# How Snap Plans to Win the AR Race | Evan Spiegel on Spectacles

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Evan Spiegel argues that AI could make lightweight AR glasses useful by moving computing from workstations into the world.

- Show: Grit
- Hosts: [Joubin Mirzadegan](https://realalpha.app/people/joubin-mirzadegan/)
- Guest: [Evan Spiegel](https://realalpha.app/people/evan-spiegel/) · Co-founder & CEO, Snap Inc.
- Guest: [Bing Gordon](https://realalpha.app/people/bing-gordon/) · Advisor, Kleiner Perkins
- Published: Dec 15, 2025
- Length: 1 h 11 m

## The best minutes

- [43:23](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2603) [Spiegel turned down the offer because Snap had a path alone](https://realalpha.app/s/spiegel-turned-down-the-offer-because-snap-had-a-path-alone/) (3 min)
- [22:05](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1325) [Snap raised its first round after running out of cash](https://realalpha.app/s/snap-raised-its-first-round-after-running-out-of-cash/) (3 min)
- [1:03:13](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3793) [AI leaders need to address public anxiety, not just opportunity](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-leaders-need-to-address-public-anxiety-not-just/) (4 min)

## Also worth watching

- [2:14](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=134) [Snap sees utility and AI as the keys to AR glasses](https://realalpha.app/s/snap-sees-utility-and-ai-as-the-keys-to-ar-glasses/) (3 min)
- [12:32](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=752) [Snap is building its ad business around smaller buyers](https://realalpha.app/s/snap-is-building-its-ad-business-around-smaller-buyers/) (3 min)
- [52:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3141) [Spiegel used walkarounds to speed up a revenue reset](https://realalpha.app/s/spiegel-used-walkarounds-to-speed-up-a-revenue-reset/) (2 min)
- [48:05](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2885) [Snap keeps its core design team to about a dozen people](https://realalpha.app/s/snap-keeps-its-core-design-team-to-about-a-dozen-people/) (3 min)
- [1:08:10](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4090) [Snap hires designers based on work, not credentials](https://realalpha.app/s/snap-hires-designers-based-on-work-not-credentials/) (2 min)

Skip the long founder-history, family and parenting discussions, work-stress section, and closing sign-off.

## Summary

Evan Spiegel is cofounder and CEO of Snap Inc. He recounts building Snapchat with Bobby Murphy and describes Snap’s development of Specs. Bing Gordon is an advisor at Kleiner Perkins.

Spiegel argues that AI could accelerate lightweight AR glasses by taking over computer tasks and letting people use computing while moving through the world; he says Specs should offer clear utility and support shared, hands-on experiences. He describes Snap as a large service with fewer resources than tech giants, and says it must stay efficient, diversify advertisers and preserve its independent identity. He recounts how customer use, mentors and a small team helped him build Snapchat, and describes the personal demands of leading Snap. He also urges tech leaders to address public anxiety about AI and rethink education for a changing workforce.

### Minute by minute

- [1:43](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=103) **Glasses need everyday utility.** Spiegel says Snap has focused on lightweight glasses for 11 years and believes people need to see the world through them. He argues that AI could operate computers for people, making glasses more useful for shared experiences and portable work; he envisions a 100-plus-inch workstation on the go.
- [7:58](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=478) **Snap’s scale brings trade-offs.** Spiegel describes Snap as larger than smaller services but far smaller than Meta and Google, leaving it between the two groups. He says Snap has almost a billion people in its community, about 5,000 team members and about $6 billion in annual revenue, so it must innovate quickly and operate efficiently.
- [11:20](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=680) **Independence broadened Snap’s ad base.** Spiegel says he believes passing on Meta’s reported $3 billion offer was the right decision for Snap’s values and its users’ privacy and safety. He says Snap shifted from about 500 large U.S. advertisers toward small and midsize customers, and that creator-made native ads can convert better. He also says users send more than a trillion selfie Snaps a year, while video viewing and content ranking add infrastructure costs.
- [15:53](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=953) **Mentors made startups accessible.** Spiegel says Stanford’s entrepreneurship class and working on a small Intuit team helped make starting a company seem possible. He learned that a tiny team could build and ship a product to millions, then raised $485,000 at a $4.25 million valuation for Snapchat. He says he left school after the funding arrived and joined Bobby Murphy in building the company.
- [24:34](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1474) **Empathy makes creativity repeatable.** Spiegel says David Kelley taught him that creativity can follow a process grounded in empathy and iteration. He believes Specs could bring people together in the real world, and says his parents’ willingness to support his interests helped him learn. He also says actual customer use gave him confidence when others doubted Snapchat.
- [31:41](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1901) **Snap expects intense ownership.** Spiegel says Snap’s culture asks people to work hard, know the details and take ownership, and he tries to make those demands clear to candidates. He recalls leaving home before his children woke and returning after they were asleep during a difficult period for the company. He says he now does school drop-off three or four days a week.
- [36:14](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2174) **He supports children’s curiosity.** Spiegel says he and Miranda try to support what their children want to learn, recalling that his mother rented him a trumpet even though he was bad at playing it. He says he tries to absorb stress rather than pass it to employees or family, using exercise, the sauna and meditation, and learning from his wife’s calm under pressure.
- [40:45](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2445) **Independence shaped Snap’s path.** Spiegel says Meta had tracked Snapchat use through Onavo, and that the interest in buying Snap did not surprise him. He says he and Bobby Murphy had planned to build an independent company and had each sold $10 million in stock before acquisition discussions, which made refusing the reported $3 billion offer easier. He calls the period after Snap’s IPO its closest crucible: the move to auction-based ads cut prices by more than 90%, while Instagram Stories and Android issues pressured the business; he recalls the stock falling from $17 or so to $4.99.
- [47:42](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2862) **Small teams protect design freedom.** Spiegel says Snap tries to solve problems shared across age groups rather than design for one demographic. He says the core Snapchat design team has nine to 12 people, hires many designers straight out of school and stays flat to limit coordination and hierarchy. The team reviews a large volume of ideas together.
- [52:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3141) **Direct access speeds decisions.** Spiegel says he worries about controlled information flows and meetings to prepare for other meetings. During a business reset, he walked around the team, asked to see work in progress and encouraged people to share updates directly. He says some projects now send him daily numbers and blockers instead of polished presentations.
- [55:23](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3323) **Motivation starts from within.** Spiegel says he works best with leaders who are self-motivated and do not need him to provide their drive. He sees intrinsic motivation as growing from finding work or interests people love, and says his family supports their children when they discover something they want to pursue, such as rock climbing.
- [1:00:22](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3622) **Focused challenges help him decompress.** Spiegel says a conversation during an executive checkup helped him understand focused activity as a way to relax. He cites learning to fly a helicopter and rebreather diving as challenging activities that help him decompress.
- [1:03:13](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3793) **AI leaders should address public anxiety.** Spiegel says polling shows that most Americans are worried about AI’s effects, including job loss, and argues that technology leaders should listen to the public. He says the transition will require rethinking education, and sees Specs as a way to make learning by doing more accessible through augmented reality.
- [1:06:53](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4013) **A beginner’s mindset remains valuable.** Spiegel says he would tell his younger self not to worry so much about what he cannot control, and that curiosity and asking questions have helped him. He says Snap hires designers based on their portfolios and how they explain their choices, rather than where they studied or worked. He defines grit as not giving up.

## Transcript

Grit, hosted by Joubin Mirzadegan, with Evan Spiegel and Bing Gordon.

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[0:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=0) The way that people are using their computer is changing. So I think that's probably the biggest role that AI will play in accelerating glasses, that instead of needing to sit and operate your computer all day long, AI is gonna operate your computer for you and you're gonna observe AI, monitor AI, make sure it's on the right track, but generally you're not going to need to spend your life operating the computer in the same way. So I think that accelerates glasses and shifts more of that time from like workstation time to being able to get out there, walk around the world, do what you love to do, and of course bring AI with you, bring your workstation with you, but not in the same way that you think about operating your workstation today. If you look at on-the-job training, if you look at the ability to use AI to actually solve problems in the real world, I think specs will be transformational. It's the best way to learn, and augmented reality can help make that a lot more accessible. In our industry, there's so much excitement around AI. I think it's so important that industry leaders pay a lot of attention to the anxiety around AI, because if you look at the public polling about what does

[1:01](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=61) a broad-based subset of Americans think about AI, the majority of them are very worried about it. They're worried it's going to take their job. They're worried about its impact. Welcome to Grit. I'm Jubin, partner at Kleiner Perkins, a show where we go beyond the highlight Reel, and explore the personal and professional challenges of building history-making companies. Today on the show, we have somebody that I don't think needs much introduction, Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO of Snap, with special guests, Bing Gordon, live from Santa Monica and one of my favorite studios that I've ever recorded in.

