The Exchanges

Q It's very, very kind of you, but I wanted to start with your entry into tech first. I like a bit of context. So how did you first get interested in tech and product? Let's start there.

A Okay, so we'll go way back. I was I was very lucky to grow up in a household just surrounded by tech and science. My dad was an electrical engineer working in the semiconductor business in Silicon Valley. My mom was a PhD in chemistry. So growing up, my dad would always bring home the latest computer gadgets, and actually, for whatever reason, I was just always so curious about how these computers and technology worked. So much to his chagrin, I would like tear them apart. I would get out my tool set and like start unscrewing everything and literally tear apart these computers. And then I would never put them back together, which just like drove him insane. Um, but I just grew up around computers and I had a really formative experience when I was around 12 years old. Um, so sort of starting in my, when I was 12 and going through my early teenage years where I discovered on my computer on the internet What's called IRC. Do you know what IRC is?

AI assessment note: “I was very lucky to grow up in a household just surrounded by tech”

Q What's your work from home setup? I was told that you have some special work from home setup. Hit me. Wisdom.

A I did go a little crazy about this over the pandemic. Um, I've got an Apple pro display XDR. I've got, I mean, I've iterated on a few cameras, but at this point I've got something called an Insta three 60 link, which is just an incredible webcam on a gimbal. It's an, it's amazing. I've got a custom keyboard. I mean, I'm a huge nerd. I mean, you know, think about me growing up on IRC. I've got a, what's called a Leopold FC six 60 C keyboard with Japanese Topre switches in a custom housing made by someone named Ryan Norbauer, who's like an artisan keyboard case maker in Los Angeles. What else? Oh, I got a Logitech MX master three mouse. I swear by that mouse. Um, I don't know. I could go, I could, I could do like an entire podcast on my work from home setup.

AI assessment note: “I've got an Apple pro display XDR. I've got... an Insta three 60 link”

Q You said about the kind of creation of profiles. Is simple always better when it comes to product design? You know, I look at kind of creating profiles today. Some are simple proceeds, some are not. Is simple always better in product design?

A It's not always better in my experience, but I do think that when you are creating a novel Product that people don't yet understand. Something that's truly innovative and new. I do think that simplicity is paramount towards making it easy to use and easy to grok. And I think about the original iPhone, for example. It was very simple. Actually, they, they use design, user interface design patterns like skeuomorphic iconography to help ground people's understanding in real physical analogies. And then over time, iPhones have gotten much more sophisticated. They've added in feature after feature and after feature. The reason that that can work is because if you start simple, then you have a core product. If you, if you find, if you're lucky enough to find product market fit, then you've got a simple core product that people can easily pick up and understand. And then once you've sort of captured their attention, once you've found that product market fit, then you can take them on this journey over time where you layer in complexity. You can really push the boundaries of what the design language can do in order to introduce New features and new complexity that solves the user's problems in totally new ways.

AI assessment note: “It's not always better in my experience”

Q So, I've had many people on the show say that in the world of AI being kind of center stage and the impact it has on product, UI will really be completely irrelevant, and it'll be BS. Do you agree with that statement, or do you think that's overly simplistic?

A I do not agree with that at all. I mean, AI is an overloaded term. I think these days, you know, right now in this moment when we think of AI, a lot of people are talking about large language models like ChadGBT, and What I think is so amazing about ChatGBT is that it opens up an entirely new paradigm of human-computer interaction where We theoretically no longer have to interact with computers through user interfaces and buttons, but we can just talk to computers. It's actually really powerful because I think about my mom, for example, she's in her mid seventies and she didn't grow up with mobile phones and understanding how to use and navigate mobile interaction and user interface paradigms. She's not that good at using apps on her iPhone, but she's really good at talking. So it's incredible to me how Something like ChatGPT can enable an entirely new mode of interaction with computers, but I don't think that the previous human computer interaction paradigms are going away. For instance, look at, like, the command line interface. That was one of the original ways to interact with computers. Like, people are still using command line interfaces today. And then the graphical user interface, you know, on a, on a PC, on a desktop, even though we have these incredible multi-touch user interfaces on our phones today, People are still using graphical user interfaces on their PCs. They…

AI assessment note: “I do not agree with that at all.”

