"there's this belief that everybody needs to be a Founder I think in some ways our industry would be much better off if there were fewer Founders and there's an entire category of smart creative hardwo..."

"short word from our sponsors this episode is brought to you by Kota you've heard me talk about how Kota is the dock that brings it all together and how can help your team run smoother and be more effi..."

"docomomo fun to get to be a part of this I thought it'd be fun to start with a story about your time at Apple and you building this now very ubiquitous feature of dragging and dropping something into ..."

"yeah I get to Apple in the summer of 1992 and I have a laundry list of things that I would like to do to make the finder more you know usable and I remember sitting in Ron's office and saying you know..."

"take care of itself and interestingly like I have been lucky enough to have some things that were were successful you know on the metrics get talked about the most big audiences big Financial return e..."

"learned those things and had those experiences and and frankly even in the case of pets.com like even the high profile nature of it I could have worked at I could have worked at uh you know one of a t..."

"it's probably unfair to compare chewy who who executed exceptionally well over a decade grew their business Brick by Brick and turned it into something really remarkable to pest.com which was you know..."

"just like reached the conclusion that that given the way market conditions had evolved there was just no way we were going to be able to get more Capital into the company and and it was a company that..."

"making software I had done it for a really long time I done for like 25 years or something and I had changed a lot the industry had changed a lot and I thought maybe I just didn't have the same passio..."

"there but a few months uh after my last day at snap I got a call from Meg Whitman and Jeffrey kenberg who were starting up it was called new TV at the time and you know the pitch was we're going to tr..."

"and um my wife is a freelance writer marketing strategist and loves her life as a freelance contributor and she's like you should do this like why not it's two days a week it's just a few months what'..."

"there something that you took away from that experience that taught you what to try to avoid what to try to pull towards I think I sort of misunderstood or misjudged companies sometimes by thinking ab..."

"that you build and all of the little details and decisions that you make about making that product great but if the equation is fundamentally broken or a big swing in and of itself no amount of like i..."

"super interesting thing that no one about is that all of that content was designed to be made like day of or day before it aired so there was no back catalog of it and it was all designed to be shot i..."

"which is sort of like self-produced at home with you know very little sort of of the support infrastructure of Hollywood now you can argue I mean I think the content on YouTube is really really except..."

"than than anyone can stomach wow I really like this metaphor and this mental model of the math formula of the entire business and thinking of it that way I knew Co changed the way people consumed cont..."

"marketing apparatus the numbers that it takes to get there felt kind of small you know if you can get 20 million people in to see Shrek on opening night new IP like surely you can get them to take the..."

"was I guess I imagined that we would launch and when the likely thing happened that we you know got millions of people to download the app which we did and then that we when we inevitably struggled to..."

"that goes along with these Investments and part of the reason I get you know all the riches on the on the upside is that they're gonna they're gonna bet on some quies along the way too so as you were ..."

"going to read through this and see see what they pitched back in the day okay let's move on to things that worked out really well let's call notable successes other products you worked on that that wo..."

"talented software engineer but also a thoughtful product designer and maybe also had interesting input on product marketing that you could build a really great reputation inside the company by playing..."

"and so I do think that there's something to be said for a culture where there are swim lanes and people are encouraged to be like really really exceptional in their Lane and uh so I'm I feel really lu..."

"day it's crazy did not know that I see the website now and yeah it's a little different but basically the same so I'd say my lesson for you know my my my lesson from from You Don't Know Jack was defin..."

"that is I I was sort of biting my time to exit this enterprise software company I was BP of engineering I a whole team that reported to me I felt a lot of responsibility to to exit in a responsible wa..."

"yours and I got to you know I got to build the team and the culture you know in collaboration with him and Tim the founder over the course of the the next 10 years and you know it's just every every e..."

"whoever sees the the request first should respond to it and so you know you would write to us and you would get the founder or you get me or you'd get the engineer who wrote the feature you'd get the ..."

"there's the numbers are still tens of millions of people in the US listen every month so it's uh it's a thing but yeah it's I mean it's it's it's a little sad that it didn't it didn't have the quite t..."

"was very hard for us to to to to take the same kind of risks that that that Spotify took but then I think we just completely misjudge one really important thing which is that we were really inspired b..."

"it was just it was too late it's interesting that so much of this was rooted in that original Vision that you shared of Pandora of the radio smart radio in your pocket like radio personal radio that l..."

