Super excited to talk to you. We've been talking a bunch before we started recording. I did a podcast on you like almost 10 years ago. It's episode I think 22 of Founders based on this book on how to turn down a billion dollars. The thing that stuck out to me the most when I read that book, because a lot of that story takes place when you're like still in college and you're talking about two of your entrepreneur heroes and Steve Jobs makes sense, my entrepreneur hero too. But you mentioned this guy named Edwin Land and I'm reading this I'm like how the hell does a 21-year-old kid even know who Edwin Land is? I've done like 10 podcasts on him, read every single biography. Tell me how you discovered Edwin Land and what you admired about him.
Yeah, I think you know he's so central to the history of photography and so as we've set out to try to reinvent the camera and how people express themselves with the camera, we studied a lot 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 my co-founder Bobby, his name is Robert Cornelius Murphy. So we found just by unpacking the history of photography a lot of interesting 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 how to make sure those products fit into people's lives and uplifted humanity. I think if you look at instant photography and the role that played in people's lives, Edwin thought of the camera as something that was incredibly personal. And I think as we've looked at the trajectory of technology over the long arc of time, technology gets 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 and how the things they're inventing 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 in doing that?
Part of it was my background growing up. So I went to school in Santa Monica here, a school called Crossroads. Crossroads, the full name actually is Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. So it actually is the intersection of science 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 speak from the heart and take turns expressing yourself. And the school's really oriented on how you build strong relationships, build empathy with other people. And so I literally grew up at a school that was so focused on the intersection of art and science, but then also wrapped all of it in a commitment to humanity, to understanding one another, to building relationships, to giving back. I mean, the school is very anchored in community service. Three of our kids go there now, which is fun. 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 as I got a bit older and I got into things like graphic design and I built my own computer, I was always sort of working at that intersection of art and technology.
Yeah. I think the perception of you is like you're like this cool designer, but you actually self-described as like a nerd growing up.
My wife and I always joke it's cool to be uncool. So, I definitely don't think of myself as cool. And my background really was in the computer lab. I mean, 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 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, whether it was the mainframe or the desktop, have sort of pulled us away from one another, away from society, brought us indoors, into this very single player experience. And so, a lot of what I've thought about and a lot of what has inspired me is how do we take all these extraordinary benefits that computing 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, that we use together with friends? Because I think one of the side effects of my love of technology growing up was that it pulled me away from more social relationships or just running around playing on the schoolyard.
So, wait, you had that philosophy even back then when you were in your 20s?
Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of 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 a feed of content from other people, not a messaging feed alerting you to what other people are sending you. It literally opens into your experience. And so from the very beginning, we've thought about how do we ground your experience of computing in what is right in front of you in the present moment and inspire you to create from that.
Why do you think that the way computing was before it would just isolate you? So essentially you're just staring at a screen getting materials pushed to you.
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 a building to use a computer, 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 mobile phones are representative of this continuum of computing getting more personal. But I think today people feel like 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 how do we get all these amazing benefits of computing but in a way that actually connects us with one another, connects us to the outdoors, connects us to the world. 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 walking to pick up my daughter from school, you could either sit in the car line, or you could get out and pick them up. And this is like many years ago. And so 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 an addiction. That is a crazy thing. I was walking on the beach here the other day. This lady almost ran into me. This is a beautiful freaking beach and she almost ran into me because she was looking at the phone. I was like there's mountains and the Pacific Ocean here. What are you doing? That's a crazy thing to do.
Is there anything else from Edwin Land that inspired you or that you think you used either in the beginning of Snap or now?
Before we jump into Edwin, two things you said just really inspired me. The first was school drop off. Like our kids insist that I walk them in every day. So I'm used to doing the long walk in while everyone's in the car pool line. But I think to your point what's fun about that is you get to connect with everyone and say hi to other parents and teachers and as I mentioned some of the teachers that actually taught me when I was there. But the second thing you said, which is so funny, my daydreaming right now, especially as we think about glasses and the future of computing, is really like what if aliens are watching Earth right now and they're like terrified that smartphones have taken over humanity that we're spending all day long caring for these things and plugging them in and tending to them and our lives are all oriented around these little screens. And what would aliens do? And so part of my imagination has been like what if aliens are sending specs, sending these glasses to save people from their lives that I think become so oriented around screen. So it's funny you mentioned that. I love thinking about that like the alien perspective of humanity right now.
