The Exchanges

Q Do you, I mean, do you think in general social media is right now a force for kindness?

A Is social media in general a force for kindness? No. Uh, are there leaders and teams within social media who are doing their best to make it a force for kindness? Absolutely. I mean, one of the most interesting technical projects Mike and I ever worked on was this machine learned filter for bullying. Basically like, okay, you all have spam filters in your inboxes and everything, and that keeps spam generally from reaching you. But like, what if you could train that on bullying, and what if you could actually keep young children online from having that experience, right, with someone else? That's like one little project that we were working on that turned out to do very, very well, but like, think about all the projects you can do when you control a platform of that scale to keep people safe and to encourage kindness. Um, I absolutely think that there are people working very, very hard on that. Uh, I just, you know, At large, social media, I think it's very difficult to control how kind it can be because of how massive it is. Sure.

AI assessment note: “Is social media in general a force for kindness? No.”

Q But there were already a bunch of photo websites and, and even photo apps. So, so how were you able to come up with an idea that, that would make your thing different?

A So we were both kind of burned out. We had decided that bourbon wasn't going to do anything. We had, you know, 495,000 dollars left in the bank because 5000 dollars to buy a couple of computers, right? Um, and, and we were like, alright, it's okay. If this idea doesn't work out, we can really string this half a million dollars out for a long time. So, We're gonna come up with a new idea. So we started focusing on photos, and we were both burned out, and I was like, alright, Mike, I, I gotta take, I gotta take a break. So my now wife and I, Nicole, went to Mexico. And we were working on, uh, this idea of photos, so Mike was like, alright, I'm gonna prototype this thing while you're on break. You come back, and then we'll, like, reconvene. So Mike started prototyping this app, and as I'm away, I'm, I'm walking down the beach with Nicole, uh, in Mexico. We were in this little surfing town called Todos Santos, and I'm like, you know, Nicole, I think we're gonna focus on photos, and she goes, oh yeah, that, that sounds like a great idea. I love all the photo, photo posts on bourbon. But she goes, I don't think I'm gonna post that much. And I go, well, why not? And she goes, well, my photos aren't that good. And I said, well, they're great. And she goes, well, they're not as good as your friend Greg. And I was like, well, Greg uses a bunch of filter apps to, like, make them look nice…

AI assessment note: “she goes, oh, you should probably add filters. And I was like, ah, that's it.”

Q that you and I both know of that launched five, six years ago that were amazing, that people use, that, that, that no one uses anymore, that, that are just gone. And there are lots of people who work really hard, who are really creative, who are really smart, who have amazing ideas, and put out a really cool product. So why, why do you think Instagram survived and thrived?

A I think there was this opportunity that we spoke of that, um, back in the day that people had cameras in their pockets with them for the first time ever. Um, and digital photography was clearly going to be a thing, but the second a camera got added to the phone, it meant you had it with you at all times, and that doesn't mean that you're going to take photos on it. Obviously, the quality has to be high enough, but we started the company right at the moment where, like, The quality of those cameras just kind of met up with point-and-shoots, and because of that, everyone started taking photos on their phone, but they had no place to put them, or if they did, it was hard. I mean, they would look at Facebook, and they'd be like, well, you know, like, I have to upload them, like, on the desktop or on Twitter, like, it doesn't really show on the timeline, um, so they had this problem, like, there's no place to easily share all these photos that I'm taking all the time, um, and we just happened to be the right tool for that job, um, At the right moment. And we created, I believe the thing that kept it growing was we created an open network. We sat down very early on in the product design process and asked ourselves, okay, do we want to be a place where you send a friend a request and you have to accept it in order to see those photos? Or do we want to be open where anyone can follow a…

AI assessment note: “I believe the thing that kept it growing was we created an open network.”

Q Then, like, at what point did you say, we, we should try to, like, raise some money for this?

A I went to a bar where a bunch of investors were getting together, and, like, I kind of mingled around the room, and, you know, people were kind of showing their prototypes on their phones to different investors, and I showed it to this one investor, his name, Steve Anderson, who was one of our first investors, and he was like, this is pretty cool, let's set up coffee, um, you know, we can meet up, and you can tell me more about the app, and That was like the biggest accomplishment to date. I was like, oh my God, there's an investor who's willing to talk to us. Yeah. So I went, uh, and I had that coffee and I sat down and, um, as, as we were talking, actually, I had an alert that would alert on my phone every time someone signed up because I was really excited when we went from 80 users to 85 users to 90 users. And, um, as I'm sitting there with him, like a bunch of people are signing up and I wasn't entirely sure why, but he looked at me and was like, did you plan this? Like, That you would have a bunch of people sign up while you were demoing to me? And I said, no, I, like, honestly don't know who these people are. And he looks at me, he was like, alright, count me in. But he actually said one thing to me, he goes, before I do this, you have to find a co-founder that's willing to do this with you. Um, and at that moment, I was like, alright, gotta find someone awesome to kind …

AI assessment note: “I went to a bar where a bunch of investors were getting together”

Q But there were already a bunch of photo websites and, and even photo apps. So, so how were you able to come up with an idea that, that would make your thing different?

