Ev Williams on Coronavirus and the 'Extreme' Tech of the Future

Ev Williams is the entrepreneur behind Twitter, Blogger, and publishing platform Medium -- three companies that helped shape the modern Internet. As we grapple with the impact of Coronavirus, these digital platforms are playing an even larger role in our ability to connect with one another. Ev weighs in on how all our lives could change in the short term and what the longer term future may hold for technology and media…

Will Augmented Reality project images onto our eyeballs? Will Silicon Valley ever move beyond the attention span economy? Will our lives start to resemble more of a video game than real-life? There's a lot to explore. And no one better than Ev Williams to help make sense of it all.

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Show Notes

Laurie and Ev’s first contact

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a book from Ev’s childhood

Full Episode Transcript

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
First Contact with Lori Siegel is a production of Dot
Dot Dot Media and iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey guys, I want to do something a little bit
different for this episode of First Contact. About two and
a half weeks ago, I interviewed Ev Williams, who founded
Twitter and medium and blogger, and I had asked him,
you know, about the coronavirus and his thoughts on it,
and two and a half weeks ago, I would say,

(00:35):
here in the United States, everything looked very, very, very different.
And so this episode, as we release it, I wanted
to talk to him again and ask his thoughts on
it now, because you know, this is such an extraordinary moment,
and I would say that a lot of us are
grappling with what does this virus mean for us? What

(00:57):
does it mean for our families and our parents and
our love ones, and a lot of us are beginning
to self isolate, to go home and spend a lot
of our lives digitally. And I think there's extraordinary power
and what's about to happen in our relationship with technology
and this fear during this moment, And so I wanted
to chat a little bit with Ev about that and

(01:19):
light of everything that's happened, and to give you a
little bit of a sense of where I'm at out
of precaution, I am self isolating and understanding the power
of digital and digital connection and really trying to grapple
with what it's going to mean to be human and

(01:40):
this era where there's so much fear and we are
relying on our digital connections. So bear with me for
the sound. How we're going to do this is I
decided to go back and interview the but it's a
phone call and I had to take it from home.
So bear with us for the sound, and we're going
to play that interview, and then once we play that,
it's only fifty minutes, we're going to get to the

(02:01):
main interview where you can hear about the future of
media and the thinking behind this is this is a
future facing conversation, and what's occurred in just the last
week here in the United States is I think game
changing for the future and what it means for all
of us. So take a listen, and we will have

(02:21):
the other part of the interview right after this phone call.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
All right, okay, here you go. All right, Sorry, as
I'm sitting here self isolated in my in my New
York apartment. You know, everything feels really different now. And
I'd asked you at the time a two and a
half weeks ago, like how worried about coronavirus are you?
You said something like ten percent worried. And by the way,

(02:46):
I was kind of with you, because I don't think
any of us thought what was going to happen was
going to happen. So I wanted to give you before
like we play the episode for folks and all that
kind of stuff, because so much has happened in the
two and a half weeks that we set across from
each other. And by the way, we would not be
sitting across from each other now, we're remote. Given the

(03:07):
state of things, like how how are you feeling about
it now?

Speaker 4 (03:12):
Very different, And I mean, I think it's an understating
place so much has happened in two and a half weeks,
because this feels like it's really two and a half days.
Everything's changed, and I think everyone, especially if you spent
a lot of time on Twitter, as I have. I
think I spent much time on Twitter in the last
week than in the last few months. And that's just

(03:35):
it's pretty terrifying. It's easy to get completely swept up
in the stories and the rhetoric, and there's a lot
of noise, but I think there's a lot of really
valid concerning information coming out.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, how do you think I was thinking about this?
Because like I'm home, and I think increasingly we're all
going to be living digital lives for the time being. Like,
by the way, it's so weird to be sitting here
and talking to someone who created like you know, major
companies that shape the modern internet, right, and I think
we're in this weird mode where like we're going to

(04:14):
be really relying fully on living in a digital state
for a little bit. Like when you created Twitter, you
create a blogger, you create a medium, Like how is
our relationship the text and to change? Do you think
in the in the coming weeks, maybe months.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
I don't know. I haven't had a chance to think
about too much. And very I think in some ways
grateful and initiatives. Just the infrastructure we have now to
deal with this, and it's currently recent and this isn't
even the things like Twitter I think shines in moments
like this and that's great, but all the other infrastructure

(04:56):
we have now, just the fact that many of us
are anyway. I have the broadband and the video comptems
actually works, and the things we need to do our
jobs and stay informed are there, and so it's feasible
and actually, for many companies, at least like mine, not
that disruptive all things considered. The most disruptive thing is

(05:20):
is probably for most people I know, is the kids
being out of school, because it's the that's the hardest
thing about working at home. But I think that being
fully immersed in the digital world and being further apart individually,
and even not having the opportunity to break from that,
even if that's your day to day job, and then

(05:42):
it's evening time when you don't have that opportunity to
go out in the world and connect with friends face
to face or go to restaurants or go to a show.
I think that's going to be hard.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, my whole career, I've set across with people like you,
a off crosses like tech. How do we maintain our humanity?
I feel like maybe it's kind of personal to me
right now because I'm sitting yourself, isolating, like and the
only connection I have now is like, it's so weird.
I'm literally doing this interview with you where I'm taking

(06:14):
a call, I mean to give you a sense I'm
basically like trying to make sure the sound is okay
under a sheet, you know, Like I literally did give
everyone a very authentic sense of like what this is
like as you talk about like this fear is like
we're going to live to digitally to a degree, how
do you think we can maintain our humanity during this time?

Speaker 4 (06:35):
Well, I think the counter is that the this pandemic
affects us all obviously affects some people worse than others,
and they're not all in exactly the same boat, but
it is it brings out humanity, is what I'm trying
to say in a way where so I think it

(06:55):
makes it much clearer as any real, real crisis. Is
there any threats that you know, what is important? And
people usually come back to the same thing about friends
and family and caring about your community. And so it's
a weird situation because you can see that, you can
see that online even though people aren't necessarily doing that physically.

