The Exchanges

Q had on the show who have been to, to the GSB, like Andy Dunn of Bonobos and, and, and others, I mean, they, they met their co-founders at, at You know, in business school, or they, they developed a network of people that they would eventually work with. Um, were you thinking, were you like constantly thinking, what is, what is the thing I, I could do? I could start.

A Oh yeah, all the time. I mean, and it's funny, I remember Brian Spaley, who, who's Andy Dunn's co-founder, they were both, they were both classmates of mine, and I remember one day in class, Spaley was coming up, and he was looking at my pants from all different angles, and, and I said, I said, may I help you? And he said, I'm thinking of starting a pants company, and I wanted to ask you some questions about your pants, and, and I remember him selling the first Pairs out of the trunk of his car and trying to convince Dunn to come in and start it with him, and, you know, another classmate of mine was working at, at Facebook at the time, and she was trying to decide whether to drop out of school, and we were thinking, I remember talking about it and saying, well, well, MySpace is a lot bigger, but Facebook is growing a lot faster, and, and then another friend of ours joined Facebook in 2006, and we said, oh, that's cool that he joined Facebook. Too bad he didn't, too bad he didn't join really early, and I, I mean, It's, you're constantly being inspired by people doing things like that. And you know what I, what I really appreciated was how the, the culture really encouraged that. Like I actually interned at Google when I was in school and had a great experience. They're really, uh, you know, interesting company, smart people. And I decided not to go back there full time because I…

AI assessment note: “Oh yeah, all the time.”

Q And why, why do you think it did? Why do you think it didn't catch on?

A I think there are a number of reasons. I think there are technical challenges back then. Battery life was a big one. I think if you use the app for a full day, it ate two thirds of your battery life. You know, um, I think the, the location infrastructure, I think was still pretty nascent back then. And, and, and the company was just two of us. It was my co-founder, Ben and me. So, so I think there are technical challenges, but I also think there are social challenges, right? Like I remember talking with a friend of mine about this idea that, um, Uh, you know, you could be standing in line at Starbucks and the person next to you could know your name and, and, you know, you could see the common connections you have. You could see if you both went to the same school or, or if, you know, they, they were from your hometown or they knew your sibling. And she was saying, um, that's the last thing I want. We always approached it in a very opt-in way. And, and it was only the people who, who wanted to use the app that, that would have, uh, you know, any information shared with anyone, but, uh, But I think that, um, I think it's very hard to know exactly what information to share with exactly which people in exactly which contexts.

AI assessment note: “I think there are a number of reasons. I think there are technical challenges”

Q know, it's like that Groucho Marx line, you know, I, I never joined a club that actually wants me as a member. Like I was sort of turned off by that exclusivity idea. Um, but I guess, I mean, it sounds like that invite only strategy, um, Was what, like designed to, to generate buzz around, uh, around it? I mean, is that, is that the idea behind it, Paul?

A Uh, you know, the whole notion that, that it was an exclusive space was, was never something that we had intended, uh, really for the, for the first four or five months of the company, it was just the two of us. And we were on the app, 12, 14 hours a day, just talking with people while we were building it, getting feedback. And we, we didn't have a website. We weren't in the app store. We didn't have any social media accounts. We, we, we weren't doing press or anything like that. And it wasn't because we wanted to be secretive or, or build anything exclusive. It was just because you don't expect products to work. And we didn't want to go try and generate hype because this thing probably wasn't going to work. We just wanted to stay focused on the product and on the community. And I would say people You know, we started to hear from people that it was some secret exclusive thing that was never our intention.

AI assessment note: “exclusive space was, was never something that we had intended”

Q So, you guys are talking about audio. Start talking about audio. And, and you're, and, and Paul, I mean, you're, you're sort of, were you like a podcast listener? Was that?