Q roof, also terrified for health and safety reasons. Your parents must be going, my word, he needs to find some more friends. But, um, I'm kidding. So my question is, we have this innate love of product and technology at such a young age. I was told I had to ask about that, and then I was told I had to ask how you came to Snap. What's that story?

A So basically, I think the first half of my life was really thinking about myself as a technologist, as an engineer. I saw my, my father as a role model, and he was an electrical engineer, so that's where I ended up studying. And then, um, I had gone to school in electrical engineering, And ended up going to grad school in computer science, and I had dropped out of grad school to start a company with some amazingly brilliant people that I met there. And the company was actually also about online connection. I think this formative experience that I had meeting all these strangers online when I was a kid really helped me understand the impact that online connection can have. And so I started this company. We were building a group messaging app, which was sort of the hot thing to do in Silicon Valley at that time. One day, a mentor of mine walked into my shared co-working space with Evan, the co-founder and CEO of Snap, or Snapchat at the time. And, um, this was in, this was in late 2013. So Snapchat was still a startup. It was already growing to be very popular. I was already an avid user. My mentor was just like, hey, Will, this is Evan. And at first I had no idea who he was. And then I quickly realized that he was the CEO of Snapchat. I got really excited because I was an avid user. And, um, he and I just had a really good conversation. So we ended up going to lunch together. An…

AI assessment note: “One day, a mentor of mine walked into my shared co-working space with Evan”

Q What's your work from home setup? I was told that you have some special work from home setup. Hit me. Wisdom.

A I did go a little crazy about this over the pandemic. Um, I've got an Apple pro display XDR. I've got, I mean, I've iterated on a few cameras, but at this point I've got something called an Insta three 60 link, which is just an incredible webcam on a gimbal. It's an, it's amazing. I've got a custom keyboard. I mean, I'm a huge nerd. I mean, you know, think about me growing up on IRC. I've got a, what's called a Leopold FC six 60 C keyboard with Japanese Topre switches in a custom housing made by someone named Ryan Norbauer, who's like an artisan keyboard case maker in Los Angeles. What else? Oh, I got a Logitech MX master three mouse. I swear by that mouse. Um, I don't know. I could go, I could, I could do like an entire podcast on my work from home setup.

AI assessment note: “I've got an Apple pro display XDR. I've got, I mean, I've iterated”

Q You worked on and kind of were central to many different elements of Snap, which is so loved today. Uh, if we start on Discover, what are the biggest lessons you have from being so central to Discover?

A I think one of the biggest lessons from Discover was That it's really, it's really important to understand the traffic patterns of how people are using your app, because we had spent more than a year building Discover, designing it painstakingly, and creating the vision for it, or pursuing the vision that we had for it, and then we launched it, and it was sort of hidden off in the corner of Snapchat, like the way that the app is laid out, is like at the very right of Snapchat essentially, and And we found that, ironically, it was actually pretty hard to discover, discover for our users, for our Snapchatters, and so it was actually, it was a pretty intense launch, because, you know, we built up all this hype around it, and a lot of the media partners that we had were really excited, and then we launched it, and people weren't discovering it, so then what we ended up doing was a very small design tweak. We moved Discover one screen to the left, essentially, to be on the same screen as where you see your friends' stories, And that completely changed the fate of Discover. It made it so easy to, again, discover, discover, and it really helped me understand the importance of thinking through the ways that people are using your app or your product today, and thinking through how to gracefully expand your product feature set by wedging additional functionality into the right portions o…

AI assessment note: “one of the biggest lessons from Discover was That it's really, it's really important”

Q You said about the kind of creation of profiles. Is simple always better when it comes to product design? You know, I look at kind of creating profiles today. Some are simple proceeds, some are not. Is simple always better in product design?

