Twitter’s former Head of Product opens up: being fired, meeting Elon, changing stagnant culture, building consumer product, more | Kayvon Beykpour

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/8ae8c9cd6a34522b

The first time I ever met Elon was over at FaceTime. It's just like, do you want to just like come like hang out? You can swipe left or swipe right. You're kind of known for at Twitter someone that turned the culture of the product team and Twitter in general from a very stagnant, nothing is changing product to shipping all the time. We wanted to change the lack of ambition, the lack of creativity, the lack of customers feeling the
The part changed at all. So here's a list of stuff that you or teams ship while you were there. Super follows, communities, newsletters, topics, leads, testing reactions, edge to edge photos, twitter blue, spaces, and obviously live video. The sacred cows are like their own roadmap. What are all the things that you think we're not allowed to change? Let's start there. And this was all relatively quickly. I was like I might flame
out completely but how if I don't try?

Today my guest is Kavon Bakepor. Kavon was the beloved and longest tenured head of product at Twitter.
And also GM of the consumer business at Twitter.
Up until the day that it was sold to Elon Musk.
He landed at Twitter through an acquisition of his company Periscope.
Which was the world's largest live streaming platform.
Which ended up inspiring Instagram Live, TikTok Live, Facebook Live, and basically every other social network getting into Live Video. He sold the company to Twitter in 2015, continued leading Periscope for a number of years, and then moved into leading product and then the entire consumer business. In our wide ranging conversation,
K-Von shares what it was like getting Elon up to speed at Twitter.
What it was like to be fired from Twitter, which actually happened during his pap leave.
He also shares all kinds of lessons and stories from transforming Twitter's internal culture from a risk-averse, stagnant product org to one that was shipping major features regularly.
We talk about how they used aqua hires and up and coming hungry product leaders to lead new initiatives and break through many of their sacred cows.
We also get into jobs to be done.
Elon's layoffs of most of Twitter's staff after the acquisition.
His lessons from building and shutting down Periscope.
And also building consumer products in general.
And so much more, this episode is full of stories and lessons and a bunch of stuff that you haven't heard anywhere else.
With that I bring you Kavon Bake Pour after a short word from our sponsors.
And if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube.
It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast.
Tremendously.
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Kayvon, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Lie. Great to meet you finally.
It's amazing to meet you. I think this is gonna be quite a unique and interesting podcast.
A big thank you to Scott Belski, illustrious former podcast guest for introducing us.
So when he introduced us
The one thing that he
Told me is that hopefully K Von will share
the story about our time getting Elon up to speed at Twitter.
I would love to hear that story. I bet other people would too. Are you able to share that story?
You know, when all the drama went down with with Twitter and uh Elon ended up buying the company and
Um
After the
eight months saga of legal back and forth ended up actually taking control of the company.
Um there is that first like
two day period where it was complete chaos at Twitter with the sync and like
Elon
Spreading his tentacles trying to find out like
you know, who are the people that he wants to keep and what are the projects that are interesting
І не міст в о
Scott ended up getting contacted and being asked like, you know, who should I who should you know, Elon talk to and
Scott recommended that
Um
You want that with me.
And so I I the first time I ever met Elon was over FaceTime.
Um where
Uh you know, I was just very curious to ask like
Hey, you know, you were at Twitter for a while, you seem to
you know, have have done some things
Like what what should I be digging into and who should I be talking to?
At the end of that conversation, um, we ended up arranging an in person meeting.
Where Scott and I
um went to Twitter HQ to actually meet Elon. I think this was like day two of Elon having
You know, brought the sink in.
And so we have this really
bizarre wild but really fun
Experience of
walking into Twitter HQ and in my case walking back to Twitter HQ for the first time after having been fired, which was a very strange experience for me.
And
You know, we we walked into the building. I was sort of like
like scurried through the back door'cause it I didn't want to make a scene and and make it, you know
Um
There was a lot of like rumors around like is Kavon coming back and I just wanted to avoid all of that.
Um, and so it was just like a very weird experience of being like
scurry through the elevator and through the back door and go to this like massive conference room
That's which we add on the second floor of the one tenth building.
And in that massive conference room
It was me, Scott.
uh Elon and then at the very, very end of the the room, Walter Isaacson, who, by the way, like I had a hard time
I knew I recognized. I'd never met Walter in person, but I was like
Is that Walter Isaacson?
Um but he said nothing the entire time and we'd have this very you know, we had probably like a two hour conversation
Yeah, talking about
The past, the future, Twitter.
Um the good, the bad, the ugly.
At the very end of the conversation, Walter came up and introduced himself and was like, Hi, C on I'm Walter. Like, can I get your information just in case I need to ask any follow up questions? And I was like, Oh shit
I guess that whole conversation was on the record. I don't know. So it was a very surreal experience.
Um for a
Bunch of reasons.
Including just being weird.
For me, since I was very conflicted.
about coming back to Twitter even physically in the office.
Um
But it was
I must say it was like it was really fun. It was fun.
Talking to someone I mean obviously Elon
I've never met him before and he's
One of the most
You know.
Um
Successful.
entrepreneurs of our time.
And so that was exciting.
Um
to to kind of like go into that meeting and also
Mm.
I had been spending so much time dreaming about Twitter and trying to mold Twitter in a direction that I
I thought was compelling and working with a team of people to to do that.
And to meet someone who
Who who also had a similar sort of ambition, um, but you know, obviously in in different ways, he had his own dream for for Twitter, but it is sort of
Really bizarre and unique and surreal.
seeing that glimmer in someone else who is like, yeah, I also just bought this thing.
So I can actually do whatever the hell I want. And by the way, here's some like crazy dreams I have for doing it. It was just a really
As someone who would
Mm.
had their own dreams for the product. Like witnessing that was um
It was really unusual and and and cool. Um so I think that's like
Probably what Scott m meant when he said to you you should ask Cavon about that was I think we both kind of recognized that, like
Something's about to happen here. Obviously, like you have this very public spectacle of someone essentially having a takeover of a public company.
But all of that stuff aside, also, um, you could tell Elon was scheming and cooking up like w you know
What am I gonna do with this? Um
And that was
It was cool.
Took to see that.
That's a an amazing story. I love the Walter Isaacson component of it.
Do you feel like you made a dent on his
approach and way of thinking. Obviously he made a lot of big radical changes.
Uh, do you feel like you made a dent in his view of where Twitter should go?
Uh
I don't I don't know. I certainly don't think I've made any impression on how you should run the company. I think
I think that's you know, Elon's gonna Elon in his way and I think you know, he certainly has had some radical
moves in terms of
you know, how how he's running the company, the decisions he made, like how many people he let go.
Have a company structure the
Culture and all that stuff is like
You know, w uh we didn't even talk about that stuff.
I think you know what we spent time talking about is
Um I
you know, shared my perspective with him of like people I thought who were exceptional, who were at the company and
And
If I was in his shoes, like who I would
Spend time with an embrace and
You know, most of the people that I mentioned are still there, which is which is awesome. And they they seem to be
A empower, which is great, and B like
having fun, which is which is awesome.
So you know, hopefully that stuff is useful. Um
We spent a bunch of time t brainstorming products um and and
And you know, I had sort of my set of projects that I was very passionate about because we'd sort of given given birth to them and
And
Yeah, I think a bunch of those.
projects it seems like Twitter's still investing in and
putting a lot of energy behind like community notes, which at the time was called Bird Watch.
Um, but I you know, I always thought
Really bullish on that being the future of how
Essentially how like content is moderated on Twitter.
Just'cause it was very clear that the way we were handling content moderation
Um
Among many other flaws just wasn't scalable.
Um
and spaces and communities and
uh the creator program of help you know helping people make money on the platform like it's it's those are projects that
We started um you know over the year ish.
prior to Elon taking over and my hope, you know, having left the company and having had a new leader come in.
was that those things would be given more oxygen and it's been it's been awesome to see that
Those have been continuing to to sort of grow and
be molded in different directions. So um
Um yeah, I think it in in that sense I hope that
You know, our brainstorm was useful, but I mean, for all I know, he doesn't even remember the conversation, so

I freaking love community notes, it's such an amazing product.
Let me ask two more.
dramatic oriented Elon Twitter questions just to get these out of the way.
The first is you said you were fired.
I don't know if you've shared that publicly. People always wondered, I think, what happened. I know you tweeted.
During your pat leave. I'm leaving Twitter.
And
No one really knows the story as far as I know, what actually went on there.
It was weird, to say the least. Um, it honestly took me some time to
kind of come to come to peace with it,'cause it was it was
frustrating and and surprising. Um I guess the the story of what ha w when happens starts with um
Jack resigning. Jack resigned in
It was like November of twenty twenty one at the end of the year.
the board, you know, uh chose Prague to be the CEO of the company and um
You know, I've I've had a long relationship with Prague, I I respect him, um, but I I had mixed feelings about about that.
But to his credit.
You know, Prague.
Very quickly.
one of the biggest things that I was
really frustrated about like in the last
Three years essentially of my time at Twitter.
One of my biggest
uh points of feedback and and points of consternation was the structure of the company and that we had a functional organizational model, meaning we had like I had a
Consumer product, me.
Um we had a head of revenue product first, we had a head of engineering, we had a head of design, we had you know research.
It was like a functionally run organization.
And
The combination of that model and the type of leader that Jack was, um
wasn't working in my view. Like I think you know if you're gonna have a functional organization to have a GM or a CEO.
who's like extremely leaned into tie break and uh resolve conflict and
Make sure the team is moving quickly and
Uh Jack for all of his
Amazing qualities like just wasn't operating that way. And so you had a group of highly opinionated people that often disagreed and would
Create.
Either the need for consensus or deadlock. And that just was
driving a lot of people crazy, including including me, and I think really held us back from
From from living up to Twitter's potential.
Anyway, all of that was super frustrating for me.
And the combination of that and
Yeah.