[1:43](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=103) Enjoy the episode. You know what I was looking up in preparation for this? Because obviously you guys are doing a bunch of glasses. I was thinking about the like legendary picture of Andreessen, John Doerr, and somebody from Google wearing the Google glasses. They went on the cover of every magazine and like that was when glasses was supposed to happen. And I was like, what year was that? Yeah, but look at the evolution of like mobile phones. Look at the evolution of the computer. Like this stuff takes time, you know. It's got to be a little unnerving to like be like, all right, we've been chipping away for 14 years.

[2:17](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=137) You've been chipping away. Socks chipping away. Google is chipping away. How do you know? Like, how do you know when the moment is to strike? I mean, it helps that we have been singularly focused on this form factor for 11 years, right? So I think if you look at Google or you look at Meta, a lot of people spend a lot of time focused on VR for the last decade, which is, in our view, a road to nowhere because people just don't want to wear this chunky headset all day long to access their computer. It's antisocial. To say the least. I was pretty impressed when... It makes you sick, so. I saw you talking to the kids in Pincus's class at Stanford about, well, everybody else is doing viral. We're going to do social.

[2:52](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=172) Yeah. I think everyone over-rotated on VR, learned that that was not a good thing. And now just in the last couple of years of trying to pivot back to glasses. But over the last 11 years, we just compounded all of our learning. Because the form factor that you chose was a lightweight set of glasses that just look like sunglasses. Yeah. That ultimately, we believe if you want to embed computing in the world, people need to be able to see the world through a see-through pair of glasses. When I was a kid, I thought wearing glasses sucked. And then at some point it became my new normal at age 43. But, you know, I own so many different specialized pair of glasses. So what you want is if you go to the trouble of putting them on, the world has to become better. So you have to you have to see some digital artifact. You have to see some information. You have to see something. So it has to be immediately better.

[3:42](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=222) And I think what you just said totally resonates with our experience, which is you have to focus on the functionality and the utility.

[3:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=229) **Evan Spiegel:** I think a lot of people, even including us in the early days, right, we put a camera on a pair of glasses, but the value just wasn't there, right?

[3:55](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=235) It's not 10 times better than just taking a picture with your phone. And so I think we learned a lot about. that, and I agree with you, that the value has to be there. For the first time in human history, computing will be shared instead of single player. Like today, every time we use a computer, we're using it alone. Every time we use our phone, we're using it alone. And I think the promise of glasses that we can all look at the same thing, interact with the same thing, build the same thing together, just like we collaborate, you know, in front of a whiteboard or something like that. And that's a big deal for computing. We just follow up on that for a second. This idea of the form factor being the glasses, like maybe it was never about the glasses, but the delivery mechanism for how you can get maybe a localized model to be able to do more interesting things to Bing's point of like, what are you projecting out of the glasses? We've been trying for 15 plus years to get these glasses to work. Was it maybe, I don't know, I don't want to like overpaint AI as the panacea to everything, but in some way, like, wasn't that a pretty key unlock for you to think about ways that you can use this form factor that are like super interesting?

[4:54](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=294) I think it will add a lot of value because the way that people are using their computer has changing. So I think that's probably the biggest role that AI will play in accelerating glasses that instead of needing to sit and operate your computer all day long, AI is going to operate your computer for you. And you're going to, you know, observe AI, monitor AI, make sure it's on the right track. But generally, you're not going to need to spend your life operating the computer in the same way. So I think that accelerates glasses and shifts more of that time from like workstation time to being able to get out there, walk around the world, do what you love to do.

[5:24](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=324) And of course, bring AI with you, bring your workstation with you, but not in the same way that you think about operating your workstation today. Yeah, super interesting. I got a daughter now in her early 30s, she and a best friend, this is an aha for me as a parent, when they were both about 14 and we were on vacation together, she and her best friend were sitting side by side, both on their laptops, chatting with each other. Never turned face to face. This generation is different than mine. You say collaboration, so at 7 a.m., you get up in the morning, your specs are sitting on the side table.

[6:01](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=361) When do you put them on and when do you collaborate? Honestly, I don't think you need to put them on until you get on the train or something like that and you're on your way to work. So you stick them in your pocket and you pull them out? Yeah, you stick them in your pocket, you pull them out, and then you'll have a giant 100-plus-inch screen workstation with you on the roads you're getting ready for work. You're going to be able to multitask in a totally different way. Right now, you know, one of the things your phone really struggles with is multitasking, right? It's a single app framework. And that really, you know, I think reduces your ability to get things done.

[6:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=390) So one of the reasons why desktops are still so important is that multitasking. So I think you get the benefit of that on the go in a really meaningful way. So on your way to work, you're already getting stuff done, getting your day organized. I think that's really powerful. We know that the digital generation believes multitasking is a better lifestyle. I've never heard anybody talking about AR as primarily a better way to multitask. That's kind of interesting because there's a limit to your field of view of how many different tasks you can get up there simultaneously. Today on the phone, yeah, but with augmented reality, I mean, your workstation is essentially infinite.

[7:08](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=428) So you put digital items out in your field of view and you multitask by somehow enabling each of the digital items? Yeah, that's one way to think about it. I mean, you know, it's just the way today people have on their desk multiple monitors, right? Because they're trying to get stuff done across a bunch of different applications. I think, you know, glasses provide a much more fluid way to do that and the ability to just pick it up and take it with you anywhere. How many of your 10 trillion employees have two monitors on their desk? We only have 5,000 team members. So, you know, and we serve a community now of almost a billion people with just 5,000 folks.

[7:40](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=460) So quite a few have two monitors. Really? Oh, of course. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Even the people who are coding, not just artists? Oh, for sure. And at a bare minimum, one huge monitor that would be impossible to take with you. I mean, that's one of the big frustrations I have. If I want to look at a piece of creative, if I want to really dig into video we're working on to do. that on your phone and to expect the quality to be good from that tiny screen is almost impossible. Evan, can I read you something? Please, yeah. In your annual letter, you said Snap currently occupies a unique position with significantly more scale and engagement than smaller players, but with less scale and market power than our larger competitors. Squeezed between the tech giants and smaller competitors on the verge of greatness, we find ourselves in a crucible moment.

[8:24](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=504) I suppose it's a bit like being the middle child. I was like, just a great, I just a great line. Can you explain how you see yourself in the world? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's interesting from a user engagement perspective, we're now one of the largest online services in the world, right? So probably in the top five outside of China and meaningfully bigger than, you know, a Pinterest or Reddit or something like that, that are near Twitter or X, you know, that are a fraction of Snap scale, you know, here in the US, but also in many other countries around the world. But at the same time, we're towards the beginning of our monetization journey, right?

[8:55](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=535) And so I think we're about $6 billion in annual revenue now. That's a fraction of what a Meta or a Google or these other trillion-dollar players. For us, that puts us in a really interesting strategic position where we have significantly more scale than smaller players. But that also means we have way more cost because we're supporting this huge community that's engaging and sending messages, watching videos all day long. And while we're bigger from a revenue perspective than those companies, we're a lot smaller than much larger competitors. And so it means we really have to work in an incredibly efficient way, innovate a ton, move really quickly, you know, to be able to continue growing in such a competitive marketplace where our competitors control, essentially control the market.

[9:35](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=575) And the middle child analogy, can you explain that a little bit more? Yeah, I think, you know, when you're the middle child, there's a lot of attention on the eldest child, right? And then everyone's like always looking at the baby, you know, oh my gosh, what are they doing? Oh, they're learning how to walk. You know, they're so excited. and the middle child is maybe somewhere in between and trying to determine their own identity. And I think it's just a sort of a funny way of describing that journey. And a lot of entrepreneurs talk about the challenge going from 5 billion to 10 billion from a revenue perspective being a really big challenge.

[10:04](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=604) But we're in like that interesting developmental phase where like we have got to really break out here to become another meaningful scale player. In the middle child analogy, is it like, okay, I feel like I'm cast in the shadow of the big players like a meta or whatever. I don't get to be the young, cool, like innovative company anymore either. Like you're somewhere in the middle of that zeitgeist. Like, I don't know, like something like that. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe the better way to think about it is the older child is like more developed, right? Like more accomplished. And the baby is growing really fast, changing really fast, right? Oh my gosh. Like they just learned how to talk. Oh, it's their first word. Right. And so I think like, and I see that we've got four boys at home. So that's what, you know, that's, that's sort of how the analogy came to me, you know? And I think we're in sort of this middle phase where like we are still developing our business.

[10:50](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=650) We're not learning how to talk or walk some of those big aha moments that Snap went through, you know, 10 years ago or whatever it was. But we're really developing and coming into our own as a business, you know, developing some of these core products like specs that will define the next 10 or 20 years of the company. And so I think being in that really interesting, like definitional phase where we haven't arrived yet, like the eldest child, but we're not, you know, just still learning the basics. What are sons two and three going to think when they hear this metaphor? I hope they can relate. I mean, we'll see what that is.