A Yeah. So my interest in audio was, it was more on the personal side. Like, I think when I was working on Highlight, I remember I had this realization one day that I had stopped reading books, and it made me sad because I love reading books, but I was just working all the time, and if anything, I was skimming headlines, and I decided to give audiobooks a try, and it was amazing. You could speed them up. You could listen while you were running or driving or in bed at night, and suddenly I started reading all these books again, and then I got into podcasts, and, and, and that was great too, and, and I kind of never looked back. I, I went all audio all the time, but I had always, I Found it a little frustrating that it was so hard to find good spoken audio content because there's no reason it should be. There's, there's no reason it should be. Like if you're a smart person, informed person, a funny person, you have domain expertise, you can just talk and people would love to listen to you, right? Like I'm sure you've had the experience where you've caught up with a friend for coffee and left feeling really energized because it was a great conversation and you learned a ton. You know, it's not hard to create good spoken audio content. The challenge is that it's hard to produce it and to distribute it. As I'm sure, you know, guy, right. Given the constraints of, of the RSS based ecos…

AI assessment note: “and then I got into podcasts, and, and, and that was great too”

Q put in, I think, more than a hundred million, um, and a lot of other, uh, several other, um, big investors, uh, in, in Silicon Valley. Um, it, it seems like that happened very quickly. Like, you, you almost didn't have to pitch people to do that, that people were kind of banging down your door to get in, in, inside of this thing. Um, is that, is that, Accurate?

A No, I don't think so. I mean, we're hugely grateful that anyone would want to use this product or invest in the product, but, but it goes back to what I was saying before. We just wanted to stay focused on the product and the community. So, so over the first few months after we launched One thing that we noticed is that, um, people kept coming back, and, and we've been doing this stuff long enough to know that doesn't, that doesn't usually happen, but, but there was something about it that was resonating with people, and it was really the other people on the app, like, you know, you know, eventually we had some people ask us about investing, and, and we just sort of said, wow, thanks so much, um, we, we don't need money right now, because we had raised a small seed round earlier in the year, um, you know, but we'll let you know if we, if we decide to raise money, and internally we just sort of said, well, You know, if it, if it continues to work, then, then we should still be able to raise money. If we get new data that makes us think it's not going to work, which is the most likely outcome, then, then we don't want to have a bunch of money and we're not capital constrained, um, cause just two of us. So let's just stay heads down and, and keep building. And so that's what we did for a long time. Um, until we felt that we, we needed to raise some money and then we raised some mo…

AI assessment note: “No, I don't think so.”

Q But do you just accept as a fact that there just will be racists and misogynists and, and anti-Semites, just people who are cruel? It's just a fact of life, and you will, it's, you just can't, it's like whack-a-mole, you just will not be able to... To control every instance of that? Do you just, I mean, I'm just, I'm curious. Do you just accept that as a fact?

A We have clear user guidelines against any form of racism, antisemitism, hate speech, abuse, bullying. But when you're building a product for the whole world, you have to know that there are bad actors in the world. And so you have to do your best to build a product that is durable to, to those forms of abuse. And you're never going to catch everyone, but, but you have to always make it a priority. That's the most important thing. And a core part of our mission is to create a space where people with different opinions, with different lived experiences, with different views on the world, Can come together and have conversations that are important and, and that can be difficult. And they can sit in a room with someone and hear them talk for hours and, and challenge them and leave that room changed with, with, if nothing else, an appreciation, a better appreciation for where that person comes from. I think there's not enough of that in the world. And I think because of, because of the fact that we often live In places with people that look a lot like us that have the same background as us. We work in places where that's true. Also, you don't often get a chance in the, in the real world to be in a room with people that, that have lived a totally different life from you. And, and, and that's a core part of our mission. So, so we don't, we, we want to allow liberals and conservatives …

AI assessment note: “you have to know that there are bad actors in the world.”

Q on something. They're all Seeing the success of Clubhouse, and they're saying, we're, we got to go after this. Um, so how do you stay ahead of the curve? I mean, we, you know, Vine, Periscope, I mean, we've seen other, there have been other stories like that before. So how do you stay ahead of the, of the curve and make sure that you don't end up that way?

A I think that audio is, Audio is a durable medium. Like, like I was saying before, it's relatively new in the world of social networking, but it is the oldest medium. We've been gathering with other people and talking since the beginning of civilization. I think it's the foundation of, of civilization. And, um, you know, this idea that you could open your phone and, and be sitting in a room with five or 10 interesting people that, that you can learn from. And, and, and you can laugh and pass along knowledge and be educated and make friends and close the app at the end of the session feeling better than you did when you've opened it. That's, I think that that is durable. And I, and I believe that many other networks will incorporate audio into their experiences. And, and we just try and focus on what we're doing. I think if we stay focused on the product and if we stay focused on the community, um, That, that's going to, uh, to give us the best chance of, of building something, um, something that we're really proud of.

AI assessment note: “we just try and focus on what we're doing... focused on the product”