A It's not always better in my experience, but I do think that when you are creating a novel Product that people don't yet understand. Something that's truly innovative and new. I do think that simplicity is paramount towards making it easy to use and easy to grok. And I think about the original iPhone, for example. It was very simple. Actually, they, they use design, user interface design patterns like skeuomorphic iconography to help ground people's understanding in real physical analogies. And then over time, iPhones have gotten much more sophisticated. They've added in feature after feature and after feature. The reason that that can work is because if you start simple, then you have a core product. If you, if you find, if you're lucky enough to find product market fit, then you've got a simple core product that people can easily pick up and understand. And then once you've sort of captured their attention, once you've found that product market fit, then you can take them on this journey over time where you layer in complexity. You can really push the boundaries of what the design language can do in order to introduce New features and new complexity that solves the user's problems in totally new ways.

AI assessment note: “It's not always better in my experience, but I do think that when you”

Q So, I've had many people on the show say that in the world of AI being kind of center stage and the impact it has on product, UI will really be completely irrelevant, and it'll be BS. Do you agree with that statement, or do you think that's overly simplistic?

A I do not agree with that at all. I mean, AI is an overloaded term. I think these days, you know, right now in this moment when we think of AI, a lot of people are talking about large language models like ChadGBT, and What I think is so amazing about ChatGBT is that it opens up an entirely new paradigm of human-computer interaction where We theoretically no longer have to interact with computers through user interfaces and buttons, but we can just talk to computers. It's actually really powerful because I think about my mom, for example, she's in her mid seventies and she didn't grow up with mobile phones and understanding how to use and navigate mobile interaction and user interface paradigms. She's not that good at using apps on her iPhone, but she's really good at talking. So it's incredible to me how Something like ChatGPT can enable an entirely new mode of interaction with computers, but I don't think that the previous human computer interaction paradigms are going away. For instance, look at, like, the command line interface. That was one of the original ways to interact with computers. Like, people are still using command line interfaces today. And then the graphical user interface, you know, on a, on a PC, on a desktop, even though we have these incredible multi-touch user interfaces on our phones today, People are still using graphical user interfaces on their PCs. They…

AI assessment note: “I do not agree with that at all.”

Q syndrome when they're thinking about art versus science and, and product in particular. They like to lean on data and science because of a fear of their own conviction or courage or lack of courage sometimes, as awful as that sounds. And I always think, is product art or science? How would you answer that question? If you were to put a number on it, Where would you place them?

A I believe that product is equal parts art and equal parts science. In fact, actually, uh, I, I, I'm just sort of beginning to build a new team here at Match Group called ASL, ASL, and it has two meanings, but one of the meanings is art and science lab, which reflects my belief that the most innovative and the best products sort of happen at the intersection of Artistic disciplines and sort of scientific or technology disciplines, and it's sort of like a dance between the two. You need to bring folks from multiple different perspectives and backgrounds and trains of thoughts together to sort of swarm around solving problems for people in order to create really innovative products. As a product leader, I think in addition to making sure that the team has art and science backgrounds, I also think you need to take a sometimes artistic sort of intuition and instinct driven approach and sometimes scientific data driven approach when you're actually developing a product and growing a product over time. So sometimes you have to leave with your instinct. You know, when you're taking a product from zero to one, you know, no amount of data or market research is going to tell you exactly whether it's going to work. You have to take a leap of faith. But then oftentimes when you're iterating beyond that, you can use data to inform your instinct and to inform which direction you want to go.

AI assessment note: “I believe that product is equal parts art and equal parts science.”

Q It totally does. Do they need to work together, those separate teams, or are they quite clearly distinct and different?

A They definitely have to work together. So I think that, I mean, that's sort of like part of the role of a product leader is to be able to properly balance between the needs of those two teams. It's creating the right communication pathways, the right processes for those teams to collaborate with each other and share notes and ideas. Think about how to build a culture of openness and information sharing and, and one where people from those two different teams can actually get to know each other personally so they can build trust with each other as humans. So that they're not just thinking about, you know, the sort of like opposing ideas and directions that they have.

AI assessment note: “They definitely have to work together.”

