Transcript

CEO Diaries: The Brutal Mistake That Almost Crippled Snapchat!

0:00 Today's Moment episode features Evan Spiegel, the CEO and co founder of Snapchat, and he has a tremendous emphasis on hiring people and culture, which is one of the most important things in business. The reality of running a small business is that switching off is never really an option. Even when you try, the ideas, the excitement and all the responsibility is always there. And because you're always switched on, it's only fair that your hiring partner should be too. LinkedIn Jobs, who are the sponsor of this moment's episode, has been that hiring partner for me and for years, because it's always working away in the background. My team can post our jobs for free, share them with our networks, and reach top talent all in the same place. So let's get into today's conversation. Let's go back to the um those early days. You're in that office.

0:43 When you think about the people in that photo that were part of the first order twenty. How important in hindsight is hiring? I think it's everything. I think it's everything. And These

0:56 were really, really just wonderful. People. I mean still, you know. uh in many cases close friends. And I think interesting there was a moment I realized um David, Daniel, Bobby, and a couple other of our original engineer all of them uh, you know, original engineers were musicians as well.

1:15 And it was really interesting this moment, uh, you know, because The the early folks who were working on the engineering side of of Snap were Unbelievably creative. and unbelievably Talented. And it it was an interesting like aha

1:30 moment because I think oftentimes people think of the disciplines as separate, like oh, there's designers and then over there there's engineers. And I think so much of the magic actually is when those disciplines like combine or cross over or people who really love and appreciate both. Especially for a company that's aspiring to Be creative. Absolutely. And everything that's doing. Um on this point of hiring

1:52 Did you make any hiring mistakes? In those early days. Oh, absolutely. And what were those mistakes? Not necessarily people, but the the frameworks w were off or the way that you've hired these people or what what What caused the mistakes? I think occasionally in the early days, um

2:08 We almost like over indexed on the wrong types of experience, if that makes sense. So One of the things we really wanted to do was bring in people who were very, very experienced leaders who had run much bigger teams. That was like if we want to build a big company, we gotta find people who have Run. Big companies and big teams. And so one of the early engineering leaders who join our team, I think he, you know, he was coming from from working on a team of three hundred or something like that at at Amazon was coming to like a team of eight at at Snapchat. But we were really thinking ahead about like how can we hire people who can actually help us scale here and and build something. uh really big and I think

2:45 That that sort of focus on leadership experience and experience leading at scale was really valuable. I think What was oftentimes a bit less valuable in those early days were was almost more people who had very specific domain expertise. So there were people who would, you know come into our come for an interview or something like that and be like, Well I think what you guys should do is add likes because every other platform has likes. So if you just add likes, then people will, you know, use your service more. And not really coming with the same open mindedness and curiosity about

3:16 Well why is Snapchat doing it differently? Like why don't you have likes and comments? Like what Well, how are you thinking about the service um differently? And and how could I how can I change and grow and adapt to the way that you're thinking about it to help you grow faster? And And so I think now one of the things we're always looking for in the interview process is adaptability, right? It's amazing to have prior experience, but the question is how do you apply that prior experience to a new context and change and adapt the way that you see things, change your perspective. Um you know, to be able to meet the needs of our business, which is different than, you know, other businesses.

3:50 Wha what are the other factors? If you if you were to make a perfect Snapchat employee now. What would their personality be, their their psychology, their The attributes. We ha we have three values and three leadership behaviors. Three values are kind, smart, and creative.

4:05 That's been the the those have been the value since the the very beginning, really because Bobby and I were just having a conversation. Like what kind of people do we want to work with? Kind of smart creative, like Great. But since then, and and we can spend some more time talking about this, I think what was really fascinating over time was to learn, you know, and by the way, ten years ago, people were not talking about kindness at work. I mean people will be like, sorry, what? You know, no kind no kind smart creative. Like why kindness? What we found was that with the that the relationship between kindness and creativity is really, really important because unless people feel comfortable

4:37 coming up with crazy ideas unless they feel comfortable that if they say, you know, they have some new idea and it actually isn't that great, that they're not gonna be laughed at, that they'll be supported, right? Unless you have that sort of supportive culture, it's very hard to be creative. And so we learned over time that actually, wow, kindness is is kind of the essential ingredient if you want to have a creative A creative. Culture. Anyways, kind smart creative, smart, pretty self explanatory. Um and then uh

