#800: Ev Williams — The Art of Pivoting (e.g., Odeo to Twitter), Strategic Quitting, The Dangers of Premature Scaling, Must-Read Books, and More

0:00 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job, each interview to deconstruct world class performers. To tease out the habits, routines, influences and resources that you can apply to your own lives from people from every discipline imaginable, ranging from entertainment to the military to technology and beyond. Today my guest is Ev Williams and what a story he has. Eve is the co-founder and chairman of Mosey, a new social network that helps you connect in person With the people you care about most. Over the past twenty five years, Ev has co-founded several companies that have helped shape the modern internet, including Blogger, Medium, and Twitter. Ev is also the co-founder of Obvious Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on world positive companies.

0:48 addressing major systemic problems. Ev grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska, has two sons, and lives mostly in the Bay Area. This particular episode, this conversation was recorded live in Austin, Texas. That's. The Dignation. Relaunch. That's dignation. Show for the show itself. And that is where Dig.com was relaunched. It was recently acquired by its original founder, my good friend Kevin Rose, and Reddit co-founder, Alexis O'Hanian.

1:16 formerly arch nemeses, but they have joined forces and invited me along for all the fun and surprises as they celebrated. The relaunch. Go to dig.com and sign up to get early access when the invites go out. One more time. Dig.com. That's D I G G. dot com. You can find Mosey. That is Ev.

1:35 newest creation at Mosey.app that's available on iOS right now. You can find obviousventures at obvious.com and you can find him on Twitter. That is also known as X. At Ev at E V. We're gonna get right into this wide-ranging conversation with just a few words first from the people who make this podcast possible. I am always on the hunt for protein sources that don't require sacrifices in taste or nutrition. I don't want to eat sawdust. I also don't want a candy bar that's disguised as a protein bar. And that's why I love the protein bars from today's sponsor. David, they are my go-to protein source on the run. I throw them in my bag whenever I am in doubt that I might be able to get a good source of protein. And with David Protein Bars, you get the fewest calories for the most protein ever. David has 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero grams sugar. I was actually first introduced to them.

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5:18 No sean. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscellary. Hello Good Lord. Wow.

5:42 I can't see anything because there's so many lights, but thank you for coming. Ah, I'm Kevin Rose. Tonight is gonna be a really fun night. Ладо соприз ладофан і твасфо. When I was first out here I would pull up my cell phone and I would text a number which was

6:03 What number was it? Four or four four. Which was for Twitter. And you would say I'm gonna be at this bar. Or this is what I'm eating.

6:12 Which is basically what you would say back then. And people would show up, and it was awesome. So it is Really cool to have this kind of throwback this time this. This new reboot in many ways.

6:24 And to kick it off. I have an old old Wooden friend. As an anchorman reference. Tim Fares who is here.

6:35 Mm. We were reminiscing on the old times. He had more hair back then, I had less gray hair. And for Ev, we were texting things not using apps. So Ev Williams, co founder of Twitter, and Tim Ferris.

6:54 What do you think? Good evening. Welcome to Austin. Beautiful, beautiful warm Austin. You guys ready for a fun night? I have my party pants on.

7:07 And it's nostalgic to be here because The last time I was in this venue was probably two thousand seven. I think for a dignation event. May have been a little bit earlier. Oh Stubbs, excuse me, Mohawk. That's my early onset dementia kicking in yet again. So we're gonna pretend that didn't happen.

7:27 And we're gonna move on to discussing cutting edge technology. With And I know the question you all wanna ask, which is

7:37 What is The past, present, and future of VHS. And we're gonna begin with your history with VHS. Great. Thanks, Jim. Hey everybody. I don't get asked about VHS enough these days.

7:52 Fact I don't even know what it stands for. I think what Tim is referring to as my very first internet product. That's right. Which was a video said That

8:03 Was about how to use the internet. You watched it on your T V The year was nineteen ninety four, folks. This is This i it did wasn't that odd for the time, but how are you gonna learn about computers on the computer when you don't have the internet? So

8:20 I made A tape in my basement with my college buddies, and that was my very first. Internet. Product. It was two hours basically of me explaining how to FTP by terminal.

8:35 I think I talked about the web for about three minutes. Yeah, there's this new thing called the web. So we're talking Use Net Go for That type of stuff. Did it sell well? Was it a best seller?

8:47 I think we broke even. On a very low budget production. So you're known for a lot of different things, blogger. Twitter, you now have Mosey.

9:00 And I wanted to ask you because here we are in person How nice is that remember covid? It's easy to take things like this for granted. And I wanted to talk about Relationships.

9:12 Because I imagine how you think about relationships, cultivating relationships, using technology to enhance relationships. May have changed over time. Could you just walk us through perhaps? That trajectory.

9:26 Yeah, we have we were talking earlier today actually about social media and social how the word social has changed. Remember when social used to mean like getting together in real life? Getting to know people. And now social is just the catch all word that kinda just means the internet. That was I think an evolution that started in

9:48 Maybe facebook days facebook was actually in the newsfeed was I think a social media New format. Really, because it was media from people you knew. We borrowed from some of that for Twitter. We also borrowed from blogs for Twitter. So but Twitter we never saw is necessarily social.

