10億ドルを断りマルチビリオンを築いた——Snapchat エヴァン・スピーゲル

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 my co-founder Bobby, his name is Robert Cornelius Murphy. So, like we 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. But how does a 21-year-old kid decide because you even said it in the book that you're like, I want to build a company at the intersection of technology and liberal arts? What was happening that you were interested like in doing that? Part of it was my background growing up. So I went to school uh in Santa Monica here uh you know and uh a school called Crossroads. Uh Crossroads, you know, it's the the full name for Crossroads 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's 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 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.

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

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. 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 what is right in front of you in the present moment and inspire you to create from that.

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 a 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 want 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 working on. 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 going to walk and I passed by 30 cars and every single person in the line waiting to pick up their kid was staring at the phone. I'm like that's not like that's an addiction. Like 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 cuz 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 like you used either in the beginning of Snap or 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 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. 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 5%. The median company running on RAMP also grows their revenue by 16%. 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 RAM, 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. We're both in LA. We both kind of avoid San Francisco and we were talking it's like the people I admire the most like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is trying to create technology that enhance humanity. Some of these weirdos in San Francisco are creating technology to eliminate humanity. Why is it so important for you to to build technology that actually enhances humanity? Well, I I I think 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 when we get up in the morning like that's that's what I like to do and what I want to want to 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 24 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 perfect, people were sharing this whole range of human emotions. 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. I read this book about you, the one I did an episode on, you know, eight years ago. I think it's like how to turn down a billion dollars or something. He says something funny in the there's a quote from you in the book. You're like, "Whoever invented the internet, why they decided to make everything permanent?" It's completely opposite. It's like this conversation, we haven't recorded yet, 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. 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. So in this case, you know, one of the reasons why everything was saved forever is because hard drives, disc 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 want to save something new. And so no one was thinking about, you know, how to 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.

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

Yeah, 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 fullfeatured 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 in front of people, learn as quickly as possible. Um, but we had 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 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 you going to 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 going to use it. um because we didn't really have a scalable way to get 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 a 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 going to use together with our friends so that we could be the first early customers. Um and ultimately ultimately Pikaboo and and Snapchat uh you know um represented that.

It's tough when no one used it except my mom. So

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

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

but even back then

We thought about as messaging app.

Were you disagreeable when you were a kid?

If I ask him the people you have working with you is Evan disagreeable would they say yes?

Would people that work with you describe you as uncompromising?

Okay. There's a Steve Jobs element.

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 me, 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.

No, I always wanted to. Okay, that's another book. I just gave you one book. I'll give you another one. But you can Ed's actually doing the show and I can't wait to talk to him cuz he worked for Steve Jobs or worked with Steve Jobs longer uh more consecutive years than anybody else. I think they worked together for like 24 years.

and just skip to the end. There's a like a 20page afterward called the Steve we knew. And his whole point after the Isacson book came out, he's like he wasn't that's not the Steve I knew. And they his point was that in earlier in his career there was a lot of these stories. Yes, he was like that, but he learned and evolved on how to be a better leader. And so in that like 20 page afterward, Ed is telling the story of how he evolved over time.

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 Morris 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?

Okay, 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 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 possible. Um, you know, so that we can meet the needs of our customers and evolve our business, etc.

My wife is uh brutally honest 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 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, you know, to to be honest.

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 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 command 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, but but I think for me what's so important is to make sure I'm getting that sort of feedback and having that kind of dialogue with lots of members of our team or or mentors as well. Um, you know, that that's that's a hugely valuable.

Are these people that started at Snap and like got through the ranks? Are they former founders? The reason I asked you is because one of the most interesting um ideas or surprising ideas I've had uh so far been having these conversations is I talked to Toby Luke the founder of Shopify which was 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 a 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 the team around him is just founders. Is that what yours look like? Is it people that you po like poached from other companies? Like what what does this look like?

Is there a lot of turnover? I would say at points in Snap's history, there has been a lot of turnover. Uh, not currently. I mean, 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 a hundred people to over a thousand 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, 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.

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 8 and 12 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 at 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 Snap and that's something that like I think really has to be learned. I I haven't found anyone who 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.