I think for Edwin Land there's a couple other things that really stood out to me. One he was a statesman, right? And behind the scenes people really relied on his advice and he gave it freely. I mean he was 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 so I like that he had a commitment beyond just his customers and creativity and these sorts of things he really wanted to participate in building a better world and took that really seriously. And then I think if you look at a lot of the investments he made around his laboratories and around his innovation he was famous actually and back then this was quite unique, famous for uplifting women in those research roles. And I think he was a real champion of talent. He saw talent very clearly. And I think at a time when people 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.
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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 build technology that actually enhances humanity?
Well, I think fundamentally my source of inspiration is humanity, right? Like I'm inspired by other people. I'm inspired by the extraordinary world that humans 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 problems. I mean that's we all get to choose what we do when we get up in the morning like that's what I like to do and what I want to contribute to the world. And I think the challenging thing is sometimes when you're working on new technology it's so exciting and inspiring that you can lose focus on its impact 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 was the core inspiration of stories right was 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 by how many likes or comments I have? That made us realize like the way that people have told stories forever is in chronological order. They're not permanently saved forever and publicly judged and liked and that sort of thing. And so it was just very easy for us to develop a product where everything, all the images and videos were in chronological order. They deleted after 24 hours. You could start your day fresh the next day. 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 by the way people feel, what they share with us 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 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, one of the reasons why everything was saved forever is because hard drives, disc based hard drives, 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 how to erase things because it was just much easier to leave it there and 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 that everything is being written over because that wasn't a consideration for a really long time.
So in a very Edwin Landian way, you seem to observe what everybody's doing and you have this natural inclination to go your own path, but you had it at the very beginning. How old were you when you started Peekaboo, which turns into Snapchat?
I think I was probably I think 20.
Where did this desire to do something different come from?
My dad was always pushing me to get a job when I was younger. Like if I was ever around the house, he'd be like, 'What are you doing here?' Like get a job, right? So I interned at Red Bull, for example. I interned at Abra Bioscience. I mean, this was back in the day when we were racking GPUs to do early stage drug discovery. I mean, that was like my first experience with GPUs, however many, when I was in high school. And then I had a couple other really cool internships, but really my first more serious job was working at Intuit. And working on this service called TextWeb, which was basically designed to help people with touchpad mobile phones build little micro websites essentially and access them primarily in India at the time. And so I had learned all these really interesting things about business during these internships but fundamentally I didn't really want to have a boss but until I saw how possible it was to build something amazing like with TextWeb I think there was like three of us on the team I did the least out of the team members but the three of us on the team or four of us on the team were actually able to build and launch a service in India right I was like wow it's actually a lot easier than I thought to build things and to create things that can reach millions of millions of people. And so that really inspired me. And simultaneously, I had lived across the hall from Bobby who I ended up starting Peekaboo Snapchat with. And he also had a job at the time. And we both just loved building things. So we started working on this thing called Future Freshman, which was designed to help people get into college. It was like a total failure, but we had loved working together.
This is an important part. Can you tell say why? because I think you took an idea from there for your next business why it failed.
Yeah, I mean there were a number of reasons why it failed. I think first of all we really focused on building the perfect product for way too long before we got feedback. So, I think we worked for like 18 months to build this perfect full-featured product, which was like in direct contravention to 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. But we had spent all this time building this 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 this college application software world, they had secured distribution through all the different college counselors. So what piece of software are you going to choose to help your kid get into college? The one recommended by the college counselors or the one from two kids at Stanford? I mean, I think it's a pretty easy choice. So we just saw very early that we had no distribution advantage and even if we loved our software that people weren't going to use it 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. 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. And ultimately Peekaboo and Snapchat represented that.
Yeah. Because in the book you talked about we build a product, no one used it.
It's tough when no one used it except my mom. So move on to the next thing.
So is Peekaboo, which turns obviously Snapchat. Was there anything in between those two or was it?
There were a couple other failed experiments I would say in between that we were playing around with different ideas for more private like I wouldn't say social networks but more private groups and social sharing and things like that but nothing that really.
But it seemed like it was a direct counter to the existing social networks at the time.