10:06 I wasn't very focused on social person. I think that's the somewhat ironic thing is that I come from very small town in Nebraska and the farm didn't know a lot of people. And maybe subconsciously I like the internet'cause I actually wanted to make friends. But I didn't know that at the time. So in all these technologies I was really focused on information and ideas. Until fairly recently.

10:28 This current stage of life. I won't say later stage of the golden years. That's golden years. Um I started thinking a lot more about relationships. And I personally had underinvested in relationships and overinvest I think in just like Maybe Business. Yeah.

10:50 So yeah, been thinking about that a lot lately. You seem to me to be a Thoughtful. You don't seem. You are very thoughtful. I wanna say systematic guy. How have you translated thinking about maybe countering the trend of under investing in relationships. Have you done anything

11:08 I started a clock. Ha ha Let's hear about it because I'm I'm sure there are people here who haven't. I started a company called Mosey within last year and um Mosey is a app for finding out where your friends are and getting together.

11:21 We like say it's actually social. Up because it's really about Getting together with Friends by knowing where they are. So I'm in Austin.

11:30 Who do I know in Austin? I know a bunch of people in Austin. I may have forgotten who I know in Austin, but Mosey tells me who's in Austin, tells me what they're doing, that type of thing. The way I look back on some of the early ideas about social and the internet is of course we connected with people, we've all made friends through the internet, we've built mean relationships or maintain relationships. We're wired to be deeply social, but that wiring It was way before screens. And that that wiring to be social didn't happen in public, and so

11:56 Mosey is very simple idea. Where we say well what would an actual social network look like? And so that's what we're building. So I want to

12:07 Edge into a question about sort of initial Product design. And what your expectations might be just by Rewinding the clock a little bit. And talking about

12:19 Odeo a little bit. So I've read about board meetings and you'll have to tell a bit of the context related to Odeo, in which you're presenting usage metrics at the time. Wasn't growing. But it wasn't dead. Maybe it was semi growing. And

12:34 As a lot of people here read in the media, it's they used to see on magazine covers. The stories of perseverance against all odds. It failed a hundred times, but then we succeeded the hundred and first time, get a lot of airplay. But uh I I think that's a good thing. Something that doesn't get as much attention is strategic stopping.

12:55 Or strategic quitting. Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to keep beating your head against a wall. So could you Take us back to Odeo and walk us through that experience.

13:05 Yeah, so Odeo was a podcasting company. That I co founded in two thousand five. Which If you recall was pre iPhone, so and not to correct Kevin, but Twitter was two thousand seven when it was was here. So this was before Twitter

13:20 And um Podcasting seem cool. I don't know if you've heard about it, Tim, but um We're like let's build a platform for podcasts. And we worked on it for Maybe Six months we raised some money because I had previously sold the company to Google, I was

13:39 Fortunate enough to get some V C funding before we even had a product, which turns out isn't always fortunate. So we had high expectations from kind of get go. This is in two thousand five. Apple released Podcast in iTunes. That summer in two tausin five.

13:55 Which completely blew us away. It was totally unexpected. This is very, very early for Podcast. The iPod. And they basically obsoleted what we had been doing for six to nine months.

14:09 Overnight. Then we you know, we were like, Oh, maybe we create a podcast. creation tool, you know, we were trying to pivot and whatnot and I think I just came to the conclusion at some point Way Biz Stone

14:23 Tells the story is that I wrote this big strategic doc about how to succeed in the podcasting business. And it was very convincing about the pivot we could do and to do. And I was like I don't want to do this. And so I went to investors and said.

14:36 I don't think this company is on a great trajectory. Maybe we should just stop. But that was unusual. This was kind of Pivoting now, of course, is taken for granted. That your ideas and th right the first time out that was less assumed back then. So I was embarrassed. I was like w I said I was gonna start a podcasting company and I raised this money. I mean these employees, I have these investors.

14:58 But I don't believe in it. I don't believe in this vision anymore, even though It wasn't dead, as you said. Was the reason you didn't believe in it? Based on

15:07 the emergence of iTunes and what that represented, or was there more to it? I wasn't that into it personally. I wasn't a podcaster. And I think that was another principle that I've learned over and over Is I think some people can build products for other people, and thank goodness they do, but I just build products for myself.

15:26 And I was like, I don't know. W I don't know the what the product is here we need to build that I want But I think To your question about strategic Wedding I think a ton of companies. And a ton of people just get in these life situations where

15:41 They just keep going. And that's certainly what I was taught. In fact blogger Which is the gun I sold to Google. I Completely ran out of money. After the dot com buzz.

15:51 I'd lay off all my employees. was barely able to pay my rent and kept working on it, kept working on it, kept working on it. Eventually sold it to Google. Very happily. And to me that was like yes, that is the triumph of perseverance, and that's why you should stick to things. And then

16:06 Audio thankfully we didn't. We did Create an another company out of that. But I think this idea of it's okay to quit is underappreciated. And the main reason everyone knows about sunk cost fallacy there's a great book, by the way, by Annie Duke called Quit. Which I highly recommend. And it's actually was part of the reason that a couple of years ago I I stepped down for Medium, which is my last company I was running for a long time.