These last a couple hours. They're going over when you say volume like can like hundreds of ideas.

In a few hours. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We're all but we're all contributing batting stuff around laugh you know what I mean laughing and iterating and you know

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 like ideas are are free right there should be 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 much more likely to get lucky by by finding good ones.

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.

Yeah I think I mean that's my background.

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 15 years, right? And I think what's so funny like you know you look at the last 15 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 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 15 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 in the last three months, there's been profound change. But to imagine, I mean, 18 months from now, the way that Snap operates will be completely different than the way it operated last year. There's so many founders, and I don't know how many, almost none of them are saying this on the record that 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 there it's just going to be so much better than I am at doing this. It should be doing this. I should not be doing this.

What's one of the most surprising ways that AI has changed how Snap operates internally? 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 because 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. our core business is writing software and now 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 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 has surprised me.

No. The first time that that the the big sort of wakeup call was when uh you know Facebook at the time carbon copied Snapchat to make poke. Do you remember this?

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.

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 to on, 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 was 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.

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

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 simp 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 acrue 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 And that's what helped the service really grow and take on, you know, these these much larger these larger competitors. 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,

Yeah. But I think even, you know, I think we were shipping like hundreds of thousands of of units. Um, you know, 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 and want to 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 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

That would have been 20 by 2016 2017 we were really pressing into you know the 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

That came out in 2024.

Four or five. Yeah. 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.

So to 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. Let's pause real quick there because this is another I think example of what I was trying to freaking figure out about you earlier and I kind of went crazy. So

I know it might take a few more conversations. Uh you're talking about all these people using augmented reality. They're in you're talking about the filters you added or the lenses and stuff to Snapchat.

Did you get that idea from another company? Where'd that come from? Were you the first one? bought a startup called Luxury that was working on those uh working on those lenses and then Bobby really pushed 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

That must have launched after stories. Yeah. How many years into Snap do you think that you've added this other feature?

Oh, that's actually way sooner than I thought. Way sooner than I thought because you've been working on Snapchat for how long? 15

Okay. So, go back to what you were saying. Then you found hundreds of thousands or millions of people now using

Like every day.

Yeah, sort of concurrent with the sort of concurrent with the the glasses and and may maybe concurrent with the second generation, I want to 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 ugly?

I was covering people in flowers. It's fun.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the book 0ero to1. It says, "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places. And they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas." This is exactly what Apploven has done with their new advertising platform, Axon. Axon is the most powerful advertising platform in a generation. Axon allows you to capture undivided attention. Axon ads are full screen videos that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. Retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water and you can launch in minutes. You set the goal and Axon achieves it. No complex setup, no expertise needed. And Axon scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day and increased their revenue by millions. And most advertisers aren't even thinking about this channel yet. Less than 1% of advertisers have access to Axon. So you want to get started quickly and you can do that by going to axon.ai/enra. That is axon.ai senra. You use 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?

I'm going to 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 Edin Land 70, Steve Job is 25, they're sitting across they're in a conference room sitting across a table from one another and they talked about they're like they don't really consider themselves inventors. It's kind of funny cuz Edin 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 or uh you know pro their entire organization to invent the technology to invent the product. Is that the similar experience you're having?

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

Um

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 the space, trying to, 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 want to really deliver, you know, this cutting edge uh computing experience, doing that um requires us to have a very high degree of control of the areas we can really differentiate. So for example for us that the display components are an area where we really differentiate. We have an incredibly performant wave guide which is like the glasses part of the the lens right basically the lens of of the glasses. Uh and we've developed our own projector that's incredibly small that you know beams light into this this wave guide. 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 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 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. say more about that line where you said it's important to control the parts that you can differentiate on

Another thing that like Edwin like again people should study Edwin Land, they should study all these history skills entrepreneurs because 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 because he started he wanted to be an inventor, not an entrepreneur. 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 fixed that when he did Polaroid and and uh and and the cameras, but when the manufacturing he owned the factories were in Massachusetts for god's sake, he was manufacturing high-end technology in America. And his whole point was just like he didn't want to 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.

Yeah it's the same same exact idea. So how are you going to distribute them? I can't share all of our fine our secrets, but I we can we can regroup after the after the launch and and and deep dive into all of it.