Yeah, I mean the problem that we were experiencing was that the way that everyone was socializing at the time on Facebook and I think Instagram was sort of just getting started at the time, but the way that everyone was socializing on Facebook was like a giant popularity contest. So, it wasn't fun, right? I mean, everyone was competing for how many friends they had, how many likes they had. Everything was about pretty photos. And in college, we wanted to have fun with our friends, but the alternatives at the time with text messaging, for example, were so clunky. I mean, people forget like sending an image via text message back then took like a minute, two minutes, right? Like to send MMS, it was crazy. And so part of the core invention of Snapchat was actually just making it really fast to send images, which made a huge difference in people's ability to use images to communicate because back then, images were for documenting things. They were for saving memories forever. And the reason why photography has exploded and I think there are more selfies taken on Snapchat than on iPhone in total which is a crazy stat. But that's because people are using images to communicate. And so inventing Snapchat in response to kind of this documentary culture around photography and this feeling of public pressure about the way that people were expressing themselves and communicating online. Snapchat really especially because the camera was on the smartphone transformed the way that people communicate by allowing them to communicate with images.
So did you think you were building a messaging app or a social network?
I mean it's a messaging service. We thought about it as a messaging app. Yeah. And we talked I mean it only had messaging for the longest time until we introduced stories. I mean it was only a messaging.
Stories has got to be one of the best inventions ever in terms of like the apps that we use. I mean now obviously everybody it's on every single app like you were the first one to come up with that and it's I think there's like stories on LinkedIn and like Pinterest or some shit now like it's just places they shouldn't be it's there.
Going back to the early days of the smartphone if you remember Apple was really talking about like hey when you're going to watch video on your iPhone you're going to turn the phone sideways, right? And watch horizontal video. And a lot of in the first year, several years of Snapchat, almost all video online was like horizontal video in the feed. And so when we came out with vertical video and we said, no, we think everyone's going to watch video the same way they hold their phone all day long, vertically, where people were like, what? We spent a ton of money back then without AI, right? Like just helping advertisers recut their video to make it vertical. And we had to convince them, showing them that the completion rate was higher on vertical videos. But for us, it was just obvious that people were going to want to watch video the same way they hold their phone. They don't want to turn their phone to watch video.
But do you see what I keep trying to get to? And this is not normal though. You're very comfortable. I'm trying to figure out because the whole point of me having these conversations like this entire show is just who am I intensely interested in talking to and there's something interesting I still don't understand where the hell did this confidence in your own judgment and disregard for the need to conform come from because it's obviously still there today. Like let me give you some background. I remember the first version of Spectacles, the ones you bought in a vending machine. I bought them. I wanted them so badly and you were out of stock. I bought the ugly blue color. I did not want bright blue glasses. I'm a grown ass man. But I was like, 'These are this is so weird. This is so interesting.' And you were like 10 years ahead of everybody else. Where the hell does that come from?
You know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure exactly. I think a lot of this stuff just really appears obvious to me and to us. It was obvious to me that if you looked at the evolution of computing that holding this tiny little screen in your hands was not the future of computers. Like it makes absolutely no sense especially for humans that want to live and work hands-free, that want to be able to see one another and interact with the world. And so I think when things like that just seem so obvious and we're fortunate to be able to invest consistently behind that vision because I think the hard part is not necessarily seeing what the future could look like. I think a lot of people have different visions for the future. I think the thing that's been maybe different about Snap or Snapchat is our determination and consistency in pursuing that vision. I mean with stories, the first six months of stories, no one used it. I mean, I remember sitting in a board meeting and we were like, we think stories is going to be a big thing. You know what I mean? Like this is the future of how people are going to want to share on internet services on Snapchat and the board's like, well, no one's using it, and we're like, okay, but it's new, so it's going to take time, so let's give people time to discover it, to learn about the feature, and then maybe by the next board meeting or the one after that, it was growing super rapidly. So I think the hard part is not necessarily having the vision for the future and often times it just seems very obvious. The hard part is delivering it, getting there.
Were you disagreeable when you were a kid?
If I ask the people you have working with you is Evan disagreeable would they say yes?
Strong opinions loosely held. No. I think I've always felt comfortable seeing something differently or advocating for something different.
Would people that work with you describe you as uncompromising?
Okay. There's a Steve Jobs element.
Yeah. But at the same time we've tried to build a really different culture because one of my you know that you mentioned the Walter Isaacson book like that book broke my heart because I think that book essentially called Steve a bad father which I thought was not only unfair but it also sort of made the case that Steve believed that you could only achieve these sorts of things if you were uncompromising but uncompromising with a taste of mean essentially.