16:29 I quit my job. The company's still going, but I was like I realized that I was just working out like Із іго, із прайд, і вас. And The book is really

16:42 Great if you don't know it because it just points out all the reasons beyond some cost fallacy that people do things way longer than it makes sense to do them. And the biggest thing is they underestimate opportunity costs. If you're working on one thing and there's identity and ego and all those other things, but it's like you don't know what else there is. Until you clear that your attention away from the thing that you've been struggling with. And so I think if

17:06 If you're in a situation where's like it feels like a slog Would you know it's probably a good idea. Ha. So any dude for people who Might not recognize the name. Well known poker player also wrote Thinking and Betts, I believe.

17:19 So let me ask you then, if you look back now, hindsight twenty twenty at Ev who Persevered with blogger. And then ended up selling it to Google. at a very good time to get o Google equity. Did he just get lucky in that perseverance, or was there some type of central that in retrospect you can say, Well it was actually the right thing to do at that time.

17:42 I've struggled with this'cause I don't have a clean way to understand it, but I think one big difference is I believed in the Vision blogger the whole time. And that was Word odio is like I'm Keep coming to work and make it succeed.

17:55 It was also I was lucky because Blogger being my first real company And I was a little bit younger. I believe in the vision, but I also Just Was Petrified of failing.

18:07 I just couldn't accept that possibility for myself. I also didn't have a lot of other prospects. I'd never really had a job, I didn't have a degree, the dot com Boom was it was like well I don't know what the hell else I'm gonna do if I don't make this succeed. So I'm gonna stick with it. But it didn't really make sense. Yeah.

18:26 Right. Exact Actually good point. Yeah. Yeah. Like your opportunity cost was not as high, maybe at that point. Fair. Yeah. By pursuing something else.

18:35 Yeah. So you mentioned something came out of Odeo. What came out of Odeo? A company called Twitter. I still call it that. I don't know about you guys. How did that happen? Well the investors thankfully the my board I went towards a

18:53 This is my honest assessment of Odeo. And they as good investors do said well we didn't believe invest in podcasting, we invest in you You have a great team. You got any other ideas?

19:07 And I thought, hmm. I must have other ideas. Um I always pride myself on having ideas, but I went back to team and said I don't have any ideas. Do you guys got any ideas? Yeah. And uh we ended up doing a hackathon where we basically for a couple of weeks. Internal hackathon, where we just said, Hey, let's allow it. How many employees did you have at the time? I think it was around

19:30 Twelve, twelve, fourteen, something like that. People worked on a bunch of stuff. A lot of it was related'cause we were doing audio And um You know, recording in the browser with flash and stuff like that. Again, pre smartphones, so but we were dabbling with text messaging and there's a couple of the engineers had

19:49 We're familiar with how to send text messages. On mass, which was little known at that time. There was no um Real APIs for that. And so People are trying a lot of things along those lines. Maybe we send an audio voice memo, maybe we record some browser, little kinda social things.

20:08 Then there one of the ideas was to The way I remember first it was record a message actually via your phone and then it got broadcast text to people and then they can listen to it. And then that quickly involved what we're doing. Evolved to what if we got rid of the audio? Maybe it was just it was just text broadcasts.

20:25 And then you know, having come from the blogging world that we were familiar with RSS and and subscribing, which turn into following and Yeah, kind of evolved from there. To mention names, that was of course Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey's project and It also was informed by Jack's previous work on careers and status systems and

20:45 And at what point did you Or anyone else for that matter realized that there was a there there. Like oh, there might be something very interesting. With this. We were pretty intrigued right away. I mean we certainly didn't know The extent of it by any means.

21:02 But it felt new and in interesting. We kept evolving it. It definitely wasn't right. I mean I think No ideas come out fully Baked and so there was a lot we had to get right, like what is the graph. The very first version actually was highly informed by

21:19 status messages which We're a thing in Facebook, but this is pre Facebook being available to outside of colleges and we were too old to be on Facebook, so we didn't even know about Sausage on Facebook. But it was kinda like that, and it was kinda like aim messages and the very first version There wasn't a whole feed, it was just the latest person who had updated their status was on top. And it went out via text message. And so but we're like, hm, interesting. And

21:45 We felt it was interesting when we had maybe ten people on it. Ten people worked at the company and then we started getting our partner is on it and we're intrigued, but So this is two thousand six. And It really wasn't growing for months and months.

22:01 And really we hit an inflection point here. In Austin in two thousand seven. So I have to just mention that that Particular shotbot is very nostalgic for me because I launched the four hour work week. with an overflow presentation in two thousand seven.

22:21 After haranguing the shit out of Hugh Forest, thank you for letting me fill in for a cancellation. And basically next to a cafeteria. My laptop failed, so I ended up having to improv the thing without my slides. And I remember the big screen T V In the

22:39 ground level of the conference center showing tweets. Yeah. Going through and I was like, Huh, look at that. Yeah. That was the Idea we had It was starting to take off amongst The people we knew and south by was always

22:53 the conference where like the indie cool tech people came and these were our people. And they they were the ones our early adopters of Twitter because they came from the blogging world. And there are friends. And so we sensed that we could get critical mass here.