"about that just today there's a headline about a Hollywood produce show that's launching on Instagram reals and Tik Tock that was shot vertical and the headline is literally something like is Tik Tock..."

"right this episode is brought to you by help bar by chameleon the free inapp Universal search solution built for SAS your help content lives outside your app and is scattered in many places forcing us..."

"have so uh I leap pendor after a decade I take like a a year and try to figure out what I'm gonna do next but after about a year I got introduced to to Evan and it's kind of a funny story uh I a mutua..."

"it to be and after a couple of years I like I said I thought maybe I just wanted to like make croissants or something but one one really really big important lesson that I learned at snap is about ris..."

"it resonates a lot with what Brian shared about how he thinks about product now would just kind of telling people kind of what to build versus very bottom up tell us ideas you have that impact the way..."

"one wasn't Steve Jobs necessarily it could be somebody else he wasn't there H wow so so um I think I think what broke Apple out of that mode was Steve came back and like they didn't vote anymore like ..."

"business but not overplay my hand with respect to dictating uh outcomes the one thing you'll always have a CEO is no matter how much you tell the team that when I swing by their virtual desk and say y..."

"company called zero what is it like to move from just being a product leader an engine leader at a company to being the CEO for the first time why did you use zero as that role and what have you learn..."

"thought was I would start something so I company idea I was kind of quietly workshopping for some months and completely independed from all of that it's you know eight months into the pandemic and my ..."

"this path and was using it to um to help on my own uh sort of Health journey and uh Mike merer founded the company four and a half years ago and he and I were talking in this interval about my own exp..."

"that you know it's not challenging all startups are challenging and you know what we've really focused on for the last couple of years is we've been really focused on unit economics like really trying..."

"an equation that describes the business it talks about like how you turn investment into returns and I suppose I had come up with finance and then a business major that maybe that's the way that I wou..."

"deliver incredible results you know like everything in life you just I me you sign up for things so you can learn and and and that's the big one for me in the last year I really love that takeaway of ..."

"optimization of this equation and I think particularly if you sit on 25 boards it's probably a much more efficient way to evaluate how your companies are doing where to spend your time and how to help..."

"we've had a tremendous year and I'm just so so proud of the the team we've assembled they're they're incredible to the last part of the reason you're so successful is exactly what you said there's a h..."

"um you know it's I I guess I feel somewhat fortunate that my you know my my natural inclination as an entrepreneur is more in sync with expectations of the market than than it was for for a while okay..."

"your listener should go and find this because there there are interesting ways to label the other intersections the intersections that where they all four don't come together and and what's really int..."

"things but a couple of thoughts about how one engages with their work one thing is I I'm I'm really not like a hashtag hustling kind of of leader I I there was a woman that I worked with on the finder..."

"every single morning at 8:30 sat at her desk wrote a ton of great software and every night packed her stuff up and left and she contributed more than I ever did and I don't think she got the same kind..."

"don't know why these people like find success and then like start another company right away like why like you know there's so many things you could do in the world why would you start another company..."

"I'll take with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round are you ready I am ready what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people I really love elad Gill's High grt..."

"science fiction um and uh I mean there's like a lot of garbage science fiction out there to be sure but when you find something special it's like it's the best so probably Through The Years in that ca..."

"only read the first one also three body problem is the only the other one that I always think about it's come up a couple times on this podcast let's move on to the next question do you have a favorit..."

"that has a beginning middle and an end and doesn't need to ever have another episode it's amazing it's worth it's worth the you know get yourself a peacock subscription for at least a month to to to w..."

"permission to like or to set their expectation that I'm asking asking them to tell me about something they've actually done that is relevant to the topic that I'm I'm probing so that's a that's a just..."

"the things where there's a natural reward mechanism because it's like well I had this great day I'm gonna do more of that tomorrow what was the thing um it's just pretty Illuminating is there your fav..."

"room but recently I came across this product uh from a company called ear tune that are these kind of their replacement tips and they just have like the littlest bit of like compression foam on them s..."

"learning is you are mutant your ears are yeah are different yeah uh cool we'll link to that product in the show notes okay do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to or share with f..."

"great we're on the same page we've decided let it be known let it be known Tom we've talked about successes we've talked about failures mental health General Health all kinds of of awesome stories two..."