CEO of Flowcode, Flowcode
How Gloria Steinem inspired Oath CEO Tim Armstrong
CEO of Oath Tim Armstrong has a goal of 50/50 women in leadership positions by 2020. He says feminist icon Gloria Steinem helped him change direction on the initiative.
About Tim Armstrong
Tim Armstrong, founder and CEO of Flowcode, appeared on the LionTree Podcast in May 2026 to discuss his company's focus on connecting physical-world moments with digital engagement. Armstrong stated that "81% of the economy is in the real world" and described Flowcode's proposition as "connecting the real world economy to the digital economy" through QR-powered interactions. He predicted that live events and in-person brand engagement will continue to grow, and argued that the next 12 to 14 months will be defined by a combination of AI and technology with human capabilities. Armstrong also offered several predictions about the advertising and software industries. He said that advertising "is going to get astronomically expensive" due to limited space and traffic declines of 7 to 40% for major brands, and suggested that the term "advertising" should be replaced with "service tizing," meaning brands will need to provide a deep service when marketing to people. He also predicted that large SaaS companies running their business models on complexity and integration charges will see that model go away, replaced by tooling that runs businesses in real time.
Transcript (12 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
I
Interviewer0:00
One of the things that you are now working on doing at Oath is a commitment you've made to make the company 50/50 women in leadership positions by 2020. That's a lofty goal. Where does the company stand now in terms of women in leadership?
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Tim Armstrong0:15
Yes, women in leadership. One thing that's probably not widely known about the company is we put the largest investment into women's leadership stories into a brand called Makers, you know, years ago, five or six years ago. And that was our initial investment into the women's leadership space to really understand it, both from individual women leaders but also how do you change the landscape for all the issues you're hearing about today globally with women's leadership. And I'd say the 50/50 goals came out of our not just a gunshot approach to say let's go for this. It came out of five or six years of understanding the space. The amount of risk that we need to take as a business to get to 50/50 is extreme, and that risk has to be treated like a business model, the same way that we would go after internet content or internet advertising and compete with, you know, the big fan companies. The changes that need to happen in terms of women's leadership diversity and changing the corporate dynamic around that require the same amount of risk taking. And the 2018 plan we're doing, I would significantly think that we'll have major initiatives happening in women's leadership both inside our own company and outside the company.
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Interviewer1:29
You're talking about overall leadership at Oath, 50% of the top jobs will be women, right? So what is it now? What would you say are we?
T
Tim Armstrong1:36
25, 30% range right now. And I think to get there it requires us to promote from internally, hire from the outside obviously, and then in some cases for us to create new positions and areas where we're going into new businesses we're going into, we're going to have new areas that women can lead.
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Interviewer1:57
What sparked this for you, Tim?
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Tim Armstrong2:00
I had one conversation with Marlo Thomas and Gloria Steinem. We were out, we were going down to a meeting in Washington DC at somebody's house, and I was in the back of a car and I was talking to them about this issue. This is about probably four and a half or five years ago. And I said, you know, one of the things I'd be willing to do is launch a women's only company, like all women, all leadership, all people who work at the company are women. And Gloria Steinem said, Tim, that's the opposite of what we need. We need somebody like you and your position to essentially take more risk inside of your own ecosystem. And by the way, companies perform better when there's men and women, so don't think about women only, think about how to combine that. So my wheels have been turning, you know, on that over the years. And I honestly think this: we're not the biggest company in the world, we're not the most profitable, but one thing we do have is we have an investment in the space already. So if there's one company in the world that should try to lead this, it should be us.
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Interviewer2:57
What about those who look at it and think this is going to mean men down, this is going to mean that men aren't going to get roles that they should get, etc.? What do you say to those skeptics?
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Tim Armstrong3:05
I mean, I think it's really the opposite way to look at it, which is the enhancement that's possible by having more women leaders is actually an enhancement for the entire corporation. And I would say for me personally, I worked for a woman leader right when I got out of college. She changed the whole trajectory of my career. She's the one who told me write goals down every year. We were one of the companies that had essentially a 50/50 Board of Directors that were men, women, and you know, we beat the S&P 500 while we were public for the time period we were public. So I'm not only believing it, but I've seen it. And I don't think people should be as concerned about a man down situation and a company up situation overall.
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Interviewer3:45
You're the father of two daughters. Was there anything personal for you about this decision when it comes to women's leadership?
T
Tim Armstrong3:51
Yeah, well, one thing happened. We happened to be on a family trip and we ran into Ursula Burns, former Xerox CEO, and she signed an autograph for my middle daughter. And I noticed like a week later my middle daughter had put it over her desk in her room. And I happened to walk down to my son's room to help him get ready for bed, and I came back in and my two daughters were brushing their teeth in the bathroom. And I walked by the Ursula Burns signature and then went to the bathroom, and it struck me that I had just walked ten steps down the hall, but my son, who I love, may actually end up earning more and having a better opportunity only because he was male. And my two daughters, ten feet down the hall, may not have the same opportunity. And I was looking at the Ursula Burns signature thinking, why on earth would we wake up on planet Earth every day where you have men and women, they were both the same from the same source, why would you treat those two people differently? And it just struck me as kind of like a human rights issue. It sounds, I guess it sounds deep, but it literally was that moment where I was like, wow, my kids, we're treating them all the same, they both go to great schools, but there could be a different outcome just because of how they were born.
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Interviewer5:07
When you read that now-famous Google engineer memo about biological differences between men and women and tech ability, what did you think?
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Tim Armstrong5:17
You know, the Abraham Lincoln principle of everybody in life is worth meeting if you take the time to get to know them. I think the same thing is true on the skill set side. If you take the time to understand what someone's superpower is, it doesn't matter if they're male or female. And we have great examples of superpower women engineers and product people at our company. And so I don't, I read it, I don't believe it, I don't see it. And I feel strongly that as long as you have a superpower and you're in the right position, you're probably going to be successful.