to take a risk and build something bigger than themselves. Um, and that at the beginning is very, very easy to select for, um, if you were in our situation. We had this horrible office, like, nobody got paid. Uh, so there was no external reason other than being excited about building something, uh, to join. In fact, there was every reason not to. Um, and that's something looking back I really, really value, because we always knew people were joining for the purest reasons, and in fact, were willing to forgo other great job opportunities, market salary, uh, a clean office, uh, you know, good equipment, just for the chance to work. So, um, to this day, I think a lot of those traits have been seeded and are embedded in the folks that we look at now.
- 7:36 – 13:00
Recruiting reality: convincing people to join an unknown startup
- JCJohn Collison
Um, yeah, the, the first 10 hires are really hard, uh, because, you know, y- you're, you're making these first 10 hires at a point where no one's heard of this company, no one really wants to work for it. You're just these, like, two weird people working on this weird idea.
- PCPatrick Collison
Like, like, their friends are telling them not to join. Uh, for, for, for our second employee, uh, uh, he was like... I think maybe he'd accepted the offer or he was just about to, and his best friends, like, took him out the night before. It was like a full-on assault for, uh, you know, why you should not join this company, why this is, like, ruining your life, basically. Um, and, uh, and so anyway, the, the guy subsequently, you know, or continued to join. A- and actually, one of those friends also now works at Stripe.
- JCJohn Collison
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- PCPatrick Collison
But, uh, but, but, uh, th- this is what you're up against.
- JCJohn Collison
Yeah. Um, and I mean, it's also hard because no batch of 10 people will have as great an influence on the, uh, on, on the company as those first 10 people. Um, and I think everyone's impression of recruiting is, you know, you, you open LinkedIn, it's sort of like ordering off the dollar menu. You're just like, "I want that one and that one and that one." Uh, and now you have some hires. Whereas, uh, at least for us, uh, it was very much over, uh, a very long time period, uh, talking people we knew, uh, or friends of friends into joining. Uh, we, we didn't have, you know, huge networks. Uh, Pa- Patrick and I were both in college at the time, so there were no people that we'd, you know, we'd really worked with to draw on. Uh, and so a lot of those early Stripes were people we had heard of, friends of friends. Uh, and the, the other interesting thing they all had in common is that they were all sort of, um, early in their career or undervalued in some way. 'Cause when you think about it, if someone is a, a known spectacular quantity, then, you know, they're probably working in a job and very happy with that. Uh, and so we had to, to try and find people who were, uh... You know, in the case of our, uh, designer that we hired, he was 18 and in high school and in Sweden at the time. Uh, in the case of our, our CDO, he was, uh, in, uh, he was in college at the time. You know, a lot of these people, they were, they were early on in their careers. Uh, and the only way we could... You know, you, you, you can, you can relax one constraint. You can, um, you know, relax the fact that they're talented or relax, you know, that it's apparent that they're talented. Uh, and we, w- you know, not consciously, but we, we relaxed the latter.
- PCPatrick Collison
Yeah. I, I think sort of f- f- finding kind of the people who, uh, uh, are, are kind of... I guess you have to kind of think like a value investor, right? You're, you're, you're looking for the, for the, the human capital that's, uh, uh, that's significant to the value of the market. You know, you probably shouldn't look to hire, uh, your, your brilliant friends at Facebook and Google or whatever because they're already discovered. Uh, you know, if, if they're willing to join, that's great, but, uh, they're probably, uh, harder to convince. Um, uh, John and I spent a, a little, a, a while, uh, yesterday afternoon sort of trying to figure out in retrospect, um, what kind of traits, uh, our first 10 or so people had in common that we thought were significant. Um, you know, in general, sort of in speaking about culture, uh, you know, I sort of want to caveat everything we say with, you know, I, I... Paul Buchheit I think said that sort of, uh, advice is, you know, a very limited experience wildly, uh, uh, over-extrapolated. Um, and, uh, I think there's a lot of truth to that. But, uh, for, for our particular first 10 people, the, the things we sort of, uh, figured out that seemed to be important were, uh, they're all sort of very genuine and straight. Um, I think that actually matters quite a lot in that sort of they're people that, uh, that others want to work with. Um, that they're people that others trust. They sort of have an intellectual honesty in how they approach problems and, and so forth. Um, they were people who really liked getting things finished. Uh, there's a lot of people who are really excited about tons of things. Only a subset of those are actually excited about, like, completing things. Uh, you know, there's a lot of talk about, for example, uh, hiring people, you know, off their GitHub resumes or whatever. I actually think that doesn't quite ring kind of correct to me in the sense that, that that places a large premium on sort of lots of different things. I, I think it's actually a priori sort of much more interesting to, to, you know, w- work with someone who has spent two years sort of really investing in going deep in a particular area. Um, and then, uh, the, the third trait that they all seem to have in common is they just sort of cared a great deal. Like, it was offensive to them when something was just a little bit off. And, uh, it kind of... Again, in hindsight, there are all these, like, crazy things we used to do that, um, uh, I mean, do in fact seem crazy. Like, we probably shouldn't have done them, but, uh, every- everyone was almost like, well, w- was borderline insane in sort of how much they cared about tiny details. Like, we used to, um-Uh, like, uh, every single API request that ever generated an error went to all of our inboxes and phoned all of us. [laughs] Uh, because it seemed terrible to, like, ever have an error that, that, you know, uh, uh, didn't go and sort of get a resolution, uh, from the user standpoint. Um, or we used to, like, copy everyone else on every outgoing email, and we'd, like, point out, you know, slight grammar or spelling mistakes to each other because it'd be terrible to ever send an email with a spelling mistake. Um, so, uh, anyway, those were the, the, the three traits we came up with anyway. Uh, genuine, um, uh, uh, caring a great deal, and, um, uh... Sorry, what was my second one? The other one. Uh, yeah. [laughs] Um-
- BSBen Silbermann
Completing things.