(07:21):
At least, what I see and what I think about
is the caring and how do we how do we
help each other through this? For that part of our humanity.
I think it will bring out.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
This is a I like to get. So how are
you going to do it? How are you going to
make sure?

Speaker 4 (07:40):
Well? I'm very I feel very fortunate that I'm with
my family right now and with a couple of close
friends and so we're hanging out together. So I think
there's for me. Just I have a delightful conversation with
my seven year old and we're in the same place,

(08:01):
so I'm glad I didn't. I talked to my seven
year old through video conference. But he's in great spirits
so far because he's you know, gets to skip school
and we're just spending conversation. Like he actually asked me
last night, if you had to die, not of old age,
how would you die? And it was a pretty deep

(08:23):
conversation with him, and so it doesn't get much more
human than I know.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
So what was your answer? I hopefully it wasn't coronavirus.
Please tell me it wasn't coronavirus.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
No, it was definitely not getting sick. It was definitely
sickness seems to be. And we went as as seven
year old boys will do. We went down some pretty
gruesome routes there after that, which I'll spare listeners.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
It feels like we're all beginning to live in this
salon digital almost like experiment as we all start isolating
in fear of the virus. I sat down on you
for over now and we talked about the future of
media and your thoughts when we come out of this.
Do your thoughts change at all on the future of media?
Given what's this almost like digital experiment we're beginning to live.

(09:13):
Kind of looks like, does this change how you feel
about the future of media.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
I haven't really had time to think about that deeply yet,
and I would guess in the very long term no, Yeah.
But I think what's very clear is paying attention to
medium the last few days is this crisis has sucked

(09:39):
the air out of everything else. It has our full attention,
and I mean that's having a dramatic effect on media
right now. And how long that lasts is impossible to predict.
I think, obviously things they're going to get worse. It

(09:59):
could be if we were just talking two and a
half more weeks, we would be in a completely different state.
And it's going to get gruesome. So certainly the shorter
term impact on media is it's hard to talk about
anything else.

Speaker 5 (10:14):
And then the.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
Longer term is if there's a likely recession and how's
that effect consumer spending and therefore the app business as
well as subscription businesses. I expect all that to have
pretty big ramifications over the short term. But that short term,
I would, you know, is months and years.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, you know, I know that there could be a panic,
people's life could be at a risk. Will just change
your rules around social media and misinformation? Or have you
seen any changes even in the last week or so,
or do you sense anything changing.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
I don't know. I've been just in my own efforts
to get information.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
It's interesting because I've had to curated in my Twitter
followings well enough that I felt like I was getting
very high quality information. But then again, maybe everyone feels
like that. Because I would dip into I would see
some retweets and some comments via my timeline on a
whole different Twitter where there's some serious bs being bandied about,

(11:20):
and I was like, wow, people are still saying this,
you know, it's like downplaying the whole thing or having
conspiracy theories. So that is definitely out there, and bad
actors will take advantage of heightened stress and any opportunity
to spread this information and this is probably the biggest
one of all times. Will that lead to anything? I

(11:44):
don't know.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
It's a leadership moment for everyone, right like are you
finding it's changing you as a leader? How do you
want to lead during this time?

Speaker 4 (11:53):
The big thing for me focusing on the company is
just trying to help people feel some sense of stability
as we go through this. And they are obviously going
to be companies that are going to be hit hard,
going to have to layoffs, aren't going to be able
to get there next round of funding. And I'm not

(12:14):
really worried about any of that for us, but there's
it's going to increase, you know, you see headlines about that,
and if you're in a startup, then you wonder ears
my company in trouble? And so I'm trying to create
some sense of stability and also just trying to rally people.
And everyone wants to do tops of things, and so

(12:36):
what we see on medium is like there's a lot
of good information on mediums. So someone to have the idea, hey,
what if we made everything around coronavirus that we have
control over, we put make sure it's outside the paywall,
and so people don't feel like, you know, they're being
charged for what can be important information, and so looking

(12:58):
at those opportunities to actually to be of service and
not opportunistic, but actually like, oh, if there's roles we
can play, and we feel fortunate that we're I mean,
this is why we exist to help people get access
to get information and good ideas as well as express
things and connect with other people. And so so we
feel like we can be relevant and encouraging people to

(13:19):
come up with those ideas, act on those ideas, change
plans that may be you know, our longer term plans
don't change. But I think that helps both. It es
simply helps other people, but also help help the team.
You know, really feel like not be totally overwhelmed and
distracted by the bad news if you feel like you

(13:40):
can help.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Something, right, are you afraid?

Speaker 4 (13:43):
I'm I'm well praid much for me and my family,
but for the Yeah, for the world, for sure and
for all that. And there's definitely going to be a
lot of people really sick, and everything I read and
talk to doctors, I know we are our healthcare systems
are definitely not prepared. Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Right, Well, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it,
and stay healthy. Wash your hands.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
I thought you all right. Thanks by.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
So that's it for that portion of the interview. Now,
this is the portion of the interview we taked about
two and a half weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
What do you think communication looks like in fifty years?

Speaker 5 (14:30):
Oh? Wow, fifty years. I tend to think that things
get more extreme. I think a lot of the sci
fi visions of people being totally jacked into the matrix,
whether it's VR or more likely AR augmented reality, like
the fact that we'll have heads up displays and classes
that project information into our eyeballs. I think that will

(14:52):
totally be true.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
And do you think the augmented layers we're all just
going to be in like a giant video game of sorts.

Speaker 5 (14:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Basically, I want to start by taking you back. It's
the middle of winter in twenty sixteen. I'm meeting up
with one of the founders of Twitter, ev Williams. It's
been six years since I last interviewed him. His chosen

(15:20):
spot a bookstore in downtown New York. Now, I remember
thinking at the time, this guy founded three major tech companies, blogger, Twitter,
and now Medium a publishing platform, and he wants to
meet up somewhere surrounded by books, books which have almost
become like ancient artifacts because of the digital world that

(15:43):
he helped create. But when you get to know ev,
you'll understand that words, thoughts, and the sharing of ideas
are in his DNA. Knowing him a bit better now,
I couldn't think of a better place for us to
talk about the future of technology. I've interview you'd V
many times over the years, and of the Silicon Valley

(16:03):
CEOs I've spoken to, he's one of the more curious
founders I've met where other founders like to talk. You
see him listening. He's quiet and he sits back, but
knows how to read a room. And most importantly, he
has a proven track record of creating communication tools that
fundamentally change the way we speak to one another. So

(16:26):
pay attention to what he says about the future of media.
There's a lot to sift through. Will augmented images be
projected into our eyeballs? Will Silicon Valley ever move beyond
the attention economy? Will the future of media look like
an all encompassing video game? And why is it that
someone who has experienced insurmountable success is still so afraid

(16:51):
to fail. There's a lot to explore, and no one
better than Ev Williams to help us make sense of
it all. I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is First Contact.