[11:19](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=679) You're a dad. How dare you? At least you didn't name my name. It's famous that you were offered a lot of money at a very young age for Zuck to basically buy the company. It's like $3 billion. You said no, you wanted to run independently. Is there something in you that's like, you know what, I got a lot of flack for that and I want to go build this thing and prove big bro that I can make it on my own? In many ways, I think we proved that decision right like a decade ago. Really, because we were able to stay true to our values, which is so important to us and to our community. And I think Meta has revealed themselves time and time again to not care about the well-being of their community, to cut.

[12:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=720) corners in ways that are very harmful to their community and to our society at large. And we wanted nothing to do with that, quite frankly. So I think we've just consistently tried to do the right thing, tried to serve our community and to provide them an independent choice. I mean, right now, if you think about it, virtually every online service that you use today is owned by Meta. We're kind of the last remaining at scale indie player. And I think, you know, giving customers a choice to work with a company that does actually respect their privacy, that does moderate content, that works really hard to keep young people safe. I think offering that is really important. And I know that motivates me and a lot of our team members who want their own kids to grow up in a world where they have the choice of using a platform like Snapchat rather than some of the other services that are out there today. Can you also make advertising a plus for your users? Well, they're going to have to see more ads or else you're going to try somewhere that you need to make more than $6 a year per person. For us, it's less about the number of ads. It's a lot more about the relevance of those ads, the diversity of those ads. And so actually

[12:57](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=777) the puzzle for us now is just bringing on more advertising demand. So Snaps advertising business historically was built around large customers. So, you know, let's call it 500 customers here in the United States that contributed the majority of Snaps revenue or really, really big businesses. We built the core of our business with those advertisers. Over the last couple of years, we've dramatically shifted our business to build that long tail, right? Of small and medium customers, which have really diversified our advertiser base. They are very focused on lower

[13:26](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=806) **Evan Spiegel:** funnel goals. They will increase their spend very rapidly if they see results on our platform. And so

[13:31](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=811) most of the large players, Google, Meta, et cetera, the vast majority of their business is small and medium customers. And we've been on this journey going from the vast majority of our revenue being large customers here in the United States to shifting that business to a much longer tail of small and medium customers. We're not done with that journey yet, but that's been the focus If you can find advertisers who do stuff that feels to the users like content, that's kind of a double plus. I think that's certainly what we see. I mean, advertisers who work with creators, for example, to make, you know, Snapchat native contents, you know, certainly see higher conversion rates and that sort of thing.

[14:04](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=844) I think that's quite well understood in the industry at this point. One of the things that on the how do you make money question that I thought was really interesting that you addressed kind of head on in your letter. I actually thought you kind of addressed everything head on in your letter. You weren't shy about anything about the state of the business. One of the things that you were talking about was the margins question. And the stat that I read was there was a trillion snaps. Is it a billion? A billion snaps? Some crazy huge number last year or something like that. I actually think you're referring to an even smaller number than the total number of snaps, which is just the number of selfie snaps.

[14:36](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=876) This story sort of happened because Apple, I think, in one of their big announcements was saying, oh, you know, last year on all iPhones in the world, you know, people took more than 500 billion selfies. I saw that. I sent that to our team. I'm like, God, that seems very low. You know what I mean? I'm like shocked. Like, what is going on? You know, how many selfies are on Snapchat? And we found out very quickly it's much more than a trillion a year. Over a trillion selfies a year. Selfie snaps taken on Snapchat. And is this why the margins are? Because what do you do with all that? I mean, that's just a lot of information flowing through the system.

[15:06](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=906) That's a crazy amount of volume. Like, to Bing's point about 5,000 people, 5,000 people is nothing to handle that much. A trillion. That's insane. Dane, he might be the only media company that won't sell that information to LLMs. Yeah, yeah. To the point about infrastructure, the major drivers are really like the video engagement and that sort of thing, right? Just the volume of video content, people watching a ton of content all over the world. And then obviously all the infrastructure to rank all of that. We get so many submissions every day to Spotlight, to Stories, et cetera, to be able to personalize and understand all that content, personalize and rank it.

[15:40](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=940) For our community, it costs quite a bit of money. Crazy. I have many more questions on Snapchat, but can I rewind for one second? One of the reasons why I was really excited to do this is because you don't do these things. And I've been insatiable to learn more about you for a long time. And it's very difficult. You're like a very private. person, having built a public company for as long as you have. And one of the first times where my curiosity started to spike was, I think, episode 102 with Scott Cook, Intuit's founder. And Scott was telling me a story about you, where in the episode, we're sitting down and he was relaying how he was teaching an MBA. You can correct me here. He was at Stanford teaching an MBA. Do you know this story? He was teaching an MBA course. I know Scott from early, early on. Yeah. So he was teaching an MBA course. I knew Signia when she was a founder, VP marketing of Software Publishing Corp. Yeah. And in the class, I think he's talking about why Intuit did or didn't get fundraising at a certain milestone. And apparently everybody in the class was really struggling with like why it could happen and why it couldn't happen. Like just being able to steel man both

[16:53](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1013) sides. And so everyone throughout the class was struggling. And then all of a sudden there is this kid, you were a kid at this point, uh, who in the back of the class raises his hand and perfectly articulates and breaks down why Intuit, I think struggled to fundraise at whatever the series B or something like that. And he was telling me, he was like, I asked the teacher after who was that? This is like out of a movie. He asked the teacher, who was that? The teacher is like, oh, it's this kid, Evan Spiegel. He's actually not an MBA student. He's an undergrad product designer that was, I think, sitting in on the class or something. Is that right?

[17:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1050) And Scott's like, well, I want to meet him. Scott invites you to join Intuit for a little bit. You're like shadow, like you're like kind of an intern for Scott at Intuit for a little bit. And then he was like, yeah, I think he only made it to like a few meetings because next thing I know, he like started what he thought was like kind of a dumb company called Snapchat. And then, and then I'll just like, then I'll let you talk. Then he tells me, Jubin, he came to me when they were putting together their first fundraising round. And I thought it was the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but I just believed in this kid. And so I don't know how much do you have, like 25 grand or something. Yeah. And he was like, the best of us I've ever done.

[18:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1092) Is that all like poke holes in that? Tell me that's not right. The story you just described was really one of the things that totally changed the trajectory of my life. So I was really fortunate. I got to meet Peter Wendell, who's teaching this class, still teaches this class called Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital at the Stanford Business School. I now teach the class. I think I'm on my like 11th year. I go up once a year and teach a guest lecture or something for the class. So as a sophomore in college, Peter gave me the opportunity to sit in on this class. And what's amazing about the class is every class, amazing entrepreneurs are coming in. So, you know, it's like the founders of YouTube. Obviously, Scott came and visited. And my guest chair was right next to the guest lecturer chair. And so I would just meet all these incredible entrepreneurs. And it really changed my perspective on starting a company because once you get to meet these folks and they're just like normal people in class, I think it demystifies it a lot, right? It just makes it seem a lot more accessible. Like, oh, they can start a company like I can too. But I think the thing that really changed my perspective

[19:09](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1149) and gave me the confidence to start Snapchat was going to work for Scott at Intuit. Because at Intuit, I was on a small team. There were like three of us or something. They kind of, you know, gave me some design-related, like UI-related tasks and stuff like that. But the whole concept was to create something called TextWeb, which allowed you on a, you know, like the touchpad phones, not touchscreen, but like the touchpad phones. You could build little websites in India, essentially. So you could create a website that would allow you to like put your store information in hours or something like that.

[19:38](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1178) And then it would be accessible through text message interface. Essentially, you could query these various pages that were designed. And what I learned from that was that with a very, very tiny team, you could build and ship something to like millions of people. And that was a real aha moment for me. Like, oh, wow. Like, no, actually, with my friend Bobby, we can build a reel. service here and share it with the world. That's so cool. How big was the round that you raised? Do you remember? Oh, back then, the first round, I think we raised about $485,000 at a $4.25 million valuation. Okay, and Scott was in it.

[20:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1212) I think so. I forget exactly which round he invested in. I do know in that first round, there was a Catholic school where the kids were using Snapchat that put in $15,000 and subsequently built a $30 million gym or something. On the demystifying point, I actually, can I tell you something about Scott? Because I've gone through this experience myself, like whatever, 260 of amazing guests on the show. And I'm like, I'll put their pants on in the morning, just like I do, whatever. Right. Scott Cook is one of the few people that was mystified to me. Like he was, he was a mystic creature to me. Like this guy, I remember sitting there with him. I don't know if you had this experience with Scott or anybody else, but I remember sitting there with him and the hair on my arms was standing up for an hour and a half straight because he was this magical intersection of humility and competence in a way that I've never experienced in a leader before. And he was so honest and vulnerable. And he was telling me how he blacks out a lot of the memories about Intuit because there was just so many ups and downs and how he really regrets not being able to remember so much of these things.