Q to him before, and he said to me about a time when the team wanted to ship a product. When it was like, it was a little bit, nah, you know, a little bit creaky. Um, and you were like, no, just no, guys, not gonna happen. Um, can you talk to me? How do you think about, like, speed of execution, and is good today better than perfect tomorrow?

A Yeah, I mean, I, I am, I can be sometimes known to be a stickler for design details, and I guess where that comes from, Is when you're working with a product team in pursuit of a vision, you want to put a product out there that, or at least in my experience, you want to put a product out there that you can be really proud of. And I think first impressions really matter, whether it's the first impression for your target customer or for reporters out there, whoever it is. I've always felt that when you're launching something brand new, It can't be perfect. Perfection is, it just takes forever, and you know, you might not actually, if you try to build perfection, you launch it after taking years, then you might find out that it actually isn't solving a real user need, and then you might have to start all over, but you at least should launch something that you're really proud of, that reflects, it's emblematic of the vision that you're trying to achieve.

AI assessment note: “It can't be perfect. Perfection is, it just takes forever”

Q You worked on and kind of were central to many different elements of Snap, which is so loved today. Uh, if we start on Discover, what are the biggest lessons you have from being so central to Discover?

A I think one of the biggest lessons from Discover was That it's really, it's really important to understand the traffic patterns of how people are using your app, because we had spent more than a year building Discover, designing it painstakingly, and creating the vision for it, or pursuing the vision that we had for it, and then we launched it, and it was sort of hidden off in the corner of Snapchat, like the way that the app is laid out, is like at the very right of Snapchat essentially, and And we found that, ironically, it was actually pretty hard to discover, discover for our users, for our Snapchatters, and so it was actually, it was a pretty intense launch, because, you know, we built up all this hype around it, and a lot of the media partners that we had were really excited, and then we launched it, and people weren't discovering it, so then what we ended up doing was a very small design tweak. We moved Discover one screen to the left, essentially, to be on the same screen as where you see your friends' stories, And that completely changed the fate of Discover. It made it so easy to, again, discover, discover, and it really helped me understand the importance of thinking through the ways that people are using your app or your product today, and thinking through how to gracefully expand your product feature set by wedging additional functionality into the right portions o…

AI assessment note: “one of the biggest lessons from Discover was That it's really, it's really important”

Q sense. I love the challenge of discovering Discover. Um, the meta problem there is quite hilarious, to be honest. Um, another element that you worked on, which is crucial as well, is the gaming platform, which I think a lot of people don't actually recognize. I heard about trips to Australia, um, we can get into that later, but what are the biggest lessons from working on Snap's gaming platform?

A Building that Snap Games, what it was called, was One of the most valuable experiences I've ever had. I had a lot of lessons from it. I got to meet some incredible people. I got to see that the game developer community is very global, and vast, and diverse, and so creative. I think some of the best product thinkers actually come from game design. Um, I think for me, Snap Games, the biggest lesson was actually very personal learning, and sort of building the confidence and the courage In myself to overcome challenges, as sort of corny as that sounds, I was in my twenties, and I had never before managed a team. I had never before acquired different companies in pursuit of a vision, and I remember actually the launch of Snap Games was quite chaotic, and I think one of the most stressful periods of my life, where We tried, we, we, we ended up launching it with this sort of grand keynote on stage where I was, it was the first ever keynote for Snap, and I was talking in front of thousands of really important people, and public speaking really terrifies me, and I had never actually before spoken to a, a, a reporter, a journalist, and then, so my first time ever speaking to a reporter was actually speaking to a whole room full of really, uh, prestigious reporters, and they were all sort of like cross-examining me, and it was just, all of this was happening Right at the same time, while…

AI assessment note: “the biggest lesson was actually very personal learning, and sort of building the confidence”

Q today, and innovation for tomorrow. How do you think about balancing investing in what makes money today, and making sure that machine hums, but also being sure that you have an eye on generative AI, and new ways of creating profiles that's seamless and easy, and you don't need to do anything, or whatever that may be. How do you balance the two, revenue generation and eye to the future?