A new a dramatic change in leadership with Jack League and Prague coming in.
Yeah, I wasn't feeling too stoked.
Prog to his credit, uh when he became CEO, quickly changed that.
And
Yeah.
shifted the company to be a GM structure. So
Um, and he, you know, promoted me to being the GM of consumers. So for the prior three ish years
having been responsible for growing Twitter's consumer product, I was only responsible for the product management team.
Um I didn't have engineering or design
Um, and that honestly was like
Difficult. It's like trying to it's very difficult to change culture with like one hand tied behind your back.
Um
Still no regrets had a lot of fun, you know, I think we had some impact, but it was it was frustrating.
So Purog
Change that.
You know, and and and the irony of this, by the way, is he was one of the biggest proponents of the functional structure.
You know, when he became a CO
Hmm.
Um
change the structure, promoting me to d be the GM of consumer. And that was, you know, I was at that point like one month
This is one month before I went on pat leave'cause my daughter was um was due.
And so I sort of went into my paternity leave being like all right, maybe I'm you know, I'm gonna give this a shot, you know, like we'll see
We'll see how this goes. Like, you know.
is Frog addressed the the biggest frustration um that I had with the company and
how it was being run and
So I kind of like
Yeah, I had some trepidations, but went into my Patley feeling.
Optimistic.
Uh mind you, this was all
Before Elon was even part of the picture, he had not
become a board member, he'd not there was no like news about him
having beef with the executive team or or for that matter, like trying to buy the company.
So I went on pat leave, you know, maybe a week and a half before our daughter's due date.
Um three weeks goes by.
Um in that three weeks.
Uh
Elon
Joins the board.
Leaves the board, makes an offer, has a short
Dramatic.
feud about whether that that goes through.
And and also during that time my daughter was born.
Um
Some drama at the hospital for us, but
A week a week afterwards we come home.
Mom's healthy, daughter's healthy.
Um the day after we get home from the hospital, Prague
called me and said that he was letting me go and that he was taking the team in a different direction.
And that night
Twitter signed a term sheet with Yuan to sell the company.
So
You know.
A lot happened in a very short period of time.
Um and the the you know, the reason that Frog gave is exactly what I shared publicly.
Which was that he wanted to take the team in a different direction.
Um uh you know, the only only other thing he said is that
Um, given that new direction, he thinks that the things that I'm good at
Twitter doesn't need anymore and the things that Twitter needs are not particularly
in my skill set or in my interest.
He wasn't particularly expressive about what those um what that direction was, but that was the reason he gave me.
And that was
A huge
Bummer for me. For a bunch of reasons. One
Um I love the company, I love the product and and also just like sucks the
Leave not on your own terms.
And two, it was just confusing the timing was very frustrating and confusing for me, not least of which because I had just come home from the hospital while on paternity leave.
Um but also because
You know
At that time especially
The fact that Elon was buying the company
Was
Um
Well, I was conflicted, honestly. I was very excited because Elon is someone that I looked up to immensely. Um
And you know, you just look at the things that he's achieved in the world.
Um
And you can't help but be inspired by that. And two
Twitter for all of
I think the impact and progress that we had made.
Had a lot of
challenges associated with its its governance and the fact that it was constantly vulnerable
as a public company. So that there's just always this drama associated with Twitter as a public company, even a private company before that, that made it extremely hard
As a builder.
To get shit done and like have a have the product live up to its potential and
Um one of the benefits of this particular takeover was that
Elon offered a path towards
Solving all that, it was like Oh, cool. Now you've got one owner who happens to be, by the way, extremely opinionated about the product and a voracious consumer and
Creator of the product.
I there was something.
I think there's an incredible opportunity in that.
That
Now you have this organization and this product and this incredible ecosystem that can
be devoid of all the political bullsh associated with being a public company and
And now it has this like
conduit to just living up to its potential. So
It was a bummer to
To have
To be removed from that, I suppose, um, without
without having any agency myself.
So that was very long with an answer to your question, but that's kind of what happened towards the end there. And
Like I said at the beginning.
It took me a while to come
to terms with it and to be at peace with it. And I I did eventually
I mean listen, there's like a a huge silver lining of I spent the first
You know, year of my daughter's life.
with her and my family and
My wife Sarah had live Twitter.
like eight months prior.
to to me leading and so you know, when's the next time we could all be together and have time and space to just enjoy each other in our new our new family.
And and frankly, to avoid a lot of the drama that ended up ensuing that's not a lot of people could have predicted.
Um the deal was on. The deal was off.
You know, it's just a whole lot of drama that I I got to miss.
Um which which, you know, is the silver lining.
And then it was confusing there for a bit because when you know, when Elon did end up buying the company.
Um
You know, in that in that conversation.
that I had with him. It was definitely
I was conflicted about like do I want to maybe
Spend some time working on this still?
And you know that
Elon was very
Cool about
He actually used this phrase at the end of our conversation, which I still find hilarious. He was just like
Do you want to just like come you seem like you care about a product and you don't have
Dumb ideas and like do you want to
Come like hang out?
And I was like
What would my job be? And he was like
No, you know. Just like
Hang out and
You can swipe left or swipe right or I you know he used the swipe right, swipe left.
Tender metaphor, and I thought that was
kind of hilarious coming from him. For like ideas that come up just like here that swipe. Like we did he's like, you don't have to we don't have to make this a thing. Just like, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, work on work on the topic with us.
And so I you know, I I sort of
Ended up deciding that actually
I'm just ready to
I'm ready to move on. You know, I've spent enough time
at this company at this product try to um shape it into something that I was
passionate about. I think it's
someone else's turn and and you know, especially Elon, like you buy it.
It's your turn, you know, it's you can do whatever you want with it. So
Um, that was conflicting for a bit, but I would say towards the end of the year, it was pretty pretty clear in my mind that I was ready to move on and
And start thinking about other problems.
What I think about is there's always this uh
Tension being a PM at a company with a very strong minded product oriented founder. And I feel like you would have been in the epitome
worst possible situation there where
Your product.
leader between Elon and the rest of the orc. So I think it probably would not have worked out.
I'm not sure I would have been able to articulate it as s succinctly as you did just now, but I think that is the feeling that I had.
Um

It's not
It's not my place anymore, you know, like I I don't have a canvas to
Try and
Exert my
My dreams on this place. I think it's, you know
Elon Elon took that mantle and and you know, I'm excited to see
What is what is
What he's gonna do with it is is kind of the feeling I had.
Yeah.
So you touched on this. You you're kind of known for at Twitter as someone that turned
the culture of the product team and Twitter in general from a very stagnant
Nothing is changing product to shipping.
All the time. All kinds of stuff. So here's a list of stuff that I've gathered.
You or team's ship while you were there.
Twitter Blue, which is I think called premium now spaces.
Super follows communities, newsletters, topics, fleets.
Being able to see Instagram photos in line.
Testing reactions.
Edge to edge photos.
Tons of UX improvements.
And obviously live video.
What did you learn about?
how to change a product culture from
A company that's very risk averse and essentially just not shipping a lot to taking big bolt bets and becoming a lot more open to new stuff.
Trying to drive culture change is
But one of the most
challenging things and rewarding things. Um
Like I you know, for the first year of my role
There is a chapter of my time at Twitter.
Uh maybe just a back up that was just leading Periscope.
And and in that first chapter of maybe two years, I was not really involved with
Twitter stuff all that much.
Um that started to change when we really tried integrating Periscope with with Twitter.
But sort of chapter two of my time at Twitter was when I became the head of product and
That first year of being the head of product was like
one of the most difficult of my career, not because the work was difficult, but because it was so
politically and bureaucratically exhausting to try and
change culture in a way that just there wasn't alignment around. And it comes back to the point I was making earlier earlier around like
the organization of the company was was functional. And so, you know, it's one thing for me to
Have some
ideas and and a plan and a strategy are that that I felt compelling, but
You know, when when you have to essentially drive consensus amongst your peers.
across the other functions. It's
Yeah.
It's that's a different game. That's not execution. That's like politics and consensus building and I both can't stand that stuff, but I'm just
I think like
Um, this is gonna sound like I'm too doing my own home, but like good enough at it and p I have enough patience at it.
That I kind of like
You know
I invested the time and and the energy. I think a less patient person wouldn't have bothered and would have throwed their hands up.
Um, but I
I think honestly a lot of it just comes down to like I pr I'd practice. Like at my first company that I started in college was one of my best friends, Joe, who I ended up co founding.
Uh, Periscope West.
We got acquired um by a big public ed tech company called Blackboard.
And like we were nineteen at the time when we got thrown into like
A public
Yeah, I was a senior executive at a public company.
That was like
Not your quintessential tech company was even more
difficult to kind of get things done. And so through the four years I spent there, I learned a lot about how to like
Navigate.
that type of environment. And so it was it all kind of came coming back when
When I was given the product role at Twitter
Yeah, that first year of changing culture was like
You know.
Walking through mud.
Um
And
It was really difficult, but I think when we started
building that alignment and sort of like
building excitement that like, oh actually maybe this maybe we should be taking some bigger swings.
Um and we s when we started seeing through
the execution against some of those plans, I think it ended up
Um
It got
Easier and easier, right?'Cause it it's sort of it becomes addicting. I think people end up feeling
Like oh wow, maybe these sacred cows we had.
Didn't need to be so sacred.
And I so I think, you know, after that first year it became a lot more fun.
It was still difficult, but it c became
It felt like we were all swimming in the same direction a lot more.
But I think my my takeaway there is like you just you can't change culture without having
Alignment
From the from the top.
Um you can't change culture.
It's difficult to change culture when you have like a pocket of a company.
trying to you know advocate for change.
So I think we we got there in the end. We didn't move as much urgency as I think we drove.
We were not fast enough, we were not bold enough, like I'm like I was consistently dissatisfied with
What
I was achieving and what our team was achieving.