5:05 When it comes to leadership behaviors, there's three leadership behaviors or attributes we look for. I just want to pause on that point of kind. Do you make a distinction between someone being Nice. And being kind because in your environment you also mentioned that you do these critique sessions and you're giving people crit critical feedback and if a culture gets a little bit too kind. Then isn't that gonna

5:24 inhibit innovation and feedback. We always differentiate between kind and nice. There's a couple of examples that I think help with that. So like for one, um I think it's really kind to tell somebody that they have something Sucking our teeth. Yeah. You have something stuck in your teeth, you you want to know about it, right? It might make you feel awkward, certainly as the person pointing it out, it's a little awkward, right? If you want if you just wanna be nice, you pretend nothing's going going on and you just say, Oh, you know, nice to meet you, whatever. But if you're really being kind and you wanna help that person, you say, you know, you've got something stuck in your teeth. You gotta you gotta take care of that. And I think that helps distinguish between, you know, niceties and

5:58 Being kind and really wanting to help. help somebody. I think I think another great example is if somebody is really struggling you know, at work or they're struggling to grow, or they're struggling with, you know, to to perform um the you know, their duties at at Snap. you know, the nice thing to do is maybe just make them feel good about it. Oh, don't worry, uh you know, um I'm sure it'll be okay. The kind thing to do is really help them succeed, right? Say, hey, this isn't working because

6:22 You're doing X, Y, and Z, you know, here are some things to do to think about that differently, provide that really direct feedback. That allows people to grow and that's the kind thing to do, rather than just making them feel good about Not meeting expectations. Leadership values, you said there's three. Leadership. Okay, there's three of them. The first one is is T shaped leadership. So we talk a lot about T shaped leadership. What we mean by that is that you have a real depth of experience, a depth of expertise in a given area, and then a real breadth of understanding of the business overall, and an ability to connect with lots of different types of people who think different ways. Cause you need to be able to connect your expertise to all the different areas of our business to really drive. Impact as a leader. I mean, I think that's one of the like almost the hallmarks of running a business today is it's basically impossible to do anything interesting without a team. Right. The way that the world works today is very complicated. And it's really important that you have folks who have deep expertise, but then they have to apply it to all these other cross-functional areas. You know, so they have to have a familiarity with it and an ability.

7:21 to relate to people with different, you know, viewpoints or or other, you know, uh areas of expertise. So And as we proceed with this these leadership principles, are you saying that in order to become a leader at Snapchat, you need these three things? Or are you saying everybody at Snapchat needs these three things? We think everyone is a leader. So we do apply it uh broadly, but of course, you know, um Yeah. You know, I I think it's really important as we're thinking about hiring or bringing in a new leader, or that you know, that this is something that we we talk to folks about. So if someone's not quite T shaped if they're a little bit I shaped. Is there something they can do to become a bit more T T shaped?

7:55 Yeah, that I that's almost maybe the the easier one, right? If you can build on a if you can build on a real depth of expertise by going engaging with folks maybe outside of your comfort zone or in different parts of the business and build that curiosity and understanding, that helps develop, I think, that breadth of understanding. I think what's harder is if you're a generalist and you don't have that deep skill set or that deep area of expertise, it's really, really hard to bring enough value. to the team, right? And I think that's w that's where people get frustrated with like the idea of middle management, right? Where it's like, oh, this is just a person who, you know, knows a little about a lot, but can't really help me solve this problem because they don't really know the details. They don't really understand you know, how how to help me, you know, grow as an individual or solve this tough technical problem. And so I think that's why that area of of expertise is so important because it's so hard to inspire people that you're working with if you don't know a lot about, you know, the the area that you're working in. And do you need to be a T shape leader at Snapchat? Now

8:52 And when there was ten of you in the in the bedroom? Or in your dad's house? Has it always been important or is that a function of being bigger? It's a great question. I wish we had been more thoughtful about the leadership values and and characteristics we were looking for back then. I think, you know, when you're working on a team of 10 or a team of twenty, you're not thinking as much about what are what leadership characteristics are really important to us. It's more about like, how do we survive tomorrow. Um you know, but but I think over time as we learned what leaders were really successful at Snap, we were able to, you know,

9:23 kind of look at those attributes and say, okay, you know, these are the leaders who can who who really succeed here and drive a lot of value for our business. Before we move on to the s the second two, if this Evan could have gone back to the Evan that was running a team of ten, and he could have pulled them aside and said, Listen Here's some advice that you're gonna need to know. About leadership in building this team. The most critical advice I could give you at this time.