23:10 So we talked to Hugh and whoever from his team and of course they were like well you could Have a trade show floor and like No no no. No one goes to trade show. Can we buy a screen and put it In the hall. Where everybody's hanging out. And that was the move and people saw that and like oh

23:29 It's amazing. I didn't realize that backstory. And this time. It's a great investment. Eleven thousand dollars. A little more expensive these days, I think.

23:41 Since you're competing against A T T and God knows who else. But This ties into Mosey in part because I'm wondering How much Your expectation is that you will

23:54 Design and delivered a spec. Maybe like in Uber, where the business model has changed relatively little over time, right? It's been very reliable. It's kind of stayed very similar. with obviously bells and whistles and changes along the way. Or is your expectation? maybe along the lines of a Twitter or ODO in some sense morphing into a Twitter that

24:14 Mosey is Just a starting point. I'm sure it'll end up with some in something very, very different.

24:28 Wildest dreams it is a ubiquitous social network and the way Facebook was it one time but actually design For enhancing people's social lives and relationships. Which means it's not a media platform. It's not an advertising platform. It's not a performative platform. It's not a status building platform. It's really

24:46 about sharing information that's important to you with people you care about and enabling it won't all be about IRL but that's where folks done right now. But It's early. We haven't figured it out yet. And I think that's part of the fun is figuring out where it goes. See you.

25:04 Impressive me at a whole lot of levels. I've always found you to be a very important thing. Deep thinker, you think a lot. And You choose your words carefully. And ask a lot of good questions.

25:15 And I'm always curious about the inputs. What you feed yourself in terms of information. You're fond of a few books. This may have changed because this is from two thousand sixteen, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Robert Piersig, The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. I don't know if you would still stand by those, but I'm curious.

25:35 If so, why those books and if there are any others that you would add to that list? Where'd you get that list? That is near times. Uh Ev Williams favorite books.

25:49 Yeah, I probably wouldn't pick those. Now it's been a while. I'm not an executive anymore, so I don't I mean That's not as useful. Zen there murder psychomanas is great.

26:01 But I will mention one book very related to the conversation, which is have you read Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned? No. Great title, though. Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. I recommend this to a hundred people. Love this book. It's the subtitle is The myth of the objective. Ha ha. And the premise is is by a guy named Ken Stanley

26:23 Another guy who were AI researchers. And the way it starts out is they this is early AI research and when worked at OpenAI later, they were building bots And the example they talk about is trying to build a a robot to go through a maze. And How they you know tried to program all kinds of smart algorithms into it and then they found that the most effective strategy

26:48 Was just try something new. And they go on from that and extrapolate this idea that If you were trying to do something that hasn't been done before You know, we're taught From birth and from school and everywhere is like

27:02 Set your goal, make a plan to get to the plan, persevere, go through that. And the permis of the book is. That works if it's something that's been done a lot and that's formulaic. You can set a goal to run a marathon and you can, you know. Download a training regime and you can go run the marathon and probably just

27:21 You can't do that to Invent the computer or Twitter or like create amazing art. You can't plot it, and to the extent you try to plot it. You shoot yourself in the foot because you cut off the possibilities.

27:36 That lay before you. And I read this book when I was running media my last company. It had a great effect on me because I felt this deep sense of relief because my entire Business and start a career. I've been

27:50 Deeply driven to create things. I saw like companies and particular products. as a creative process you know Writing a book or painting a painting is like You have to figure it out as you go. You don't have it fully baked in your head from day one.

28:06 But what I've seen happen a million times and happen to me is you have this intuition You kinda ha know what it is, you start develop it, you're like, Oh, it's this, not that. Let's try this, not that. And you feel your way into what's the best first version of it. If you're lucky and good enough that that first version

28:26 you know meets with some success in the world Then at least in the tech world Employees and investors and business people come in and it's like okay. Where are we going next? What's the plan? What's the roadmap? We know How are we gonna make the numbers go up?

28:41 And It doesn't work to very far. It it works like a little bit to get that next stage. But it doesn't work to really innovative, doesn't work and so you have to be comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing where you're gonna go. And

28:55 This book is is good and it makes this point very short. It also talks about evolution a lot and how Like the most Creative force. In the world is clearly nature.

29:07 And like It has no plan. It just tries shit. Trial and error. Yeah. All right. Taking notes. That's gonna be one of my next trees.

29:21 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. It's the new year and many of you, no doubt, are planning for the year ahead. I'm doing the same, and of course, one thing that tends to be top of mind is setting financial goals, getting your finances in order. And It's a mess out there. The hypercomplexities of the US economy, global economy can be very confusing, and there's a lot of conflicting advice, but saving and investing doesn't have to be complicated. Here's something refreshingly simple to use, and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now you can earn 4%. APY, that's annual percentage yield on your cash from partner banks with the wealthfront cash account. That's nearly ten times the national average, according to FDIC.gov. So

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30:36 This is a paid endorsement of Wealthfront. Wealthfront brokerage isn't a bank. The APY is subject to change. For more information, see the episode description. Yeah. You mentioned AI and it is the topic du jour, but Can't believe everything you read on the internet, but I believe that. Twenty five percent of the latest Y Combinator class wrote ninety five percent.