And for me watching Steve and seeing how people spoke about him and there are plenty of stories of folks who felt really close to Steve and felt really inspired by Steve and also stories of people who felt like Steve was mean, right? And my big question to our team was like could we achieve something really extraordinary? Could we build a culture that was incredibly creative but at the same time is kind?
Right? So 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 we think that is the best 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 opposite of creativity.
There's actually Did you ever read Ed Catmull, the founder of Pixar, his autobiography called Creativity?
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 because he worked with Steve Jobs longer more consecutive years than anybody else. I think they worked together for like 24 years.
I would just buy the book today and just skip to the end. There's a like a 20-page afterword called the Steve we knew. And his whole point after the Isaacson book came out, he's like that's not the Steve I knew. And 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 afterword, Ed is telling the story of how he evolved over time.
45-year-old Steve Jobs is of course not going to be the same as 21-year-old Steve Jobs. So I think that's a very important point to make. How do you reconcile though? Because there's a lot of people that are famous about this like Elon. I just heard somebody was telling me a story. Michael Moritz from Sequoia said the same thing that camaraderie is dangerous and kindness is dangerous for your teammates because you can't deliver honest feedback and tell them if their work isn't up to par or whatever. How do you balance that? Like be kind but also honest if the quality of the work isn't there?
Well, I think there's a big difference between kind and nice. 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 saying we're just not there yet on this project we're working on or hey the way that you deliver that 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 a partner is that they're honest with you about your shortcomings and help you evolve and make you better. And that comes from a place of love. And so I think kindness in many ways is essential because it allows people to hear that feedback. So one of the big problems 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 one of the things that helps people grow fast. And ultimately at a company like Snap, our goal is just help people grow as fast as humanly possible. So that we can meet the needs of our customers and evolve our business, etc.
Who plays that role for you? Who tells you the truth?
My wife is brutally honest in a very loving way. And it's super important. But I also, 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. So I have friends who I've grown up with who've always been real with me and 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, I can count on them to be honest.
I think of like what Charlie Munger said. He says, 'Anybody engaged in complex work,' this is a paraphrase of his quote, 'it's very useful to find somebody to help organize your thoughts with.' And I think he was referencing really the role he played with Buffett, where Buffett was the main guy, obviously was 100 times richer than Charlie, but Buffett knew that Munger was special, and he let Munger shape his mind. Do you have anybody like that? Not like high school friends are different, like they were more like peers or have like an understanding. You have a very unique lived experience for somebody that's still in their mid-30s.
Yeah, I think Bobby, who's my co-founder, has really been that for me. And I think we approach the world differently and see the world differently. So, I think that's really valuable. But I would say I rely on our leadership team and broadly our company to help me do that. I mean, that's the fun part about innovating is it's a dialogue. It's not like issuing command like let's go build this. It's like having 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 for me it would be a real shame if I only got that from, maybe if it was Charlie Munger, I'd feel differently, 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 mentors as well. That's hugely valuable.
What does the leadership team look like?
It's probably on the Snapchat side, it's like roughly 10 or so people and it's funny even in the architecture of our building, we have a circle table for a reason. I really like everyone to sit around a circle and have a dialogue where we're all talking from an equal position around that table. So it's that sort of mentality where everyone is expected to contribute, everyone has an equal seat around the table that you get that sort of really helpful dialogue.
Are these people that started at Snap and got through the ranks? Are they former founders? The reason I asked you is because one of the most interesting ideas or surprising ideas I've had so far been having these conversations is I talked to Tobi Lutke the founder of Shopify which was like 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 a team around him is just founders. Is that what yours look like? Is it people that you poached from other companies? Like what does this look like?
I would say it's an incredibly diverse set of backgrounds. Some folks are from other companies. Some folks have spent their entire career at Snap, more or less. Some folks around the table are founders who have joined Snap. So there isn't like a one-size-fits-all model. I think we're really fortunate to draw from lots of different backgrounds.
Is there a lot of turnover?
I would say at points in Snap's history, there has been a lot of turnover. Not currently. I mean, knock on wood. But the business changed so quickly. I mean, there were periods of time when we went from having a hundred people to over a thousand people in like 18 months. And the skill sets that we were slow to build what we needed to support 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 to operate 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 maybe are misaligned with where we're trying to take the company.