- PCPatrick Collison
Sorry. Uh, sorry, yes, uh, completing things, like the list of three items. [laughs]
- 13:00 – 15:31
Finding talent anywhere—and always selling the story (elevator pitch)
- BSBen Silbermann
Yeah, I mean, the only other thing I'd say, I, I just don't think there's any wrong place to find people. Um, so when I look back at our, our first few folks that we hired, they came from all over the place. Like, I put up ads on Craigslist. Uh, I went to random tech talks. Um, you know, we met people at barb- We used to throw weekly barbecues at the office. It was like bring your own... Like, bring your own food and drinks, and then we would just talk to folks. I think every time I ever went and got coffee in Palo Alto, like, one of you guys was, uh, recruiting, uh, at Coupa because their office was, like, strategically situated next to the best coffee shop. Um, but I, I think that the really good people generally, um, they're generally doing something else, and so you have to go seek them out rather than expecting that they're gonna seek you out. Uh, triple so, uh, when no one's ever heard of or is using, uh, the product that you're working on.
- PCPatrick Collison
Yeah, uh, um, uh, it's probably really important to have a, a great elevator pitch, not even for investors, but just because everyone you, uh, run into right now is, you know, maybe six months, a year down the road, a potential recruit. Uh, and so the, the right time to have gotten them excited about your company, the right time for them to have started following us and, you know, be thinking about it as they think about what they're going to do next, um, is, you know, as soon as you can start. Uh, it's going to take a, a very long time to recruit people, so being able to consistently get people excited about what they're... What, what you're doing, uh, will pay back dividends later. M- Maybe this is, um, uh, a l- little bit tangential, but, uh, John and I were also chatting about it yesterday afternoon. Sort of, uh, like a, a bunch of our friends, uh, have sort of started companies right out of school, and we were sort of thinking about, uh, you know, what, what seems to go wrong in those companies. Uh, and I think something that, um, that maybe the m- most common, uh, failure mode seems to be sort of doing something kind of overly niche or overly sort of specific and bounded. I think maybe it comes from sort of, uh, like there's a major shift in time horizon a- as you go from classes to building a startup, right? A, a class kind of plays out on a quarter or a semester or whatever, um, whereas a startup is like a five- or ten-year thing. Um, and I think this is really problematic because, uh, it's actually quite hard to hire people for niche things, uh, in that if, if you tell somebody, "Look, we're going to build, uh, a rocket that goes to Mars," like, I mean, that sounds almost impossible, but it also sounds fucking awesome, right? Uh, and so it's actually pretty easy to convince people to work on it. Whereas if it's, "Well, you know, we're going to build this," uh, I don't want to single out any particular idea because probably sound like I'm picking some actual startups doing it. But, you know, if, if you pick something pretty narrow, something that maybe kind of inductively comes out of the kinds of problems you'd solve as part of a class project, uh, that's actually much harder to hire for.
- 15:31 – 22:21
How inexperienced founders can assess talent: calibrate ‘world-class’ and test for real work
- SASam Altman
S- O- One specific question that has come up a lot, um, is how as a relatively inexperienced founder do you identify who the really great people are? So, you know, you meet people at these barbecues or through your friends or whatever, and maybe you've worked with them a little bit. But h- what specifically did, did you guys do in your processes to identify, like, you know what, this person's gonna be really great, or when did you really get it wrong? But what, what have you learned about how to identify raw talent if you can't just say, "Well, they work at Google or Facebook, they must be good"?
- BSBen Silbermann
Well, I mean, you'll never, like, 100% know, obviously, until you work with folks, which is why the flip side of it is, you know, if someone you hired just wasn't a good fit, you owe it to the company and to them, uh, to tell them how they can improve and if they're not working out, to fire them. But I think that, that generally the question of talent falls into two big buckets. Like, one is you have some sense of what makes them good at their job, uh, and there are some areas where you have taste in that area, um, and there are some where you don't. And, and the ones where you don't are actually much more difficult. Um, so what we would do is, is we would do a few things. Like, first, before talking to anyone, we try to get a sense for, like, what, what is really world-class, uh, in that discipline mean? And this becomes very, very important later when you're hiring things like head of finance, and you don't know anything about finance except what was contained in, like, a library book you got about, like, an introduction to finance or head of marketing. Um, so, uh, I always made it a habit of, like, talking to people that I knew de facto were world-class and then asking them specifically, "What are the key traits or characteristics that you look for? What are the questions that you ask, and how do you... And then how do you find them? And, and if you're looking for the next person that's as good as you, like, where are... Where is that person working right now, and, like, what's, what's her phone number?" Um, I think that, like, learning what good and bad is during the interview process is extremely expensive. It's an expensive use of your time, and it's an expensive use of everyone else's time, so pre-calibration of that really matters. Um, and then once you have someone in sort of the interview process, uh, you'll build the process over time, uh, to both, um, screen quality. And so, um, at Pinterest, you know, we have an evolving set of standard questions that we're always rotating through, and we're always measuring are these good indicators or bad indicators of quality? But the other thing that the questions are meant to do is they're supposed to give a sense for is this the right place for that person to come and work? Um, and this is to the point you guys made about being very transparent about what's gonna be easy or hard. Really great people wanna do things that are hard. They wanna, they wanna solve tough problems. And so, um, there was a, there was a certain brilliance in, in Google setting out these interview questions that were thought to be really difficult because then people who like solving really difficult problems, uh, they come out and, and seek those. Um, I think it's really important even as companies get bigger that you don't whitewash the risks. Um, I heard that, uh, PayPal, you would go in and after interviewing with, like, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, then they would say, "And by the way, like, Visa and MasterCard wanna kill us, and we might be doing something that's illegal. Uh, but if you succeed, you'll redefine payments." Um-Or when they were recruiting for iPhone, they didn't even tell people what they were doing. They were like, "You won't see your families for, uh, three years."