31:00 Plus of their code using AI. And I'm curious You have kids. What would you suggest your kids study in school? My kids are here in fact. Um

31:13 Whatever they want. I mean it's Mm. It depends on what what the goal is. I mean I think I can I can frame it a little more, I can strain it. I would say if people are wondering here how to I don't want to say AI proof themselves because Good luck predicting where that's gonna go.

31:32 But Are there any fundamental skills or specific skills that you think will increase in value over time? For instance I don't know if I had kids if I would suggest they take a legal path. Necessarily since I already use AI in thirty seconds to draft most of my legar legal documents before I send it to human eyes.

31:53 You have any thoughts? I haven't thought about this deeply, but what comes to mind is social human things. One is I do encourage them. To read and write still because I think that's

32:07 How you figure things out. The best way to Think and have ideas and get clarity is to write. And

32:17 You can't write if you don't read. So even if the AI can write for you, that's fine if it's a paper or you know a report or some analysis that where the product is very important. Like this is the information and text that I need. But it robs you of of the process of thinking. So I think problem solving creative

32:38 ideation. is useful no matter what you do ever. So I think those core skills and then social skills. And one of the reason I love the school they go to is actually They have a thing called S E L, which maybe you all had, but I sure as hell didn't have in rural Nebraska in the seventies. is social emotional learning and then it's just like how do you connect with people. I mean We know that's critical to any job no matter what you're doing, and I think that's

33:03 Probably well, hopefully not gonna go away. I think we're a lot of trouble if that is removed. So let's Shift gears a bit.

33:15 And I'll just ask a question I like to ask. If it goes nowhere, it goes nowhere. But Alright, so Metaphorically speaking, the billboard question. So if you're gonna put a message On a billboard could say anything. Could be an image.

33:29 Anything at all that you would want a lot of people to see. And understand. What might you put on that? I love this question. I might overthink it.

33:40 Um And understand. So so we can assume though. And thinking about the what comes to mind first of all is The category is Something that will help people

34:01 Heal you know. Just be their whole and true selves because I think that's where all our problems come from is the lack of that. Um As much as I care about climate, I think the the key to solving climate is to heal ourselves, to heal culture, to heal the planet.

34:18 And so I start with the the self. And then my mind goes to what's a big fundamental truth that we want everyone let's pretend if they read it they'll actually get it and and know it. Then I think there's a little bit of tension between like the most fundamental truths and how actionable they are. So if we said

34:38 We are all one. I believe. It's like Okay, we're all one. The universe is one big thing, we're all connected. What do I do with that? And maybe if you really ponder that and meditate on that a long time, it'll actually it will do you some good. But then if you move toward the spectrum of

34:54 Usefulness. What's a fundamental truth that's more useful? You might some you know have like some Buddhist or saying like all of our suffering comes from, you know, our thoughts or inability to accept reality, which A little bit more useful. But maybe for the masses not

35:11 Still not very actionable. And then you could move to like Fear feelings which I think would do tremendous Amount of good. And people adopt oh, feel your feelings. It's a little bit easier to imagine that. Like so much of our suffering. I see this as someone who

35:27 Told their first therapists, I don't understand the point of feelings. I was like they they are just a nuisance and get in the way. So it took me a long time to appreciate that. And the avoidance that so many of us go through. And then Um One step further might be

35:46 Stop drinking alcohol for six months and see how you feel. Yeah. Not tonight though, it's fine. Not tonight. Starting tomorrow. Starting tomorrow. So following up just on the feeling your feelings. You said for a long time and you said this to your first therapist, right? Just a nuisance. I'd like to know how to rid myself of

36:05 What changed? How did you end up Going onto team feelings. So I mean it was a long, long process. I mean the the therapy help.

36:16 The psychedelics helped, um, meditation, growth, learning, reading books. Having friends. Stopping drinking. Actually. Just for six months. And I've gone through a lot I've done a lot of work particularly in the last couple years. That's been just super, super important.

36:35 Yeah, just a note on alcohol. Look, I'm gonna have some drinks. I do enjoy drinking, but Yeah. But just a PSA for people because Ketamine is in the air. Ketamine's probably in a few people's pockets here. They're both dissociative anesthetics, so if you want to feel your feelings, it's a good idea.

36:55 Not to engage with those things. Excessively. And if you have a history of alcohol. Overuse. I would also stay away from any at home ketamine. But In terms of books or types of therapy, did you find if there are people in the audience are like, Yeah, you know what, actually that makes sense to me, but I've never been able to

37:12 Find a a handhold to get started. Is there Any advice you may give? Probably Best thing I've ever done in that realm is Hoffman.

37:23 Have you done Hoffman? Hoffman. I haven't done Hoffman, but quite a few of my friends have. So there's a thing called the Hoffman process. It's Twenty years of therapy in a week. In terms of the effect. I mean, I got much more out of it than I ever got in therapy.

