Founder and CEO of OpenWeb on the Future of the Online Interaction | #78 Nadav Shoval

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. I told you before we got on air, is there a little something the world doesn't know about Nadav Shoval from the talks that are out there or past interviews?

So interesting. See, I'm a little bit—well, I'm not a little bit, I'm a lot a bit OCD as well, so we can relate. So talk to me a little bit about your compulsions.

So it's more about general habits. I didn't know I had it until you're diagnosed with it. So we hired an in-house therapist for the team. We thought it was a beautiful thing. And one time she was like, 'Hey, we need to speak.' And I said, 'Is it bad?' She's like, 'No, there's some awesome people who got it, but you definitely have it.' So it's just about the way I organize my life. I have the same habits, the same workouts, almost the same food. I literally eat almost the same food for the past like three years.

So when you work out, do you get up at the same time every morning?

So you wake up at 6 AM. And what's the first thing you do?

Okay, every day. Wow. So then it's like 6:25, 6:30 when you start your workout?

Absolutely everything? Including your parents? Wow, so their thing must be pretty long. It is. Wait, so where do you write it down? Notion. Oh, see, my friend was telling me about this the other day, Marwan. Shout out to Mario. I know you were just talking about him. He was telling me about this Notion app too, where you like... wow, we're plugging.

Wait, I'm not done yet with the people, because that's just a little crazy, but it's cool. I think it's actually very interesting. So every person you meet ever, you write something about them in Notion with the tag where I met them. So let's say tomorrow I go back to Paris, London, every person usually a tag of what they do, which context we met, and if there is a next action item.

That's a very good point. So what's an example? You'll meet someone, what are some of the notes you'll write down?

See, that's smart. Does that make sense? Well, I think it's also pretty admirable because something that frustrates me on a personal level with some people is that they might forget it or they might not care enough. I feel like it's a level of respect for someone.

Gotcha. So how many people do you think are on your Notion app?

Wait, so have you always been like this for at least the past six years? Were you like this before?

Oh, do you think work triggered it too?

Gotcha. Interesting. And for you, do you feel because... for me personally, I feel like I'm not, or at least nobody's told me I'm OCPD. I've been told by my therapist that I'm OCD, but I've never looked at it as a fault or a con. I'm happy with where I'm at in life right now, and I feel like if I wasn't OCD or doing the things, then I wouldn't be where I am. Do you feel that same way?

Wait, so when you were younger, you were diagnosed with all those things? I don't know if we have enough time, man. Wait, so what are they? You grew up in Israel?

Interesting. Okay, wait, I'm still curious though. So you're a young kid and they tell you you have ADD, ADHD. Okay, it's the first one, but this was kind of obvious. And it was like, 'Okay, tell me something new.' And then you were just... my mother always told me that I was the energizer kid, always moving, jumping, breaking things, getting injured. So it was kind of clear that... to be able to read. And there was another thing on top of it. As a kid, I was diagnosed with a disease called Kawasaki. I heard you talk about that. That's serious, much more serious. But what came out of that is that until today, it's still pretty hard for me to write with a pencil because my fine motor skills are slightly still damaged. I did a lot of physiotherapy as a kid. So when you really think about it, when I first started school, I couldn't write, I couldn't read, and I couldn't stay focused for more than two minutes.

Wow, okay. Interesting. And then how did your wife only figure out who you actually are recently? She one time came to the room and she saw my CRM and she saw some names of mutual friends of us. She's like, 'Why are you there? Are you planning a party or what are you doing?' I was like, 'Oh no, it's my CRM.' She was like, 'What do you mean? We're meeting them there.' I was like, 'You're there.' And she looked at me and my mom is like, 'Oh.' And this was how long ago? Like three years ago. Wow. So is her Notion section pretty long? I tried not to update it since she found out because I don't want to... you keep a lock on your Notion? You have to. No, I could put a copy. Yeah, I do. Because that gets dangerous. I put it on my computer and I don't on my Notion, but I don't try to write like hell. It's more like I don't mind actually to show you because it's more about... let's say tomorrow I meet a great person and we discuss doing something together. It's coming from a really good place, but I do think some people might be like, 'What the f***?' It's a bit freaky. I mean, you're not the first person that told me that, but at the same time, I do think it's a smart concept and there are a lot of benefits to it. I always say the opposite of forgetting is writing. When you write something down, you don't need to keep thinking about it. One of the issues why I write it down is because I'm selfish. If I didn't, I would always think about it. Does that make sense?