But I think, you know, we we did make a change. You know, like Twitter was an organization that
had a lot of sacred cows and became very calcified in its ways.
Literally when when
You know, in the first two years I was at the company, the stated
product strategy for Twitter was
Refine the core.
It was like you know, don't we're not che
Yeah, we're not making any big bets here.
Team.
Our goal is to like keep turning the knobs that are working.
And listen, like as much as I was
kinda throwing stones from the side sidelines through that period when I was in Periscope Land in our separate office a few blocks away from the mothership.
That focus actually did
help the company for some period. Like the reason why Twitter went from stagnant to declining DAU growth.
to
growing DAU again is because they refine the core, right? This is when they went from the reverse chronological timeline to the rank timeline. And that, you know,
And the and the year after that was a lot of knob turning. It was like how do we make these recommendations better? How do we make our push notifications more relevant?
Now that is not an inspiring product strategy. That does not result in the product feeling materially different or adding new capabilities, but
It did.
um return the company to user growth.
Um and I think that the fact that it did actually
calcified the organization's
Um
sort of reticence to take any risky bets even more. So it's a very interesting
uh sort of predicament. Um'cause when I when I
Yeah.
got into the role.
The goal wasn't to change that progress. Like we wanted to continue reaping the benefits of
refining the things about the product and were working really well. What we wanted to change was a lack of ambition, the lack of creativity, the lack of
customers feeling that the product was a changed at all.
'Cause you would hear people I mean one of the beautiful things about
working on Twitter as a product is that you have literally like
Customers being injected into your veins. Every single day, whatever you change about a product or whatever you don't change, they're telling you what they love and what they hate.
And it is
both exhausting and exhilarating. It is like the one of the most ridiculous luxuries of product development is working on a product that
that many people use and therefore you get that much feedback around.
And
It was a very common thing for us to hear people say
What you what are you all doing over there? Like the product hasn't changed in like
Eight years.
And that was
Horrible to hear. That was like and I felt it too as a as a critic on the sidelines, as a as a user who wasn't an employee, who eventually became an employee. Like I had the same feedback.
And so that was my
I I I that was my mission. I was like I'm
you know, somehow ridiculously in this fortunate position that I've been entrusted some responsibility here, like
I might
you know, flame out completely, but
Hell if I don't try.
And so that was
both fun and exhausting, like I said, but um
It was really
It was as simple as starting with like
We are voracious users of the product ourselves. And and if we aren't, by the way, that's its own problem. Like
I don't I I I think that in order to build
Um
In order to build something wonderful, like you have to be a customer of the product. And sure, I'm sure you could you can point to businesses and products where that's not the case. And I'm sure there's a flaw in that philosophy somewhere, but like
I've always believed that
you know, one of the best ways to build products is to be a customer yourself and and to
Find your own pain coins and uh
you know, build a product that you want to use. And so
That's like actually not that hard to do if you're a a user of of Twitter and you like
You know, can
think critically, we was ripe with opportunity. And so it was actually really fun and amazing to
um be able to kind of craft a a a plan that started to take a swing at some of these
Things.
The other thing I'll add to this is that
There were so many sacred cows on Twitter.
That the sacred towns are like their own roadmap. It's like a built in free roadmap of like all right, what are all the things that you think
We're not allowed to change.
Let's start there, you know?
Everything from like the moving from reverse traum to a ranked feet, that was a sacred cow.
Um
Text and hundred forty characters, that's a sacred cow.
Not letting anyone control
Any tweets that they see on the platform, like
Like the notion of Lenny owning his reply.
reply space was anathema at Twitter. You know, it's just like if a tweet gets
You know, if you're that mentioned.
And you don't like it or it's abusive or it's like
We're not touching that. We can't annotate tweets with community notes. All that stuff will those are all sacred cows.
And
You know, w the the process of starting to address those one by one reveals a lot of the cultural
hesitations that that existed.
Um
So
Yeah, I I'll I'll never forget one of the first
features and this is such a tiny feature that we worked on
You know, after I um
After I started in the role.
Uh we we're
Building this feature called hide replies. Still exists in the product if if someone replies to one of your tweets, like in in the tweet details area, like as a reply to one of your conversations.
Before you had no ability the only way you could
kind of like address
unwanted content was reporting it. So that was like
Twitter acting as policemen and policewoman. Completely unscalable and
um and challenging, especially in the context of like someone replying
To one of your tweets.
And so we wanted to add a feature that let you hide a reply to one of your tweets. And it's not impacting what people say, it's not impacting
free speech in the sense of like you can still broadcast whatever you want, but if you're gonna like come into my reply space.
And say some shit that I don't want to see in my feed, like I should be able to hide that. You know, tweet what you want, but don't at mention don't you can't scream in my face, basically.
Um and I remember w we had a PM on our team
Who is who is leading this feature.
Who
You know, the few weeks into this project.
Uh
mentioned to me that she had had a conversation with someone on the engineering team
that told them
Don't work on this feature.
This is bad for your career.
This is not gonna launch.
And you don't want to work on this
You don't want to be seen as having worked on
This is the same thing.
kind of anathema to
We can't let people hide.
replies to their tweets.
Um, and I just remember hearing that and my my blood was boiling. Like that is like the the most
Um
It is such an interesting representation of the culture, like not just like
Hesitation to try new things.
Which by the way that that product might have failed, and that's fine, but which doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
But like
To go so far as to dissuade
Someone else who is excited about
experimenting with a hypothesis to see if it could help customers on the platform.
And telling them like don't work on this is bad for your careers like as a microcosm for
some of the cultural challenge we had around trying
big bold bet, which by the way, this wasn't even a big bold bet. It was like such a innocuous thing to try.
But there was a lot of that. And it made it very difficult without like
sh some sheer force of will and
Also like
Just a lot of um
Just a lot of effort.
Um, so there's a lot of that.
C Von yours there's like fractals of stories that I can infinitely follow. There's so much interesting stuff.
Here.
Um, one that's just stands out as this idea of the sacred cows become like your future roadmap. It's like flipping it from
Here's the thing that we're all afraid of. No, this is not what we should be doing.
I think that's really
Interesting and could be a lesson to people.
The other is just I I love this point he made about like the growth
was most accelerant when you're just focusing on the core.
Like that's what act like optimize like people bash on optimizing the existing experience and just micro optimizing and improving.
versus trying to take all these big bull bets and experiments. Obviously that's also valuable.
I think it's really interesting that that's
what readnetic growth and was responsible
For
Growth for a while.
Yeah.
And and continue to be, by the way. Like we one of the
um lines that we had to
um maneuver was
Creating a portfolio of bets where
Some of them were
Not speculative at all.
We knew that if we continue to invest in ML.
Um and um getting better with recommendations in the main feed and through notifications and
You know, things like improving the onboarding slow, like there was just it was rife with opportunity. You'd have like
really dumb things happen. Like we we would learn

meeting we had where we
finally had gone more rigorous around around instrumenting our onboarding was what I only found that like
And
A couple countries like we like one of the
We had a bug with our like SMS verification.
Um
flow where, you know, we wanted to verify users um who were signing up with phone number and our telco integration to send SMS verification cards just wasn't working. And so like a huge percentage of people signing up and like the UAE and other countries just like
Couldn't couldn't use Twitter.
And so like of course at the scale that we were operating in with hundreds of millions of users.
you need to be able to
refine the basic building blocks of the product and that's gonna lead to to reliable growth. But we wanted to balance that with
A portfolio of other
Beths and and planic improvements that would.
materially add new capabilities and and that that was a balance that I don't think
Existed.
Uh and and by the way, I don't think we nailed it either, um, under under my tenure, but it it is it was the driving force of what I wanted to achieve was to
create a better balance that would result in
evolving the product and introducing new capabilities and um
And um so that's that's you know, that's what we tried to do.
In terms of what actually helped turn things around, things that I kind of
gathered from what you shared so far. One is just building a little momentum, having some quick wins of new products that people start to get excited about. So creating more excitement.
Down the Oh wow, we can actually try new things.
There's also felt like there's like a
sense of trust that you built with Jack and Execs of just like, okay, we can actually trust this team.
Also it feels like because growth started up
There's probably a sense of like okay, we can try some new
Crazy ideas.
It feels like another part of your strategy was
acquires and bringing in these like entrepreneurial folks to take
the lead on some of these big ideas. Can you talk about that? Was that something?
Yeah, if I thought about it and was that a big part of the
the the impact there.
Totally. Yeah. So I I think the a couple of things. One, the only thing I'd add to what to what you said in terms of the ingredients, it was also just like storytelling.
Uh and just like repetitive storytelling around like
This is the vision. This is what these are the bets we're making and here's why.
And like you can't just tell that story once. And I'm talking internally, by the way. There's a whole other component of this, which is like externally, how do you tell
Especially for a product like Twitter, where you know you have it's a consumer product that hundreds of millions of people are using and you have many constituents, you have users, you have advertisers.
And so w it was very important for us to tell the story of like here's what we're doing and why. Here's why you should believe in us. And by the way.
Give us all your constructive criticism too, because like we're listening and we're gonna build that into you know. So that storytelling was really, really important. And you know, there's
Is like oversimplifying the world, but there's two types of
Internal
team members. There are people who hear that story, who have been a part of the organization who's been slow, or maybe they've been outside as a user of Twitter and they're like, I never really want to work there because like doesn't seem like a particularly ambitious product company.
And one of two things happens when you hear that story. Either
You're inspired and you're like, Yeah, we can finally like
Take a swing at making this product better. Maybe I wasn't interested at working in this company before, but
I mean, this is an iconic product and ha to have an opportunity t to reshape it is really exciting.
Or
You know, again oversimplified.
Well, but there are people who
are very pessimistic and maybe aren't excited by that vision of like why let's just stick to what we know works. You know, we're not gonna take any big swings, that's a waste of time.
I think one of the really important things about
Driving cultural change.
