The Exchanges

Q But how does a twenty-one-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, like, in doing that?

A Part of it was my background growing up. So I went to school, uh, in Santa Monica here, uh, you know, and, and, uh, at a school called Crossroads. Uh, Crossroads, you know, the, the full name for Crossroads is actually Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences. So it actually is, you know, 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, you know, speak from the heart, uh, and take turns expressing yourself. The school's really oriented on, on how you build strong relationships, build empathy with other people. And so I, I literally, I grew up at a school that was so focused on the intersection of art and science, but then also wrapped all of it in, you know, a commitment to humanity, to understanding one another, to building relationships, you know, to giving back. I mean, the school is very anchored in community service. Uh, our, our, three of our kids go there, uh, now, which is fun. Uh, 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, you know, as I, as I got a bit older, and I got, you know, into things like graphic design, and I built my own computer, I was always sort of working at that intersection of, of art…

AI assessment note: “Part of it was my background growing up. So I went to school... at Crossroads”

Q This is the important part. Can you say why? Because I think you took an idea from there for your next business, why it failed.

A Yeah. I mean, there were a number of reasons why it failed. I think, first of all, we, we really focused on building the perfect Product for way too long before we got feedback. So, you know, I think we worked for like 18 months to build this perfect full featured product, which was like indirect contravention to like 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. Um, but we had, we had spent all this time building this like 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 So Naviance, which I think still today is probably the leader in like this college application sort of software world, they had secured distribution through all the different, uh, college counselors, right? So like 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, you know, from two kids at, at Stanford? I mean, I think it's a pretty easy, it's a pretty easy choice. So we just saw very early that we had no distribution advantage. And, you know, even if we loved our software, that people weren't going to use it, um, because we didn't really have a scalable way to get in people's hands. Around that time, when we …

AI assessment note: “we really focused on building the perfect Product for way too long before we got feedback”

Q So, 5000 people serving a billion, uh, billion users. You mentioned, uh, you have a bunch of different revenue lines, or ones that are growing. Like, how does, can you tell me about the ones that, like, are new?

A One of the new ones is our subscription business, uh, which is growing really, really rapidly, called Snapchat Plus. Um, And I think it's a really good fit for Snap's culture. You know, we, we adopted the advertising model very early on. I think it's like well understood. It's a huge opportunity and we have a ton of, you know, engagement on, on Snapchat. So advertising is a big opportunity for us and allows us to offer our product for free, which is great. Um, but I think, you know, the heart of Snapchat is, and our company is about building stuff that people love and that they want. And we were getting so many requests for all sorts of You know, new and different features from our, our, the most passionate members of our community, and we wouldn't, we can never really find time to resource and invest in them, um, because we were focused on things that everyone would use, not just like our most passionate, not just the most passionate Snapchatter. So we decided to build Snapchat Plus, which is essentially gives you access to like new fun features on, on Snapchat. We listen to our community and the things that they, they want, and we'll test stuff and release new things for, for Snapchat Plus. And for like four bucks a month, you can join Snapchat Plus and get access to all these new Uh, these new features, that's now grown to like, twenty-five million subscribers, which is like…

AI assessment note: “One of the new ones is our subscription business, uh, which is growing really, really rapidly, called Snapchat Plus.”

Q Why would people use it? Like, give me a use case.

A Because it's a calendar built for your friends. So, like, it is so difficult. I mean, I don't know if you've experienced this with your Partner, but with my wife, like, it's so hard to get my work calendar to match with her work calendar. It's like almost impossible. And let alone get that to map to our fifteen-year-old's calendar, right? And you know, everything he's got going on after school. And so I think all of a sudden there's a solution that like works really well for our fifteen-year-old who doesn't have like a whole corporate email or whatever, but like wants to share his calendar with, with friends, right? We can have visibility into each other's calendar and it all works Centered around your phone and your mobile number, right? So it's, so it actually is a social calendar rather than being like a work-oriented calendar. That just makes things easier.

AI assessment note: “with my wife, like, it's so hard to get my work calendar to match”

Q This is what, one of the things I admire about you. So like, why, how the hell do you make that decision at 22, 23, 24?

A Well, I think we, we loved what we were doing. I mean, Bobby and I just loved working together. We loved making stuff. We saw a huge opportunity for the service and fundamentally the service was so different than what else was out there. And it was very clear that like we would have had to compromise on our vision and values if we sold the company. I mean, you think about almost every choice was the opposite of what was happening at the time, right? It was like permanent public social media on a feed. We were doing like private Messaging private ephemeral messaging, right? Uh, no public likes and comments, right? With like opening into the camera, not a feed, investing in things like augmented reality when everyone was investing in virtual reality, thinking that people were actually going to like wear a TV on their face. Like it's insane. Like it was insane. And I think like, you know, it makes no sense. And I think like we looked at that and we were like, wow, like, you know, if that, like, if that's like the direction people want to go, like that's scary for the world now. It's great in many ways that, like, all of these services have adopted our inventions. I mean, when we talked about, I mean, in 2012, 2013, the importance of privacy, people looked at us like we were insane. I mean, literally, they were like, what are you talking about privacy? Like, what? Like, that, remem…

AI assessment note: “we would have had to compromise on our vision and values if we sold”

Q Yeah, that's what you described, like, when you started, that's right. And so talk a little about, like, What you think AI will do to a company like yours, where it seems to be like a design first culture?

A I think AI is like probably the best thing that's ever happened to, to Snapchat, which is great. Um, 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 like trench warfare with monopolies for 15 years, right? And I think what's so funny, like, You know, 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, right? 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, right? I mean, 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 It's hard to copy, right? A network effects business of people communicating with one another. These platforms, right, like our augmented reality platform or our content ecosystem that are not just pieces of software that you can, you know, easily copy, but ecosystems of people communicating with one another or creators making content that people are watching or people building augmented reality exper…

AI assessment note: “I think AI is like probably the best thing that's ever happened to, to Snapchat”