Speaker 5 (17:04):
Ev.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
You're the founder and CEO of Medium. Also, you were
Twitter CEO for several years and Twitter came out of Odio,
which was a podcasting platform, so you were way ahead
of your time. And before that, you created Blogger, which
pretty much revolutionized blogging online, wouldn't you say, as opposed.

Speaker 5 (17:22):
To the blogging offline?

Speaker 1 (17:24):
We were all moving on. Well, this show is called
First Contact, and I was super excited about this because
I did some digging for our first contact. Do you
remember our first contact?

Speaker 5 (17:37):
Was it a south By?

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah? Yes, it was ten years ago and you were
the CEO of Twitter at the time. Okay, so I
found a photo there it is oh yeah, yep, oh wow, yep.
I wish our listeners could see that, But that was
ten years ago. And I in the middle, well, because

(17:58):
I think I was interviewing you. It was March twenty third,
twenty ten, and I was interviewing you. I was actually
a production assistant at the time, pretending to be a producer,
but interviewing you as the CEO of Twitter, so much
has happened in ten years. I would say, we talk
a lot about kind of beginnings here. I want to
go back to Nebraska, where you're from, and talk about

(18:24):
how you got into all of this. So I watched
a commencement speech that you did, and you were talking
about this giant idea sharing machine that you were into,
the thing you've kind of always been obsessed with. And
it's something about like opening up the second edition of
Wired magazine and just like falling in love with this
idea of connecting our brains? What about it was so

(18:46):
interesting to you? And don't give me this like, h
you know, like large answer, like because like I you know,
I just hate when founders do that, when they're like, oh,
I just really wanted to connect the world. Like that
seems so broad. Like you were this guy in Nebraska,
like and you opened up the second edition of Wired
and you were just like hooked in some capacity. What
was it?

Speaker 5 (19:06):
So you don't want a large answer? Can I give
a medium answer?

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, yeah, that's a joke.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
I think I was captivated by the notion of getting
out of where I was because I was from this
very small rural place and pre internet growing up, and
I never traveled, and I just was itching to see
the world, but not in a traveling sense necessarily, but

(19:35):
just to kind of break out of there. And so
the idea of getting access to the world and ideas
through this little box on our desks as it was
at the time was super compelling. And it wasn't I
wouldn't claim it was altruistic of connecting the world. It
was just the idea of being connected. And it was

(19:55):
more from an idea knowledge perspective than a social perspective.
I wasn't necessarily looking to make friends.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
But do you have friends growing up? Yeah? I mean
was it were you kind of like a lonely kid
or was it? I mean, was it kind of a
form of connection.

Speaker 5 (20:14):
I was lonely, but I wasn't a loner. I was social.
There just were very few people, and so I think
I was spending a ton of time alone. And by
this time I had gone off to college actually and
then I quit, but I was looking. I was still
having that feeling of there's more out there in the world.

(20:34):
In fact, my cousin had a cousin from Kansas City,
which was the big city, and he came and visited
us on the farm one time and he gave me
this book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Do you know that book.
It's like a children's book, a fable, and it's about
the seagull who is different and he wants to break

(20:55):
away from his flock, and basically, and my cousin wrote
a note in the book saying something about regarding that
that he saw that in me, and that I could
you get out of there or you know, is okay?
And so I think it was that yearning to be
in a different place than it was and more connected

(21:17):
to the greater world that really compelled me.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
I think for me, so growing up for me, like
I was the only Jewish girl a very Christian conservative
southern school and had parents that were divorced, and I
think for me, because of that, for some reason, I
always felt like a little bit of an outsider, and
so I always liked outsider stories. And that's why I
went to go on to do what I did, I think,
which is tell outsider stories, which you could argue, you

(21:43):
guys are now all insiders in some kind of way.
You guys are all very powerful.

Speaker 5 (21:47):
Now, but I don't know who you guys is, but
I still feel like it not.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
The outsider for sure, So I guess I guess I
ask you that to a degree, Like when you say
you're talking about this book, you're talking about this idea
of like doing something big or being different. Where do
you think specifically that came from.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
I don't know whether it was was something I was
born with or just I mean, there's all kinds of
narratives that I could imagine in wanting to do something
important growing up in a place where I didn't feel important.
But as I got into it, it was. It was
compelling in its own right. Just technology in the Internet,

(22:31):
specifically in the early nineties, I guess mid nineties, and
then started blogger in ninety nine was just so interesting
because of you could sense the potential and not that
I or anyone saw the future in detail, but there
was the talk about it at the time about connecting
the world and sharing ideas and information at our fingertips

(22:54):
and all the media ever produced being accessible and all
that is true now and we take it for granted.
And that was such a it's a transformative thing. And
the way I look at it now is that there's
so much that we take for granted that has emerged
over the last twenty years, and all kinds of it
is broken and is it good or bad? And there's

(23:18):
problems that come with it, and I think it's all
still very interesting because in twenty years we've completely changed
how humans get their information and how they communicate with
each other, and of course it's broken, and of course
we still have to work out and make it better.
And so while a lot of the novelty has gone

(23:39):
away and a lot of the painful reality has come up,
there's still all these exciting and really cool things that
we don't even think about now that I think you're
still pretty cool. But back then it was, oh my gosh,
could this really actually be true?

Speaker 1 (23:54):
I read that you kind of went west and because
you were looking at Silicon Valley, which you thought was
just like Geniuses, basically Baywatch and like something else. But like,
I know that's going to come back to haunt you
now that I've said it was like Baywatch Geniuses and
something else was like Silicon Valley. How did you feel
when you first got there?