At the leadership levels, you gotta identify
Whether someone's
On the wagon or off the wagon and
Yeah,
quickly convince them to get on the wagon or if they're not on the wagon, like they shouldn't be there.
And that's something that we were terrible at. And we didn't have the we didn't have the organizational structure to be able to enact that.
The wagon is they're excited and bought into this vision and want it want this to happen.
Correct. And contribute towards it. And and off the wagon is like you're not at the company. And we didn't have an organizational structure that could allow for that. Nor, frankly, the fortitude. I I I include myself in this. Like I feel like I've learned a lot about
you know, how to make that determination. So I think we were we were terrible at that. And
And Elon is like the
Whatever, like if that's a spectrum, Elon is like the opposite spectrum of that. Like his tolerance for people who are not aligned and his tolerance for low performers is famously.
Extremely low. And I think it's you know, it's it's
It's one of the things that when I s when I said A B test, it's like very interesting to see
The extreme to which he has operated and
Um, and I think like I've learned a ton around like we just, you know.
We didn't have the organizational structure nor the fortitude to be swifter, and that made cultural change.
Way slower. We still were able to change the culture, not
As much as
We should have, and not as certainly not as quickly as we should have.
Or efficiently as we should have.
'Cause by the way, a lot of high performers who have
who are aligned with that desire to to change and build.
They don't have the
They don't there's not like a
Equal distribution of patients, right? If you're extremely talented.
And you're dealing with like organizational bullshit.
You're gonna go find some place else that lets you do your craft and and have impact. So
It's it's very difficult. But anyway.
Go into your your question.
One of the things we found
that was r a really effective way of accel accelerating cultural change and also
Helping drive some of these
product initiatives that were
Particularly speculative.
Was
Doing small aquires.
And and and really the benefit of that was
A you bring in
Uh uh founder type.
who is an entrepreneur who's drives urgency, who has ambition, who's
ideally savvy enough to also work in the context of a large organization, which which, you know, sometimes is a totally different skill set. I mean it is a totally different skill set.
And a lot of our
most ambitious bets that were
the riskiest and most um
Kind of
misalign with how the the product worked or you know it wasn't like an easy there was no easy staff with them to build on top of.
Well, those bets were driven by founders who we
Basically acquired and said.
Here, you you know, you're gonna run this. Um, and they believed in it. They were able to rally a team around them, and it's all the attributes of a startup, but with the
The canvas of a product that hundreds of millions of people use and
And and more resources. So
You know.
spaces, communities.
Community notes.
Called Bird Watch back then.
Um
These were all projects driven by uh fleets as well. These were all projects that were run by
Uh small teams led by
entrepreneurs who we acquired, right? Like Keith Coleman
Um
r runs community notes. Last bird watch, you know. We he actually was my predecessor. We we acquired his company so that he could be the head of product.
And then when he moves on from that role.
He was extremely passionate about this idea of
sort of crowdsource moderation and and and letting people annotate
you know, uh misleading content on the platform without Twitter acting as a a policeman and
That was a very speculative bet that by the way a lot of people thought most people thought was a terrible idea.
We gave Keith a little silo to go build
You know
Building
This vision and then
You know, it was it was our job to make sure that bet didn't get suffocated.
in the context of a big organization that that would otherwise not had not had patience for it.
Um
You know, all of the community effort or the um creator efforts started with superfollows and tipping, and all these things were led by Esther Crawford, whose company we acquired.
And who
How
couple of viral moments um with the with the Elon acquisition, but she's a phenomenal leader who
Again, it's a perfect example of balancing
that sort of entrepreneurial startup muscle with the saviness to be able to get things done at a large organization.
Fleets was run by Mo Aladon, who's an entrepreneur
Um
And you know, communities was um you know, has gone through a few iterations, obviously, and still is in the product, but
John Barnett and a team of people who we acquired from from Chrome Labs.
I think that that story of
Acquiring
hungry, ambitious
uh founders and giving them responsibility.
And latitude.
is a success story of Twitter's history. I mean I I'm a beneficiary of
such a bet as well, right? Like
My company Periscope was acquired and I was given the responsibility to eventually lead the product team.
So I I feel like my
That we ended up realizing
Both of the company's history and
and and through learning is that this is actually a very effective way to
Drive cultural change.
Um and to and to
To deliver impact.
'Cause you need a special type of person to be able to
both operate within the existing structure and change
The structure. Like to know when to
Use the system and to know when to fuck the system.
Um and that um
I feel like on my whole life has benefited from other people taking bets on me like that.
Um to the point that I even I was like, Really?

You sure you want to know.
Um and so I've I think
I've enjoyed trying to pass the buck.
um and and and do that for other people and I've never regretted it. It's you always like taking a bet on people.
And in especially throwing them in a deep end, which on paper they may be unqualified for.
I think is like one of the
one of the best ways of driving change and and by the way, supporting growth. Like you learn so much more when you're thrown into deep end.
than in other contexts. And so I think it's a I think it's a fantastic it's an expensive strategy if you're gonna go buy a bunch of companies, but it's a great strategy for the situation that we found ourselves in.
Uh on Twitter.
It feels like every every big bat was like one of these companies from what from the list that you just shared. And I'm glad you shared Periscope. Obviously that's a great example too.
I guess maybe just a follow up question here. Is there anything you learned about
How to do this
Well, I know you talked about maybe creating a little silo for the team'cause so many companies acquire and acquire
They just go nowhere.
So I guess just like a two part question, just like
What are some tips for how to do this well at a company?
And then two, you also we were talking offline about this
Previously, and I think it's a really interesting point that
A lot of companies staff based on
Who's available versus who is right for the role. And let's wait until that person is there for us to bet on this.
Just talk about lessons there.
Yeah, that the last one is um
is like a huge pet peeve of mine that I feel like we learned the hard way. Um and it's particularly
It's a it's a common pattern.
I think in
highly functional organizations where
You have different
Different people making decisions on how to staff projects. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but
I think in the situations we we in the situation we found ourselves in where
We had this sort of like cultural um
evolution that we were going through where
Some people just didn't like agree with the the things that we were prioritizing.
uh there's sort of like begrudgingly going along with it, but you would end up in a situation where the combination of that sort of like cultural shift and strategy and the fact that
The way teams were being staffed was not
There's no s ultimately no single decision maker other than the CEO and like Jack is not gonna get in the weeds and
Debate a staffing decision on a team.
resulted in a situation where oftentimes we have projects
Like the one I mentioned about hiding replies.
where there wasn't even agreement on the team about whether this was a good idea.
And whether this is worth trying or how to do it. And imagine it's hard enough to build something from nothing.
It's even harder if like the team doesn't believe in it. Like
Like this this is like to the point of just being toxic. Like you a startup would never succeed if all the people who are working on that startup aren't
Like to the point of being perhaps irrational.
Obsessed with that idea.
And still willing to see truth. Like you need to be able to see whether the thing is working or not.
But if you don't believe it in the first place.
You know, I'm not betting on that succeeding.
And so this was common. This is and and sometimes not as as extreme as the examples that I mentioned, but
Um
You know, I think one of the lessons I learned
And it's not even it's it's
Quite intuitive actually. It's like
You need to staff
projects with a team of people that are well equipped equipped from a skill set standpoint, but more importantly
Ham have an obsession with the idea they want to pursue.
It's gonna make them work harder, it's gonna make them be more creative, it's gonna make them
have the the um the sufficient level of ambition and desire
to will this thing into existence because every project
You know, whether big or small, like there is an element of you need to like
Will this thing into existence.
'Cause it's hard, right? Like the the only way you're gonna get through that pain.
is by having that desire and
I think a very easy cheat code.
for an organization to employ is to say, if you're gonna work on something, especially if it's speculative or risky,
Staff it with a set of people who believe in it and want it like really
Want to learn whether this solves a customer problem or not.
'Cause if if you don't have that ingredient, it's gonna drag everyone down and it's just not gonna be as successful.
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This kind of touches on something I wanted to touch on, which is jobs to be done.
This is like uh maybe one of the most recurring
controversies of the podcast is like is Joss to be done amazing or is it
Really bad and not something you should do. We've had many guests share their opinions. I feel like at Twitter
It like jobs to be done was implemented so strictly that it burned a lot of people out on it's like oh my god.
This is not any things anyone should ever do.
I'm curious just your lessons and experience of just with frameworks in general, the jobs to be done specifically, maybe even OKRs. I've only seen one
Interview.
On your show that covers this, and it's you know, Sriam was particularly spicy when he talked about jobs to be done, which is unsurprising because.
I spent a lot of time talking this room, but it's done.
I mean I'll I I guess I'll just start by saying like I I was not a fan of how
we leverage jobs to be done at Twitter. I thought it was um
Exhausting and not particularly helpful.
Um and so I've it's a particularly s particularly sore subject for me because you know, I I was sort of charged with
defending it and rolling it out. It's hard to hard to do that when you don't really
Believe in something?
But to me the critique is less about jobs to be done, though there are many critiques of it, and more about like every framework at its limit if followed to such a religious extent.
is just unhelpful. You need to have nuance in how you leverage these frameworks, otherwise people
Um
You lose the force to the trees and you end up following a process for the sake of following a process. And that's what happened with jobs to be done.
So I I think that's my real critique of it. It's not the I mean listen, the premise
of jobs to be done and my m my most ch charitable take on jobs to be done, which is actually
Useful
is that it forces you to look at things through the lens of customers and understanding what their needs are and understanding what their true alternatives are outside of the
narrow lens of your product.
And I think that's just like healthy product thinking, right? Like you don't need a
framework called jobs to be done you're gonna think about milkshakes in order to be able to do that. It's it's like
You could employ common sense
Or you could leverage something like jobs to be done.
to to be able to like
force your mind to think of things through through that lens.
So I think that's like my charitable view on what jobs to be done.
can help you do, but as a framework into and of itself as a sole governing principle of what to build.