[21:22](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1282) Or creating artifacts along the way. Yes, exactly. And I just remember thinking, this dude's different. Like, this guy is more different than, like, he's just so special. Did you feel that? He's an incredibly special person and very thoughtful, too. He learned a lot of good lessons at Procter & Gamble, but didn't get tied down with all the wrong lessons of Procter & Gamble. My Scott story is he got into user-generated content really early on, and he wanted to know about games. So I did a class for his employees about it, but I called it video game design thinking. And then I called it video gamification in the early 2000s, which is kind of about when gamification started first getting used.

[22:04](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1324) That's awesome. He's just such a good questioner. He listens like crazy. He's a pretty good dad too. Evan, can I keep pulling on this thread of like the history of you from Stanford to today? The 485 you were building at home, you, your co-founder, who else was there? You were at your dad's house? At that point, it was- Home was a cheap rent. At that point, I'd gone back for my senior year of school. So I was still in school. Bobby was out of school. And at that point, I think our server bills were approaching like $10,000 a month. And we had run out of cash.

[22:36](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1356) **Evan Spiegel:** Like I had invested the $10,000 my grandfather had left me. Like we'd maxed out the credit cards.

[22:41](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1361) We were like out of money at that point. And we'd gotten some like random investor emails kind of from all over the world. But we got this reach out from Jeremy Liu at Lightspeed. on Facebook, actually. And his profile picture was with Obama. And this was before AI. So I was like, okay, like, you know, yeah, exactly. I'll respond. And so, you know, we met and at that point, you know, we didn't have a deck or investment materials or anything. We just shared the usage data. So they could see very easily that once folks started using Snapchat to communicate, they just kept kept on using it. And I think this was at the time when a lot of people were using like the Facebook graph and Facebook connect to get those like viral hit sort of apps. And so there was a lot of skepticism, I think, about these social apps and this kind of thing. But because we had such retentive communication engagement, that's, I think, what gave Lightspeed the confidence to invest at that time. And you were home, your co-founder.

[23:34](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1414) I was at school. So you were still at school while the usage was going crazy? Yeah, I would sit in the back of class and we actually had something called like the snap counter, which would just show how many snaps had been sent. And it just kept going up. And at the started the school year, it'd be like, you know, one every hour or two or something. By the middle of the school year, you know, that snap counter, when you'd refresh it, it was like, it was really getting going. So we raised the money and then literally I was in the back of my machining. class in the machine shop checking the wells fargo account we'd set up and as soon as i saw the 485 000 i went up to the teacher and i was like craig i'm so sorry no way yeah in class yeah i was like i'm so sorry i gotta drop out i gotta focus on this you were refreshing the app and as soon as you saw the money was wired and i had to go back and take that same class from craig you know five six years later to graduate because i went back in 2018 to finish my come on so that's incredible and did you raise the money to keep up with the server bills or was it to hire people Yeah, we had to keep up with the server bills. And then ultimately, off the back of that, we hired two of our friends from school. And then around that time, we all moved down to my dad's house in LA and started working out of this house.

[24:41](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1481) I saw you a couple of weeks ago at the D School 20th anniversary and the David Kelley 50th celebration. What did you take out from design thinking? And that was early on in Stanford's repositioning around product. Yeah, I could not believe my outrageous good fortune to have David Kelley as an advisor. I mean, what a legend. I still have a screenshot of the first snap he sent me at the time the app was called Pickaboo, you know, and it's like Pickaboo from David Kelley. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, what an incredible guy. I think the most important thing that David teaches, right, is that creativity is not about like getting hit by lightning.

[25:17](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1517) Like it doesn't happen like by accident. There's actually a process you can use to be consistently creative. Innovation on demand. And it's all grounded in empathy. So if you can really empathize with people and understand the problems they're facing or how they're feeling, then you can design solutions to those problems and you can iterate until you're able to develop a product. And so I think for David to like demystify creativity and to empower everyone to realize that they are creative. So many people, you know, people come to Snap and they're like, I'm not creative. I'm like, oh, you're for sure creative. There's no question you're creative. But you know, once you create an environment or provide a process like that, people almost like rediscover their creativity and they realize it's not magic. It's, you know, it's, it's a predictable process. Are specs going to amplify empathy?

[26:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1560) The way that they could amplify empathy is that they will bring people together in the real world more often. I mean, when I, even, you know, with these huge clunky glasses we have today, our kids, when they use specs, they go outside and they play together and run around. For me, growing up using computers in the computer lab to watching my kids run around using a computer or outside together, like that's a huge shift in the way that people will use computers. That's a good visual. When you moved to LA and told your dad what you're doing, and you said, by the way, we're also moving in and we're going to do it here.

[26:31](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1591) Did you get a positive or negative response? You know, I have to give my dad a lot of credit. To my face, he was very supportive. I think to his friends, he expressed some concern, which I found out about later. But he certainly preferred me living at home rather than, you know, when I was first working at Intuit, I had gotten an apartment in San Francisco. And I basically told him, hey, I know I have this great job at Intuit, but I'm actually going to quit that job. And I'm going to like work in this apartment with Bobby. And he was like, I don't really want to like pay for you to have an apartment.

[26:56](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1616) Like, you know what I mean? Like you need to get a job. So if you really want to work on this thing with Bobby, then like, you know, you can come live in my house and do that. But like, I'm not going to like, now that you're not making money from your job to pay for your apartment, like I'm not going to pay for your apartment. So I came back home. He actually invested $10,000 himself, but then just gave the equity back to the company. So we could use it to provide shares to team members and that kind of thing. You might be somebody who actually celebrates Father's Day. My dad's been a hero of mine since I was a kid.

[27:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1641) And when I was putting myself in your shoes, like in that moment in time, the Scott Cook reaction of like, this is crazy, must have been more typical than atypical. Yeah, that was the default response. And that's why it was so important that we were able to get far enough to have the data to show that people were just using this to communicate all day long, that it had an important role in their lives. Because like, you know, if it was just a pitch deck or something like that, I don't think it made sense to folks. But that was a great learning experience for me because you could tell, you know, within three seconds of meeting a VC that there was like no way they would ever invest.

[27:52](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1672) So I would just like flip it around and like, you know, I'd be having a coffee with someone. I'd flip it around and be like, oh, maybe you can give me some advice on like how to raise money. Right. learned a lot that way. How long did it take for you to not feel like this is dumb? I imagine that when everybody else is telling you this is dumb, smart people like your business idols, it's got to feel like, wait, who's wrong here? Somebody's wrong. It's either me or them. Or did you just know, like, come hell or high water, I don't even care if it's dumb. I'm rolling with this. I think having customers is never dumb, you know? And I think that was a big learning for us. Bobby and I had worked on something called Future Freshman that was designed to help people apply to college. And we had siblings applying to college at the time. They didn't use it. The only person that signed up was my mom.

[28:36](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1716) It was a total disaster. So to go from that experience to even just having a few of our friends, five of our friends using Peekaboo and then Snapchat, that was huge for us, just that we had a service that people actually wanted to use. So I think it's easy to ignore the narrative when you actually know that you have a product that's making a difference for people that they enjoy using. Yeah. But you seem like somebody who always found it easy to be popular. And sometimes people that go against the grain have a chip on their shoulder. They like being contrarian. They're a little bit of an outsider. And then suddenly you had this product and before you had customers, it seemed a little outsider-ness. Was that a new experience for you?

[29:16](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1756) Not at all. Wow. I love that I come off that way. I mean, that's great. I grew up like a total nerd loser. I think like later on by like by by high school, sort of like partway through high school, my parents ended up divorcing. I ended up spending more time living with my dad. And so I got more freedom along with that. And so I started to be a little more cool kind of by high school and then and then into college. But most of my elementary school, middle school years, I felt pretty isolated. But, you know, both my parents are lawyers. My stepmom is actually a lawyer. Like there was a lot of debate at the dinner table. And so I thought that that was always something that helped me kind of hang on to my sort of point of view because I had to defend my point of view a lot, you know, with my parents.

[29:57](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1797) And that, you know, that was a good learning experience. At what age could you win arguments with your... Oh gosh, I mean, I still, I still, I mean, Miranda and I will be at dinner with my dad and she'll just be like, honey, you got to stop. Like, cause we still, we still love, you know, we love a good debate. So I used to ask a lot of my guests what conversation they used to have at the dinner table when they were kids, because it's so formative into how you shape your worldview. Like for me, when I was a kid, my parents were scientists. It was all about, and they used to work at the same place.

[30:29](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1829) And so it was always about work. And I remember thinking like, okay, work is important. Like I was just like, I just internalized that that work was important. And it always felt like work to them. Like it always felt like a job. And I was like, okay, if it's this important, but it is a job to you. Like, it felt weird to me. Like, I was just like, man, you spend a lot of time complaining about the thing that you do more than anything in your life. And I remember thinking, I don't know what that is, but I do not want that. I want the job part of it, but I don't want it to feel like work. And it sounds very similar in your case.