Yeah. The reason I ask is because I think conversations like these, the other podcast founders podcast that I'm doing, I think it's important for entrepreneurs realize like there's not like one right way to do things. Tobi told me he's like there's probably a hundred right answers here. You got to do the one that's best for you. And so I'm just curious like do you have a philosophy on like turning over the top people of the team? Because like if you look at like Larry Ellison, you read biographies at him. He thought the fact that he kept the core product team, the core product team on Oracle together for like multiple decades was a huge advantage. His person he mentors, if you ask Elon who he admires, he says Larry Ellison, he's like I want fresh blood, I think is the term over and over again. Do you have an opinion here?
I think it's different in different parts of the organization. If you look at the core, the core product and design team, that's a very small team. I mean, I think it's currently like nine people. It usually fluctuates between like 8 and 12 people 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 right out of college. I don't think we've had we've had some interns, but no one joined right out of high school. They typically join right out of college. And we spend a huge amount of time investing in their growth and building things together and so I think it's really important to have that longevity because those are folks who really understand how we build products at Snap and that's something that I think really has to be learned. I haven't found anyone who's just been able to enter Snap and I mean certainly folks can contribute right away but it takes time to learn what makes Snap.
Say more about that. That's interesting. Why does it take so long?
I think the way that we build products at Snapchat is just fundamentally different than anywhere else in the world. And so I've yet to see someone come into Snapchat with all the skills and all the understanding necessary to be able to really deliver value in that role. The closest we come are probably folks out of art school because they're used to such a rapid iteration process and are used to making things in extremely high volume. And so they are a good fit for the design culture at Snap, which is really about very rapid idea generation and creation. I mean, every week I'm with our design team for several hours and we're just looking at new work. I mean, new work every week, hundreds of ideas, hundreds of concepts, iteration, etc. and really going kind of together as a group working through a critique process. And so I think the art school folks are probably the easiest to adapt to that culture because they're used to such a rapid velocity of work, but at the same time, we're really trying to overlay that deep empathy for people, that deep connection with how our community feels and what they're looking for. We're also trying to cultivate a very positive and fun environment around that. Like we're laughing half the time in these design meetings, and playing around with ideas. And I think creativity can really thrive in that environment of levity and fun. And so I think that combination and that velocity of creativity and product development is something that people have to adapt to typically when they come to Snapchat.
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If I was to sit in on one of these design meetings, you said there's like nine to 12 people and you like what would I see?
You would just be looking at a ton of work. I mean, we would just be talking through a huge volume of ideas across the service or maybe even ideas for new services and that sort of thing. For a couple hours.
These last a couple hours. They're going over when you say volume like can like hundreds of ideas.
And are you like leading this discussion like how?
Yeah. We're all but we're all contributing batting stuff around laughing and iterating and you know.
Why is the volume part so important?
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 an idea instead of constantly thinking about ideas are free right there should be a zillion of them. And if we can do that and create that culture where there's just an endless flow of ideas, you're very lucky. You're much more likely to get lucky by finding good ones.
So how many of these do users of Snap ever see?
Tiny tiny fraction. I mean less than 1% probably maybe 1%.
And what's the process like from when an idea comes up in the meeting to it gets in front of one of your users?
Well now that's happening incredibly quickly because designers can ship code with all these new AI tools. So the whole world of design is changing I think very rapidly because now many of our designers are just empowered if they've got something we think it's cool let's get it in the app and test it immediately. So I think design to code is happening way faster than ever before.
So there's an intense design culture at Snap. There always has been. You describe yourself as a designer.
Yeah I think I mean that's my background.
Yeah. And that's what you describe like when you started. That's right. And so talk a little bit about what you think AI will do to a company like yours where it seems to be like a design first culture.
I think AI is like probably the best thing that's ever happened to Snapchat, which is great. 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 trench warfare with monopolies for 15 years. And I think what's so funny 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 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 almost instantly you can copy nearly any piece of software. And so because we learned that lesson very early on we've evolved our business to really focus on the things that are hard to copy, a network effects business of people communicating with one another. These platforms, like our augmented reality platform or our content ecosystem that are not just pieces of software that you can 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 over the last 15 years, we've really honed our business perspective for this moment 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 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 thought about how to position ourselves for 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, 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.
I think that's certainly true in terms of like the operational lift, but at the same time, right, like that the vision and creativity and connection to your customer has never been more important. And so I think if anything it's going to enable founders to run teams that are much more operationally effective and require less of their time to operate the business and instead hopefully you know pivot more time towards that sort of creativity and ideation and you know meeting customers where they're at.