It's just not useful. By the way, in the same way as
Um and I think the Twitter had this this problem as well prior to our
detour around jobs to be done.
If you're if the only way the organization is trained to think about what to build and what not to build is OKRs.
It's equally unhelpful at the limit.
Because you know, sure you can
Um have a good sense of like
What you should build to drive metrics, but
By the way, you might be focusing on the right wrong metrics, or you that might not help you have the right balance of of things to build. That might not help you see when
The things that you're building are actually hostile to customers.
So you know, I just as an interesting example the thing that that
I remember about your interview with Sri Ram, if I'm not mistaken, she um
I think he mentioned um
And I love Sarum. I'd be happy to debate him about this on his podcast.
Um
But he mentioned um one of the examples I think was the Amazon.
Amazon doesn't send you um when when you get order confirmations from Amazon
They intentionally bury
The order details. You have to like click the link and authenticate to go see what you ordered.
I don't
Give two shits what metrics that drive for Amazon. That is one of the most
customer hostile things I experienced in my daily life. I order a lot of things from Amazon. I hate the fact that I can't
You know
Search my email to see
To see what I ordered and so I think
The problem with these frameworks is that
You lose nuance and ultimately, and this is where I agree with Shution this on your podcast as well. You need to be able to make trade off decisions that balance what's right for the organization and what's right for the customer. And sometimes based on how you devise your frameworks,
Your metrics aren't actually aligned with the customer's benefit, like the Amazon example. And we had many famous examples in Twitter's history, which were the same. Like we, you know, one of our key metrics that we always optimized around growing was DAU.
And we had a, you know, uh obviously the rank timeline did wonders for for growing DAU and it was a great experience for many customers.
But we often had
features that would
not lead to a good customer experience and
the team would just be blind towards
leaving sort of like hostile customer experiences in place because it was good for metrics and aggregate.
And a famous example of this is we have this toggle
Which we call Swish very affectionately.
But it was like a sparkle icon.
Before you could switch between the rank timeline and the following that reverse chronological timeline, which is still in the product right now.
It was just a tarball.
Right.
You would press a button and it would turn your feed
Reverse cron, which
Very few people used as a percentage of of our users, but you had power users who really cared about
having a reverse chronological timeline.
And
We had the you know, we took so many baby steps on the evolution of this product, but the very first baby step was
You press the toggle, it's turns you to the reverse cron, and then
we would pull the rug out from underneath you and and make the experience go back to the ring timeline after like
I don't know, twenty four hours or something like that. Oh wow.
And the reason
The the team felt strongly about keeping it this way is because it was better for metrics. Why? Like even if Lenny wants a reverse from feed, we knew that he would spend more time
in the app if we put them in the rank timeline.
And and this was like
You know, the the number of
debates that we had about this because you know, the team, understandably, was like
This is good for metrics, but at the same time, you'd have customers being like, I fucking hate this experience. I'm telling you I want reverse cron. Stop.
Randomly changing it for me.
Um Instagram has I think gone through their own
struggles with this as well. They they sort of
tiptoed their way towards ultimately giving people control and
Like the the the difficulty in making product decisions comes down ultimately to making these trade off decisions. And
you you have to look at things through the lens of the customer. You have to balance that with you know
what's driving the right business outcomes and sometimes those things are aligned and sometimes they're not. And the answer isn't any one framework.
Sometimes it's just good old fashioned like judgment and product taste.
Um and so that's that's where like I
My take is different. I don't think the issue is jobs to be done, although I'm not
I'm not the biggest fan of jobs to be done.
The issue is just um
having the right nuance and ultimately the right leadership to be able to weigh these things and see when your frameworks are not actually helping you make the right decisions.
I think that's really important advice and I I love hearing
Details if I actually think about this stuff.
Actually finding this balance is very hard in practice. I'm curious if there's something
you could recommend or have learned about how to know when you've gone too far with a framework. Like signs like you have
implemented this too.
religiously and maybe you should be thinking a little more broadly.
There's two.
I think simple and obvious ones.
Um, one is if the result of your framework is that subjectively bad decisions are being made, then something's gotta change, right? Like
Assuming you have the person who's making this assessment has good product taste, which is in of itself subjective, obviously.
But m my personal
Um
view on this would be like in the role that I had, if I if I saw that our organization was being incentivized to make decisions that
To some non trivial
Degree of the time.
were just bad decisions that I
don't like as a user
I can't stand by as a as a user or builder.
Then something's gotta change. Either either bad judgment was made in following the process or the process was wrong.
Or if that framework did not
Didn't it didn't even lead to the right debates.
Then that's that's
How you know, you know.
Like either you have an incentive problem.
Um and like the team did what they were incentivized to do.
Or you know, that there is bad judgment and that's that's a different problem, obviously.
But I think, you know, in the situation we found ourselves in where the team was
Um
Again, understandably hyper focused on driving DAU because that was the strategy for so long. It left so little room for
Even
You know, taking ambitious bets that in the short term
Wouldn't drive D like some of our bets that I
I still to this day believe in.
hurt DAU in the short term, but you know you had to squint and believe over time would
Improve some metric DAU or otherwise, right? Like
A product like spaces.
In order for spaces to be
Actually used.
You needed to make sure that when Lenny starts a space that people would join.
Right, and how do you get people to join Lenny space when they're used to having an asynchronous, you know?
feed of tweets.
You can send push notifications. You can occupy really prime real estate at the top of the app.
That lets people know hey what is
Live right now. He's in he's in a space. There's people here. Come join.
Guess what happens when you put a bar at the top of the app?
That tells people when they're live.
You move tweets down, you move ads down, DAU goes down, revenue goes down. And so if you have an organization that's like just hyper focused on like the thing that matters is driving DAU quarter over quarter.
Then
That doesn't leave enough room for nuance to
accommodate new speculative bets that might hurt one metric, but over time have other consequences that are positive and and beneficial. Like
Enabling an entire new
vector of content creation and conversation on the platform.
I guess the other answer to your question in terms of like how do you know when the framework's not serving you right. When you start
Imagining and planning for a bunch of bets.
That the organization then sees
It's like disincentivized to make successful.
then something's gotta change. Either your strategy is just not the right strategy because it doesn't abide by the frameworks.
Or
The framework needs to accommodate
the fact that actually we're gonna try some things that in the short term
Either might not be a
Yeah.
show up as blips on our DAU radar or
or gonna help some other metric that's important.
And so that took us some time to to get, right? And we tried a variety of
schemes to to make that work, right? Like community notes, like Keith the project that I was mentioning Keith, you know, started.
We intentionally structured that like a startup.
Like.
It was literally like
We made a seed bet on Keith and his team and we were like
You don't like
Don't worry about the OKRs.
We're not gonna judge you on the basis of your OKRs.
And there's some pros and cons to that. Like a lot of our projects work that way. Fleets started that way. Community notes started that way. And some other projects started
More kind of like part of the
Core organization.
Because they were so intertwined with how we were
Like the the the nature of the product that it just made sense to
It separating it was gonna be um
It was gonna do more harm than good.
Um so you just have to figure out based on
What
Like
Based on how execution is going, whether you're you've got the right framework and you've got to be willing to
To make adjustments when it's not working.
That's actually really helpful. Kind of the two that I'm taking away here is how often are you feeling bad about the features you're shipping? Like they're bad for users and you think they're bad for you as a user, potentially.
And the other is it is it keeping you from taking big bolt bets that don't necessarily
drive the metrics you're focusing on.
Okay, so before I let you go, I wanna spend some time on Periscope.
I don't know.
if everybody knows the history and story of Periscope. Basically it it was the biggest live video streaming platform in the world and
I imagine inspired basically every other social network to build a live
Streaming
platform, Instagram, live.
Facebook.
TikTok. Obviously Twitter.
Uh, so I wanna spend a little time here and see what you learned in
And also just broadly consumer products.
But um
First of all, I hear there's like a
Story with Kobe Bryant.
And Periscope about
Have using it in some form. Can you share that story?
Before Periscope launched publicly.
Which is in it was in March of twenty fifteen, I wanna say.
We had a small beta that grew to maybe five hundred people in total before we actually
I released the app publicly.
And in that time, while we were still in beta
I was personally onboarding I was trying to personally onboard every single user.
Um and I had sort of like a a shtick that I that I did, which was we'd get them in the app and I would start a broadcast.
We had a feature called private broadcasting that we basically built for for this use case, which is
Someone joins
I'm gonna go live.
And they're gonna join them and show them how the app works. And and you know, we were spending a lot of time in our office. So, you know, Kobe
Yeah, one of them.
Chris Saka actually invited Kobe to the beta.
Um and so you know Chris connected us and um I did a private broadcast and Kobe joins and I was like it was like 10 PM in the office.
And my my routine was like let me just walk around the office.
kind of like talking through the mechanics of Periscope through the lens of this demo of like, hey, let me show you around the office and like
Here's how the chat works, and you can tap the screen to send hearts. And if you want me to do something like go to it go to the room over there, just type it in the chat and it'll come up and
It sort of
Showed the
Um one of the things that was unique about Periscope is the you know, is that it was a multi
It it was a one to many broadcast, but still low latency enough that it felt like a FaceTime so you could have
The that
Bidirectional.
Communication between
multiple viewers and a broadcaster. And so
Um I was teaching him how to use the chat.
And showing him the office and he was he was playing with it and
At one point through the end of the demo
He he posts a comment
That was like um
Why the fuck would anyone want to watch someone else stream live?
And I remember like my heart sank.
And
I sort of like fumbling through like well, we think it's you know, cool.
And like before I could even get the words out, he posted like, I'm just fucking with you, bro. This is incredible.
And I just remember
It was just such a surreal moment.
That has I'll never forget. It was I mean Coby's a legend, obviously. Um but like to
How's that?
To have him essentially troll me.