37:37 It's a week long retreat. There's a few different places. The main ones in Petaluma, California. You hand over your phone. You go. And do some exercises with

37:47 Thirty six strangers. And yourself. For a week and you've come out a new person. S. I've

37:56 spoken well not directly, I've more listened, but had a conversation on this podcast where the Hoffman process came up. And a lot of listeners have gone to the office process and I get letters literally every week. From people Que Thanking

38:11 Me. For not really The proper credit because there's someone else who brought it up. For the Hoffman process. I'm very curious. You mentioned the stranger is

38:21 Part of the reason I haven't gone is I'm like, I don't want to air all of my dirty laundry in front of Twenty strangers. I don't know these people. And I know you're also I think it's fair to say pretty introverted. I would say I am, even though I'm on stage, like safely doing speaking into the darkness. Was that an issue at all for you, or how did you It wasn't it wasn't easy, but it's just in the context of it.

38:47 It just feels very safe. One of the fascinating things is it's strangers. You're you are not allowed to say your last name or what you do in the real world when you get there. So you connect with people, and I realised After a few days. I relied so much on people knowing who I was or what I did that it w was this

39:07 Veil between me and uh other humans. So you get to know people such a deep level. without really knowing any of the normal things that we would say you meet someone here, Oh, what do you do? Where do you you know, where do you live? And That just feels incredibly safe, but the process is

39:26 They've been doing it for fifty some years. It's very evolved. It's very well done. You take any of it out of context that sounds weird, like I knew nothing going in. And about five people brought it up to me in random conversations over a week and like okay, this is a message. I'm going to sign up for this thing. Show up and no idea. And then you just dive in and and it's

39:47 Incredible. Yeah, from what I can tell, it's it's somewhat like fight club. It's like first rule of fight club is don't talk about fight club. You're not gonna find much detail on the Hoffman process. This also ties into a question I was planning on asking anyway, which is Are there any habits? Or beliefs.

40:04 That have really positively impacted your life. In the last handful of years. Could also be ten years ago, but it's not a good thing. Uh, you've talked about doing a lot of work in the last Handful of years.

40:16 Any new habits? Beliefs. Tools, anything come to mind that have been really helpful? Yes, uh but I feel like they're the ones that everybody knows.

40:31 Exercise exercise and meditation. I dabbled in for A long time. And then I got much more serious a couple years ago about Both? And really, really dramatic life improvement. Why did you get more serious about them?

40:47 You just wake up one day and you're like, Today's a new day? Or was there a Breaking point. What the fuck am I doing? I'm gonna turn fifty and I need to work a hell of a lot harder to to be in shape than I was. So I just started doing it, I was at home, I had the time. So I did that. Although that g that's increased and you know,'cause you get the positive reward cycle and it feels great.

41:12 And Meditation I've always found super valuable and I just last year On January second Twenty twenty four. I had meditated the day before and like

41:25 I could meditate every single day to this year. And it was just that that sort of psychological hook that you find motivating, even though it's arbitrary. And was like, Yes, I'm gonna meditate every single day in twenty twenty four. That's a goal. And I don't normally set goals like that, but I I was like Okay, let's see what happens. And

41:45 My teacher says it you can't boil water if you keep turning off the flame. And so the consistency of meditation. I underestimated what a dramatic difference that makes and how fast you can drop in if you do it every single day. What type of meditation? Did you decide on the mindfulness?

42:02 Meditation, breath. Awareness. Just like an open monitoring, feel what you feel, see what you see. Yeah. Are you noting things or are you just observing noting? Sometimes no deam.

42:16 And I know you you like to know about products, you know about this product, but the I was using the way. Yep. You've probably talked about that before. The way is a meditation app. I hadn't used a meditation app for years. The way I started using the way it Kevin sent it to me actually. When it was still in data. And I started doing that around that time. Yeah. The way is fantastic. Yeah, Henry Shuckman.

42:39 Just an incredible guy. Hope to meet him in person someday. Do you have a favorite failure or any favorite failures that come to mind? mean you've got you've got a greatest hits list that's Pretty outstanding. I'm just going to do it.

42:53 Wondering. I have a lot of failures. I thought taught you a lot, or in some way, set you up for. Successes later. Let's

43:05 Two possible ways of approaching it. Um Well we're already talking about ODO, which is kind of a failure, that led to Twitter, so that's Obvious. But um A thing that it took me very long time to appreciate that felt

43:19 Like the biggest failure possible was getting fired from Twitter. Mm-hmm. Which I did. I co founded the company. I was CEO for two years and then I got fired. To my great shock and dismay and I was just devastated. Absolutely. Now I looked and I was like wow, I'm probably way happier today than I would have been had I uh

43:44 Had I not. Uh but it took me a while. Took me a long while to appreciate that. What was the silver lining? On that in retrospect.

43:53 Kinda goes back to All our unhappiness comes from thinking things shouldn't be how they are because I was Very upset because of the injustice of it. And and like in the

44:07 What I thought was just dumb на і retrospect. And even at the time I knew I was in over my head to a certain extent, and um Dick, who became the CEO, was much better at certain aspects of the job. I wasn't even that attached to being the the CEO long term. I was just like Maybe we should talk about it before you you fire me. That would seem rude.

44:29 But I mean is my company But um The silver line Line was like I didn't have to do the job anymore.