So I think it's pretty simple. We work with publishers, media companies, brands. We want to give them the tools to bring back the audience from social media to their sites and apps, to build great communities. We're mostly focusing on improving online conversations because we truly think that in the past few years, online conversations became pretty toxic and pretty bad. There's a lot of racism and hate speech out there. We think there is a better way to build communities, and by leveraging great technology, we might be able to solve some of it.

We work with some of the biggest media houses, publishers, brands in the world. We help them bring back users from social media to their sites and keep healthy online conversations happening on their websites and apps. So if you want to talk about Tesla, finance, technology on TechCrunch, we help you do that. Almost every legit media house you think of, we mostly work with them.

We go like the carrot and the stick. On one hand, we remove the bad stuff. This is all the ML algorithms that detect patterns of behavior like spam, hate speech, racism, to the level of white supremacy. There are so many levels of toxicity. Then you have the good things: how do I incentivize someone to be slightly more thoughtful? Can we create positive reinforcement? I believe most people are good. It's all about context. One of the issues we're seeing on social media, specifically Facebook, is the echo chamber. This is a real problem for society. It's not about politics; in general, I don't think it's healthy for people to only see what they love in such a close ecosystem. We believe in diversity of opinion, freedom of information. We want to empower others, whether they have a massive audience or smaller ones, to have their own communities and create meaningful interactions without people feeling they need to sacrifice their beliefs.

But how is that different from Reddit, for example?

Gotcha. Reddit is a social network, which from my point of view is much more diverse than some others. I actually like Reddit a lot, and they do a lot of great things. But we say, what about ESPN, Yahoo, TechCrunch, Financial Times, Vice? Can we connect brands, journalists with the audience and let them have more meaningful conversations?

Great question. We look at more than 20 different KPIs. For example, we measure the algorithm we produce. Let's say our algorithm approved 1,000 messages. We compare how many of them afterwards will be reported by users as toxic. So we measure automation compared to user-generated reporting, like crowdsourcing. We hold ourselves accountable and are transparent about it. You can see it on our website, openweb.com, with research and case studies. It's very hard to improve online conversations. Algorithms are not perfect, we are not perfect, we have a lot to improve. But given our scale today, we have more than 100 million users a month.

So I'll play devil's advocate for a second. Don't you think that obviously hate speech is different from negative conversation? If something is blatantly racist, it should not be there. If someone calls someone out on the internet, like celebrities do, that could be under the negative category. I hear you. I'm not saying that opinion... I think all opinions almost, we want people to speak out loud, but we don't... don't be racist, don't make it personal. We don't have to agree, and I think debates are critical for online conversation and society. We encourage those types of conversations, but we want to make sure it's not becoming bad.

We work on that problem. It's all about context. We are not taking any side. Who are we to make a decision? It's all about context. There are a few things that you and I might say here but not in the office or in a bar. We try to be very cautious of the context of these conversations. We do not want to limit; the opposite, we want to encourage people to speak more because sharing ideas and debates is beautiful for society. But we want to make sure people are not attacking each other while doing it. We also work with content creators to understand the context of the environment, and they help us define the policy and how to handle things.

I started OpenWeb in 2012. But you were working on other things as well over time. We had a bunch of spin-offs. We didn't start from where we are now. We started from a consumer dating app. Where'd that go? Oh my god, chaos. That was bad. So we started from that. You were 21 at that point? Yeah. So myself and my co-founder started that. You guys have always been working together? Yeah. So we started that, didn't work very well. We said maybe we should build communities for events, for parties, to connect with friends around events. Tried that, massive failure, huge moderation issue. We were like, 'Oh s***, we don't have a lot of money in the bank, what do we do?' We know how to build communities, but it didn't go very well. Then I started speaking with a bunch of people, and someone told me, 'What about the media industry?' I spoke about it and was like, 'Why would they do that? It doesn't make sense. They should own the users, have the relationship with users.' I spoke with 20 media executives, they told me their issues, and I was lucky enough to be in the right place with the right people. So when you came here, 2015? Yeah, something like that. So you had those conversations, and OpenWeb was a thing you had been working on, and then you went full time? We always did it full time. It was always full time, just the beginning failed too many times.