But while also
Like
putting a point on like what was cool about the experience and it was like bi-directional and like something he commented on could cause the broadcaster to kind of like change their behavior or change their
Change the experience. It was like
A really ironic
Full circle uh
I'm showing off how the product works, but yeah, it's one of my favorite early Periscope stories.
Oh man, if I if I kept doing that uh the manual onboarding I'd be like who's coming?
Just always worried that someone else fancy is gonna join. You never know what Krishac is getting.
Who's talking to.

That's amazing.
Okay, so it's been about
Ten years, I believe, since you sold Periscope.
And about six years ish?
Since you stopped running it as CO, something like that.
Now, as I shared, every single platform basically is doing this. They added live video streaming.
I'm curious if there's anything you learn about just competing with
These major
platforms.
Well there there's there's a few reasons why
Why Periscope failed ultimately and why we shut down the app. I mean obviously Per Periscope, the technology
And the mechanic still lives on because you can go live on Twitter, um, you can watch live broadcasts on Twitter.
You can do audio conversations and Twitter and all of that is the Periscope stack still there, which is like
It's awesome that the legacy lives on in a different form factor.
The reason that the Periscope app
Failed.
It really comes down to a few things. One
We did not address the core problem that retention wasn't good.
Our poor retention was mapped by just an incredible surge in top line user growth.
Um you know and and and it then
for Twitter it was very, um or for Periscope it was it was interesting because like every month or two
we would kind of blow up in a new market that would just bring along an incredible surge of usage.
Um, you know, we we blew up in the US, we then blew up in France, we then blew up in Turkey, we then blew up in the Middle East, and you had these like incredible surges.
But underneath that surge, like the core product.
have retention issues.
And it was we ultimately just did not we didn't spend enough time prioritizing
Addressing those and in fact we shipped product changes that made those
Retention issues worse.
Um compounding that was the fact that one of the theses behind our acquisition
the Twitter acquisition was that we would leverage the scale in the community.
The product mechanics of Twitter
to
Um make the the product grow faster and also become more durable.
And I think that sort of connects to one of the reasons why I feel like
One of the one of my learnings and one of the things that we knew but just failed to execute on was that
I still am very sceptical that there can be a
Um
Mm
Consumer product that is just focused on live video, like a generalized
uh synchronous live video application for short form video.
I don't think can be durable on its own.
I think you have to surround that product with enough
features and capabilities to allow a community and an ecosystem of users to be able to
stay in touch with one another asynchronously and synchronously.
This is why
A lot of the other products that you mentioned that incorporate
live capabilities and and were shameless about copying
You know, are
What was working about Periscope.
They're they're surrounded by a scaffolding that lets people also stay in touch with each other with with each other asynchronously, like Instagram.
It's an asynchronous product that has synchronous features like Live.
Um same with TikTok, obviously.
Um I think we were in this position where
It was a live only products.
Right, like
You know.
You are
you can you're connecting with your audience and having a great time when you're broadcasting live, but you're not using the product
um to keep in touch with that community when you're not broadcasting. How often throughout the day
Would you would you broadcast live from your phone?
And
Mind you, this is different for products that are live like live there are live consumer products that focus on a specific vertical, like
whatnot for selling or Twitch for for gaming that have very different properties that make it more durable.
as a standalone live product.
But but but Periscope was really in the sort of consumer
Um
generalized live streaming from a phone land and I think it was just not durable to
Have the product be live only.
And the time it took us to integrate with Twitter.
was way too long. And there was reasons for that that um
You know, come down to
Just how distract the Twitter was with its own roadmap and uh refining the core and they just had other other fish to fry, basically.
And that
All of that leads us to
competition because at some point
Facebook woke and decided
This is cool.
And we need to go build this.
And
Yeah, I I I obviously wasn't
Wasn't there on the inside, but like legend has it, Mark
Says.
Hey, like
Three you three hundred people stop what you're doing, go go basically you know make live exist in our product as a first experience. I didn't know that. Um and you know, if you have that level of organizational effort put on
Building.
Something that by the way isn't even like there's there's no
You don't have to spend any time wondering what the product looks like. Just go like copy at his features basically and make them make them work.
Um and they have did a lot of other savvy things too.
from a partnership standpoint, like we know we have a lot of prominent streamers that
Range from
kind of like uh influencer or just creative people that became known on Periscopes all the way up to celebrities like Kevin Hart and
um others who were like prolific periscopers that Facebook just went and
bought out. They were just like, Cool, we're gonna pay you like
Bunch of money.
To stream exclusively with us. So
They kind of hit us from all sides. They
had the entire company put their effort towards building
Live in a way that was cohesive in the core product, first with Facebook and then
And then Instagram. And then also
Attacked it from the
From the creator side as well.
Um and um we were too slow.
And it was is you know, very
painful to think about'cause um
Yeah, it was
Yeah.
insights that Twitter had early.
Twitter had the right insight, but the follow through. I I'm not pointing fingers, I blame myself for that just as much. Um
But it's it's there's a pattern where Twitter is really great at spotting
Meaningful
consumer behavior changes, right? Like they spotted Vine and acquired Vine.
Botched it. Spotted Periscope.
Watched it.
Um s spotted Instagram, by the way, before
You know, Facebook tried to buy Instagram.
Um Twitter was trying to buy Instagram and there are other reasons why that didn't fall through, but
It's just it's interesting to me. It's one of the interesting um aspects of Twitter's history. They were phenomenal at spotting
meaningful changes in consumer behavior. Consumer social behavior and and and actually like
putting their money where their mouth is in terms of um trying to follow through on
Bringing those.
those bets in house, but then botching the execution.
And so that was that was one of the
things that was really motivating for me when I
I was in my role um leading product of Twitter was like
I didn't want to
I didn't want to make that mistake.
Um
And um
you know, we didn't end up buying anything
as we didn't end up buying anything like Vine or Periscope and and keeping the product in house. We obviously bought lots of small aqua hires, but
You know, we did we did obviously um
Uh.

a story with Clubhouse that ended up with us building um
No, building spaces and competing with that. But anyway, that was long rambly story. Hopefully that answered your question.
Yeah, there's there's so many again, it's all these fractals of
Fall threads I want to follow and ask about.
Real quick on the Vine and Periscope point, I was gonna ask this.
Uh, Twitter, as you said, had the opportunity to win in video in so many ways, Vine
Amazing killing, everyone loved it and then it's like yeah, then it
Hey do I guess you already shared a lot of
Challenges Twitter had with
Executing shipping.
Sacred cows, things like that. Is there anything specific with video? Was it just like, oh, this is not actually a huge priority and we're just gonna kinda ride it for now?
And that's why it didn't work out, is there anything more that
No, it's e it's even more
Like
Pathetic than that. Um'cause I think Twitter did believe in video.
But it d made this classical mistake that we we also
unfortunately recreated with with Periscope, which was
They had the insight around short from video.
They bought Vine.
They then
competed with Vine internally. So Vine was a separate organization within
Within Twitter.
Separate office obviously in New York.
Um and then Twitter rather than like
integrated holistically into the product and and sort of pour gasoline on it.
Um the
They built a native Twitter video.
feature that was like a different stack, different team.
It it became what you think of as Twitter video now. It's like the simple act of uploading video and all the
uh professional um video tools um called media studio that let publishers like ESPN put content. Like all of that was basically built as a separate team, separate organization, separate product.
That was fundamentally competing with environment. You had like two visions for short form video.
Um that we're manifesting and that's like
That's like the quickest way for
For like a
For things to get messy and for
Of course, like the the the separate startup team is gonna get
Um
Uh
you're not gonna be able to make good on the vision of buying the company and integrating it in all the right ways if you compete with it internally.
Um and we had a
You know, a similar thing happened with with Periscope. Um, you know, we were very focused on on Periscope with you know
Separate organization, separate structure, separate app.
Periscope at the time primarily was focused on UGC live video.
Um so user generated content being streamed from a phone.
Twitter then, you know, decided to get in the premium
Live.
video business, um, very famously with the you know, acquiring rights to Thursday Night Football, the NFL.
Guess what happened?
We competed
Internally.
Um rather than um have a cohesive technical and product vision for for how to embrace live video across the spectrum of UGC and
Premium live video.
Twitter
you know, put a separate team in charge of premium.
With a separate product separate
Technology stack.
Um
And um so you have like two ways to manifest live video on the
product. It was like UGC Live video, which was kind of like awkwardly not even really implemented well with Twitter at the time.
And then premium live video, which had totally different UX, totally different team, totally different architecture.
And by the way, like the company put in an a tremendous amount of energy and investment in talking about Twitter being a place to watch
The NFL.
And meanwhile you have this burgeoning UGC ecosystem. So this was like
We're making the same mistake all over again.
Now luckily with in the Periscope case
With a lot of persistence and impatience and table pounding.
We eventually fixed that mistake.
But
We wasted a tremendous amount of time. Um right. It was just a lot of petbutting and politics and
Um
And eventually it took us a lot of time to technically reintegrate things together. And and now it's clean and awesome, right? Like
SVN can go live with
behind the scenes content at Wimbledon and it's like the same technology stack and the same user experience that power is Lenny going live from his from his iPhone.
Um but
I think that was like one of the reasons why it wasn't it was an example of failed execution that ended up wasting time, resources, and just leading to a subpar product experience.
that other companies
I think have
Uh
avoided making such mistakes. Facebook being a prime example. As as frustrated I am with them as a competitor.
For having
You know, um
really taken over the use case for live video.
Gotta hand it to them.
Brilliant execution.
Um have a lot of respect for them.
Um
So um we made sure to not make that mistake.
Moving forward.
Yeah.
I imagine there was reason for that, partly I imagine this calcification of just like we can't get shit done, we just need to start a new team and do this thing.
Like I imagine it always comes from like, Oh, this makes sense.
And then you realize okay, this was a terrible idea.
Down the road.
Yeah, it's it's that and also leadership. When you when you don't have unified leadership around these things.