Speaker 5 (24:13):
Yeah, that was my so when you're not from California,
when you're from the Midwest and you only know California
from TV and movies, it kind of all blurs together.
So you assume that surfing in the beach have something
to do with computers and everything else. But yeah, northern California.
I traveled to California for the first time when I

(24:34):
was twenty four twenty five, and I saw the ocean
for the first time when I was twenty, so that
was on the other coast. I went to Florida, but
so everything was new and I was nervous, but I
did feel in California. Instantly. I noticed two things. One is,

(24:54):
there were no bugs, like in the air. It was
during the summer, and it felt like a movie set.
What did I know of movie sets? But because I
was in California, that's what came to mind, because in
Midwest in the summer, there's bugs. And I felt very
strange and not real, but also felt very comfortable in

(25:17):
that because everyone there, it seemed like, was from somewhere else,
and so that feeling of being an outsider was lessened
because it was a community of outsiders. Those are the
two things I remember when I first got there.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
And so we fast forward all these all these years later,
we talked about like, you know, twenty years later and
this whole idea of this idea sharing machine that you
had in mind. You connected the world in all these
different ways with Twitter, Medium, blogger. I know everyone asks
you now, like how do you feel? How do you

(25:51):
feel about what's happened with Twitter? How do you feel
all this stuff? And I remember the headlines like now
av Williams is going to fix the Internet and all
this stuff, Like but like behind the scenes, and like
when you're sitting at the dinner table and when like
you're with your wife and kids, and like you think, like, whoa,
you really did create this incredible ecosystem for us to all,

(26:12):
you know, share information. How do you feel about it?

Speaker 5 (26:18):
Well? The first thing, even hearing that, I feel uncomfortable,
like saying that I did these things. I was part
of something. And I think the main thing that I
feel is incredibly grateful to be a part of both
Twitter and the greater that the Internet as it's grown
and emerged over the last couple of decades, and to

(26:39):
be just at the forefront of that and helping that
along was just an incredible experience that yeah, I feel
lucky to have been a part of is the main thing.
And I don't spend a lot of time lamenting choices
we made or regret. Very focused on what's new and

(27:02):
interesting and what can we do next. Now. Over the
last six months, I've been living in New York after
spending twenty two years in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
So mostly I just feel like there's new, interesting stuff
to explore, and I don't feel like because I was

(27:22):
a part of something, I get questions like do I
regret things or what I've changed things? And all that
gets very complicated and nuanced, and I don't I don't
know how to answer those questions.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
You said something about make sure technology makes things easier,
But do you worry that things got a little bit
too easy?

Speaker 5 (27:45):
Yeah? Yeah, I think so. That something I realized a
few years ago, and Tim Wu has written some great
stuff on this, But I realized at one point that
the way to make something successful in technology and probably
most businesses, but at least technology enabled businesses was simply
to make something easier. Something that a human wanted. You

(28:06):
make it easier, and that could be connection. It could
bean romance. It could mean status, it could mean goods delivered,
it could mean the answer to information. And you go
through the list of major things people want entertainment, and
you look at the major tech companies, and what they've

(28:27):
mostly done is that this thing that people have always wanted,
we made it substantially easier. And you look at how
the big tech companies have what they've gotten really really
good at And take Amazon and it's one click and
literally patenting the idea of buying something with one click
that was a major value creator. And then the free
shipping in prime so you didn't have to think about it,
and always having the lowest price and having the best selection.

(28:49):
And Google how they've been obsessed with speed and low friction,
and company after company has basically used technology to reduce
friction and make things easier. So in many ways that's great.
And then obviously humans are humans, and they want things
that aren't always good for it. I think society as
a whole is kind of gone through this sugar binge

(29:12):
and now we're reeling in that and saying, oh, well,
like we shouldn't have allowed all that technology, or we
shouldn't have partaken that much. But I think we're figuring
out how to deal with that. How are we going
to deal with the fact that there is all the
stuff that's immediately available and it's exploiting many base instincts

(29:32):
in the same way that junk food exploits based instincts,
and saying how do we deal with that? How do
our kids deal with that? How does society deal with that?
And how are people manipulating that, manipulating us in ways
we don't even know.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
We're going to take a quick break to hear from
our sponsors, but when we come back, EV talks about clickbait,
the worst offenders, and why medium is different. Also, if
you like what you're hearing, make sure you hit subscribe
to first Contact in your podcast app you don't miss
another episode. I've read from a blog post you because

(30:20):
was like twenty fifteen you said you I was never
a fan of RSS readers. Sometimes they've made things easier
to read, but I didn't like how they took content
out of context, especially from sites where I liked the design.
But then you kind of went on to create Twitter,
which like it seems like it's like everything is just
like can be taken out of context to a degree, right.
I mean maybe that's a that doesn't make complete.

Speaker 5 (30:40):
Sense creates a new context, Yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
It certainly seems like this moment has kind of lost
a little bit of context or something like. What do
you think is the solution to some of some of
our Internet's latest issues.

Speaker 5 (30:52):
I think context has a tremendous amount to do with
how people interpret information as well as what they share.
And I think what we're focused on medium and doing
is enabling thoughtful and meaningful content to find its right
audience and find a receptive audience. And what we're fighting

(31:13):
against is the fact that there is the way that
the content distribution systems of the Internet have evolved over
the some time is for optimization of attention on the Internet.
It's like the goal is to distract you, and the
reward is if you actually capture enough attention cheaply enough

(31:34):
and get distract enough people, then you make money. And
that's what we rely on for our information. And so
I think it's systemic. It's not a matter of when
we need better publishers, or we need better better systems
to control the bad stuff, or we need to kill
miss information. It's much more fundamental. I think in how

(31:55):
are their systems that allow people, whether to journalists, writers, experts,
people who are sharing information and knowledge. Is the incentive
structure rewarding the right thing? I think for the most part,
it's not today.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
And so I mean I remember maybe these three years ago.
I mean, you've been taking you were kind of talking
about this before people were talking about this.