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

Yeah, I I mean I I think that the the term I used in my letter was like the middle child, right? Because we're so much bigger than, you know, smaller competitors like a Reddit or a Pinterest or something like that, right? But we don't have

from like a you know we're almost a billion folks using our our service. If you look at like our daily active engagement it's about like half a billion folks. So I think like just in terms of the scale of

About half a billion every day. Yeah.

and a billion about you know how many services how many other services are that size?

Okay.

No we don't. America baby. Um all right. All right. So, wait, you're the not the I keep saying little brother. You're the middle child. Say more about that.

Is this a stressful time for you? You know, it's so funny. My my wife like loves the Aura Ring. Like she's obsessed, you know? She like she like, you know, markets this thing to like everybody, right? Wants to like compare scores and all this kind. So, she finally like years and years later was like, I'm going to try the Aura Ring. And she was like shocked to learn that like, you know, there's sort of like the relaxed and stressed 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 sleep like seven or eight hours. I'm in the relaxed state all the time. like she was like how like what you know like 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 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 for our company. 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?

Brad Jacobs has started eight separate billiondoll companies. He said, I've come to know a lot of extremely successful people in my life, and they all have one thing in common. They think differently than most people. All of them to a person have rearranged their brains to prevail at achieving big goals in turbulent environments where conventional thinking often fails. What Brad noticed is that great business leaders are pattern spotters. But you can't spot patterns if you can't see all of your data. Most businesses only use 20% of their data. Why? Because 80% of customer intelligence is invisible. It's hidden in emails, transcripts, and conversations. That's where HubSpot comes in. With HubSpot, all of your data comes together so you can see the patterns that matter. This is important because when you know more, you grow more. And that is a pattern that never fails. Visit hubspot.com today. That is hubspot.com. I had this great conversation with Michael Dell, who's just awesome, like a great human being. Absolutely 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's reimagined his company that I mean have you spent any time with him?

Okay. Yeah. So like that's probably if I was you I'd be like picking his brain. I'm friends with his son Zack and you know um everybody has access to like the Bloomberg terminal and Zach's like I got the dad terminal and it's just like I get to like type in any question and get some crazy you know response from this 40 essentially he's been you know world class entrepreneur for four decades so like I have an issue with supply chain well guess what seen everything about supply chains and he and he's like can be very helpful but his whole point was like he knew that he his company was under 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 you might have 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 uh products and essentially they're going to come for us is like that company's us like we are going to reinvent we're going to figure out what our weakness is 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 find one 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 all like staying in touch, especially at our size, right? We're like 5,000ish 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 when it's better to create a little more space for like ideation or you know experimentation.

Don't make me do public math. Is that a billion run rate? uh we're doing a bit like yeah like a billion run rate growing 60% year-over-year.

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

Once a week.

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

Uh maybe but I think it's 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 have you know so we release a bunch of these um Genai lenses and we give a number of uses for free. Um but then if folks want to upgrade to lens plus because 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.

There's been a couple huge shift for shifts for us in the past couple years. You know, the core of our advertising business from the early days really grew around, you know, 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 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 lowerfunnel 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 those capabilities and small and medium customers really care about that. They want to 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 built out that entire lowerfunnel advertising offering so we can really drive performance for for customers um for for small medium customers and we've been really rapidly growing that small medium uh that small 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 upperfunnel and brand goals into like mostly small 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 engineering and product work that's happening.

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

Yeah. 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 want to 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 lowerfunnel customers at scale right and so rather than doing

that small yeah that small medium customers can really easily you know sign up for and use

we're doing a lot less bespoke but we also find that these large customers they want to drive lower lowerfunnel outcomes too. So, a lot of it is teaching our sales folks, you know, who were used to living in this more brand upperfunnel oriented world to sell into lowerfunnel objectives for large customers. 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 Olsen who he still needs permission to to publish a book, but essentially he's like, "Hey, I want to tell the story of the history of SpaceX as it happened and I'm going to use their internal memos to do so." So, he's got access to like the first 10 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 going to write an essay that tells the story of why this is important." And so, I read the essay like three times like, "This is … crazy." So, I just did an episode of Founders on it. And one of the most interesting things I never 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 Gwyn Strowell was, you know, a huge driver behind this. It's 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 have to get this uniform if we're going to scale this and we can't get to our goals if we don't scale it.

you know of an asset or something like that.