- SASam Altman
[laughs]
- BSBen Silbermann
"Um, but when you're done, when you're done, your kids' kids will remember what you built." Um, and I think that's a really good thing in recruiting as well, that you're very, very transparent about why you think it's an amazing opportunity, but you lay out in gory detail, um, why it's gonna be hard, and then the right people select in or they select out, um, of that opportunity.
- SASam Altman
Um-
- PCPatrick Collison
Evidence suggests it's worth allowing people to see their kids, though. [laughs] Um, I, I feel like one thing you have to do, uh, as you try to identify talent is have the, uh, the confidence to, to interview for it in a way that works for you. Uh, I think, uh, you know, if you're, uh, say you're not the, you know, the world's best engineer and you, you're, you're trying to interview engineering candidates, uh, I think it's tempting to try to cargo cult what everyone else does, and you know, get them to code on whiteboards and do other engineering interviewee things. You know, in the case of Stripe, hiring our first engineer, we, we flew the guy out and we, uh, spent a weekend coding with him and, you know, looked over his shoulder and kind of... The, th- It was the only way we could really tell and get ourselves confident, uh, that that person was good. And I think you can actually extend that to, to other roles where, again, you're not an expert in that, you know, I'm no business development guru, but when we interview people for business development roles, we'll ask them to do a project, you know, where they, uh, talk about how they would improve an existing partnership that Stripe has or which new partnerships they would go out and do. And again, you know, e- even though it's not my domain area, I, I am actually confident enough that I can, I can judge those pretty well. And, and I think people often have this, uh, imposter syndrome when it comes to, to interviewing for roles. Yeah, I, I think a pretty specific kind of just tactical thing, um, to, to do for, again, the first 10 people is to work with them as much as you can, uh, before committing to hiring them. I mean, once you reach a certain scale, it's kind of impractical because it's a huge time commitment on their side and also, I mean, it just would be unscalably expensive from your side. Um, but it, it's really worth it to get the first 10 people right. And so for a majority, maybe even all of the first 10 people, uh, we, we, we worked with them in some capacity, usually for a week in advance, and it's, it's pretty hard to, to fake it for, for a week. Um, uh, pe- people... It, it tends to be pretty clear, uh, quite, quite, quite quickly. Um, another thing I thought of, uh, you know, to, to the question of sort of how, how do you know, like, who's great or who's good enough or whatever, and people always talk about sort of this notion of the 10X person at sort of whatever the skill set is. Uh, I don't really know what 10X means. I think maybe the, the slightly more kind of helpful, uh, or, like, intuitive version of that is, is this person probably, uh, the best out of all of their friends at what they do? [laughs] Um, uh, and so, you know, it's a little bit sensitive to, uh, how well they choose friends and how many they have, but, uh, uh, for, for me at least, I, I find that kind of a, a more helpful way to think about it. Like, is this the best engineer this engineer knows? Um, and, uh, and the other thing I think that's actually probably just worth mentioning in all those kind of first 10 people or even more generally on the culture and hiring topic, um, I think everyone, uh, sort of doesn't realize until they go through it themselves how important it is, in large part because, uh, the, like, in life and the media and everything, people focus way too much on founders, and that, like, here we are, and so kind of we're reinforcing the sort of structural narrative that, like, Stripe is about John and Patrick, and Pinterest is about Ben, and so forth. Uh, whereas, I mean, obviously sort of the vast majority of what our companies do, like 99.9%, is being done by people who are not us, right? Uh, and I think, I mean, obviously that's kind of, it, it, it's obvious when you say it, um, but it, it's sort of very much not just the, the macro narrative, and, you know, companies are abstract. You kind of need to associate them with specific people. But I think it's worth bearing in mind that, like, for, you know, Apple, you know, everything was, was, you know, Steve Jobs was, like, a tiny, tiny detail at the end, right? Or Google with Larry and so forth.
- SASam Altman
So don't screw it up is what you're saying?