Speaker 5 (32:18):
I give this to you while you've.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Been obsessed with this. I mean, it's like, okay to
talk about this now, but when you started talking about this,
it kind of wasn't okay to talk about as a
Silicon Valley leader. Like I will give you that, Like
you had stepped away from Twitter, but you're on the
board at the time. I don't think people fully understand this.
Like the first time you said this, like it was
kind of controversial, right, Like now everyone is like, oh,

(32:41):
the attention economy and like and you know, our attention
is not being and now this is like a whole
buzz word in Silicon Valley. But like when you came
out and you were like, our attention is under attack,
Like I can imagine first of all, that got awkward
in the boardroom at Twitter, because isn't that their business model?
Correct me, if I'm wrong.

Speaker 5 (33:00):
Correct, Twitter does make its money from advertising, So was
that awkward? Yes and no, But I mean maybe it
gets complicated because then I not I'm not on the
board of Twitter anymore. But I do make a distinction
between types of advertising and the advertising and distribution systems
such as Twitter and Google and content advertising. But it

(33:26):
gets a little, a little complicated, and so advertising.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Is just like the worst offender.

Speaker 5 (33:31):
Oh gosh, there's no actual it'd be too hard to
name the worst of endor. I mean, we've all been
across the web and seeing these just terrible sites that
are overloaded with ads and the clickbait and there there's
we can all recognize the worst offenders when we see them.
But I think about what's complicated about talking about this,

(33:52):
And in the Twitter case, I don't think that's not
all the worst offender, nor is Google. There's a defensible
argument that that's the best way to to fund an
information distribution system because the content itself doesn't get promoted
based on its advertising, which is different than other systems
where the content has the advertising embedded in it. There's

(34:14):
a time when television was seen to be trash and
movies were the only high form of video entertainment, and
now that's no longer true. What changed to make that
no longer true was the best television stop being funded
by advertising, and then consumers got a much better value proposition,

(34:35):
a much better product via streaming in first of all
HBO and other premium channels, and now that's the norm.
Music went through the same thing. There's a time when
music was the whole music industry was going to be
out of business because of Napster, and then obviously for
decades there's commercial radio and now it's healthier than severban
and the consumer value proposition is amazing. For ten bucks

(34:57):
a month, you can get access to everything you've ever
wanted in these great playlists and discovery. So I think
there is reason to be optimistic that if you change
the system and what's rewarded, we can get to a
much better solution.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
So take me to the reason behind building Medium and
what you found, because this is a reaction to a
lot of the stuff we just spoke about totally.

Speaker 5 (35:19):
So I started Medium eight years ago, so twenty twelve,
which was before certainly before a lot of people were
talking about advertising and before fake news and fake news
at the time was the Onion in the Daily Show.
It was delightful. So I saw what happened with social media,
which I thought out of this whole interesting layer in

(35:42):
real time information exchange, speaking of Twitter specifically, and there
was nothing like that on the more on the bigger side,
so to speak. So Twitter people would exchange links, and
then you'd click off to a website and you'd read
an article, and often it wasn't yet optimized for mobile,
and I had all these ads in there, and it

(36:02):
was kind of And if you were publishing a website,
then you go to Twitter or search or email try
to get someone to come there, and if they came,
they weren't They probably weren't logged in. So if you
wanted to comment or something, just the systems didn't feel
modern and they didn't feel evolved, and they also didn't
seem like again that the best stuff was floating to
the top. So the idea was, create a place where

(36:25):
anyone can write and publish and help the good stuff find,
you know, find audience. And so that's what we created
in twenty twelve and is still the case today. Medium.
Anyone can write on Medium, anyone can publish for free.
It's read by About one hundred and forty million people

(36:46):
a month visit Medium. Many of them log in and
use the app. Many of them are paid subscribers. It's
ali ad free, and it ranges from the amateur storyteller,
the individual who wants to rant, to professional journalists and publications.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
So where does medium fit in the modern media landscape?
As someone who sees kind of into the future and
says like, this is where I think media is going.
Where do you think it fits?

Speaker 5 (37:12):
Well? I think it's our aspiration is to be the
best place to publish and find quality, thoughtful content on
the Internet, and I think we can achieve the best
place to publish for the vast majority of individuals and
organizations because it's just way easier and more efficient to

(37:32):
publish to a network and the same reason, for the
same reason that if you have a tweet to share,
you don't share it anywhere but Twitter. If you have
a video, you might put it on your own website
depending on what your goal is, But if you just
want audience, you're probably going to put it on YouTube.
So we're trying to achieve the same thing as the
default in the best place to find your audience and
to build an audience, but without the downside of having

(37:56):
to monetize with only advertising and really where a system.
And when you change the business model and you change
what's rewarded, then you create a space for quality and
thoughtfulness and help good stuff rise to the top. So
we're not trying to get everyone to publish on Medium,
but we're trying to get those people who are really
trying to put stuff out there that is a value

(38:18):
and is worth to put it on Medium and make
it the best place to find that stuff. And that's
our goal.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
How's the subscription model been? I mean, has it been
difficult to get people to subscribe? Will people pay for quality?
I mean this is the question of the internet, right
like will people pay for quality contents?

Speaker 5 (38:34):
Well? People will? I mean we've been doing the subscription
for We're entering our third year, or just center our
third year. We've done three years, sorry, and it's gone
very well.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
And so the founders always say that yes, what does
that actually mean?