9:44 And this is for all the entrepreneurs out there that are building it. They're laying the foundations of a potentially very big company right now. What would you have whispered in his ear? I would have said everything's gonna be okay. Really. Everything's gonna be okay.

9:55 Um you know, I I think sometimes People are too focused na on. making the right decision and not as focused on fixing it if they're wrong. And I think what I would have put more emphasis on is just how quickly Are you changing your mind when you receive new information? How quickly are you fixing a problem or a mistake?

10:18 If you didn't make the right decision in the first place. And that's the feedback loop that is so mission critical to building a a business in the early days. It has very little to do. Obviously, there's existential decisions, you know, and those can You know, create some big problems for your business, but most decisions are not existential decisions. And the more important thing is to make a decision, and then if you're wrong, Fix it. Um and I think it's the When you're wrong.

10:42 fixing it part that deserves most of the attention and and also how you can identify, you know, who your great leaders are, who, you know, uh who really talented folks on the team are because they're very quick to point out, you know, I don't think we did that. Right. I think we should take this path. you know, uh this other path that you know we we maybe hadn't considered the first time. And and I think it takes courage to to say that in in an organization rather than just say, Oh, we're doing a great job. And when you're back there and you're you've made a mistake, there's something you've done wrong.

11:10 In hindsight. Did you know? 'Ca'cause one of the things that I think of when I was a first time founder building a student notice board was I would get feedback And the feedback would be saying, You're wrong about this, you need to change.

11:24 And I think sometimes there was a part of me that knew, but I was like too scared. to act upon it. So I kind of like gaslit myself to just keep going. And I think a lot of founders do that. I know this because they they come to me in my portfolio and they say, Oh Steve, there's this guy we've hired and he's been there now for a year and he's just not cutting it. I'm like, why the fuck are you telling me? And the they're they're procrastinating, avoiding the conversation, but clearly they know. Clearly they know it's not right. It's funny you say that because any time someone comes to ask me about like that type of people advice, like what do you think we should do? You know, do you think that I'm like, sounds like you've already made up your mind. Um so yeah, I I think it is I think it is really important to, you know, act on that.

12:06 feedback, not be afraid to change direction quickly if you know you you realize that you made a mistake. But as you point out, it's It's hard to do. And sometimes it is worth seeing if you know your your bet you know, plays out. You don't want to thrash the team and change your mind all the time. So sometimes, you know It is it is sometimes worth seeing things through a little bit before you change. Is there anything else you would have said to that younger Evan in that In your dad's house.

12:29 Advice. Um At at that point before we had scaled to a lot of, you know, thousands of people, I think we could have been much more clear on the culture, the kind smart creative piece, and really embedded that in the team prior To scaling, because one of the biggest challenges that we confronted was, you know, as we went from twenty people to two thousand people, we basically imported all of these different cultures from all sorts of different companies. Like we imported an an Amazon contingent, right? We em you know who

13:00 They really love their six page documents. We, you know, imported a a Google uh contingent, right? And they're very focused on consensus based decision making. We impor a contingent from from Meta as well. And I think we were too slow to be really clear about what our values were and what that looked like in practice. What those behaviours look like. And I think if we had earlier and and faster one so when when we're evaluating performance we look at our values kind, smart creative, we have specific

13:30 behaviors attached to that that are actually research backed and whatever. We did a whole study to understand which of those behaviors are really tied to performance and those values. But that gives people a really clear framework for the expectations for how to behave at SNAP and our unique culture. And there there was a moment of time uh moment in time where I felt like we were losing control of our culture and I wasn't happy with our our company and the team. I remember I was complaining To a friend of mine, this is probably like your story of of folks coming to you and saying, Oh, it's not working. I was I was complaining to a friend of mine and I was just like, Man, I just don't

14:02 Like I don't like it. Like I don't like my job. I don't like what our companies become. And she just looks at me and she's like, then fix it. Great point. And and I you know, I think at that it just it had changed and grown so quickly that it was really hard to stay true to our values, but I think, you know, uh I really took that ad advice to heart and just started trying to fix it with our team, getting really clear about the values, getting really clear about the behaviors, holding a higher bar and saying, Hey You know, if you're not into the kind smart creative thing, that's okay. There are other companies with different cultures, but you know, that really matters to us here. I hope you found today's conversation helpful and insightful. If you're ready to join two and a half million other small businesses already using LinkedIn for hiring, head over to LinkedIn.com slash DOAC now. That's LinkedIn.com slash D O A C to find your next exceptional hire.