- PCPatrick Collison
Something like that. [laughs]
- 22:21 – 24:16
Reference checks that actually work: forcing specificity and learning from the network
- BSBen Silbermann
I think, you know, the only other thing I'll mention is that I think referencing people is really important. Um, and, uh, referencing people is just what it sounds like. You're basically asking people who have real, material working experience, um, for their honest opinion. And, uh, we, we do that really aggressively, and what we're trying to figure out is, what's this person like to work with? Um, uh, we're not trying to validate, like, whether they told the truth on their resume, 'cause we assume that they're telling the truth. So very standard questions that, that I'll ask somebody, um, is in an interview, I might, I might, I might say, "Hey, you know, we both know, um, Jonathan in common. I'm gonna talk to him, uh, you know, in a couple weeks, 'cause we're both social friends. Like, if I asked him, um, what, what you're the best at, or what you would be most proud of, or what you were kind of working to improve, uh, what would, what would he or she say?" Um, because it sort of tests a level of self-awareness and creates a bit of social accountability. Uh, and then I'll try to ask something that makes the question, which is typically very soft, feel a little bit more quantitative and then calibrate that over time. So, uh, you know, in evaluating this person on this dimension, do you think this is the top 1% of people you've ever worked with, the top 5%, and the top 10%? And it forces a scarcity that gives a materially different, uh, reference, uh, than if you just say, "Hey, like, what's the best thing about John? Uh, he told me, you know, he's good at these things. Can you validate them?" You're like, "Yeah, sure," 'cause they, they don't gain anything. So I think that's, uh, just a tool that people should, should take seriously.
- PCPatrick Collison
Yeah. Yeah, and, and re- referencing isn't obviously easy to begin with, uh, but it, it does actually prove really useful over time. Uh, and you just have to... People, I think, uh, especially for named references, people really want to be nice, so you have to do things like create an artificial scarcity by saying, you know, "Where would you rank this person amongst the people you've worked with in this role?" Uh, or, you know, there's lists out on the internet of how to reference, but, uh, you should aim to spend, you know, 15 minutes on the, on the phone with that person, not just let them say, "Yeah, this person's a, this person is awesome," and then hang up.
- BSBen Silbermann
But also a tremendous source of new recruits.
- PCPatrick Collison
Yeah. [laughs]
- 24:16 – 28:38
Onboarding early employees: ship real work fast, then give lots of feedback
- SASam Altman
Uh, that was references are also a tremendous source of new recruits. Um, what, what have each of you learned about h- On- once you hire these first people and they join, what, what have you done to, to make them effective quickly, uh, to get them-Sort of, you know, to the right cultural place, uh, you know, 'cause sort of hiring is usually very difficult, but then not as difficult as making them happy and effective. So what, what do you do with these early employees to accomplish that?
- BSBen Silbermann
Um, well, the answer to that's changed when we've gone from really small to bigger. Uh, I mean, when we first started, we were generally hiring because we needed that person, like, a long time ago. And so their whole onboarding was like, "Here's your computer. We already set up your environment. Don't worry about it. This is the problem that we have to solve together." Um, and then because of the, because of the nature of the startup, so we were all in this, like, tiny two-bedroom apartment, um, all of the other things like building personal relationships, spending time together, getting to know, it just all happened kind of automatically. Like, you didn't have to do anything. Um, uh, the one thing that I would add to that is though, we would always try to remind people of, like, where we wanted to go someday. 'Cause it's really easy when you first join to drop someone into a problem, and then they think the whole world is, like, this little problem in front of them. We'd always say, you know, "Hey, someday we wanna do for, uh, we wanna do for Discovery what Google did for Search. This is our plan for trying to get that done." Um, now as the company grows, I think that, uh, that process has to get a little bit more formalized. Um, and so we spend a lot of time thinking and honestly trying to constantly refine what does that person's experience look like from the day they came in, uh, to their very first interview through 30 days after they join. Like, do they have somebody whose name they know? Do they know who their manager is? Have they sat down with people on their team? Uh, do they know what the general architecture of the company is and what the top priorities are? Uh, and we have a program, and it's, um, a week long, and then there are sort of function-specific programs that go in deeper. Um, and that's something that's always been refined. And the output metrics that we look on that is, one, we ask people, like, "What did you think afterwards?" And then 30 days afterwards. And then we also ask their peers and their manager, like, "Hey, is this person kind of up to speed? Do you feel like we've done a good job making them productive?" And if, if we haven't, um, that's a key, A, that that team shouldn't be hiring any more people because they're not doing a good job bringing in new people, um, and B, that we need to retool that. Um, and so I think those things are important. I, I just wouldn't discount just how important it is to get to know the person as a person. Like, what are their aspirations? What's their working style? Uh, how do they like to be recognized? Um, do they really prefer being in total silence? Uh, do they... Are they a morning person or a night person? Like, knowing those things, I think, uh, it just demonstrates that you care about them individually as well as collectively, like, what your, what your goals are.
- JCJohn Collison
Uh, I think there's two things that are important at any stage, though the implementation will change. The first is to get them up and running doing real work quickly because that's only when you can find the problems. That's the only way they'll- That's how progress is measured, is how much real work they're doing. And so, you know, when we have, uh, engineers start, we'll try to get them committing on the first day. When we have, you know, people in business roles start, we will have them in real meetings on the first day, uh, on, on what they're meant to be working on. Uh, but I think sometimes there's a tendency to, to be tentative and help ease people in. Uh, we're much more of the, um, push people off the cliff, um, school. Uh, and then I think the second is to try and start quickly giving people feedback, and especially feedback on how to adapt to the culture. 'Cause when you think about it, like, you know, i- if you have built a strong culture, uh, as, you know, all, all the companies up here, you know, are, are trying to, then it's going to, it's gonna take some adapting for the person, and it's not going to be necessarily easy. You know, one thing we had at Stripe was just the culture was, was a lot more written. Uh, and so, you know, you would have people who are right next to each other, each with headphones on and just, like, IMing away to each other. Uh, and for, you know, a lot of people coming in who hadn't worked in an environment like that, it's, it's sort of hard.
- SASam Altman
In normal places.