What's one of the most surprising ways that AI has changed how Snap operates internally?
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. 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 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 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 Snap. And the rate at which that has happened has surprised me.
You said something very interesting. You said you realized a long time ago that software has no moat. The experience that taught you that lesson was it stories?
No. The first time that the big sort of wakeup call was when 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 really good lesson for us.' It ended up being super helpful to Snapchat.
In the book, you call it the greatest Christmas present you ever received.
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 just a clone of Snapchat. And then to on, you know, on Christmas Day see Snapchat number one in the app store in that context was huge for us. But 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 things that are hard to copy.
Do you remember how old you were when this was happening?
When would that have been? That would have been 2012, 2013, so 22 probably.
Super young. Super young to take on that's that had to be terrifying.
I mean to be living in my dad's house with like three of my buddies from college you know and like this huge company you know set their sights on us. I mean it you know it was definitely a formative experience I would say.
So then realizing software has no moat is that direct insight leads to deciding bizarre decision I think correct in hindsight for what people consider a social network app or a messaging app to get into hardware and make glasses. Those two things are related.
Absolutely. And I think but even before that right a real focus on messaging. So the other key foundational insight of Snapchat that really changed the company was at that time if you recall people were very focused on a 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 value of the network is you know are the people that you actually talk to and communicate with especially the ones you communicate more frequently are they a part of your network and if they are then you can accrue the vast majority of the value in that network very very quickly without having the same scale or the same size right so what Snapchat showed was that if you just have one good friend on Snapchat right they might represent half of your communication right because they're super important in your life so you don't need 500 friends on Snapchat you just need your best friend on Snapchat and that's what helped the service really grow and take on, you know, these much larger competitors. What really prompted the work on glasses in the beginning was the feeling that we were always competing with that lock screen camera button, right? And so, do you know on the iPhone there's a lock screen camera button? So, Snapchat opens the camera, right? And we always want you to choose to open Snapchat to share a moment with your friends and your family. And you're making a choice between having to unlock your iPhone and go and open Snapchat and take a snap or just using that lock screen camera button. And that lock screen camera button is on your phone and it's in your pocket. And so, you know, when we were trying to reinvent the camera and change how people were using their camera to help them communicate, one of our fundamental questions was like, how do we get the camera out of your pocket right off your phone to make it easier for you to, you know, share and express yourself or communicate your point of view or communicate what you're doing? That was really the prompt that led us to explore glasses because back in the day we just made camera glasses. But I think as part of that journey and as part of starting to work on camera glasses, not only do we realize first of all that the market for camera glasses is very small, right? That ultimately your phone is very good for taking photos. Even if you're on a jet ski or even if you're rock climbing, people still use their phone to take a photo. So that meant that we had to push way harder and faster to our full vision for glasses.
When did you learn the market was small? Because you couldn't even keep these things in stock. I told you I had the big ugly blue color. Like it was a fine color, but you know what I mean.
Yeah. But I think even, you know, I think we were shipping like hundreds of thousands of units. 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 want to buy. But even at a couple hundred thousand units, I just didn't see a path to it being like 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. And maybe in some use cases it was if you really wanted to be hands-free or that kind of thing but it just wasn't 10 times better than the amazing camera you had on your phone. And so we really then set out to try to push towards as fast as we could our true vision for computing.
That was how many years ago when you started?
That would have been by 2016, 2017 we were really pressing into the more advanced parts 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 market.
What's the generation I used yesterday?
That's generation four or five.
Four or five. Yeah. And that was the first time we really offered a developer platform so that folks could start building and creating all these experiences.
Okay. So, can you explain your evolution of glasses? You said basically you don't think it was glasses, it's just another form of computing.
So to go all the way back, 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 we still haven't figured it out. I know it might take a few more conversations. You're talking about all these people using augmented reality. 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?
We bought a startup called Looksery that was 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's what got me using Snapchat because it was a little older than like the typical people using it. But did this launch after stories?
That must have launched after stories. Yeah.
How many years into Snap do you think that you've added this other feature?
Probably three or four years only.
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?
About 15 years. 15 years.
Okay. So, go back to what you were saying. Then you found hundreds of thousands or millions of people now using...
Hundreds of millions of people now.
Like every day. But back then, this is they're engaging with AR through this feature. But this is before you did the glasses.