44:38 That's one. I mean I still Owned a bunch of the company. I didn't have to Do the job. I mean that's like objectively it wasn't that bad. But as an identity and ego hit it was tremendous. I also

44:54 I thought the best thing for the company was for me to say and even not in CEO role, and I tried to negotiate that and that Wasn't accepted and but it was more like This is so wrong. Once I was out of that Um

45:11 You know, some deep reflection happened and and I think a long term path of Personal growth. Are there any People who come to mind who you're tracking Right now? Or anyone you think people should pay more attention to?

45:28 Innovators. Technologists. Thinkers. Alive or dead? I'll mention another book.

45:37 What what I've been geeking out on recently is How the universe works. Small side project. Um

45:47 Which I used to I used to read a lot of physics books and quantum physics just For fun. And then it had been a while, so I started delving into that. More reset a bubble bath, light a candle, read some quantum physics.

46:02 There's a book I'm reading right now called The One by Henry Position. The one is about it's about how It's monism, the idea that the universe is just one thing. And nature and

46:17 Us in this class is all one thing and that the separation is an illusion. How that fits with Quantum physics and and the whole history of quantum physiques and how this idea had come up. But rejected it was very interesting to learn how The implications of that, which we've heard about with multiverse and all these crazy ideas.

46:37 were rejected by scientists who were Materialists. And it was interesting to learn the m materialism in the sciences Basically religion. And that's Fascinating. So

46:51 How did you find this book? My partner James Joaquin. Mm-hmm. We like to talk about how the universe works and then invest in startups.

47:01 Sounds like a great job. Do you tend to find books? Again, just riffing on how you choose your intake, right? And

47:13 There's finding the signal and then there's tuning out the noise. I mean, I haven't had any social apps on my phone for years at this point. Because I just don't have the control to be like the heroin addict wandering into the heroin den. But then there's choosing the signal. And I think books are still if you can do it with a slightly longer attention span or to cultivate that A great way of

47:36 Finding the these like I said earlier, scent trails to follow. But you still have a problem because there are a hundred thousand plus books. Published in hardcover alone in the US every year. How do you choose your books? And do any other books come to mind?

47:54 A month. Probably four or five. Okay. You read a lot more than I do. But I may read two a month, but um

48:03 I think it's kinda haphazard, which is scary because you're gonna like Select a very tiny portion. Yeah, Tim Urban style, right? It's like you got time for However many books left in your life. Great book, by the way, Tim Urban's book. I have the uh It's it's pretty random. It's just like wandering like I'll buy tons of books.

48:24 I read mostly on my phone, but I'll buy physical books. To remember that the book exists. And then uh So I'll have a laying around the house and be like, Oh, Oh, this is interesting. Then I'll go.

48:36 But I feel like I should have a better way. I also watched a lot of YouTube, I have to admit. What do you watch on YouTube? It's gotta be better than what I watch. I end up in some weird corners.

48:51 I watched Music. Like how to make music. make music as a hobby as well. And then like Quantum physics stuff.

49:02 Do you have a background in physics? No. I don't even understand it. I don't want to give the impression that I I I'm an expert on any of this. I just follow my curiosity. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I used to just exclusively consume business and technology and startup stuff.

49:20 Most of my adult life I was CEO of a company. And just Waking up every day desperately trying to make that succeed. And so a lot of my new stuff, like music, is like it's just fun. Mm-hmm. Do you read any fiction?

49:35 I'm trying to read more fiction. I tried reading that book that you recommended a little while back. The Little One. Little Big. Little Big by John Crowley. This is the one. There's the one book that I hesitate to recommend because nine out of ten people. Are just like what the fuck. You even like I can I can handle it. I got this. I'm gonna do it. I d I I gave up. Yeah. The more drugs one is done, the easier it is to eventually get into the talking fish section of the book. Okay. When then you Kinda crossed the Rubicon and that's all in. But yeah, John Crowley. Any other fiction books? So you're trying. Uh just

50:15 Read this Miranda July book, all fours. Okay. She's hilarious. Random. Got it.

50:26 Alright. If we Look back. At the products that you've built. If you were to build any of them again today.

50:36 Are there any features you would either remove or add? They come to mind? I think a lot of Cases I was much too eager to

50:48 Add things. Especially medium. medium had definitely prematurely scaled and I just wanted to create a Why why do you say that? That it's prematurely scaled.

51:00 I'm good at seeing like Systems. A product and like most of the things I build are systems. They're not just You know. A product and

51:12 Lots of experience understanding the internet and publishing some platform and I've like a wanted to build Everything new. And that may or may not have been possible, but I tried to do it all at once, which was I think the mistake. And so that's why I say we're prematurely scaled is just that it takes time

51:34 To get everything right. And you know, the company and the product, et cetera. And because when you're trying to do a whole bunch of things at once, it's Classic failure mode to try to bite off more than Yang Chew and Almost every I'd say eighty percent of the time if I meet with a startup or founder, which I

51:51 Don't really do. Um more. If they ask me their advice is I do less. And so m medium it was like that. It was like build a great writing. Platform.