- JCJohn Collison
Exactly, yeah. Uh, and so, uh, you know, everything from kind of high level, how you're doing at your job to, to, to kind of minor cultural pointers, the, the, the more feedback you can give them, uh, the, the better they'll do. And it's unnatural, right? Because it's unnatural to, uh, be constantly telling people that they're doing a good or bad job. You don't do that, you know, hopefully in your, you know, in your, in your normal life you're more restrained. Uh, but w- when you have employees, that's kind of what you owe them for them to do well.
- 28:38 – 31:15
Scaling teams and hiring systems: autonomy, mini-startups, and recruiter leverage
- SASam Altman
So I think this is sort of a good transition, too, a- as your companies have scaled. Um, what, what are the biggest changes you've had to make to your hiring processes and also h- how you sort of manage and run the teams a- as you've gone from, you know, two to 10 to 100 to 1,000 employees?
- BSBen Silbermann
There are, there are a lot of changes. Uh, I mean, I think one thing that we try to do on the team side is the goal is to make the teams feel as autonomous and nimble as possible within the constraints of having a large organization. Um, and that means over time that we're always trying to make it feel like a startup of mini startups rather than this monolithic organization with a set of foreign processes that cut horizontally through it. And that's easier said than done, and I think that, like, we're not all the way there. But, um, one of our goals is that each team has-- they control the resources that they need to to get things done. Uh, they know, uh, what the most important thing is and how it's measured. Um, in that way, then the management problem becomes somewhat tractable. Otherwise, it feels completely impossible if you can't decompose it into autonomous units. Like, you just look at it and you're like, "Oh my gosh, like, communication complexity is increasing geometrically. Management complexity, like, it's never gonna work." And so you have to sort of create these abstracted units, or that's at least what we're gonna try to do. Um, and at Pinterest in particular, the real challenge of creating those abstracted units is, um, we wanna actually have units that encompass, uh, a super strong designer, a super strong, um, leader in engineering, um, often a writer, um, often, uh, um, sometimes, like, a community manager. We want them all to be self-contained. Um, and so that makes the problem really hard, but that's kind of core to our philosophy of how we build products. We try to put people together that have all of these different disciplines, they're curious about lots of things, and then we anchor them on a single project, and then we try to remove barriers to let them go fast. When we find new barriers, we sit down, we think, "How do we speed that up?" I think hiring, um, is a little bit different, and I think the biggest, uh-The biggest change and the biggest asset that you get as you get more people is referrals become, like, more and more and more and more the lifeblood, depending on sort of the network of all the people that you bring in. So one of the really lucky and, in hindsight, great decisions that we made was our actual 14th or 15th person that we hired was a professional recruiter. Um, and she'd worked at startups, um, she'd worked at big companies like Apple, but she sort of knew where, um, that pipeline, uh, breaks down, kind of knew the early indicators, and taught everyone, um, not just how to sort of screen for talent, but how scalably to identify the people that are gonna be, like, culturally, like, really good for the company. And I, I think looking back on that, um, is something that I, I personally really value.
- 31:15 – 34:21
Growth changes time horizons: from immediate execution to long-term investments
- PCPatrick Collison
Um, you know, th- there's just, like, a huge amount of stuff here, right? In that sort of, uh, I guess, this is all under kinda the rubric of, of managing growth and, you know, uh, like, either your company sort of fails very quickly or sort of all of your problems become, in some way, about managing growth. Um, o- one thing that I think tends to take people by surprise, and certainly took me by surprise, is kind of how quickly, um, just, like, the time horizons change, uh, in that sort of in your first month, uh, you're, you're largely thinking about things on, on a maybe o- one month ahead, right? Uh, in that maybe that's kind of what your development, uh, roadmap is, is oriented around. Your, even in terms of who you're working with, maybe it's, like, really informal relationships, uh, where they haven't sort of fully committed to, to remain full-time or whatever, right? And that kind of, the, the, the more time goes by, I think that kind of has a, a reciprocal, uh, or, or corresponding, uh, increase in the time horizons. After one year, you're kind of thinking one year ahead. After four years, you're thinking four years ahead. Um, and, uh, and kind of [laughs] but that increases very quickly, right? And so after, you know, say after one month, it's, again, sh- super short term, and then just, uh, 11 months later, you should now actually be thinking and planning, you know, a year ahead and, and thinking about kind of human structures on that time horizon. Thinking about, you know, stuff Ben talked about, like, um, you know, where you want to be going long term and, and things like that. Um, I think that also plays into your hiring and the kinds of people you hire, right? In that in the really early days, you kind of have to hire people who will be productive essentially immediately. Like, you, you, you don't have the luxury of hiring people who are sort of really promising but, you know, they're not quite gonna be up to speed for another year or two. They have to be able to contribute immediately. But after two or three years, now it sort of starts to get, you know, uh, much more reasonable to, to make those investments. And in fact, if you're not making those investments, you're probably being much too short term. Uh, and so I think that's, uh, that's really important. Um, a lot of it also just comes from, uh, sort of, like, all these problems in some sense are easy. Like, how do you build kind of good social bonds between people? I mean, we, we all do it, you know, every day, right? Uh, i- it's kind of how, how do you, how do you kinda make it systematic and sort of effective at scale? And, it, it's always kind of a very, like, severely imperfect approximation of what you would ideally do if you were small, uh, and just kind of what, what hacks can you pull to sort of make it work as well as you possibly can at, at a larger scale. Like a, a rapidly growing company, say growing headcount, you know, two or three X a year, just, like, it's a very unnatural thing. Uh, and so it's sort of, you know, how, what's, what's the least bad way of sort of managing a period of growth? Hu- human organizations aren't designed for it. Um, and, and I think it's worth being sort of, like, quite systematic about sort of thinking about ways to do that, but, um, realizing that you probably can't do much better than, uh, than sort of adequate. And, you know, for Stripe, it's things like we have free meals every day at sort of long tables for kind of everyone can sit together, right? And if you think of sort of net how much more total human interaction happens as, as a result of having these kind of randomly mixed meals, I mean, it's vast, right? Uh, and it's kind of a, a whole list of things like that. But, uh, I think that's kind of the general framework.