Yeah, sort of concurrent with the glasses and maybe concurrent with the second generation, I want to say, by the time we really had an augmented reality platform, but you know, the original thesis behind creating lenses was just a lot of people thought it was weird to just take a selfie, right? Tons of folks were taking selfies to express themselves, but like a lot of people were like, 'Why would I just take a selfie?'
I don't want to be reminded what I look like.
Well, you could put some dog ears on everything. So, you know, or vomit a rainbow, right? So, people had a reason to...
I was covering people in flowers. It's fun.
So, I think lenses really gave people a reason to express themselves and to share with their friends. But then, you know, after we built out the Lens Studio developer tools and this kind of thing, the platform just exploded. Now, you know, people have made millions of lenses, all sorts of different ways for people to express themselves. Not only with selfies but also lenses that change the world as you experienced. And we just found that people were incredibly constrained by this tiny little smartphone screen and needing to use their thumbs to interact with augmented reality. And it was so clear that we needed to embed it in the world for it to be successful. And we were going to need to create the device to do that because no device even came close to the vision that we had. So we've really just pushed over the last decade to make that vision possible. And then later this year, you know, we're launching the first consumer version, which will be a big step for us.
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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?
Yeah, I think in general with my life thus far like with the things that we build I see them very very clearly even before we've built them. And I kind of know what I want. I know how I want it to work. And I also know that if I can't see it, then we're off track. And so I think really trying to stay true to that feeling and that vision and that focus is just so so important. And that doesn't mean not being open to other people's ideas, other people's creativity, etc. But like I think, you know, I just very very vividly can see what we're trying to create.
I'm going to explain or describe an experience that I read about. You tell me if it's similar to the one that you experienced where when that legendary meeting that happened when Edwin Land was 70, Steve Jobs 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 because Edwin Land had the third most patents you know in human history. They said 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 you know prop their entire organization to invent the technology to invent the product. Is that the similar experience you're having?
I really really like that because I think what they're describing is technology in service of a product vision. So instead of chasing a technology, being crystal clear about what you're trying to create and then organizing everyone to invent everything needed to create that product. So yeah, I mean, yes, I guess. Yeah.
Is that not what you've been doing the last decade with the glasses because you made a choice. You're like other people are partnering with existing companies like Luxottica who I think is a very fascinating story. I told you before I did this crazy episode of Founders Podcast. I think it's episode 394 on Leonardo Del Vecchio which is just one of the he's an orphan and he built one of the most you know to this day most powerful and like such a dominating companies in his industry but you chose not to do that.
There's a lot of reasons why I don't think that's the right...
Let's go into them. We don't have an end here. As much as you can share that you know but I'm very interested in your philosophy behind the decisions you're making is what I'm trying to get to.
I think there's a number of challenges. Obviously, I think it's much more harmful for Luxottica than it is for Meta. I think Meta needed to partner with Luxottica because the Meta brand, I think, is not something that people want to put anywhere near their face. So, I think Meta really needed... I think what's challenging for Luxottica is they took like the most iconic crazy high margin product and they destroyed the margin and then they associated it with Meta. So like I think like that like we'll see if that pans out over like a longer period of time if that was the right brand choice for them. But I can definitely see why Meta needed to camouflage their brand which I think a lot of people don't resonate with and don't like with the Ray-Ban brand. But I think people are misreading, I think, the dynamic of what's happening when you have Meta Ray-Bans on the shelf next to a regular pair of Ray-Bans and they're both about the same price, right? And it's, you know, I love to just walk into a Sunglass Hut or whatever and talk to them. Hey, what's going on? What's selling? What's not? It's like, well, you can get the Meta Ray-Bans that have a camera for about the same price as the regular Ray-Bans. Why don't you, you know, try it out for your upcoming vacation? I think that's a smart strategy if you want to move a lot of volume. But I don't know if that builds a durable business over time. And the reason why I don't know if that builds a durable business over time is if I look at successful hardware companies over a long period of time, we can look at Apple, we could talk about Tesla for example, early adopter is the wrong term, but they really try to start with premium or even luxury positioning around a very passionate early adopter group that believes in their vision, right? Think like the Tesla Roadster, right? Or the early iMac or the early iPhone. And they build a brand by starting with those early enthusiasts who believe right in the electrification of the world, the transformation of the power grid, how we're going to move things around or in the case of Apple a revolution in the personal computer right that everyone's been doing phones wrong and that like having this personal computer in your pocket would be really transformational and they really activate that passionate group of enthusiasts and then over time they work with that really passionate group of enthusiasts to grow into the mass market while preserving their premium positioning which means high gross margins then they take those high gross margins and they reinvest in R&D which widens their lead and like that is the story I think of successful hardware companies and I think it's very very hard to start with a super broad-based low margin consumer product and try to work your way into premium positioning. So I think if you look at Specs and like what we've tried to do even like your early experiences with the brand right we're innovative and different and again oriented around a group of enthusiasts and early adopters who want to see the world differently who want to participate in the cutting edge of technology and I think if we're able to build the brand that way and build our own brand around that that will allow us to sustain our margins over time which will allow us to reinvest which ultimately will give us a big competitive advantage.