[31:03](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1863) This was the thing that you would talk about all the time with your family. Maybe the drive was the thing that was important to you. Well, it's funny you mentioned that story about your parents, because one of the success metrics for me with Snap's culture is whether or not people's kids want to work at Snap. So we just had your like, bring, bring your kids to work day. And a lot of kids want to work at Snap when they grow up. And I'm like, okay, we're doing something right. If like the vibe that kids are getting from their parents, when they come home after a long day is not like, oh snap, it's like, oh, I had a really interesting day. I learned something. I did something challenging. I worked together with a really cool team. So if, if kids, you know, kids are so perceptive, right? They feel everything. So if, if kids are saying, gosh, I want to work at Snap when I grow up, I'm like, okay, We're on the right track here when it comes to the culture.

[31:45](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1905) Can you filter that in recruiting interviews? Can you try to figure out who's going to go home and make their kids love SNAP? I think it's more about creating an environment where parents feel that, even after a long day, a tough day, a long week, you know, if they feel good about the work. better over the years at interviewing and recruiting new people, figuring out who's going to be great? I hope so. But it's not easy, as you know. And I think Snap has such a unique culture. You know, we talked a little bit about the size, right? A 5,000-person team supporting a community of almost a billion people constantly innovating, constantly inventing new, creating new products. I think it's so hard to set the right expectations, especially when people come from large companies. I almost try to talk people out of the job, like, hey, hey, this is going to be a lot of work.

[32:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1950) This is going to be really different. You're going to be really expected to be in the details and know your stuff. And that's the way you're going to be able to contribute as a leader. We just hired a fantastic new general counsel. And he was like, Evan, I just feel like my cortisol levels are too low. I really am looking for a 24-7 job. I recognize it will require personal sacrifice. I was like, I think this will be a good fit, actually. So let's argue about this one. Do you still have the juice to rent? like you started, how old are you now? 35. And you started the company when you were 20 and it went public at, yeah, what was it? 27, 27. So it's been eight years since it's been public. Another 10 that you've been running it. You're like almost 80 and dog years. Yeah. You're like almost at the 20 year mark of running this company. You have four kids now. Yeah. Yeah.

[33:18](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=1998) Four kids. You've been running this company for almost 20 years. If you're asking other people, like an executive, like, Hey, you're going to make a sacrifice at home. Like, can you, can you do that? That means you have to do that. Like, there's no way you can ask for that unless you're revving it up. Can you still rev it up like you used to, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And, and I think part of the thing that's so great about working at Snap is it gives me a lot of energy. Like I love what I do. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love what I do. And you know, some days are better than others, obviously, but I mean, what fun to be around such brilliant people to invent new stuff that totally transforms our industry and the world.

[33:55](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2035) I mean, it's, what could be better? It's kind of like the kid test. I was teasing with our kids the other day, you know, oh, maybe I should explore some other job opportunities, that kind of thing. And our kids were like, no, dad, you have the coolest job, like definitely not. You know what I mean? And I was like, oh, okay, you know? So I think even though they see how hard I work, even though obviously, you know, it requires a bunch of sacrifice in terms of my personal life, I think, you know, it's so unbelievably rewarding. When you say sacrifice and you say hard work, can you give examples of what sacrifice means in your day-to-day or in a year or how you internalize what hard work means and what those trade-offs are?

[34:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2070) Yeah, I think the simplest way to put it for a very long period of time, I would leave our home before our kids were awake and I would get home after they were asleep every day, day in and day out. I mean, this was really in the years sort of leading up to the pandemic, right, where we were going through a really tough time as a company, and it just required those kind of hours. And I remember I was just like, I literally asked, I'm like asking God at the time, like, Lord, like, find me a path here so I can actually see my kids, you know, and then the pandemic happened. I was like, well, that was like, that's a big change.

[35:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2100) Yeah, I was like, wow, okay, it was pretty profound. But that really changed my life and changed my relationship with our kids. And I could, you know, spend a lot more time with them through that really critical period of their lives. you know, when they were very young. That was like an incredible, incredible gift. And now I've tried to get a little more balanced. You know, I wake up really early to get work done in the morning and exercise, but then I, about five o'clock usually, and then I take our kids to school. So I get to do school drop-off at least in the morning, three or four days a week.

[35:26](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2126) I still get home usually after they're asleep, but you know, some days I'm lucky. How similar is your note giving to your employees and product teams, your note giving to your kids? I think sometimes I can be very direct at home as well. And I've gotten feedback on that over the years and I'm trying to evolve. But I also think, you know, my parents were very direct with me. And I think that's really important. Like having those direct, honest conversations with your kids are really valuable. What's so important is that they know no matter what they do, I love them completely and totally. But I think, you know, it's as a parent, I want our kids.

[36:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2160) to grow. And in order for them to grow, I have to give them feedback. Do they know you want them to grow? How does that conversation and role modeling go? I think for me, it's less about wanting them feeling like I want them to grow. I want them to cultivate that for themselves. They have to cultivate a passion for learning. They have to cultivate a desire to grow and wanting to learn and try new things. And so it's more about just supporting that for our kids. And when I see that, when I see they want to learn something, I see they want to try something new. you know, this is another thing I learned from my parents. We just tried to do that totally and completely. Like my mom was so good. I was like, mom, I really want to learn how to use the, how to play the trumpet. This was in second grade. My mom's like, whoops, great. Okay. Like rented me a trumpet, signed me up for class, like total disaster. I was terrible. And then she didn't make me feel bad at all. She was like, okay, well, hopefully you find something else that you enjoy doing, you know? And I think we just try to have that with our kids where we, you know, try to support them when they want to do new things. Do they talk you into things that you have misgivings

[36:58](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2218) about? Well, you know, now we are, our eldest is 14. So we had a long chat about the recent Halloween parties. You know, he wanted to stay out late. And so I think, I think he made it back home by about 1130 on, on both nights, but that was, that was a conversation. Evan on the leaving before they wake up in the home, people really glamorized your life. And I don't think they quite understand the tax that it takes to actually live your life. Giving examples is very useful when the company is going through a hard time, which is why you have to leave so early and why you have to come home so late.

[37:31](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2251) And when you come home and like your wife is asleep or in bed, everybody's asleep. The house is quiet. The business is going through the shitter. And you can't feel good about either of those things. Take me into those moments. Like, what does that feel like? Does it feel that shitty? Do you even have time to feel? Do you even recognize that those things or emotions that you're experiencing in those periods? Well, first, I mean, maybe first of all, like I have been incredibly blessed, right? Like I have zero complaints. So even on these very tough days, like I lead an extraordinarily blessed life.

[38:07](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2287) And I think one of the reasons why that is, is like I met an incredible woman who's my wife. Miranda is an unbelievable 100% support all the time. You know, the ups and downs, that kind of thing. It's hard to find a perfect co-founder. Yeah. And I got very lucky with Bobby and very lucky with Miranda, both of whom have been incredibly supportive. So I think even in those really, really challenging times, she was unbelievably supportive. And I think a lot of my job as a leader is to absorb that stress for the team. I've tried to find my own ways, whether that's exercising or going in the sauna or just taking time to meditate, like, you know, over the years, just developing my own ways of managing that stress for myself. But in, you know, in my family and in my job, I want to absorb that stress, right? I don't want to unload that onto people that I care about, whether that's our team or family or wife. Yeah. And you just continue to absorb that until what? Like at what point does that tip over? Well, I think what's helpful is like when you live in that environment for such a long period of time, you just get better at managing stress, right? And so I think like you, it just becomes more normal, right? To live in a rhythm where there are big challenges every day.

[39:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2352) And like, that's, that's okay. I think, you know, if you look at some of the science behind stress, right like a lot of a lot of course a huge amount of it is you know the way that we frame it right so like how do we you know approach stress in our minds do we call it out as stress and something that's bad or do we say oh actually this is like this is a gift this is a learning opportunity this is a growth opportunity and a lot of the science shows that like reframing what could be stress as a positive actually has a huge impact on your ability to manage it but then also i think once you're just in a rhythm of dealing with stressful events all the time it becomes very normal and stress is about a response to something unusual. So once it becomes very normal, then I think, you know, you just kind of adapt. It becomes usual.