A I mean, you need both. You just need both, because obviously you need revenue to support the business, but you also need to be innovating and pushing your product forward to stay ahead of the competition. I have found that the best approach, or at least what's worked in my experience, Is having two separate teams dedicated towards each of those two independent goals. So one team dedicated towards revenue generation, another team generated towards innovation, because oftentimes there's a really strong tension between those two when you're building a product. You might Have to deteriorate your revenues, you know, with a new feature in order to find, in order to experiment with some really innovative new idea. And if it's the same team making those decisions, that conflict of incentives can be paralyzing for development, if that makes sense.

AI assessment note: “having two separate teams dedicated towards each of those two independent goals”

Q No, I totally agree with you. Listen, I want to talk about the future, and then we're going to do Quickfire, because I've roamed around here. I do, we have to talk about kind of the impact of AI. First, impact of AI on product design. How does AI change the actual process of product creation and design, do you think?

A First of all, as a product designer or a product manager, I think AI has already created a bunch of tools that we can use to be super product designers or product managers. I mean, thinking through like, you know, I have already some product designers on my team who are using tools like mid journey or Dolly to come up with different UI concepts or visual concepts. I actually think I was experimenting with these large, I guess they're called LMMs, these large multimodal models that are both like, they can talk with like language, like a chat GPT, but they can also see, they can, they can, they can see imagery and photos and analyze and understand them. And I think there's probably going to be an AI tool in the near future that gives you instantaneous user feedback and testing. Like you create a mock-up or a prototype and you Hand it to the AI, and you say, hey, AI, give me feedback on this new experience as if you were a eighteen-year-old male living in Los Angeles, or as if you were a fifty-five-year-old woman living in New York. And I, I've already actually started, like, playing with some of these LMMs in this way, and I think it's definitely just right around the corner. So I think, like, making sure that you understand how to utilize these latest AI tools is probably really important towards making sure you've got The right tools at your disposal to do a good job. And then …

AI assessment note: “AI has already created a bunch of tools that we can use”

Q to him before, and he said to me about a time when the team wanted to ship a product. When it was like, it was a little bit, nah, you know, a little bit creaky. Um, and you were like, no, just no, guys, not gonna happen. Um, can you talk to me? How do you think about, like, speed of execution, and is good today better than perfect tomorrow?

A Yeah, I mean, I, I am, I can be sometimes known to be a stickler for design details, and I guess where that comes from, Is when you're working with a product team in pursuit of a vision, you want to put a product out there that, or at least in my experience, you want to put a product out there that you can be really proud of. And I think first impressions really matter, whether it's the first impression for your target customer or for reporters out there, whoever it is. I've always felt that when you're launching something brand new, It can't be perfect. Perfection is, it just takes forever, and you know, you might not actually, if you try to build perfection, you launch it after taking years, then you might find out that it actually isn't solving a real user need, and then you might have to start all over, but you at least should launch something that you're really proud of, that reflects, it's emblematic of the vision that you're trying to achieve.

AI assessment note: “It can't be perfect. Perfection is, it just takes forever”

Q syndrome when they're thinking about art versus science and, and product in particular. They like to lean on data and science because of a fear of their own conviction or courage or lack of courage sometimes, as awful as that sounds. And I always think, is product art or science? How would you answer that question? If you were to put a number on it, Where would you place them?

A I believe that product is equal parts art and equal parts science. In fact, actually, uh, I, I, I'm just sort of beginning to build a new team here at Match Group called ASL, ASL, and it has two meanings, but one of the meanings is art and science lab, which reflects my belief that the most innovative and the best products sort of happen at the intersection of Artistic disciplines and sort of scientific or technology disciplines, and it's sort of like a dance between the two. You need to bring folks from multiple different perspectives and backgrounds and trains of thoughts together to sort of swarm around solving problems for people in order to create really innovative products. As a product leader, I think in addition to making sure that the team has art and science backgrounds, I also think you need to take a sometimes artistic sort of intuition and instinct driven approach and sometimes scientific data driven approach when you're actually developing a product and growing a product over time. So sometimes you have to leave with your instinct. You know, when you're taking a product from zero to one, you know, no amount of data or market research is going to tell you exactly whether it's going to work. You have to take a leap of faith. But then oftentimes when you're iterating beyond that, you can use data to inform your instinct and to inform which direction you want to go.