Speaker 5 (38:50):
Well, we don't share a subscription number, but most people
are surprised and what we've learned so it's been super
interesting because what we've done is not just put up
a paywall and charge money which a lot of publishers
have done, and even three years ago when we started that,
the default assumption was no one will pay on the Internet,

(39:13):
or certainly no one will pay for written word content.
That's all free. It's ubiquitous, there's too much of it.
And on top of that, Medium is mostly user generated content.
It's an open platform. Anyone can publish, and while we
now have an editorial team that publishes some, the vast
majority of what's on medium comes from individuals who can

(39:35):
publish outside the paywall or behind the paywall and get paid.
And so we did something that is very unusual, which
is with an open platform, charge a subscription. And so
open platforms lend themselves to advertising business models. This is YouTube,
this is Twitter, this Facebook, this is everything, because it's

(39:55):
all about volume and quantity, and as the platform, you
don't pay for content, and so advertising tends to make
very little per content, especially Internet content, but there's lots
and lots of it, and the quality doesn't matter if
you're making money from advertising, because people aren't paying for it.
And for all those reasons, advertising is a model that

(40:16):
makes sense for a platform. Whereas a publisher who wants
to charge a subscription, and think of the New Yorker
and the New York Times, and it's like, oh, it's
all about quality and brand and trust. And so what
Medium has done is what the biggest thing we've figured
out is how to blend these two because we believe
deeply in the open model and that the idea of

(40:38):
the great ideas can come from anywhere. And many of
historically the best stories on medium that have been surprising
and unique and valuable and interesting have come from places
you would never expect. And we have lots of famous people,
when we have professional journalists, and we have all kinds
of people published on medium, but time after time, the
thing that comes out of nowhere and blows people is

(41:00):
because it's open and free and anyone can publish. And
so we hold that deer, and we hold the fact
that people should pay for quality and we should reward quality,
and that lenses. So what we've done is blend those models,
and we do a lot of work to curate the
best of Medium, help make sure that people are seeing

(41:20):
both what's interesting to them and what's actually good. And
when we do that, what we find is people happily pay.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Do you worry that, especially now that good information is
harder and harder to get. I mean, do you think
it's we're going to have this most like junk food
epidemic for information, where like you're going to pay like
only the people who can afford it are going to
be able to have good information. And then and so
when your kids grew up, if they grew up wealthy,

(41:48):
they'll be able to have good premium information. And then
if not, they're going to have like the bad information
of like the you know, look in the dumpster of
the internet. And then we're just going to create a
world of haves and have not. Do you worry about that?

Speaker 5 (42:01):
It's a good question. I think we need to think
about that a bit more. I think in the near
term we won't have that because one of the one
of the nice things about the model like Medium has,
which same as The New York Times has, is the
people who are willing and able to pay it actually
a subsidizing it. It's not a hard paywall. What happens

(42:22):
is it's actually a little bit of a It's good
for everyone in the sense that the few people who
pay for Medium enable one hundred plus million people to
read Medium and not pay. I think that can continue.
I don't know if that will always be the model,
but what that allows is then because certain people are
paying and some authors and publications can do very well

(42:45):
in a subscription model who couldn't even survive in an
advertising model because different types of contents, not just that
it's paid for differently, it's different types of content will
work better in an advertising model versus a subscription model. And
one of the things that's been really informative as we've
been building this is engagement and value are not the

(43:08):
same thing. And if you build an advertising based platform,
what you learn and what Silicon Valley engineers obsess on
all day long how to increase engagement. And engagement is
measured in all kinds of ways, and everything's measured, and
it's all about making the charts go up. And it's
like if we move this button, or if we change

(43:28):
the density of the listings, or if we do this
or that, if we send more notifications, will people spend
more time? And so you have these charts and you
try to make the charts go up. And in an
advertising business, those charts are very tightly correlated with how
much money the business makes because what you're selling is
that attention. So it's all about capturing more and more
attention with a subscription business, so a medium. We have

(43:52):
all those charts as well, and you know, we're very
familiar with that model. And what we notice is those
things you can measure do not necessarily correlate with the business.
They don't necessarily correlate with subscription because what we're asking
people to do is make an evaluation of is this
worth my time? Not just worth my time, but am
I willing to pay for this? Do I feel good

(44:12):
about that time I spent? And there's no way to
actually measure how much value someone is getting except if
they're paying for it. And so what we found is
there are certain types of content that will be consumed
and people are less likely to pay, and there's other
content that may be consumed in less numbers, but those

(44:34):
people are very happy. And we can all imagine things
that maybe not be wildly popular, but we feel really
good about consuming or we get a lot of value
out of personally, and that is worth something to us.
So that's a roundabout way of saying, by building these
subscription models, or this model in particular, we can enable
things to exist that are extremely valuable and for a

(44:56):
lot of people, they will be free, and because they'll
be subsidized by the people that're valuable to and the
writers who are writing them are going to be able
to get paid in a way that they would have
never been able to in an advertise model, and they're
going to reach an audience they would have never been
able to say in a book model, because they're still
open and free out on the internet.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
We're going to take a quick break. But when we
come back, almost ten years after leaving Twitter, Ev explains
why it's still difficult for him to talk about exiting
the company he founded. And if you have questions about
the show, comments, really anything, you can text me on
my new community number nine one seven five four zero
three four one zero. It's been a year since you've

(46:01):
left Twitter's board and you were there for twelve years,
and I think leaving any job, and I mean you
weren't day to day, but I know you created this company.
What was the hardest part of like completely stepping away, Well.

Speaker 5 (46:16):
It was very hard to do that. It's something I
thought about doing for years and Twitter is a very
large part of my life, my identity. Like I said,
I feel very lucky to have been a part of it.
I also stayed on the board because I wanted to
be helpful, and I felt an obligation to be helpful.

(46:38):
And I don't know if I was, but I tried
my best to bring conversations and participate in conversations that
were brought to the board or that I thought we
needed to have on the board. And that ranged from
how to be helpful to the business to how to
help make sure we do the right thing. And there
was a point where I felt like, for the time

(47:00):
I was spending, I could be more helpful doing other things,
and so that was sort of my equation. The other
reason I like being on the board for a long time.
It was tremendously educational for me to see as a
student and a builder of businesses, to see a company
go from from zero to a public company worth billions

(47:22):
of dollars and ibe thousands of employees, and seeing the
issues that came up, and seeing the different rounds of
management and leadership and how they handled the many, many
challenges that were extremely complex. Was even if I didn't
feel I was always being helpful, I was always actually
learning a great deal And so I started to seeing
decrease in returns just because the company had been the

(47:43):
size it was in public for a while, and so
that's why I got off to board. As far as
the most difficult part, I think it was just giving
up that part of my identity. Although I realized you
can't unfound something, so it's still it still is. I
mean the main people. If people don't know me, it's
like I don't usually volunteer that information, but other someone

(48:05):
else will say I co founded Twitter, So the identity
hasn't really changed that much. But I felt like, am
I making a mistake? Should I? Or it was probably
the obligation part. I still also care about the company
and so many people there that's like, am I It's
like I'm quitting them, It's like I'm breaking up with them.
I had sort of that feeling like I'm like I

(48:27):
shouldn't do that, and I owed so much to the
company that I should just stay as long as possible.
But I got over that.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Was there like a point that you were like, it's
just time to go.