We saw that like if we really wanted to grow the ads business to be you know doubledigit billions over time that we needed to have a lowerfunnel business with a diversified set of small business. Did you hope that wasn't true at the time at the very beginning?

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.

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 lowerfunnel goals. I'd argue like a a Reddit or a Pinterest today. I mean, you know, to some degree Pinterest is building out lowerfunnel objectives and this kind of thing, but a lot of it is still, you know, large customer upperfunnel dollars. So, I' 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 systems. 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 would prefer I don't know if you can say this but you would prefer almost if you had like an all subscription business because the incentives are more aligned. I really love the subscription business. I wish we had done it earlier. I I just 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.

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, founders podcast or any other podcast. I feel great. Now they have audio books. 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 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 Jimmy I was on the the show and he told me some outlandish … He's just like, "When Apple bought us, Spotify only had 3 million paid subscriber. I want to take a run at them." And now they think of like 250 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 enlightened. I I didn't ask you that before, but I just got that that the sense that that's uh that's how you were. You have any idea the size that you think it could get to? Because you have how many page? You said 20

over what when and when did you like start it?

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

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

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.

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 2 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 because 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 trying to make it more human and we think the way that people have designed computers for the last 50 years is like robbing us of who we are and like our humanity. And that people are going to 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.

Different location, separate not shared office space. How like explain the organization?

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 out, you know, that I don't think it spun out different like entities inside of Apple, but he want he's like you can't even be in the same building. That was like really really important.

And differentiation, you don't want, you know, the opinions of other people outside of, you know, the people working on it. What was Snap Lab? Uh, Snap Lab really incubated a lot of the spectacles and specs stuff.

It was to house all the the hardware development.

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 SnapLab. I mean, that's what it was called initially. 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? 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

a separate app from Snapchat but we can use Snapchat as a launchpad for for these new services because it reaches almost a billion people.

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

all the time?

Really? I push everything to email.

I use email like text message.

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

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 tradeoffs, 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.

He was obsessed with focus.

Not a lot. No.

I don't buy individual stocks. I don't really give a … about anything about 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 Jordash. 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. I'm like, I'm just going to vibe. I'm going to 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 going to build and he already is. I think he 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 going to be focused on, you know, what they're excellent at, but he's got grandiose ambitions to the point where like just like there's no way in hell Bezos was going to stick with books and CDs and movies. Like 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 you basically like your level of ambition.

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

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 makes people's lives better, the way they respond to like that's that's like the best. It's it's awesome.

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.

How do I allocate my time across the existing problem? So, you know, so like like Elon's famous for like what is the the bottleneck here and like I'll find out in my entire empire where the bottleneck is. I'm going physically there and I'm going to sit there and like dedicate all our resources. In that essay I told you I I read about the history of SpaceX the they they just there's a NASA 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. I'm just curious like I'm not talking about problems you could solve like in future product development. I'm saying literally like there's you're running a giant company. There's all kinds of stuff that's not going well.

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

How do you ensure that information gets to you though?

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, you know, this 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 going to 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 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 outsiz 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 wasn't even really clear like who my manager or leader was because 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 team feeling is is really important.

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 going to 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 think people respond really negatively to that in our in our culture. So I think you know sometimes that creates problems because the swim lanes are less clear. I mean people are solving problems across the organization across teams are 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.