[39:50](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2390) Did you learn from someone else about being a stress absorber? My wife is unbelievable, under pressure and difficult. situations and a tough interview. I mean, I remember our earliest days dating and there would be a bunch of like paparazzi harassing her and this kind of thing. And she would just be chatting with them. Oh, hey, how are you? I'd be like losing my mind. She's like, hey guys, like hope you're having a nice day. You know, she was just so lovely. I was like, wow, to like see how graceful she is under that sort of pressure is very inspiring. And so I think once you like live, I mean, there's no better way to learn something than to just be able to watch, right and experience that and to be able to live with Miranda to learn day in and day out from her example of managing stress or managing uncomfortable situations quite inspiring I mean it's like I still have a long way to go she's she's like pro level you know but but I'm trying yeah between the two of you walking around LA it's about as a power couple as it gets around here I imagine can you even walk can you walk around in the city yeah yeah you're fine it's her it's her I'm Miranda's husband. I mean, who's that guy? That's right. Can I pull a little bit more on the history of

[40:58](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2458) the company and then we can get to present day again? At what point is the company hitting such an inflection point that other players come in to think about acquisition? Like what happened where Zuckerberg and others started to hover around? Like what became obvious to them that was otherwise obvious to you where it started to draw this type of interest from people? Well, I think now that through some of the, I guess, litigation and whatnot around Meta, a lot of the facts around this are now sort of public knowledge. So they had acquired something called Onavo at the time and, you know, basically had installed a VPN on people's phone and had invested a lot in trying to observe their traffic, right, and to actually decrypt Snapchat traffic to understand the engagement patterns and these sorts of things.

[41:44](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2504) So they really had a front row seat to what people were doing on their phones. And I think it became very obvious that Snapchat was one of those major destinations. I'm sure you've read like the internal tech memo stuff. Like you can read all the litigation stuff that's come out. It's insane. I should go. I should. Oh, if you want to read about yourself, you should read about the emails that Zuck was firing off internally about, should we buy StumbleUpon? Should we buy Snapchat? Things are going crazy. you can see all this stuff. It's all come out through litigation. When he calls you, by the way, you probably have this effect on people now. So like whatever feeling you had when he probably called you is probably exactly how every other entrepreneur feels when you call them. And so I'm curious, like, did you think it was real? Did you actually believe that there was an offer on the table when the offer started? Did you like, I'm curious how that played out for you.

[42:34](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2554) You're 23 years old. You're probably just like wrapped up in, I'm just curious, like your reflections on that now yeah i mean they had done the instagram deal which was very obviously a great deal for meta at the time too oh for sure i mean we were shocked that they sold so early i mean we were like wow instagram's about to like run away with this thing and when they sold we were like save facebook's uh mobile footprint save their whole business i mean yeah so we were like stunned that they so you saw that done that so it didn't surprise us that they were interested I mean, they're very acquisitive company that that was their strategy for a very long period of time.

[43:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2592) The number reported was three billion. At what point do you have to sit down? And the problem is, you tell me if I'm wrong, three billion is not just your money. Like it's your co-founder. It's your early employees. Like it's not like you just sit in a room and decide, all right, do I want to make a billion dollars or something? it's like you have all of these pretty competing priorities in your business that I'm imagining like you know your friends like dropped out of school or like didn't go to other jobs to like join you on this thing and so when you get an offer like that I have to imagine that you're like okay is this just stupid for me to say like as much as I want to say no like is this just irresponsible a couple things that had happened that made it a lot easier to make that that decision. The first was that, you know, very early on in our conversations with investors, to your point, you know, when you raise money from venture capitalists, you are signing up to exit the business. So you can either take it public or you can sell it. But like that is essentially the agreement you are making with venture capitalists. And so going into that, you know,

[44:17](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2657) **Evan Spiegel:** we were clear that we wanted to build an independent company. We had seen the Instagram

[44:21](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2661) thing. One of the conversations we'd had with the benchmark team because they had invested behind Instagram was like, hey, we think they sold really early. Like, we hope you agree because we're trying to build something like bigger here than, than Instagram. And we were worried that they had traded too early. So I think we had had some conversations around that, around the time that we'd raised money. We also, Bobby and I each, you know, were able to sell $10 million of stock at the time before, you know, there were any conversations about an acquisition. So Bobby and I felt like, like we're set. You know what I mean? You're living on house money. Yeah. Like, you know, okay. We, we each took $10 million off the table. We can buy a house. We can support our family like we'll be fine so that made the conversation a lot easier this was at the c the b or the c when did you take money off the table i probably c or b something like that yeah it's funny because it's such a contentious debate in the industry of usually vcs are like if if you want to go you want to go long if you want to play the long game you kind of have to make it possible i am but that's because a lot of entrepreneurs don't have that option right and so when they

[45:23](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2723) are having conversations about whether to exit the business or not. It really is about like, can I get a house for my family, put my kids in school or whatever it is? Like, I think people have to make a lot of decisions. Those decisions were sort of off the table for us because they had allowed us to sell some equity. But then you do have to go around to your other employees. And when they know that it's been passed up, you have a whole new leadership responsibility to get them re-fired up? Well, I think what was really fortunate for us was that businesses like Meta to some extent, you know, Google and YouTube had paved the way to show that, hey, if you've got a bunch of people using your service and engaging a lot. There's a company there. You can build a big business. And it was pretty clear, even with the rough math that like, you know, if we just continued on a modest trajectory, even assuming more competition and these sorts of things that we'd be able to build. So that wasn't a hard stress absorber, confidence builder with your employees. What was the hardest time of picking up the spirits of employees? There was a really tough period of time. It was probably right after we went public. I think that that was probably the

[46:29](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2789) closest to the real crucible moment we've had as a company because a couple of things were happening all at once. We were transitioning from, I mean, our advertising business we built in the early days was based on insertion orders, like old school television advertising, like you buy impressions at a fixed price. And we went from, you know, folks buying impressions at a fixed price to an auction model. I think the pricing went down like more than 90%. So like we were navigating a period of time where we transitioned this auction model, the cost per impression was 90 plus percent. Instagram had launched stories. We were under a lot of pressure on the Android app at the time, which was, you know, putting pressure on users. So users were coming down.

[47:14](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2834) Spotify, Amazon, Zynga, Duolingo, four out of five of them, 365 days after an IPO, they were 40% or less below their IPO price. They all worked out okay. Yeah. But that, you know, that was a huge, I think the stock at that time was, you know, we'd gone public at 17 bucks or something and traded down to 499, you know, through that period of time. And so that was a real, that was a real challenging moment. Bezos had a week where it went from 105 to six. That's a bad week. Talking about stress absorbing, that's where I think all CEOs learn that they have to walk around and bulk up confidence of the people around.

[47:53](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2873) Do you worry you are moving away from the core age demographic yourself of where Snapchat a majority of its usage is. Before, you were the ideal profile of a Snapchat user. And now you're like, you know, the dad with, you know, kids. Telling dad jokes. Yeah, exactly. Do you feel like you still have feel for who you think the core user is relative to you just building a product for yourself? So I think one of the most important things is like we don't design for a specific like demographic, right? Like we try to solve problems that people have and whether that's things like, you know, lenses so that you can augment your images, which lowers the barrier to creativity, whether it's stories that put your content in chronological order and helps you like start fresh every day.

[48:40](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2920) Right. And whether it's a thing like the map that answers the question, like, where are my friends? What are they doing? Like, when are they going to be here? You know, those are common problems that people of all ages experience. So a lot of what we work on on our design team is solving those common problems that everyone experiences of all sorts of different ages. Obviously, I have a different perspective at 35. I think it's quite helpful because, you know, as we continue to grow with our community, right, solving problems for 35-year-olds is an important part of the equation as well. But at the same time, we have, you know, lots of members of our design team joined straight out of school.

[49:14](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=2954) I mean, typically, our point of view is that designers often get ruined by going to other technology companies first because they don't do design like we do. So we bias towards hiring people directly out of school, usually with like, you know, very limited, if any, actual work experience. And so those folks bring a ton of great new ideas. And what's that ratio of designer to engineer? Do you have a number that you try and keep to? Our design team is very small. The core Snapchat design team is anywhere from like nine to 12 people. It sort of fluctuates. Yeah. That's it? That's it. nine people out of 5,000? Yep. And it's a flat structure. So everyone's a designer. There's no like hierarchy and, you know, BS and this kind of thing. And we spend three or four hours a week just looking at ideas. What do they report to? They report to someone who runs the design team.

[50:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3000) So that's in, that's it? That's it. Yeah. Nine. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes up to 12, because ultimately once you get beyond a certain size, you then have a lot of coordination

[50:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3012) **Evan Spiegel:** overhead. As soon as you have coordination overhead, you have more hierarchy and bureaucracy and all of those things destroy creativity. So if you want to really have generative creativity,

[50:23](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3023) like new ideas, I think it's very important that you have a very flat structure with a very, very tight team culture and dynamic because then people feel safe and comfortable being creative and trying new ideas and this sort of thing. And they're not focused on some sort of weird hierarchy, which typically happens in large organizations. As soon as you have a hierarchy, people become more focused on getting to the next level, right? Rather than taking a risk, coming up with a crazy idea, that kind of thing. If we were to sit in a design meeting, how does a design meeting here unfold differently than in places where designers have been spoiled?

[51:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3060) Well, I've never been to another design meeting, but at Snap, you'd be laughing a lot. I mean, it's super fun. It's really, really fun. And we just go through a huge volume of ideas. I mean, that's really like, so you would see, you know, a hundred new ideas over a couple hour period and you'd laugh a lot along the way. Is that the thing that you enjoy doing the most at the business though? I really love that. I mean, it's a really fun part of my job, but in general, I love tough problems. And now, you know, given the scale of the company, we've got tough problems everywhere. So while I really do enjoy that and it's a lot of fun, it's a place where I feel like I can add value.