Um you end up.
Making
decisions that are in conflict with one another. Th there just be a highly opinionated person at the top.
But avoids that kind of
Um
that kind of um messiness from a product and engineering standpoint.
You mentioned Clubhouse.
So I think what's interesting is
One.
Many people copied Periscope.
As a product.
Uh I don't know if you'll describe it as copying, but it feels like spaces very inspired by Clubhouse.
Yeah, uh just uh it
current philosophy on when it makes sense to
be super inspired by another product and build it into your existing product.
Versus like no, you should not do this.
I think it's always about doing the right thing.
So the customer.
Um and there there's you know
Everyone has always been sh shameless to be sh shamelessly inspired by other people's ideas. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I think it I think copying ideas can be done in poor taste and can be done in
With taste.
Um I think some of the people
who copied Periscope did so in poor taste.
Can't blame them. I just you know
I wouldn't have done it the same way, but
You know.
It worked, so it you can't say it's the the wrong thing. I just I think that it's
It's possible to
to take ideas in good taste and take ideas in in poor taste. And I think
Um, you know, with with Clubhouse, we actually had been working on
Audio. Audio was one of those bets I mentioned that we structured very separately. We had a team of people
Many of which were the former Periscope team.
That when we wound down Periscope
I feel very strongly that the
That there is still something
to the idea of
Synchronous conversations.
'Cause one of the famous things that I think we botched with with Periscope is that we always
Our dream and our vision for Periscope and how we talked about it was it was a mechanism for teleportation. You could see through someone else's eyes and be teleported somewhere else. It was like that was the story we told ourselves. That was the thing that inspired
Periscope.
Um and to a certain extent a lot of people
did use the product for that way. You could go see what it was like
Um some place in the world where there was
um something amazing happening or civil unrest happening or some important moment happening with breaking news or otherwise.
But it turns out the vast majority of our users were not using
Periscope that way.
They were not it wasn't a rear facing camera experience where you were showing someone the world.
The vast majority of people were using it to just talk to other people.
They were bored.
And they or they were lonely and they wanted to just
have a conversation with other people. And it turns out video and audio is a very interesting way of
Of doing that that allows for more nuance, more long form conversation, more in depth conversation, especially in contrast to Twitter.
W which has mechanics that really incentivise.
you know, quick snappy
sort of broadcasts that don't don't sort of lead to much depth. And so when we shut down Periscope.
We were like, man, we really need to enable a new form of conversation on Twitter that has some of those properties. And so we
had a team that was working on a uh
project that we sort of codenamed Hydra.
Um hydra because you know the
There are multiple heads.
on this monster and those heads are participants in a conversation.
And so well before Cup Clint House was on the map, we had
Many different iterations of
Both the video and audio only experiences that just didn't feel right.
We weren't working right, but we're kinda felt like we were onto something.
And when Clubhouse um
Kind of c came on the map.
It really recentered
It put into focus a a user experience that
felt a lot more right. And I'll give them complete credit for that. They you know, Paul and Rohan and that team
Did an exceptional job.
crafting an experience that really
enable that that mechanic and that that that premise of enabling these longer form conversations to shine.
And so we did.
you know, shamelessly seek inspiration from what they had done and what had worked, and we put our own spin on it, right? Like the execution of
of spaces within Twitter.
You know, I think
has some similarities, but also really took advantage of the mechanics that you had available to you in Twitter. It's a different product.
Um and so
We were
Yeah, we took the ideas that we felt were
shortcuts to making the experience work and then
We put our own spin on it. Um
And so I have n no problems with
with what we did there and having had
Having had
Experience the
Um
The pain of
Not moving quickly enough with Vine
from the outside and periscope having lived that experience.
you know, we were not willing to
Not the
The winner.
in this um with this with this use case and so
We put like it was one of the projects I'm most proud of that we worked on at Twitter because we were very radical in our execution.
We
Yeah.
Hydra went from this like tiny project that like six people were working on that no one knew or care about to
Um, we made spaces the number one priority of the company.
Um literally like above any other project, period.
Um and we put
A bunch of people
on accelerating that product and um and making it
Um
you know, making it come to life within within Twitter. And a lot of that was having felt the the pain and burn of fucking this up with Vine and Periscope.
Um
And so I'm really proud of our execution. And it was also really energizing, I hope, for the company to see though. Wow.
We we pulled that off.
So
Yeah, it was a good it was nice to
Um it was nice to have that full circle experience and also nice that
You know, personally like I I love that
aspects of Periscope continue living on within within Twitter.
I did not know that. That is uh extremely interesting and
Speaking full circle, when I joined Clubhouse the first time
Uh Paul was there introducing me to Clubhouse in exactly the way you describe Periscope, so I feel like he was
Drew some inspiration from you.
One step back.
Paul's amazing. I feel like we're we're kindred spirits and I I could s I could see the
It was one of the things I love about
um that team is just you could just feel
how palpable their excitement was and their passion was for what they were building.
Um
You know, in another another universe we could have we could have worked together more closely.
Um, but um I think what they built was in was incredible and we took we took inspiration from it for for sure. And
Um
Yeah.
So you've built
Some of the most successful, most beloved
Most used consumer products. You continue to help other founders with their product.
I'm curious just if you have any advice for how to get better
Ad building consumer products in terms of maybe craft a product, product sense.
What have you learned about what it takes to build a successful consumer product?
Mm.
the best cheat codes for getting better at building products is just being a voracious user of
Products.
Um
And
Just try new things.
Feeling out what works well, what doesn't, what you like, what you don't like.
There's just no replacement for that.
Um it's it's such a effective
Way of
of honing your own taste.
And seeing like what's superficial.
But not useful.
What's ugly but useful.
What's beautiful and useful.
And you you just you hone that by
having practice and building muscle memory and um
And so I think
You know that that's
Yeah, there's not a lot of science to it, I think. I mean,
Science can help you.
you become more affected at lots of things, but like I feel like I've just always been very curious about
Um trying new things.
I'm I'm a I'm a very hungry consumer of
new things that people are are building. And I'm not not I'm not quick to judge, you know, like I'll I'll try it even if it seems dumb because sometimes things that seem dumb at the beginning
become very meaningful.
Um and so it's it's always been a very helpful cheat code for me and it's also just personally interesting. I'm always
Like
Every tool, even the silly
The silly ones, like people put their heart and soul into it and it's like an expression of themselves and it's always interesting to
to see that, to see people's creations and to to learn from them and see what you like, what you don't like, and how you might
create something of your own that that borrows
um borrows from that.
Um so if if I could give people any advice
Um
through the lines of like what's worked for me.
Um
It's that.
Speaking of trying new things.
What are you up to these days?
I'm building a uh something in the consumer space. I started the company
Um
with with a a couple co founders um late last year.
Um we're not quite ready to to to talk about it yet, but hopefully you'll be see you'll be hearing
From us pretty soon.
Um but it's really nice to be back.
building something again, particularly like building something
With a small team again after
kind of seeing the opposite extreme with a really large
large company. We've just talked about lots of large company things.
Um
But
Yeah.
Hopefully you'll be hearing about it soon.
Oh man, I think this is breaking news.
So mysterious and exciting.
Kayvon, is there anything else you wanted to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning rap?
No.
No, I think we've covered we've covered quite a bit.
We have, we have indeed.
With that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Gonna take a sip of water and then I'll be ready.
Okay, here we go. First question. What are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?
I love reading sci fi.
I just feel like um
Sci fi and mystery books are
So healthy for jogging the imagination.
Um
And so some of my favorite books are by Neil Stevenson. I love Krypton Kryptonomicon, I love Reem D.
Um
I I love a book called
Uh Name of the Wind by Patrick Roth Rothkiss, which is a
Um more like a
Fantasy.
fantasy book, but um
I just love kind of escaping
Escaping reality and thinking about
sci fi thinking about
Um
fantasy is just um
It's helpful for the soul and helpful for the imagination. So those are those are some of my favorite reads because it helps me
I feel like it in some weird
circular or um wandering way it helps
It helps me be more creative and imaginative. And and by the way, that's true outside of reading as w as well, like some of the
Some of the content that has shaped me, I feel like and helped
uh motivate my
My curiosity and a lot of things I built is
Sci fi TV, right? Like Star Trek is
Incredible. Like w we used to use
As a metaphor for what Periscope was.
Um we would think about
Um, we would think about Star Trek. Like it'd be really cool to be able to teleport or
Um you know, get beam somewhere else.
in the world and like we're not smart enough to go build that device, but what's the closest approximation to that that we can realize through software?
Live streaming.
So I think like that kind of
Um
Literature or or
Or
content. Um
has always been inspirational for me and um I think getting that through books is is really healthy.
On that note, is there a favorite recent movie or TV show that's inspired you?
In addition to Star Trek back in the day.
I mean the most recent movie I saw in theaters was Dune too, and it was incredible. I just saw that. It's insane. I also thought Oppenheimer was I'm a huge Nolan fan. Oppenheimer was like was captivating. Um to have that level of like high octane.
In a biopic.
Consistently for like two and a half hours is like so hard to pull off.
And um I thought it was exceptional.
Um T V shows
We're watching Tokyo Vice right now, which I really like.
Um I think one of the
Best T V shows
I've watched recently
I mean succession was amazing, but I'll maybe I'll uh I'll pull a less popular one which is uh
Devs.
Also in the sci fi realm. I think it was a Hulu show.
Um
But if you're interested in tech
Um
And AI.
Um
And you want great acting.
And Nick Offerman
Devs is a pretty amazing show.
Hm. Haven't heard of that.
Uh have you seen Three Body Problem yet, by the way? Feels like it's squarely in your wheelhouse. I haven't seen it yet. Um
And it's it's funny, like
Like some content it it's
People are talking about it so much.