not in depth I mean you would you would be the expert I'm sure

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 operated today. So I I would imagine that more people will move to much much wider spans of control, much flatter organizations and I think that'll be helpful. 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. 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 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 just 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 want to 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 over a longer period of time I I want to think about like more ways that I can make an impact. but 10 million is more than enough money to live a really great comfortable decision on your part especially when you were how old were you when you make the first time you turned down a multi-billion another acquisition offer okay don't downplay like that's another see we've we've gone over a series of unusual decisions that you keep making so like 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 work I'm trying to do on founders podcast to give you like I I want to like to the degree that there is any influence that the podcast has on future generations entrepreneurs it's like right now the entre entrepreneurship ecosystem. They celebrate because the incentive structure is … up. They celebrate start, scale, sell. Yeah. 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 going to like wear a TV on their face. Like it's insane. Like it was insane. And I think like you 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 want to go like that's scary for the world. Now it's great in many ways that like all of these services have adopted our inventions. I mean when we talked about I mean in 2012 I 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 going to be open and connected. Everyone's going to share everything. like what like 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 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 well-being. That is fundamentally different from social media because in those same studies, it shows that Instagram, Tik Tok, 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 want it 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. 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 20s, right? You might have had like a a faint idea that you know first of all I think you love being an entrepreneur like entrepreneurs need businesses. What is an entrepreneur that sold his business is like nothing. You're just sitting on the sidelines doing nothing. 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. like this is I think you even said this like I don't think I'm going to come up with a better idea than this. But you have that kernel of the idea. But now the you just did this great articulation of that. It's 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 that you realized that was the right choice. such as social media gets a really bad rep. It has terrible PR. Um, you know, all the the polling is like, you know, people even though they're addicted to these things, they seem to not you 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. There was two conversations I had on this podcast that surprised me. The first one was with Daniel of Spotify and the next one was Toby Luke of Shopify. I get those back confused all the time. Daniel said something interesting where he was even willing at the beginning. He he thought uh Spotify needed to exist in the world that he would have he didn't want to sell it but if he thought selling it would increase the likelihood that it continues on this world then he was willing to do so and then so that that shocked me and then Toby Luke said something that was fascinating where he thought if if it was not for the this new invention of AI and in its current uh format that he was close to find he didn't think he would be the best CEO of Shopify so he would find somebody else to do that because all in both cases they wanted what was best for the company. Oh, I never even thought about that like that. So you use Snapchat as a means to reinvent computing. It's an incredibly important part of it because without a hugely profitable cash flowing. I mean, Snapchat's almost a $7 billion revenue business, right? Almost in the Fortune 500, 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 12 years. We've been able to very consistently invest in a way that no VC would ever in a million years support. Would there ever been a world where you only built software? Yeah. I I think ultimately 100%. Yeah. I I think ultimately if you think about the the customer experience you're trying to create or the what what you're trying to create in the world ultimately you realize that hardware is a necessity and realizing that vision essentially. Think about how early we started doing it. I mean this was back in 2014. We started investing in hardware. because 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. Yeah. No, it's it's definitely a lot of fun, but like we need to do a better job of telling that story, man. So what does your schedule look like during a year like this? I've heard like Okay. So It's untenable. No, it's it's a this is like a seven day a week job, you know. 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. 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. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Why? 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 12 years of my life that I've invested in you know creating this new vision for what a computer can be and you know and I I almost said the number of days and in some number of days we're about to share that with the world and like that's incredibly incredibly exciting. Huge on meditation. Korea meditation changed my life. Called Ka. Is this like a daily practice 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 name her Keller who was the founder of Southwest Airlines which the most successful airline and think about he's selling commodity product right uh most successful airline of all time. I think he was profitable for 40 straight years 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. 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 going to it's going to be great. I mean in the early 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 want to do public speaking. I didn't want to do companywide Q&A, you know? I'm like, if I want to communicate with a company, I'll send an email kind of thing, right? Like it's 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 going to learn how to love it. Like I'm going to learn how to love public speaking. I'm going to 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 appear like a challenge or feel like something you're uncomfortable with, like that's that's really important. Yeah, you'll see this in the history of entrepreneurship. Thomas Edison, Henry Kaiser, Edwin Lan, they view it as pro uh problems or just opportunities and work close. It's like this is an opportunity. We just have to get to work to actually do it. There's been this new um thing that's popped up where I'm glad you you 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 chief storyteller. It's like yeah, that's the founder 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 tell and it's not even have to be that articulate. It's just you care more about anybody else. You know more about it than anybody else. Just educate us on what is why your product exists and what makes it special. And who else could do that but the person that was there when it was just one person, two people and a laptop. Yeah. 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 chief. that is the job. Like you got to 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. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks.