Brian Armstrong, what's up, bro?
It's good to see you as well.
Yeah, Jason just pinged me yesterday and he's like, 'Why don't you just come on as a guest randomly?' And I was like, 'Okay, great. Let's do it.'
It's so good. I'm really excited to hear what Jay Cal's intro is for you.
Oh man. Yeah, you guys keep getting wild and wild on this.
Let your winners ride.
We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 77 of the AllIn podcast. Less than 30 days for the soldout All-In Summit. And there's a wait list, but sadly I don't think we're going to get to anybody on the wait list. We've got a great episode for you. I thought I'd bring a bestie guesty in, but not tell my bestie. So, we'll see if they can figure out who's coming on the pod today. But let's get the intros over with. He's investing in SAS at different stages coming off a Miami Bender for the ages doing shots with Boy and Vanilla Ice. The Rayman is back. He's twice as nice. David Saxs, everybody, how are you, sir?
How is your adventures with Vanilla Ice? You're still here. And so, Vanilla Ice, that costs $1,600 to get him to show up. What does Vanilla Ice cost to show up for a party?
That's about 10K. I think it's about 10 to 20K.
A little bit more. Really?
A little more.
And did you go on stage and do Ice Ice Baby with him?
I didn't, but there were some like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles type dancing around with him and whatever. It was interesting.
People liked it. It was fun. It was fun.
Oh, very nice. Very nice. And you're still in Miami for whatever tech week. Okay. So, he won't eat your meat, but he'll take your MDMA. He's very interested in your DNA. When he's in the lab, he's in heaven. He hasn't been the same since that rave in 1997. The lord of the laboratory, the Sultan of Science, David Freeberg. How are you, sir?
That was my favorite one. I like that one.
Yeah, I'll have you. You peaked in 97 at about 2 a.m. You were peeking at about 2 a.m.
Did you say he doesn't want your meat, but he wants your MDMA?
Yes. He won't eat your meat, but he'll eat your MDMA.
Shout out to producer Nick who really crushed it this week. Ah, his bank. This one is too funny.
It's hard to keep it together for these sometimes. His bank account would make a crown prince jealous. His knitwear collection is overzealous. When he's on CNBC, he makes a scene. The last time he did leg day was 2019. The supreme leader of Spaxs, the dictator himself, Chamal Polyapata. I've been actually spending a lot of time working out on my legs.
Really? I have been working on shoulders and chest and my legs have always been diesel. I will be doing a shirt off selfie this summer.
Jal, it looks like you have not bought new shirts since you lost all the weight cuz that shirt looks about five sizes too big.
Here's what I bought this one halfway through the weight loss and now it's still too big. So, I got another slimmer. I got the slim fit. No, I got the normal fit and then I got the slim fit.
From peak to now, you've lost what, like 50 lb? 213 pounds was my peak like four years ago and I was 167 168 the other so whatever that is. 45 pounds it's awesome.
Something I feel incredible. I've started running again and I did 40 days of skiing this year and I'm going to take up kite surfing this summer. I want another sport to do in the summers.
Are the people around you annoyed at your increased energy levels?
Yes, people who work for me are annoyed. I'm sleeping better, everything's just going better. I highly recommend everybody.
You know, just try to lose some weight. Lot of options out there for you, including Mique. All right, we have a very special bestie guesty today. He's a lean mean crypto machine who sort of looks like Mr. Clean. If you need some tokens, you know who to call. Satoshi has his picture hanging on his wall. His NFT game is never lacking. If you talk about politics at work, you might send you packing. The king of coins, the tycoon of tokens. Who is he?
Brian Armstrong. Brian Armstrong. Brian Armstrong.
You guys got it. Brian Armstrong's with us. Hey Brian, how are you?
You could have gone vital vitalic at the first part but became Brian by the office part. Anyway, welcome to the show Brian. We've obviously talked about you a whole bunch and you've been on this week in Startups and I think you know all the fellas here. But thanks for joining the pod.
Thanks for having me. This is awesome. I listen to your show every week.
Oh, thanks for that. So I guess you know the topic we all have talked about a whole bunch is work and keeping people focused at work. You took a very bold step which Toby at Choppifi I think followed and you said listen, if you're coming to work our mission is crypto. Can we stop talking about every other thing in the world and just stay focused on that? And I think that was maybe a year and a half ago that you did that. Everybody wants to know how that worked out for the company. So maybe you could tell us what it was like to go through that, because you were a target for a period of time. We all thought it seemed reasonable. And then how has that actually impacted day-to-day life for the people who decided to opt into working at a single focused Coinbase?