I want to go back to wanting to control most of like actually building your own hardware. The you said something even the marketing though I think like you got to give you credit to the marketing you guys were doing back in the day from the first Spectacles where like there wasn't like a store you could just walk into. It's not the experience you described. It's like you would like airdrop these vending machines and then I remember there's like a website and I'm not a power user of Snapchat. I was just like, I want these glasses. And I would be like refreshing the website to figure out it's like, oh, okay, here's a new drop. And you'd have like a countdown like it's dropping. And you wouldn't say where it is. And I'm in like Miami at the time. It's like, all right, it's dropping in Venice. I'm like, god damn it. And then I wind up the way I got them is you did a drop in New York and a friend of mine, I called him and he went and stood in line and got them for me. It was like really unique and fun like you just made it. I like this idea of I just talking to Brian Armstrong about this founder of Coinbase where he's like everybody has shareholder letters, everybody has to write a shareholder letter. Everybody has to do these analyst calls and he's trying to find a way to like make them fun and like kind of like internet native and you know they are forms of marketing. They're not just analysts that are reading these things like they could if you if you think about them and like and think about like doing creative marketing you could just drastically increase the amount of people that are getting information about your company. Why is it so important to you though to control so much of the hardware that you're making?
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 this cutting edge computing experience, doing that requires us to have a very high degree of control of the areas we can really differentiate. So for example for us the display components are an area where we really differentiate. We have an incredibly performant waveguide which is like the glasses part of the lens right basically the lens of the glasses. And we've developed our own projector that's incredibly small that beams light into this waveguide. That's a big strategic advantage for us because the display components draw a lot of power, right? They're really important in terms of having that immersion and being able to have a very wide field of view when you're using 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 our ability to deliver on that product experience. So by doing it ourselves, I think we've created a competitive advantage that will show up 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.
Essentially like you're going to burn yourself out if you try to control everything, right? So, it's really important to identify very early on like where are the strategic points where you can create a totally unique customer experience by really investing in doing things differently. And for us, we've really thoughtfully picked out where can we play and do something that's really hard and do it differently that creates a sustained competitive advantage because it delivers such an awesome customer experience. So the display components are one. I can talk about that because it's public, but like later this year, people will see a lot of these areas where we've invested and invented, you know, fundamentally invented new ways of doing things that I think consumers are going to love.
Another thing that like Edwin like again people should study Edwin Land, they should study all these history's great entrepreneurs because you just realize they come up with ideas too. We were talking earlier, it's like 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 let other companies get in between him and the end consumer, which he fixed that when he did Polaroid 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 product.
Yeah. People you know I think would be stunned to learn that we manufacture core components in the US and the UK right in our own facilities which allow us to do this really advanced R&D that push the boundaries of what's possible with these components.
Yeah it's the same exact idea. So how are you going to distribute them?
I can't share all of our secrets, but we can regroup after the launch and deep dive into all of it.
Okay. But I have a sense that you want to control that too.
I think it's important in terms of the customer experience.
What a surprise. All right. You just described you wrote this like I think it was your annual letter recently. And I forgot the term you're basically the way you're positioning Snap. Not like a little brother, but you described essentially like you have the scale of some of these big players, but you don't have the trillion dollar market cap, right? And you were I think at least once in this conversation, you described that you've been engaged in trench warfare. Why do you call it trench warfare and tell us some stories about this?
Yeah, I mean I think 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...
You just call Reddit small?
From like a you know we're almost a billion folks using 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...
There's half a billion people using Snap every day.
About half a billion every day. Yeah.
And a billion about you know how many services how many other services are that size?
Seven to 10. Depends if you include China.
No we don't. America baby. All right. So, wait, you're not the I keep saying little brother. You're the middle child. Say more about that.