AI assessment note: “I believe that product is equal parts art and equal parts science.”

Q Do you cap it at a certain number of people? How do you determine who to invite? I'm just intrigued to really get to grips with kind of the bare bones.

A It's actually really important to have a small group of people, because otherwise you just get into these situations where there's too many cooks in a kitchen, and there's too many people that can sort of shoot down ideas, which I think is the worst thing when it comes to creativity. I mean, it could just, you know, shooting down ideas is something that I just Really try to avoid in the sort of like product culture that I create, because any idea can have merit if you look at it under a certain lens. But yeah, I try to cap it to maybe like Five people max. I mean, there's like a rough rule of thumb, but I think it's really important. It's like people that you trust, you know, the way their minds work, you're all coming at a problem from a different perspective. Maybe someone has, maybe someone's formally trained in product design, or maybe someone is an engineer and you can think about it from those different lenses.

AI assessment note: “I try to cap it to maybe like Five people max.”

Q She says to everyone that I'm a hedge fund manager, so, you know, not quite mum, but, you know, with that. But like, how do you bring chaos? How do you inspire creativity? How you like, let's actually fucking think outside the box here.

A Two things come to mind for me. I think one, Just bringing together people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. I just can't underscore enough how important that is so that you have people thinking about the same problem, that same human need that you're trying to solve from a totally different perspective. Like I said, whether it's engineering or someone who's trained in fine art or graphic design or fashion design or architecture, whatever it is, like bringing these different perspectives together can help you analyze a problem in a different way. And the other thing that I think is really important is inspiration. Traveling around the world and seeing your target customer, for example, in the flesh, and observing the way that they're interacting with the world and understanding their environments in a really nuanced way. I think that, I think getting the right sort of creative inspiration is paramount towards coming up, towards generating that chaos and coming up with the right ideas.

AI assessment note: “Two things come to mind for me. I think one, Just bringing together people”

Q today, and innovation for tomorrow. How do you think about balancing investing in what makes money today, and making sure that machine hums, but also being sure that you have an eye on generative AI, and new ways of creating profiles that's seamless and easy, and you don't need to do anything, or whatever that may be. How do you balance the two, revenue generation and eye to the future?

A I mean, you need both. You just need both, because obviously you need revenue to support the business, but you also need to be innovating and pushing your product forward to stay ahead of the competition. I have found that the best approach, or at least what's worked in my experience, Is having two separate teams dedicated towards each of those two independent goals. So one team dedicated towards revenue generation, another team generated towards innovation, because oftentimes there's a really strong tension between those two when you're building a product. You might Have to deteriorate your revenues, you know, with a new feature in order to find, in order to experiment with some really innovative new idea. And if it's the same team making those decisions, that conflict of incentives can be paralyzing for development, if that makes sense.

AI assessment note: “having two separate teams dedicated towards each of those two independent goals”

Q It totally does. Do they need to work together, those separate teams, or are they quite clearly distinct and different?

A They definitely have to work together. So I think that, I mean, that's sort of like part of the role of a product leader is to be able to properly balance between the needs of those two teams. It's creating the right communication pathways, the right processes for those teams to collaborate with each other and share notes and ideas. Think about how to build a culture of openness and information sharing and, and one where people from those two different teams can actually get to know each other personally so they can build trust with each other as humans. So that they're not just thinking about, you know, the sort of like opposing ideas and directions that they have.

AI assessment note: “They definitely have to work together.”

Q What do you think product people care about today? I think people's shift has been very real. People care less about money than ever before. Mission, nah, they say they do more because they think it's more moral. But they actually do care about the work-life balance, I find, much more than anything.