Yeah. So I would say short term it was quite a painful transition. It created a lot of consternation. There were some folks in the media who decided to call people who had left the company and write hit pieces. About 5% of the company opted into the exit package, so some teams were short-handed and people had to work extra time. But long term, it turned out to be an incredibly positive decision. I think a lot of companies in Silicon Valley feel like CEOs are being held hostage by employees. Sundar probably has an incredibly difficult job right now. We saw that video from Microsoft with Satya where people were talking about their hair color. They don't feel they can lean in and move the company in the direction they want. I think there's a better way: if you're starting a company today, make that clear up front. I didn't, and the culture drifted, so I had to realign it, which was painful. But I'm glad I did it. Coinbase has been very productive since then, and we've attracted great people from other companies who want to focus on the mission.
Brian, I've always talked about this as the difference between a hard culture and a soft culture. Hard cultures define what they do and don't do. Sometimes what you don't spend time on relates to product or externalities. Do you think that's become a trend where soft culture in Silicon Valley is about appeasing a fickle employee base, and as a result you aren't clear about what you're not going to talk about, and the troops rule the day and productivity goes down? Can you talk about what you've seen with other cultures and how that's affecting work and where employees choose to go?
Yeah. Ben Horowitz talked about wartime CEO and peacetime CEO. I'm conflict avoidant, never thought of myself as wartime CEO. But I'm trying to find a happy medium. The company should have an ambitious mission, and as CEO you have to say no to things off track and part ways with people not raising the talent bar. So you have to be hard in that sense, but it's not just about making money. Most Silicon Valley missions are about great humanitarian efforts. We take time for exec offsites, walk in nature, coaching. So it's a mix of both. I don't think of myself as a Wall Street hedge fund or the most touchy-feely culture.
Why do you think companies have veered into this place where they have to appease fringes on either side? How did we evolve from being mission focused to dealing with all this other stuff?
One theory is that pre-pandemic, it was so competitive to get talent. Google and Facebook were one-upping each other on salaries. As a CEO of a rising company, I felt incredible scarcity. I was doing anything to retain people. If an employee wanted another flavor of water, I'd say okay. But during the pandemic, we moved to remote first, and the talent pool opened up 100x to people all over the world who were hungry and thankful for jobs. That changed the scarcity mindset. Also, Google and Facebook made it common to host open mic Q&As, which felt like a democracy. But it became hostile, with people asking difficult societal questions not related to the company. We got rid of open mics. People can submit questions anonymously, and we address themes. But you can't grandstand.
I saw this on Twitter, Nick, maybe you can find it. It was a general who commanded battalions. He said 80% of his people were incredible, 15% were wishy-washy, and 5% were always pushing boundaries. He focused on keeping the 5% in line or out, because that solved for the 15%, and the 80% would be fine. If you don't deal with the 5%, the 15% go crazy and the 80% get dejected. It's a reminder that some people join companies with a desire to see them go sideways. And to be fair, you told people they could create their own dinner party off hours and talk about whatever. This was just about staying focused during work hours on company time and servers. You weren't saying they can't have political beliefs. That was one of the biggest mischaracterizations.
Yeah, exactly. The policy never silenced people or prevented them from taking positions or donating. It just said that while we're in the office on Coinbase time, we engage in Coinbase's mission and avoid fractious debates that divide us.
Yeah, that's right. And there's a time for those debates. I think a lot of this has to do with Slack. When people are in a Slack room and frustrated, it's understandable they want to blow off steam. But people have to look at Slack as not an AOL chat room or Reddit. Maybe you could talk about electronic communications, and then David has a follow-up.
Yes, I agree. Slack is an amazing tool, but it turns into social media once you get more than 500 or a thousand people. A lot of CEOs are trying to figure this out. We still think Slack is a net positive, but it has a huge negative in distracting people and causing flame wars. We've tried limiting large channels so only VPs or level 9 and above can post, and others are read-only. Dunbar's number is 150. We try to cap channels above that. These tools need to evolve.
Yeah, there's a neat feature in Slack now where that level 9 person can post and everyone else can reply in the thread. But Slack needs to double down on this. I also think they put that random room in there, which is like waving a flag. I tell all startups to delete the random room and tell people not to post memes and jokes. David, you had a follow-up.