[51:35](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3095) I, you know, I enjoy working across lots of people. What do you mean you love tough problems? One of the most fun things to do from an intellectual perspective is to work on very, very complex issues. That could be a complex regulatory issue, right? That could be a complex issue on one of our ranking teams when we're trying to think about how do we evolve to next generation ranking systems. So I think that's just something I gravitate to. I really find interesting and fun. Yeah, it's interesting. Because earlier you were talking about reframing stress and it's almost like you've reframed the stress of problems into the fact that you love tough problems because at some point you realize that the only thing you're going to be doing is solving tough problems.

[52:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3132) And so maybe you better start enjoying it or at least pretending to trick yourself into then at least believing that you enjoy solving the tough problems. Yeah, I mean, by the time I'm involved, all the easy stuff is gone. So you better love the hard thing. On the 5,000 person question thing, does it freak you out that like there's a lot of layers before things get to you and there's a lot of like editing to edit before evan sees something and i guarantee you that's like you're like you're probably up at night thinking i cannot believe people are doing that inside my company yet everybody is doing that inside your company and if you find it i bet you go crazy because you're like don't have a meeting to prepare for the meeting with me yet everybody has meetings to prepare for meetings with you. And as you think about like the sluggishness of organizations as they grow, that's generally what tends to happen. Does that drive you nuts?

[53:04](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3184) That dynamic's incredibly worrying to me. We have gotten rid of that in most parts of the company, I would say. But, you know, one of the things I observed, this was maybe two, three years ago, I mentioned we, you know, went through this huge transition to diversify our revenue into small and medium customers and to build a lot more features into our advertising platform that would allow them to optimize against lower funnel objectives and that sort of thing. One of my favorite things to do when going through a major reset moment like that is to just go and

[53:33](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3213) **Evan Spiegel:** walk around and talk to the team. I mean, there's no better, faster way to understand what's going on than to just go walk around and talk to people. So I would spend a lot of time. I mean, usually

[53:41](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3221) like every night I would just go, you know, at the end of the day to our monetization building and just walk around and talk to people. And what are you working on? What are you building? And sure enough, you know, I'd talk to folks and they'd say, hey, I'm working on a presentation. You probably won't see this for six weeks, but, you know, and I'd be like, great, can I just see it now? You talk me through it. And, you know, you learn so much, so much faster by just getting in there with the team. And I think you can start to break some of those sort of patterns. But the culture there at the time was very oriented around very controlled flow of information and presenting information in that very structured way.

[54:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3252) With a company of our size, that's just too slow, right? Like, I think it's almost impossible to work that way and expect good results. So I think in most areas of our company, we're moving so quickly that there's just no time to like present the information in some fancy way. I mean, on some of the projects we're working on right now, I get a daily update. There's no time to make it fancy. I just want to see the numbers. I want to see what's going on. I want to see how our community is responding to it. I want you to flag the top issues that are blockers and then we can just keep moving. When you were 21, you found a Scott Cook.

[54:41](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3281) Now you're 35. Are you finding any new Scott Cooks? You know, all the time. I really love meeting other entrepreneurs. I learned so much from them. I, you know, I'm a huge fan of this company called Zipline, which is run by my friend Kelley, who created that business. It's like the largest autonomous drone network now in the world. They're expanding here in the U.S. after starting in Africa. Like he's incredible. And I learned so much from him. So I love meeting founders. He's big energy. He's big energy. Yeah, that's awesome. And Evan, I'm curious on the, let's say like a pet peeves list, if there was a document that you wrote about like working with me and in one half of the document was like, don't do these things.

[55:22](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3322) Like these are the things that I really don't respond well to. What would those like, okay, like one would be meetings for meetings to meet with Evan. Do you have other things that you have developed over time that you're like, oh man, these things really rubbed me the wrong way? I have incredible difficulty working with people who are not self-motivated. Like I think one of the most important things as a leader is to get that source of drive and passion and curiosity from within, right? And I think a lot of people who maybe grew up in a more typical corporate environment are constantly used to other people providing feedback, shaping their behavior, right? They're getting a lot.

[56:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3360) of external motivation. And I think for me, as I look at the leaders that I love to work with time and again, they are the people who are intrinsically motivated, right? That with an internal locus of control. And that to me is really what differentiates great leaders because I don't have to ask them, you know, they're, they're five steps ahead of me already. They're like, Evan, I, you know, totally like the minute you're coaching somebody to try harder. You've caught up. Yeah. But you know what I mean? Like I, you know, we thought about that four years ago, You know, like that, you know, but there are people who are just so driven, you know, internally, whether they're motivated by changing the world or serving customers or inventing new things or being a great leader, like wherever you get that source of inspiration, that's so important that that's something internal to you and not something you need other people to give you.

[56:44](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3404) It's just too difficult in this competitive environment with a team that is full of so many people who are so self-motivated to need that sort of like prod, right? I can provide feedback. I can provide my perspective. I can help people solve problems. But if I have to be your source of motivation, that's not going to work. So you and Miranda talk about your own kids and you have a high value in intrinsic motivation. How as a parent do you foster intrinsic motivation? I think intrinsic motivation is almost a secondary effect of finding what you love to do and what you're passionate about. Right. And not everyone is going to find that. But as I mentioned, you know, my parents were great about just supporting me, trying as many things as possible to find something that I love.

[57:29](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3449) I mean, we took our kids this weekend rock climbing and like the rock climbing gym and our seven year old just like will not stop talking about rock climbing since going to the gym. When can I go? Can I go again? Is there somewhere closer to our house? Like, you know, he's found something that he really loves and enjoys doing. And so as parents, like we're trying to figure out, OK, how can we support that? how can we help him after school, you know, get to the rock climbing gym? Because if he can just bit like, you know, I'm not trying to force him to go exercise or get out there. He's found something that he loves. And so I think trying to nurture that is so important in our kids.

[57:58](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3478) Because once you get hooked on that feeling of finding something you love, getting better at it, learning more, I mean, I think it becomes self-fulfilling and then self-motivating. Have you read the book Open by Andre Agassi? Oh, yeah. He talks about his wig. Yeah. He's like, you know, Andre Agassi is like a famous, like amazing tennis player. You should read this book. It's incredible. It's basically his own insecurity chronicle of his entire life. And he just talks so vulnerably about how the external world perceived him as this superstar tennis player, which he was. And all he could think about was, I'm not good enough at tennis.

[58:34](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3514) My home life is falling apart. I'm losing my hair. So he wore a toupee. All of these crazy things. And, you know, I think like, anyway, I think you might actually really enjoy the book. And I wonder, especially as a young age, being the dude, you must have felt some of that stuff. Like, man, I can't believe this. Brick Shields was not his Miranda. That's right, that's right. Yeah, he had a second swing. That's right. I think the most helpful thing about starting a company at such a young age is no one expects you to know anything. I mean, like, I could just be very transparent. I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing.

[59:11](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3551) I've never, you know, run a company before, like, please help, you know, and I think one of the special things about the tech industry, you know, you all have experienced that is how helpful people are, right? I think that was like something that I really love about the tech industry that I experienced firsthand at Stanford, just how many people do you reach out and say, hey, can I get your advice? Can I get your help? And everyone in the industry pays it forward. I mean, I still like almost daily get random emails from folks saying like, hey, you know, can I get your thoughts or what do you think about this?

[59:38](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3578) Does that pay it forward as much in Southern California and Northern California? LA doesn't have the same density of consumer technology maybe that the Bay Area has. Although, you know, here we've got an incredible hard tech ecosystem that's growing really nicely. That's super exciting. You know, over in El Segundo, it's amazing what everyone's building. So I think that there's... enough density there that you can have that sort of community culture. But I got so much of that in the Bay Area where like almost everywhere you turn is somebody who's worked on building a company or, you know, I can't stop thinking about your face when I asked you, like, if you can still rev it up. And it was like, it was like, I was a little offended.

[1:00:15](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3615) It was like I asked you the dumbest question and I can't stop thinking about because he's starting a company in his spare time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can't stop thinking about like that feeling that I had when you, when you like looked at me in the eye making me feel like that was one of the dumbest questions someone's asked me what i've reflected on as you've been talking is like people like that like true sickos for the game like that this feels like like i love the game yeah you like love the game like it feels like a sports you just want to play it all the time right like probably how your kid feels about rock climbing right now is how you felt about snap for the last like 15 years and is there a valve i have often observed that people like this have a very hard time turning that off? Because like, why would you want to turn it off? And so like, if you go on vacation or you do these things, like it's just the CPU continues to process in your brain.