- 34:21 – 39:14
Scaling transparency at Stripe: email firehoses, all-hands, and cultural norms
- BSBen Silbermann
And one thing I'm really curious about, you guys value transparency. How have you scaled it over time? Um, 'cause I know we think about figuring that out all the time. I'm just curious.
- PCPatrick Collison
Um, so, uh, yeah, you know, startups in some sense, I can't remember who it was, um, uh, sort of defined it as, like, a startup is kind of an organization that's not yet stuck with all these kind of principal agent problems, that at most sort of large companies, uh, what is locally optimal for you is very frequently, you know, not what is globally optimal for the company. Um, uh, and so, uh, you know, there, there are, as a consequence of that, probably a lot of ways in which a startup can work differently to a big company. At a big company, a lot of the, you know, things that are good for you, uh, uh, well, you, you, you couldn't do them in a completely transparent environment, right? Because people would think less of you or, I mean, you're not, you're doing things you're not supposed to. But because everyone is kind of sailing in the, or rowing in the same direction at a startup, you can actually just make all the information transparent. Uh, and so, um, uh, yeah, I mean, from a very early st- uh, I guess I mentioned earlier, like, Stripe used to, uh, BCC every other person at Stripe on basically every single outgoing email unless you opted out of it, uh, 'cause we thought that would be sort of much more efficient. You wouldn't, wouldn't need to have as many meetings, uh, if you could just kind of keep abreast of what's happening. And over time, we've sort of built, uh, an increasingly intricate sort of framework of mailing lists, and we now have, like, a program for generating Gmail filters, um, and for, like, a pretty rocky patch where 50 people or so, uh, to, to, to Ben's point of, like, asking people sort of how they're getting on for the first couple of days, they all reported terribly because, like, they couldn't even, you know, find all the emails people were sending to them, and they were missing things and everything. Um-
- BSBen Silbermann
Gmail broke at one stage.
- PCPatrick Collison
Oh, right. At one point, Gmail broke because we were just, like, sending too much email. Um, and, uh, I, I mean, it, it is hard to scale because it's, I mean, you, you, you might sort of contact somebody outside of the company, um, uh, with, like, some great idea, and maybe, like, the person sitting across the way from you thinks that's, like, the stupidest idea they've ever heard, right? And you're kind of subject to the scrutiny of the entire organization to some degree with all of your communication. Like, that's kind of the, the challenging side of it, and then, you know, the, the, the good side is people are much more informed about what's happening. Um, uh-I guess I, I don't feel that I can give a much, um, stronger, uh, endorsement of it than it has worked so far. Um-
- JCJohn Collison
That's a pretty good endorsement.
- PCPatrick Collison
[laughs] Uh, yeah, I, I'm actually really curious how or whether it'll work when we're, you know, 5,000 people or something like that. If, if, if we're ever at that scale.
- JCJohn Collison
Uh, I think the two things that have helped us scale it are, one, changing the tools, and two, developing the culture around it. Uh, and so on the tools front, you know, it used to be the case that, uh, or kind of the infrastructure, it used to be the case that you could keep abreast by... of what's happening in the company by read- reading all the email. Now we have, you know, weekly all-hands, sometimes with a deck, and, you know, we actually have to go put all this work into developing a deck to, to communicate to people what's going on in the company, uh, since there's so much more. Uh, and, and the second is on the cultural side, you know, so much of i- information being available internally, uh, you have to develop cultural norms around how it's treated. You know, obvious things like, you know, the, the fact that a lot of it is confident- confidential to Stripe. But even less obvious things like, you know, when emailing someone or talking in, in, in Slack or IRC, when that is, is viewed by now 170 people, it's actually, you know, it's pretty easy to get stage fright. You know, it... And it's, uh, it's pretty easy for, you know, what you thought was a, a reasonable proposal, you know, you get this drive-by criticism and you're, you're, you know, now less likely to share in the future. And so we've had to create norms around, you know, when it's reasonable to jump into discussions and how that interaction works because people are on stage so much more.
- PCPatrick Collison
I- I- I'm pretty sure it's net good, but, um, not to put her on the spot, but, uh, Emily, intern at Stripe this summer, I'm curious, like, as an intern, what you thought of it?
- SPSpeaker
I think overall it's great. I think, like, my first week I spent most of my time just reading Hackpad and getting caught up on what the company was doing. It can often be quite distracting, um, from your own work as there are oftentimes other parts of the company you're really interested in.
- PCPatrick Collison
Uh, Hackpad by the way is like Google Docs but with a newsfeed, and where you can just, like, see all the documents.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, and you're encouraged to make everything public, everything you work on. Um, but overall it gets you spun up really quickly, and we also have things called spin-ups where every single sort of leader of a team at the company, whether it's like sys or it's product, gives like a 30-minute talk on what their team is currently doing and sort of how you can contribute if you're interested.