When did you learn that lesson? Was there a specific moment? I think around 2015, when we didn't have a lot of money in the bank. It was like, 'Okay, we gotta find a way to make it work.' We were thinking so much, and some employees brought ideas. I was like, 'Whatever we do, I want to make sure we're doing it right. We cannot fail again.' It taught me a lot about how to listen to the market.

In some things it's the same, in some ways it's very different. By design, our Tel Aviv office is mostly focused on engineering, product, and data. Here in New York, it's more marketing, business development, account management. If you have a good mission and great people, all the rest will follow. We have different issues and have been through many cultural tensions between the countries. 2020 was a complicated year everywhere, but it was beautiful to see how both teams supported each other.

Yeah. I think the pandemic put everything in perspective. It helped all of us understand that improving online conversations is something we all want to wake up in the morning and do. We care about commercial metrics and revenue, but we're not a non-profit. I truly believe what we do is important. When people are stuck at home, it's clear that it's important. It would be amazing to get to a point where you wake up and read about a more positive internet landscape.

Obviously if I didn't think it was realistic, I wouldn't do what I do. I'm optimistic by nature. I do think it's realistic, and it's not just about technology. It's about a combination of crowdsourcing, like the Wikipedia model, getting some of the best users to be part of it and help. There is some level of curation with content and discussion. In the end, communities are driven by...

I have only one job: help the team achieve the things. I'm trying to realize the change from being an entrepreneur to being a CEO. The main change is the perspective. As an entrepreneur, it's 'let's get s*** done, let's build things, let's do everything myself.' As a CEO, it's 'how do you help all these talented people achieve their dreams and goals?' My job is to find the best people, make sure they are focusing on the right things, and help them achieve what they want. If you hire the right people, it's more about making sure I'm helping them achieve what they need.

It depends. It will be a lot about strategy. These days we're thinking a lot about how to stay focused on what you don't do. It's very easy to try to build a million different products and features, acquire companies, do something. There are so many great opportunities. It's about priorities. The team usually goes back to saying, 'It's very hard to do less things and be the best.'

Actually, I do really enjoy it. I've heard some CEOs on both ends, but I like it a lot because it teaches you so much about what you do and makes you much more professional. The outcome is obvious because you have more capital to hire people and build better products. But what's exciting for me is almost like going and getting some of the best feedback by professional people. They can help you accelerate the company. Not all investors are perfect, but some are super smart people, and I learned so much from them. So yeah, I do like to raise money, but it's not just about the money. It's about being savvy and learning how the outside world sees your business, and understanding what you could improve.

The obvious one but the most important is persistence. When I started the company, no one wanted to invest. Everybody said, 'Who the heck is this crazy kid? Go to school, come back, we'll talk.' Persistence is by far the most important thing. The second one is be loyal to what you want to do. Don't let investors shape your strategy. Be open for feedback, but be very loyal to what you want to do. Some of the best ideas and greatest companies had so many investors tell them no, but they stayed loyal and achieved it. So be open for feedback but stay loyal to who you are and what you want to do.

I think scale is beautiful because there are so many ways to achieve it. When I say scale, it's impact, users, partners, revenue. It's intellectually a very interesting game, like playing checkmate.

I don't play to achieve. I'm not putting myself in a place of 'if I only achieve that, it's enough.' It's not the game. I want to build things that make a good impact on people around me and society in general. I know it sounds fluffy, but I'm honest. I want to have fun, do big things, and make a good impact on society. Where do you stop? I don't. Is there nothing that is enough? But is your ultimate goal to sell the company? No, really. We already got different inbounds at different stages, but I enjoy what I do and work with some of the most amazing people I've ever met in my life. I don't want to make a great impact with great people. Does that mean you guys are at 140 people now? Does that mean a thousand people? I assume you're going to be 20,000 people all over the world, building a great technology company that is transparent to everyone about the numbers, fair with revenues, and hopefully does good to the internet.

Do you feel like you're ready to balance the two? Actually, I'm very afraid of it because I'm very obsessive about things. Are you going to have a Notion for them? I hope not. Maybe, that would be a little psychopathic. A little strange, but hey, who knows?

Thanks so much for having me, appreciate it.