52:03 And then got in impatient for growth. And was that due to Outside pressure or was that And internally generated pressure. It it was internal, but it w it was self imposed by me, but it was also

52:19 Does the part of prematurely scaling is if You get Beyond a handful of employees. It's as much pressure from employees as it is. From an investors. And if you have everyone around the table and everyone's seeing all then Then you can kinda take your time more. But if you like

52:36 People are having doubts and you have to sell internally all the time. Before you figure it all out? That's a dangerous place to be, so that's where we were for a while. Mm-hmm. So when you say do less, right, I'm sure. A lot of folks in this audience, I've been in a position where I'm trying to do more things than I should taking

52:56 A maybe shotgun approach to trying to impatiently get Seven things done when I should probably put them in some type of logical sequence. So if you're trying to take a more Rifle like approach. And you could give the example with medium or it could be with Mosey or otherwise.

53:15 How do you choose the first few things to focus on when you have this ocean of possibilities? Looking back. We can use this as a starting point at say medium. What would you have focused on in terms of Fear said or otherwise.

53:29 I'll use Moses as an example of that, sorry, because it's fresher in my mind, but Where we've done a much better job. So Mosey originally conceived of as A better contacts app? And the idea was

53:43 It's very old idea, like the Plaxo idea. If you remember that. I do remember. I remember hearing about Plaxo two thousand one or something like that. And The idea of Plaxo, pre-sm, desktop, like a roll of dex on your on your computer But if I have your business card and my Rolodex You can update it.

54:02 And my Rolodex. I heard that idea of like Duh. That's like the one of the many things that the internet is going to change is like the difference of being in a connected world versus a disconnected world is and what utility and great stuff come from that. And then Fast forward twenty twenty three, we still have that.

54:22 Which is kind of crazy. Like I have I have this contact app. And it's like lacking information, it's incomplete, it's outdated. So it's like I'm gonna build a better contacts app. And then it w led to the idea of okay, if you managed to do that and got lots of people connected, then you would actually have this private social network. Then you could do all kinds of things. And one of the ideas

54:43 we had was location sharing or like city level location sharing, but we also had these ideas around Customizing if it's a digital business card, it was like what if you could customize it, make it look really cool and choose your fonts and colors and w wouldn't that be just fun and kind of A throwback. So we we actually built that. We built this whole system for making these cool looking cards that would show up For your friends in your Mosey.

55:11 And Then we killed it all. Thankfully. And then that was that was painful because you know you've gone down a path with the team. They work really hard and like Actually, you know what?

55:22 This is complicating our vision because what we're hearing from people and what we're sensing is That's kinda noise compared to the utility. What I just wanna know is when my friend's in town. when I'm going to a city like where are my friends and all the rest of this is noise, so we rip that up. How

55:41 Are you going to approach The invite process to show your contacts. Because this this seems to have been a challenge with Some previous attempts at this work. If I look at my contacts, I've had I mean my contacts is this bloated monster.

55:58 Full of people. A lot of them are. Sort of acquaintances I don't really want to keep in touch with. They're probably a handful of frenemies where I'm like definitely don't want to see those people. Some crazies Don't want to see them either.

56:10 But they're still somewhere hidden in my contacts. So how do I just have My real friends notified. Good question.

56:21 We are assuming for starters who made this false assumption, if you are in the phone book someone else and they're in yours. That you're willing to share more than your phone number. You're you're willing to share your private profile. And we're not sharing anything that's never public, but that's If you've given your phone number to them. It's not addressed.

56:43 It's like social handles, it's more or less what you show up on a social network profile. But some people are nervous about that. So eve I mean you can not sync your contacts and build it from scratch, wouldn't would be the answer. And then plans have a separate mode. What people are most nervous about and we want to make very clear is It's not gonna tell everybody in your address book where you are. We don't even automatically update your location.

57:10 And then at the plan level there's another level of privacy where you just say You have to actually opt in to say this person can see my plans. Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. We're trying to take a conservative approach to privacy but balance that Obviously with ease of use and growth and having enough nodes in the network, but we

57:31 We're not compromising on privacy. We never want to surprise someone that they're sharing information with that. random X or crazy person who happens to be in their phone book. Yeah. Uh so we're we're coming up on time pretty quickly. You guys excited for a fun night? There's a lot there's a lot coming.

57:49 You mentioned I think it was January twenty twenty four. I could meditate every day this year. Do you have anything On the docket for twenty twenty five that's like that? Do you make resolutions?

58:03 No, that was the only one I'd I'd made in in years, actually. Other than the just general themes like dance more. Here we are tonight. You guys are in luck. You guys ready? Alright, well we're gonna we're gonna land the plane. Anything else you'd like to So you have any closing comments? Um thoughts for the audience. I would just say, Tim, thank you for having me. Um Tim and I have known each other for like twenty years. I've never been on the podcast. That was fun. And it's just a whole night of nostalgia because we're back in Austin.

58:37 And it's dignation. And it's um it's Good time, so I hope you guys enjoy it. Yeah, I will say, guys, it feels like the mojo's back to South Bye after Covid. It took a few years. And you have an amazing night in store. So we'll get more people out here in just a minute. I will be back out in maybe a half hour. I have a a surprise and maybe even some gifts for everybody here. So stick around. And Ev, thank you. So much fun. Have a great night, everybody.

59:09 Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bold Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmas, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash.

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