A I mean, I do think that the pandemic really helped people to realize that maybe you don't need to be in the office five days a week, or, or, or maybe even worse, seven days a week. I think having some level of flexibility is conducive of having a little bit better work-life balance, and maybe even being better, being a better teammate, being a better employee, Because you can bring your full self to work under the right circumstances. I don't know if people Aren't looking for money. I mean, this is one of the things that concerns me actually about product management as a discipline today. I feel like it's this sexy, trendy job in tech that has an allure because, you know, it's, it's known to sometimes be high paying. And I guess it's like, I, I try to weed out people who might only be interested in product management because of reasons like that.

AI assessment note: “I don't know if people Aren't looking for money.”

Q I mean, it is, and it's a cool thing, you're CEO of the product, like, that's kind of how most people describe to it. That's kind of cool. Can I ask, on, on, like, case studies, In the interview process, do you do case studies? If so, how do you think about doing them?

A I don't, personally. I mean, I've always just felt that it's a little bit too artificial and forced, and it's like, kind of like, I mean, I was never, I think of a case study almost like a standardized test. You know, the classic brain teasers that some of these big, big tech companies, I don't know if they still do it, but at least, you know, when I was going through college and sort of studying for my internship interviews and all that kind of stuff, it was all about these brain teasers. I don't know. It's like a certain type Of test of someone's thinking, but if they're not good at brain teasers, they can still be good at a lot of other things. So I don't really take a very structured approach when it comes to my interviews with case studies or brain teasers or anything like that.

AI assessment note: “I don't, personally. I mean, I've always just felt that it's a little bit too artificial”

Q Are there products that you think of today that do this brilliantly and that do this badly to bring this to life for us?

A The Apple Watch is a fantastic example of a product that I assume was, that was, was, was made with human-centric, with a human-centric design approach. Because if you think about it, I mean, I feel like human-centric design is all about identifying Problems that humans are having, your users, your customers are having, and figuring out how to solve them through a blend of art and technology. And the Apple Watch is an incredible product. I mean, look at how ubiquitous it's become over the last few years. And elderly people, for example, it's like a, it's a problem that in old age, if you have a nasty fall, it can have long-term detrimental health consequences. So it's incredible that the Apple Watch Can use its accelerometers and motion sensors and all that kind of stuff to actually detect these falls and notify emergency services. I mean, even looking at the, I don't know if you saw the most recent announcement for the Apple Watch, I think it's called Double Tap, where they saw that there's a problem with using the Apple Watch today. Every Apple Watch as we've known it up until this point, if you can't actually tap on the screen to hit like a button on the watch, If your hand, if you're holding a cup of coffee or if you're like walking the dog or something like that with a leash. So they invented this feature through a blend of intuition and instinct and art and science that l…

AI assessment note: “The Apple Watch is a fantastic example of a product that I assume was”

Q My question to you, generative AI. I'm a venture investor. We love a bit of generative AI, Will. Is it worth the hype?

A I do think the hype is warranted, but I'll caveat by saying I wouldn't just invest in every single generative AI based company that comes across my radar. I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs right now who have a great idea maybe for how to apply Something like chat GPT to a new application, but if they're essentially just prompt engineering on top of the same large language model that everyone else has access to, then I worry about their long-term defensibility. But fundamentally, I do think that the hype around generative AI is warranted. I think, you know, going back to that shift in human computer interaction paradigms, or that evolution, um, it just allows us to interact with computers in an entirely new way. And on top of that, the fact that these large language models are trained on, like, all of the world's information and data, it's just incredible. It's like, It's true intelligence is democratizing access to intelligence over time, especially as the cost of accessing these and the cost of the inference gets cheaper. These AIs can actually reason across multiple domains, whether it's human history or science or medicine. It's just incredible to be able to have this intelligent system at your fingertips that can access like all of humanity's knowledge. It's incredible.

AI assessment note: “I do think the hype is warranted, but I'll caveat by saying”

Q great brand, and I'm like, they came from, you know, Jack's product team at Snap, obviously not this, but they must be amazing, and they're like, nah, not really. Um, or like, I go, amazing product, they're so innovative, they're so innovative, and then they're just, like, not a good culture fit, and I didn't take that into account. What have been your biggest mistakes product, like, product hiring wise?