- PCPatrick Collison
Do you think email transparency was net good?
- SPSpeaker
Yes. I remember having a hard time understanding what I should and should not subscribe to, and, um, like, the first week having like 2,000 emails in my inbox, and then by the end, you know, there's like three or four teams you actually want, um, that information coming in from.
- JCJohn Collison
All right. Audience questions. Yes.
- 39:14 – 50:34
Audience Q&A: early hires becoming leaders; Pinterest vision evolution; authenticity in recruiting; hiring vs user base
- SPSpeaker
So this question is for Patrick and John. Um, is it your experience that your early hires are able to grow and to develop into leadership roles as the company scales? And a question for Ben, um, how is what Pinterest, what Pinterest is today, how is it different than your initial vision of what the product and the audience would be?
- JCJohn Collison
All right. We'll go, uh, first on have the people... Actually, all three of you are welcome to answer this. Have the people that you've hired early been able to, uh, grow into leadership roles?
- PCPatrick Collison
Um, i- in Stripe's case, yes, in that, uh, uh, quite a number of the, the first 10 people are in, are in leadership roles now. Uh, I think that's one thing that, uh, organizations, again, it's sort of an unnatural skill that they have to get good at, is realizing that, you know, people don't necessarily come out of the womb being good at managing or, you know, being good at, uh, at leadership, uh, and being able to, to develop that in people, uh, and being able to, uh, you know, help people progress as they spend a number of years at the company. Um, it's, it's a lot of, it's a lot of work at a time when everyone is, you know, running around with their hair on fire, uh, but it, it's also sort of damaging if the company can't develop that skill.
- BSBen Silbermann
Yeah. I think for us the answer is some yes and some no. Um, uh, I don't know. I think one of the big benefits of working at a startup is that you can be handed a challenge that no one else would be crazy enough to give you the opportunity to, to take on, and that could be managing people, it could be taking on a project. Um, but the implicit contract with that is that, uh, if you're gonna ask someone to take a really big risk on that, it shouldn't be like one way through the door, and if you don't succeed, otherwise it creates fright to, to give it a shot. So, you know, we have some folks that are managing large teams that started as, um, kind of individual programmers where they were engineering and they said, "Hey, I'd love to try, I'd love to try leading a project, and then leading a group, and then taking responsibility for management and taking a group." Uh, and we have other folks that tried it and they were like, "I'm really glad I tried it 'cause I never wanna do that again." Uh, and we try to make sure that for those people, like, you can have just as much impact at a company, um, through your individual contribution as an engineer or designer. You don't have to manage. Um, but, but it's really hard to predict until you give people a shot. Uh, and so my strong preference is that you give as many people a shot as possible, um, and in the few areas where you really feel like the, there's too much kind of learning curve relative to the business objective you're trying to achieve, that's when, um, you look for somebody who, uh, might be able to walk in and really execute well on that job.
- JCJohn Collison
And you wanna answer the Pinterest question?
- BSBen Silbermann
Oh, so the question was, uh, how has the vision changed since we initially started?
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- BSBen Silbermann
Um-
- SPSpeaker
From the audience.
- BSBen Silbermann
Sure. Um, well, I mean, I think on the, on the vision, uh, when we first started, you know, I think we started it, like, like hiring very inductively. We were like, "Oh, we're gonna build this really cool tool. People are gonna enjoy it. I love collecting things. Maybe other people like collecting things." Um, and what we didn't expect that kind of revealed itself early on was that, um, looking at other people's collections turns out to be this really amazing way to discover things that you didn't know you were looking for. Um, and it becomes kind of a solution to a problem that a lot of other technologies don't have. And so over the last couple years especially, we've poured enormous kind of technical and design resources into building out recommendations products, search products, feed products, um, leveraging kind of the unique data that we have, which are these pins that were all handpicked by someone and hand categorized. Um-And then on the audience side, I mean, I think the first big surprise was, you know, truthfully, like when we first started, we didn't really know if anyone would use it, and we were just happy that anybody that wasn't, like, related to us and obligated [laughs] ah, by like familiar relationship would use it. And so one of the biggest surprises was, has been how many people and how diverse those groups of people have been. Um, and so I think that's been one of the things that's really exciting. And, and the funny thing is that as often, like, the company goes farther along, your aspirations therefore, like, get bigger. So, so there's like this gap that always exists, I tell my team, between, like, where we are and where I think we should be. And even though objectively we're much farther along, I feel like the gap has widened even farther. Um, but I think that's a really common trait amongst people who found companies.
- SASam Altman
Yes.
- SPSpeaker
You said that, like, uh, while selling the vision of the company, uh, you have to describe in gory detail that how hard it is going to be, and, like, you won't see their families for three years. But then it would also be the thing that their grandchildren will be proud of. But how do you really know? Like, both of you know that the second part is, like, it's not, it's not guaranteed, but the first part, that they're not gonna see their family for the next year is going to be a shock. So, like, how can you be authentic, like, selling that vision of the company? Or is it, like, about, like, giving high returns for the high risk they're taking, giving, giving them a lot of equity?
- SASam Altman
Great, great question.
- SPSpeaker
So what is that really telling?
- SASam Altman
So, so the question is, uh, m- most startups are not the iPhone. You can't guarantee that people's grandchildren are gonna remember this because most startups fail. How do you convince people to sort of make sacrifices to join a startup?