[1:01:06](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3666) Like, is that a thing for you? I have no idea. Well, one of the things that like really struck me, you know, I did a couple of years ago, I went to like Mayo Clinic, you know, you do like the executive checkup. They're like, okay, do you want to like talk to somebody about like, you know, mental health or whatever? I'm like, great. I'll talk to somebody about, you know, mental health and stress and this kind of thing. And they were like, did you know how the brain like relaxes? I said, no, I have no idea how the brain relaxes. They said, if you do a focused activity. I was like, really? They're like, yeah, everybody thinks if you go to the beach and like lie down, you know, to relax, like actually your brain gets more stressed out because it's all over the place thinking about all these sorts of different things.

[1:01:41](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3701) They're like, your brain is in its most relaxed state when you're focused on something. And that's actually how your brain decompresses. I was like, that makes so much sense because the way that I've relaxed is like learning how to become a helicopter pilot. Like I'm a big rebreather diver. I love to do these things that are challenging, require a huge amount of focus. And they've always like helped me relax. And I can never put it together until apparently the science like really reinforces when you have to focus on activity, like flying a helicopter, that's when your brain actually calms down.

[1:02:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3732) Oh man, I feel the same way. That's crazy. That's a crazy feeling. There's a book called Chicken Hawk talk about heli pilots in Vietnam. That's the first person. Check it out. That's a more serious line than what I've gotten up to. I've never heard it framed that way before. Yeah, that was a big like aha moment. Like when you sit on a Zoom, does it drive you nuts? Like for me, if I'm sitting in a meeting, the podcast is the only space where I can actually stay focused for this period of time. If I'm sitting in a meeting for too long, I have to start walking. Like the meeting has to move into a walking format.

[1:02:46](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3766) Otherwise, I legitimately start going crazy. I start going fully nuts. It's either a plus or a minus. It's probably a little bit of both. But I do think that there's something around my brain feeling very similarly, which is that in order to focus, it needs something else to be focused on. I don't know how else to explain it, but I think you actually did a really good job of it. It's amazing. And by the way, your walking meeting, I mean, nothing better than a walking meeting. So good. Yeah, I mean, didn't Steve Jobs design his entire campus around walking meetings? Like, wasn't that the whole principle of how he designed the entire campus?

[1:03:19](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3799) As we wrap here, are there things that you are looking out over the next five years that you believe that you think nobody else believes yet? I mean, I think that, you know, in our industry, there's so much excitement around AI.

[1:03:34](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3814) **Evan Spiegel:** I think it's so important that industry leaders pay a lot of attention to the anxiety around AI, because if you look at the public polling about what does a broad base subset of Americans

[1:03:47](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3827) think about AI, the majority of them are very worried about it. They're worried it's going to take their job. They're worried about its impact. And I think if you study these huge periods of technological transformation, which, as we discussed, have happened a lot in the past. whether it's railroads, semiconductors, the internet, there's a huge amount of change that happens, not just technologically, but societally, politically as well. And so I think, you know, leaders, especially technology leaders at this moment in time would be very well served, you know, really listening to and hearing from the broader community, the broader American public, because I think it's going to take some really effective communication and some real forward thinking from the industry to navigate this period of time in a way that can bring the benefits of AI to the broader population, but it's going to require rethinking things like our education system, right, which was developed a hundred years ago for an industrial age that is nothing like, you know, what workers are entering today. And I think the more proactive industry can be in solving these problems and the more attuned to the way people feel industry can

[1:04:51](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3891) be, I think we'll all be better off for it. You know, it's hearing you say that Palmer we're lucky speaking of Segundo here was giving an interview and the interviewer was asking him, are your kids going to go to school? And his answer was so, I've never heard an answer like this. That was so honest. He was like, listen, I'm a billionaire. Can I not figure out better ways with the technology today and the resources that I have to figure out how to educate my children in a way that's not the same as the last like hundred years. And I'm like, that's a really interesting framing for like how you think about it. And I, you probably think about it the same way. Like you have the resources, you are obviously on the bleeding edge of technology.

[1:05:30](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3930) As you think about the next generation, whether it's your kids or otherwise, like you're probably like, all right, are there things that we can just like reimagine that have just not, that have been the way this, because they've been this way. They don't have to be that way. I think there's so much opportunity to do that. I think California is a great place to focus on it as well, because we have such incredible strengths in technology. We're the fourth largest economy in the whole world. But at the same time, we also have, you know, middling educational outcomes. We have the highest poverty rate in the country tied with Louisiana, the highest unemployment rate in the country. And so California has a lot of these big challenges that I think this community of innovators and technologists and, you know, the broader public it can work together to solve. So I would love to see California, you know, lead not only in technology, but lead in, you know, thinking about ways to apply that to, you know, these broader societal issues. Can Snap's platform be a platform for learning by doing? I think that's a huge role that specs will play. I mean, that's one of the areas of greatest interest to us. I mean, if you

[1:06:38](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=3998) look at on the job training, if you look at the ability to, you know, use AI to actually like solve problems in the real world, I think specs will be transformational. I love the notion of learning by doing it. I think it's the best way to learn and augmented reality can help make that a lot more accessible. So, Reid Hoffman did a Reid AI and he did a video interview of himself at the LinkedIn Series B talking to himself today. And they went in two directions. One, Reid Hoffman AI, the young Reid Hoffman, had questions for the old Reid Hoffman, basically, what did I get wrong? And the old Reid Hoffman wanted to hear from the young Reid Hoffman. Remind me, what was I like back then? What did I think about? What would your 21-year-old self want to know from you today? How would you advise your 21-year-old self? And then if you were with your 21-year-old self, what would they remind you of that you might be at risk of forgetting? I mean, I always think that I would tell my younger self, don't worry about it. You know what I mean? I think we all spend a lot of time worrying about things that we, you know, can't necessarily control. And so just reminding myself, it's all going to work out, I think,

[1:07:42](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4062) would be the first thing I would do. But I think there are so many benefits, we touched on this earlier, of not knowing, right? And I think bringing that beginner's mindset of not knowing, of curiosity and asking questions, never assuming, has been one of the most important things in my life. And so I think, you know, I always try to put myself back in that, you know, 20 year old, 20 year old shoes and look at any problem we're facing and, you know, without, you know, of course, it's been great to build all this experience. But if I approach this from a totally fresh perspective, how would I think about it differently?

[1:08:17](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4097) Are you hiring? It's funny. I like, this is whatever, five plus years on this show, okay? I always ask the same two closing questions. The first is, are you hiring? And the second is, when you hear the word grit, what do you think of? Until like the last year and a half, it was basically, I just assumed if I asked the hiring question to a growing tech company, the answer was, yeah, we're hiring for basically everything. Now, I'm not totally sure I'm going to get that answer anymore, which is a little bit weird. So maybe with that caveat, are you hiring? We are hiring. Okay. Are there anything specific you were hiring for?

[1:08:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4129) Not designers, clearly. Or if there is, it's one. One every couple of years. It was so funny. We got this escalation, I guess, because our people team was very concerned that our hiring process was broken for design because for every 1,000 candidates we reviewed, we hired one. So they were like, this is a huge disaster. Do we have the spec wrong? What's going on? Out of 1,000 candidates, you all review, you hire one person. We were like, no, no, it's working. Like, it's definitely working, I think. So I think, yeah, we are always hiring for designers and always trying to find great people. It's just, you know, we're looking for one in a thousand, I guess.

[1:09:25](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4165) Are you in all the design hiring? I meet every single. You meet every single candidate? Not a thousand. No, not a thousand. But like everyone that filters through. Yeah. You're meeting them all. Now our team's pretty good at saying, I think we got somebody special, you should meet them. And how much are you selling in that interview versus how much are you interviewing? I'm usually trying to talk them out of the job. if anything, but you know, I'm really just trying to assess one thing because we own, we make our,

[1:09:50](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4190) **Evan Spiegel:** for the design team, we make our hiring decisions only on the portfolio, only on your work. Like

[1:09:55](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4195) we don't care where you study this, that, or the other thing, where you worked, whatever. What did you, what have you made? And then I want to, I want to hear from you. How did you think about making it? Why did you make something the way that you did? Why did you make this choice? And I really just want to hear, like, pick a couple of things you made and tell me how and why you made them. Doesn't sound like a filter for laughter. Well, I think... Where does the laughter come from if not in the... You know why? Because they're stoked. Because they're one of ten that made it through the gauntlet.

[1:10:23](https://realalpha.app/v/Xkc5XOpbAq8/?t=4223) So they're laughing their way through the system. Let me tell you about that 90 to 99. Yeah, exactly. That's what they're laughing about. Thank you for doing this. Last question. When you hear the word grit, what do you think of? I think of not giving up. Thanks, man. This was fun. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Really fun. Thank you, guys. Thank you. that's it for now if you like the episode please leave us a review or go back into the archives where we've done more than 200 episodes with some fantastic folks this podcast is a Kleiner Perkins production and I'm Jubin thanks for listening