A For me personally, I mean, I, I think that I can get overly invested in people. I can give people a lot of room To fail because I like to see the best in people, I guess. I'm like a glass half full kind of guy, and my friends always actually give me a hard time about this because I tend to like everyone. Even people who are, who most people severely dislike, I, I, I love them because I just like see them for who they are, and I think they bring something special to the world, but I think that does make it so that sometimes I give people a long leash, and, you know, I may need to sort of, like, read the signs from the team earlier to figure out that maybe they aren't a great culture fit, or maybe they're just in this for the money and not that passionate about our mission.

AI assessment note: “sometimes I give people a long leash, and, you know, I may need to”

Q My question to you, generative AI. I'm a venture investor. We love a bit of generative AI, Will. Is it worth the hype?

A I do think the hype is warranted, but I'll caveat by saying I wouldn't just invest in every single generative AI based company that comes across my radar. I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs right now who have a great idea maybe for how to apply Something like chat GPT to a new application, but if they're essentially just prompt engineering on top of the same large language model that everyone else has access to, then I worry about their long-term defensibility. But fundamentally, I do think that the hype around generative AI is warranted. I think, you know, going back to that shift in human computer interaction paradigms, or that evolution, um, it just allows us to interact with computers in an entirely new way. And on top of that, the fact that these large language models are trained on, like, all of the world's information and data, it's just incredible. It's like, It's true intelligence is democratizing access to intelligence over time, especially as the cost of accessing these and the cost of the inference gets cheaper. These AIs can actually reason across multiple domains, whether it's human history or science or medicine. It's just incredible to be able to have this intelligent system at your fingertips that can access like all of humanity's knowledge. It's incredible.

AI assessment note: “I do think the hype is warranted, but I'll caveat by saying”

Q roof, also terrified for health and safety reasons. Your parents must be going, my word, he needs to find some more friends. But, um, I'm kidding. So my question is, we have this innate love of product and technology at such a young age. I was told I had to ask about that, and then I was told I had to ask how you came to Snap. What's that story?

A So basically, I think the first half of my life was really thinking about myself as a technologist, as an engineer. I saw my, my father as a role model, and he was an electrical engineer, so that's where I ended up studying. And then, um, I had gone to school in electrical engineering, And ended up going to grad school in computer science, and I had dropped out of grad school to start a company with some amazingly brilliant people that I met there. And the company was actually also about online connection. I think this formative experience that I had meeting all these strangers online when I was a kid really helped me understand the impact that online connection can have. And so I started this company. We were building a group messaging app, which was sort of the hot thing to do in Silicon Valley at that time. One day, a mentor of mine walked into my shared co-working space with Evan, the co-founder and CEO of Snap, or Snapchat at the time. And, um, this was in, this was in late 2013. So Snapchat was still a startup. It was already growing to be very popular. I was already an avid user. My mentor was just like, hey, Will, this is Evan. And at first I had no idea who he was. And then I quickly realized that he was the CEO of Snapchat. I got really excited because I was an avid user. And, um, he and I just had a really good conversation. So we ended up going to lunch together. An…

AI assessment note: “mentor of mine walked into my shared co-working space with Evan”

Q What do you think product people care about today? I think people's shift has been very real. People care less about money than ever before. Mission, nah, they say they do more because they think it's more moral. But they actually do care about the work-life balance, I find, much more than anything.

A I mean, I do think that the pandemic really helped people to realize that maybe you don't need to be in the office five days a week, or, or, or maybe even worse, seven days a week. I think having some level of flexibility is conducive of having a little bit better work-life balance, and maybe even being better, being a better teammate, being a better employee, Because you can bring your full self to work under the right circumstances. I don't know if people Aren't looking for money. I mean, this is one of the things that concerns me actually about product management as a discipline today. I feel like it's this sexy, trendy job in tech that has an allure because, you know, it's, it's known to sometimes be high paying. And I guess it's like, I, I try to weed out people who might only be interested in product management because of reasons like that.

AI assessment note: “I don't know if people Aren't looking for money.”