- PCPatrick Collison
Uh, I think, um, uh, part of the way, uh, sort of in which it resonates with people is because it's not guaranteed, right? If it were guaranteed, then it'd be boring. Uh, and so it's the sort of, there is the prospect of, uh, sort of, you know, affecting this outcome. Um, but, but nothing sort of, nothing more than that potential. Um, you know, to, to the sort of not seeing their, their, uh, families or kids or whatever, uh, I mean, startups often do involve sort of longer hours in the beginning, but, uh, you know, I think, well, um, uh, I think that that particular story is probably s- somewhat overstated. Uh, I guess it was, I think Scott Forstall was trying to recruit these people. Uh, but I mean, I, I, I ... Even though startups, especially in the earlier days, tend to involve somewhat work, longer working hours, I think there's kind of this tendency to, to exaggerate it and sort of, I mean, it's, it's like the startup version of fishing. Like, every startup thinks they worked even more insane hours than, you know, the, the next one back in the early days. Like, we, we literally never sleeped, or slept rather, for, uh, for two years. Um, uh, so, uh, I don't know. I, I, I think that realistically for most people, it's not that big a sacrifice, right? Uh, you're m- maybe on average, real- being really realistic about it, people work two hours more on average per day. It, it's, it's certainly a sacrifice, but it is not, um, uh, for- foregoing all, you know, pleasure and enjoyment for, for the next half decade. [laughs]
- BSBen Silbermann
Yeah. I mean, I think even the iPhone wasn't the iPhone before it got done, right? So, uh, I mean, no, no smart person you're hiring is under the illusion that you have a crystal ball into the future that only you have, uh, and that joining is a guaranteed thing. And in fact, if you're telling them that and they select in, like, they've, like, you probably shouldn't hire them 'cause they didn't, they didn't pass, like, a basic intelligence test about uncertainty, uh, in the future. Um, but I, but I think it's fair to say, like, you know, what's exciting and where you think it can go and where it's gonna be hard and chart your best plan. Um, and then tell them, like, why their role in it could be instrumental, um, 'cause it is. Um, you know, I really liked what, what you said. Uh, you know, if you tell people, like, "Hey, we're gonna go to Mars," it attracts the best people, and then you're incrementally closer to getting to Mars. Um, and, and they know that going in. Um, what I would discourage doing is just whitewashing all of that. Um, and if people kind of are joining because they want sort of, "Oh, I want all the certainty and guarantee of working at Google, plus, like, the perk of working in a small startup with more email and transparency," like, that's a, that's a really, really negative sign. Um, and, uh, for example, when I interview people, um, they'll often say, "Oh, I'm really passionate in what you're doing." And then I'm like, "Well, where else are you interviewing?" And then, and they'll just list like seven companies that have nothing to do with each other-
- PCPatrick Collison
Yeah
- BSBen Silbermann
... uh, except they're sort of at the same stage we're at. They're like, "I, you know, I love the problem of discovery, so I'm interviewing at, uh, Stripe, Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber."
- PCPatrick Collison
[laughs]
- BSBen Silbermann
Uh, "Now I'm also putting into my resume into Google X, into that part of the division."
- PCPatrick Collison
[laughs]
- BSBen Silbermann
Um, and that's a sign that they're probably not being authentic with what they care about.
- PCPatrick Collison
Yeah.
- BSBen Silbermann
And those folks often, when things get really hard, they won't stick it out, um, and work through it, um, 'cause they were really signing up for an experience, not for achieving a goal.
- PCPatrick Collison
Uh, I think the other, um, thing that motivates people a great deal in addition to sort of the, the prospect of sort of, um, uh, you know, affecting some outcome, uh, is just sort of the, the personal development angle. Uh, and that a startup, just because it's much kind of, uh, more l- lightly staffed, uh, it's kind of a, uh, it, it's much less forgiving, right? In that, like, e- even if you're the best person in the world, you're not gonna ... Or, well, whether or not you're the best or the worst person in the world, you're probably not going to significantly alter Google's trajectory, right? Um, whereas, uh, if, if you sort of really want to, you know, benchmark yourself a- and sort of see how much of a contribution and impact you can make, uh, and I think kind of that prospect is quite compelling to a lot of the best people, then a, a startup is sort of a, a much better place to, to go test that.
- SASam Altman
All right. Last que- Who'd you want? Uh, last question.
- SPSpeaker
Um, so this is a question for Ben, but you guys can all answer it. Um, but how has your user base affected your hiring strategy? So Pinterest is a site that's used, like, 80% by women. Um, so how did that affect your initial hiring decisions?
- SASam Altman
How has your user base affected your hiring strategy?
- BSBen Silbermann
Yeah, so, you know, conventional wisdom is, like, you only hire people that religiously use your product every single day. Um, and that probably works really well if you're making an API. [laughs] It's probably amazing. Um, uh, for us, like, we screen for people that are ambitious and excited about, um, the vision of cracking discovery online. Uh, and they have to know, like, exactly how our service works and have to have used it, but they may not be a lifelong user. And that, for us, is this great opportunity because we can be like, "What is the barrier that's preventing you from using it? Come join, remove that barrier, and help us get closer to kind of that vision." Um, I know there, there's a lot of, uh, if you read any startup book, there's all this, like, startup wisdom that sounds, like, really reasonable, but it's only useful if it works in your particular circumstance. And so for us, we've had to sort of broaden, uh, the lens a little bit in looking broadly about people that are ambitious about the mission, uh, that care about the product and the, our approach to building products, even if from day one they weren't our earliest users.
Episode duration: 50:36
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Transcript of episode H8Dl8rZ6qwE