A So we were both kind of burned out. We had decided that bourbon wasn't going to do anything. We had, you know, 495,000 dollars left in the bank because 5000 dollars to buy a couple of computers, right? Um, and, and we were like, alright, it's okay. If this idea doesn't work out, we can really string this half a million dollars out for a long time. So, We're gonna come up with a new idea. So we started focusing on photos, and we were both burned out, and I was like, alright, Mike, I, I gotta take, I gotta take a break. So my now wife and I, Nicole, went to Mexico, and we were working on, uh, this idea of photos, so Mike was like, alright, I'm gonna prototype this thing while you're on break, you come back, and then we'll, like, reconvene. So Mike started prototyping this app, and as I'm away, I'm, I'm walking down the beach with Nicole, uh, in Mexico. We were in this little surfing town called Todos Santos, and I'm like, you know, Nicole, I think we're gonna focus on photos, and she goes, oh yeah, that, that sounds like a great idea. I love all the photo posts on bourbon, But she goes, I don't think I'm going to post that much. And I go, well, why not? And she goes, well, my photos aren't that good. And I said, well, they're great. And she goes, well, they're not as good as your friend Greg. And I was like, well, Greg uses a bunch of filter apps to, like, make them look nice. An…

AI assessment note: “she goes, oh, you should probably add filters. And I was like, ah, that's it.”

Q that you and I both know of that launched five, six years ago that were amazing, that people use, that, that, that no one uses anymore, that, that are just gone. And there are lots of people who work really hard, who are really creative, who are really smart, who have amazing ideas, and put out a really cool product. So why, why do you think Instagram survived and thrived?

A I think there was this opportunity that we spoke of that, um, back in the day that people had cameras in their pockets with them for the first time ever. Um, and digital photography was clearly going to be a thing, but the second a camera got added to the phone, it meant you had it with you at all times. And that doesn't mean that you're going to take photos on it. Obviously the quality has to be high enough, but we started the company right at the moment where like The quality of those cameras just kind of met up with point-and-shoots, and because of that, everyone started taking photos on their phone, but they had no place to put them, or if they did, it was hard. I mean, they would look at Facebook, and they'd be like, well, you know, like, I have to upload them, like, on the desktop or on Twitter, like, it doesn't really show in the timeline, um, so they had this problem, like, there's no place to easily share all these photos that I'm taking all the time, um, and we just happened to be the right tool for that job, At the right moment. And we created, I believe the thing that kept it growing was we created an open network. We sat down very early on in the product design process and asked ourselves, okay, do we want to be a place where you send a friend a request and you have to accept it in order to see those photos? Or do we want to be open where anyone can follow anyone? …

AI assessment note: “I believe the thing that kept it growing was we created an open network.”

Q So very shortly after you launched this thing, it's, like, it's valued at, like, more than twenty million dollars or something, right?

A Yeah. Yeah. It was, I think our first round was like, I don't remember. It was like, we took eight million dollars of financing on like a 20 pre, so like roughly a thirty million dollar valuation or something. And I mean, again, at that stage in life, it's like, wow, I've never heard of a company that's worth this much. I mean, this is crazy. I didn't really think much of it. I just wanted to get back to work. And I think Mike felt the same way. We were just like so focused on building what we were building. Um, It just, like, it kept growing, and the question was, again, Mike and I, every single day, we're thinking, how, what scale can this get to? And I think it really started to hit us when we would be out and see people using it in the real world. It was kind of surreal over time.

AI assessment note: “we took eight million dollars of financing on like a 20 pre”

Q How much of what happened to you guys, to Instagram and, and, and this whole story, how much of it was luck?

A I'd say 50%. Actually, I have this thesis that the world runs on luck. The question is what you do with it. Everyone gets lucky for some amount in their life, and the question is, are you, are you alert enough to know you're being lucky, right, or you're, you're becoming lucky? Are you talented enough to take that Advantage and run with it. And do you have enough grit? Do you have enough, like, resilience to stay with it when it gets hard? Because everyone gets lucky in minimal ways every week. I mean, you find a dollar on the ground, or, you know, you get a break at work to work on a cool project, or you meet someone really interesting. The, the difference between people, I think, who succeed in the long run and the people who don't is, frankly, that optimism that, like, you got lucky and now it's yours to Yours to make awesome. And that first day, I think we got lucky by having the right ideas, the right time, in the right place, and we, we were lucky to have met each other. I mean, there were a lot of co-founding pairs in tech who have not worked out, and Mike and I are, like, great friends. At least I think so, right, Mike? And, uh, the question is, can you take that luck and capitalize on it?

AI assessment note: “I'd say 50%. Actually, I have this thesis that the world runs on luck.”