Speaker 5 (48:40):
Yeah, it was the beginning of last year, so yeah,
a year ago. I often just try to assess life
over the holiday break and say, like what do I
want going forward? So it was it was right after
after that that I I think it was after that
that I that I told Ohmat and Jack.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
It is funny though, I think identity is a really
big thing for tech founders, and because startups are like
children to a degree and total you and you live
and breed them. I think that people don't talk about
to get to where you're at and the seat where
you're at, where you can just casually talk about a
lot of these things. It comes with like an extraordinary
amount of resilience and a lot of these downtimes that

(49:24):
that we don't really talk about. Everyone has failings and
their jobs. Everyone goes through things. But how did you?
Because I think we can talk about it now that
you're you know, we just talked about medium and doing well,
how did you move on? How does one move on?

Speaker 5 (49:42):
It's still not that easy to talk about. But time
is a big thing. It's been a decade almost it'll
be a decade this year since I left, and you know,
hopefully I've grown in that time and scotten distance. I also,
I just see it much more balanced now. I've learned

(50:04):
a lot about people and politics and relationships, and I
can own a lot of the For a long time,
it just felt like this grave injustice and betrayal. And
now I look at it more neutrally and say, like, Okay,
I can see I can disagree with this conclusion or
how this and this was done. I can also see
the logic, and I can see also the gift that

(50:27):
I got of freedom and the ability to pursue different things.
And for a long time it was I didn't necessarily
look at that way, but that's how I think about
it now.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Least you had a mentor who said, during tough times,
you either change for the better or you just get frozen. Right,
How did you change for the better?

Speaker 5 (50:45):
That was actually, yeah, I forgot about that, but that
was when I was still dealing with a lot. And yeah,
he said, given what you've done already, you're going to
be better because of this. You just don't know how yet.
And that started a long, long journey of sort of introspection.
And I don't know how much of it was recovering

(51:06):
from that, but I think I think had I been
caught up and running the company for you know, it
was totally crazy for lots of years and probably still is.
But I probably wouldn't have taken as much time to
grow personally, and so that's been part of what I've

(51:28):
been doing the last few years. Via health, meditation, kids,
family relationship development, all of those things have helped me
create that distance and sort of the more even view
of it.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
How do you take care of your head when you're
a founder and you talk about like, you know, taking
care of yourself personally and that kind of thing, like
what do you actually do?

Speaker 5 (51:53):
What do I do? Literally? What do I do?

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah? I mean, I actually think like tangibles are kind
of interesting.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
So the things I do now that I think, looking
back it was just silly not to have done before
are the things that everyone is. It feels cliche the same,
But I try to get enough sleep, so like seven
to eight hours of sleep every night, and I exercise,

(52:21):
I meditate, I eat well or at least better than
I did a one time, and you know, all the
kind of the classic things. Another thing that I think
has helped a lot at the Culture medium is just
developing much better relationships with my team through training and

(52:44):
workshops and stuff. That's been a really healthy thing for
our culture and a very big difference from how I
ran things a medium.

Speaker 1 (52:53):
What do you think when you look to the future
in fifty years you have kids now, I mean, what
do you think communication looks like for your kids in
fifty years? Are we even on Twitter to see it?
In exists advertising a thing like just take us to.

Speaker 5 (53:09):
The future, Oh wow, fifty years. I tend to think
that things get more extreme, but in more than one
direction at once. So on the one hand, I think
a lot of the sci fi visions of people being
totally jacked into the matrix, whether it's VR or more
likely AR augmented reality, like the fact that we'll have

(53:33):
heads up displays and glasses that project information into our eyeballs.
I think that will totally be true and a real thing.
And I'm sure we'll have ambient AlwaysOn audio in our ears,
and maybe even I'm not up to speed on the neurotransmitters,
you know, sending information directly to our brains, but I

(53:54):
know people are working on that. I think all those
things will be true. I also and so like everything
else that'll be good and bad, it'll be partially touted
as oh, we're not looking at our phones the whole time,
because we're getting just the information we need. But I
also think that'll be overwhelming. I think, hopefully, because I
like to be optimistic, we'll get over the sugar high

(54:16):
of information. I think the misinformation and fake news and
abuse and all those things that are part of the
Internet today. I think there're solves to all of those.
I think that really, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Do you really think we get on top of this?

Speaker 5 (54:30):
Yes, I think we don't know. I think we get
on In the.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Years that we've been talking, it doesn't It feels like
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (54:38):
I think we get on top of all that. I
think it's still really early. It's still all driven by advertising.
And do you think that that's fixable?

Speaker 1 (54:46):
Do you think that the fund that the business model
of Silicon Valley changes in order to happen? How it
has to most of the people.

Speaker 5 (54:54):
Every because everybody who can is going to pay for
a higher quality information, just like they hey for higher
quality entertainment. Like you don't know anyone who can have
afford it, who doesn't have Netflix and probably three other
streaming services or Spotify or Apple Music, and it's just
way better. And the same thing will happen with our

(55:14):
news and information that we consume, as well as probably
your social networks which will also exist, but they'll all
be much more now. There's just going to be a
downside of that as well. Maybe there'll be more degated communities.
Maybe they'll be more.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Filter bubbles create like the ultimate I don't know, Silicon Valley,
where like we can't even be in your presence because.

Speaker 5 (55:36):
I don't know what you're talking to me about it.
I live in New York.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
It's okay.