Then I'm like kind of I I kinda wanna not watch it now because I feel like it's really hard for shows to live up to
To the hype when you're mid hype cycle. So I haven't gone around to it yet, but it's definitely on my list. I know it's the type of show that I would love, but
Okay.
You have a favorite enemy question that you like to ask candidates you're hiring?
the the thing that I find is both very illustrative and helpful um is just act asking people like
To t to talk about something they worked on.
That failed.
Um and you know, talk about something they they built that
that succeeded as well, but I think you just learn a lot
about someone's self reflection and their passions
And um but but but in particular their self reflection
If they talk through something that they really care deeply about that didn't work.
And why why didn't it work? What what what were the takeaways?
What did you learn from it? I think it
It teaches you about like
How willing people are to take risks, um
It it tells you like
Have they experienced failure, what they learned from failure.
Um so I think it's it's always you just get to know someone really well. It's a like a well rounded
It ends up in a well rounded understanding of a person, if you can dig into that.
Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you really like?
I
Love perplexity.
Um it's really interesting to me how like perplexity is
P perplexity is a product that fits in your life.

A product that is so ingrained in people's
behavior, which is using Google search for some set of use cases.
And it's just really incredible to me how quickly perplexity took that over.
It's it's it's very hard actually to rewire
your muscle memory if you're like used to using Google
For something for you know, for searching for
Fifteen, twenty years or whatever.
Um, it it was just amazing to me how quickly my go to became perplexity.
Um so I'm and and frankly, it's like one of the only non development tool AI products that actually has retained.
lot of people trying consumer AI products that just aren't really
Haven't retained, but perplexity is one that
is a it's a daily driver for me.
Uh it's on my home stream and I I love it. I'm very impressed by it.
Uh also a huge fan.
Yeah.
Um here's a here's a biased one. Um my wife is actually working on a startup called Particle and they're reimagining the news experience.
Um with AI.
Um, and what I love about what they're doing is that for the first time
They're sort of like
They've rethought what the form factor and the unit of content for news stories should be. You know, like articles
Or a failed format.
Is my belief.
Um and certainly their belief.
And so they've really come up with an elegant and um
an engaging experience for understanding what's happening in the world.
Um
In a way that's like purely powered by by AI. And it's it's it's awesome. Again, hashtag biased biased husband, but
Um it's amazing.
It's um in beta right now. You can sign up on the wait list. Um the the UL is um particle news dot AI.
Um, they're letting people in on beta if you sign up.
Um
Use uh use uh coupon code hashtag K on Lenny.
Uh that's not a real code.
Um but um
But yeah, it's so that's amazing. So that'll be my second pick.
I'll give you a non software one.
Um which
is um actually a board game
that I ran into that it was I was gifted actually for my birthday.
Um and it's called Croconole. Have you heard of this game called Crokinole?
I'm not.
So Crokinole is like a Canadian I think it's a Canadian board game.
Um
And it's a it's
Um it's amazing to me because I've never seen a g a game
be captivating to all age ranges.
Like
I love it. I play with my friends. My parents over Christmas were like obsessed with this game.
My daughter loves it's like a physical game. You kind of like um flick a puck kind of like shuff shuffleboard style, but like miniaturized with a totally different
Set of mechanics.
Um and it was just like seeing this
Game captivate.
People of all age ranges.
Is
Was mind blowing to me.
Um and it's just and it's really fun. So
um made a curveball answer for you there, but I think those are some of the
products that I've been really enjoying and appreciating.
Lately. These are all these are all some answers. What's the name of that game again?
I'm gonna Proconol. Proconol. Okay. I don't know how to spell it, but I'm sure Google will help me figure it out. We'll link to it in the show notes. C R O K I N O L E
Great. I love the K in there. That makes it really fun.
Uh, and by the way, I think it's also particle.news I'm looking at it. It's so cool. It's basically bullet points.
of news items and then the links to all the articles that I've written about it. So it kinda just summarizes here's the things you need to know. And it's beautiful. They they basically they consume and aggregate everything that's happening in the world um by among other things
Ingesting articles.
And then crafting s the story modules through them that are
summarized by AI and then they let you actually interrogate the news and ask questions.
Uh so leveraging you know, L L Ms and tool calls it's able to actually
help you understand what's happening in the world.
And they also are building a social layer as well. So it's very cool. I'll definitely get you into beta.
This is actually amazing timing'cause I was a huge fan of uh Artifact the news app and they're d they're going away. So this is this is the next news app.
So thanks for sharing that.
Okay, two more questions.
Do you have a favorite life motto that you
often come back to or share with people
that you find useful in work or in life.
Something that definitely shaped my
work ethic and and um
Like how I how I work that
Um
you know, came from my first boss actually, when I was like
Fourteen, I had a summer job.
Um
Uh basically replacing and doing maintenance on fire extinguishers.
Um so I would like
Driving to San Francisco.
Um, my boss would you know, pick me up in his truck, we'd go to like big commercial buildings, hospitals, high rises, and we would
Take all the fire extinguishers in the building, hundreds of them.
To the garage, empty them.
Till then
Tag them, inspect them.
And you know, that was my first job and
I don't even remember if I was getting paid. I was probably getting paid a very small amount, but
Um it's just like first work experience. And I remember there was this moment that
I finished like
you know, dealing with my extinguishers and I was just kind of like sitting in his truck.
Kind of like twiddling my thumbs, doing nothing.
Um and he my boss, you know, came up to me and was like
When you've got nothing to do.
Sweet.
Like never sit around.
Um and that it was just it was so funny'cause it was just like
Very
You know, tiny moments, but I've never ever forgotten that. Like
When you got nothing to do, sweep. And it was had such a profound impact on my work ethic of like
There's always something you can be doing to moving the to to move the ball forward.
And being productive.
Um
And being impactful.
And it
You know.
I'm so grateful that Fred, my boss
you know, had that moment with me because it it was like I don't even think he understands how impactful that was.
Um but it's just it uh it's not so much a life motto, but it's um it definitely stuck with me in shapes.
Shaped it how I work.
I love that you share that story. I was gonna I found that quote and story in GQ magazine, it turns out.
is the where you were talked about this, and uh I was gonna ask about it.
And I didn't and I'm glad you shared it'cause I I love it.
Final question.
We're gonna go full circle, Scott Belski.
You're friends with him.
What's something people
would be surprised about or don't know about Scott, that might be
Interesting.
Um well I'll tell you one funny story and then I'll I'll I'll
First tell you something I love about Scott.
Um Scott is a great example of someone who I think has driven immense cultural change.
Um at a you know massive
um legendary company in in Adobe, obviously, but
The number of transformations that
you know, box that that um that Scott oversaw and and and led
And I'm I'm sure having
You know
a fraction of this experience at at Twitter
um, I can appreciate how difficult and and challenging and rewarding that was, right? Going from
You know.
package software to cloud.
Going from non AI to AI.
going from kind of like discrete tools to an integrated suite that worked really elegantly together. I think
Yeah.

Um
Scott oversaw a lot of the stuff and it's pretty incredible to see that transformation.
um bi have been so successful um
Uh an Adobe So I I love that.
Um the thing I guess like a funny story about Scott that
That people might not know.
I consider him to have been
The first periscoper.
Um so
Yeah, Scott.
Scott believed in Periscope before it was Periscope. You know, like the before we had turned it into live video, we had like a
A previous version of our
Or beta that was
Um static photo sharing.
Same vision, same concept, but the product was called bounty and it was like you
You put a pin somewhere in the world.
like the Tokyo fish market and someone would respond with a photo of like what you know, what it looked like there.
Uh you know, our vision was still to like help you see through someone else's eyes, but the first manifestation was really static and
have this like marketplace dynamic and
You know, it took us a while to get to the point where we're like, press a button, go live, and have it be live video, because by definition, it's like real time rather than static.
Anyway.
Before we built any of that
When we were kind of like playing with the idea and Scott was really encouraging us to go in this direction.
I remember like probably the second time I ever met Scott.
We did it FaceTime. Um he was at the TED conference, I want to say was in Vancouver. And just to like illustrate how cool it would be when he when he accepted the FaceTime, he's like,
Cool, and I'm gonna take you on a periscope and he like flipped his camera and started walking around the tech conference and basically pretending like
He was like prototyping the product but using FaceTime.
And it was such an amazing
It was such an amazing um
experience'cause I you know, having an investor
Essentially like
Encourage you down a product direction by showing rather than telling.
It was such a great encapsulation of how supportive Scott was and inspiring Scott was as one of our cheerleaders.
And it's you know, I I respect him so much for everything he did to help Periscope make happen um happen and also for betting on us, because he, you know, he was one of the first people who said yes.
to investing. He didn't know us, he just believed in us.
Um and that helped everything else come together and
Um
Yeah.
He's amazing.
What a mench. We've got to get him back to the podcast.
The uh the story reminds me of your Elon story where he FaceTime you.
And it also makes me think about
Your lesson of building consumer products.
Just using it.
being obsessed with it. Scott just like cares what it could look like and actually using the product not just talking about.
Yeah, he's a great example of of that as well. He's definitely a voracious user of
All
All tools and products and
Um that's why he has really great really great product sense.
Kayvon, you're amazing. This was so freaking fascinating. There's so many nuggets here. Can't wait for folks to hear this.
Two final questions, where can folks find you if they want to reach out and learn more?
And maybe follow up on anything if there's things you want to follow up on potentially. And then how can listeners be useful to you?
Uh people can find me on Twitter slash X slash whatever we're calling it these days.
Um the handle is uh Caves, K A Y V Z.
And um yeah, if you're if you're um if you're this brocast and you're working on something
Uh, cool and you need some help or advice or
You're looking for uh an angel investor, don't hesitate to reach out. Uh and would love to try what you're building.
Amazing. And also check out Particle.news.
There you go. Support support the way. Exactly. Amazing.
All right, Kayvon, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks, Lenny. Great to meet you.
Hi, everyone.
Thank you so much for listening.
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