Speaker 5 (55:41):
So I think all that's going to happen. There's also
going to be a one one trend in general is
that the Internet reflects the real world more and more
over time. And so one of the reasons that we're
going through even if you look at cybersecurity, is because
most most the Internet was not built, was like communities

(56:01):
that were small towns and didn't have locks on their doors,
and then maybe became big cities and people decided they
needed to take security much more seriously and we need
police forces, and that's just that's taking a while. And
so that's all going to happen. I'm sure. I think
it's Mentally and emotionally, I am concerned about what the
about extreme looks like. Even if we've addressed some of

(56:24):
the more blatant issues we have today, and so I
think on the other extreme, there's going to be hopefully
enough nature or nature like experiences where people can complete.
I think there'll be a big trend toward completely unplugging
real life interaction, and that will be a way to

(56:45):
live at least part of your life.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
What do you think is actually we go a little
black mirror with me for a moment. Sure, someone in
here has said to me, like he's like, well, I'm
worried about Netflix and the idea that like they'll be
able to measure your facial expressions and know the second
you talk about this instant feedback and how bad it is,
and know the second that you're not interested, and be
able to target and do that kind of thing. Do

(57:10):
you think we're when it comes to the future of media,
Like the media companies will be able to know the
second where or not our attention is gone and be
able to kind of act accordingly.

Speaker 5 (57:21):
I think that's much more likely with CNN than with Netflix.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Do you think CNN will exist in fifty years?

Speaker 5 (57:27):
The brand will Big media brands don't die, but Netflix,
because when they start doing that, it's going to be
the same thing when we get someone to read something
on medium that they click on because it appeals to
their base instincts, but they don't value And so because
now Netflix may create an advertising business as well and
be doing that. I don't know if Netflix will be

(57:48):
independent in fifty years, but they'll probably be owned by
Disney I hope not. By the way, I just read
that on medium. So speculating, what.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Do you think is the single most important ethical issue
when it comes to the future of tech and us
complicated human beings.

Speaker 5 (58:03):
The most important ethical issue, well, the biggest pay attention
I mean to frame it as an ethical issue is
by the way, I think Netflix will be all video
games in fifty years two Why because they're more compelling
that that's the thing that will capture people's attention. More
entertainment is going to shift more.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
To you think it's all games, And do you think
with augmented layers we're all just going to be in
like a giant video game of sorts.

Speaker 5 (58:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Basically you said to kids, have a great future ahead.

Speaker 5 (58:36):
There will still be storytelling. Storytelling is not going anywhere.
But the ethical issue, I mean, the issue that I'm
most concerned about, and we've talked about before is climate
and it's tangential to most of the things we're talking about,
but on the other hand, completely related, because I think
the reason the world has not done enough for climate

(58:58):
change so far isn't because of Blackman information or lack
of possibilities. It's because of medium manipulation and politics and
by those who it's not in their interest to do things.
So I see that as the biggest issue by far
that we need to grapple with, and as an ethical issue.
It's not clear to me what tech does about that,

(59:18):
but I worry about it.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
You did Blogger, Twitter, Medium, You just come up with
like a new form of communication every so often that
fundamentally changes things. Will Medium be your final act?

Speaker 5 (59:30):
I think so. I can't see starting another company from scratch,
and there's so much more I want to do with Medium.
I do really feel like we're scratching the surface and
there's not really anything I can't be Certainly, if I
were going to start another internet and media thing, I
can do all I want to do and all I
can imagine within Medium. If I were to start another company,

(59:50):
it would probably be totally unrelated.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
I want to do a quick lightning round who would
you rather have dinner with Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg?
Who's at your table?

Speaker 5 (01:00:02):
Do you have to pick? Can I have them both?
I just like that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Do you want them both?

Speaker 5 (01:00:05):
Sure? I'd love to have them. See what the chat?

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Okay? A feature you wish you'd created on Twitter but
you didn't.

Speaker 5 (01:00:10):
Oh, well, you know it's a silly thing that we
should It's basically Instagram. What There was a very long
time when you couldn't upload a picture to Twitter, and
then eventually we built it in. But I think we
could have done everything that Instagram does as a separate,
separate app, or a separate feed or.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Something the media company you'd like to buy since you're
I think you're a billionaire. You're a billionaire and Bennioff
bought Time, so everyone's doing it these days. In your position,
I know you didn't you want to you wanted to buy?

Speaker 5 (01:00:42):
Can I answer that?

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Why not? Stop looking at your pr people? Why not?
You can answer whatever you want? Okay, Disney, Okay, years
ago you told me no regulation would be better than
bad regulation. What candidate is best equipped to deal with
the nuances of social media issues from tech comp and
he's being too powerful to the spread of misinformation. I
don't know which one's the worst candidate to deal with it.

Speaker 5 (01:01:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Oh man, so are you not political?

Speaker 5 (01:01:09):
I am political when I haven't. I don't want to
weigh in on the current Democratic candidates. I will certainly
get behind one.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Do you have a free ride to space or a
doomsday scenario like a bunker kind of thing.

Speaker 5 (01:01:21):
That's no, I don't worry like that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Okay, just in general. That's not because of coronavirus, just
in general. You know, I feel like a lot of
people in Silicon Valley have those.

Speaker 5 (01:01:29):
I don't have those. I do have. My dad still
lives on the farm I grew up and in Rual, Nebraska,
So that's sort of like good always retreat to there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Okay, some personal questions, When is the last time you
felt really uncomfortable?

Speaker 5 (01:01:40):
Besides when you're asking me questions politics, Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
You know, and sometimes I think people maybe think because
you're a big founder, you probably don't really get uncomfortable.
But I can imagine you get uncomfortable sometimes.

Speaker 5 (01:01:53):
Absolutely. Wow, I wasn't going well when you're asking me
about being fired from Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
That was It's still to this day feels sensitive. Yeah,
why it's embarrassing really look at all the things you've
gone and done since.

Speaker 5 (01:02:12):
It's uh, I don't know. It's not a logical thing necessarily.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
I guess it makes it makes sense it was really public.

Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
Yeah, yeah, well no, it was sort of as one
of those euphemisms at the time, like I'm spending more
time with family, stipping away. But yeah, I mean talking
about failure is uncomfortable for me. Why because of spent
I think most of my life trying to succeed.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Isn't failure just part of success. I mean, if I
could go back to any founder I've ever interviewed, the
only thing that most of them have in common is
a little bit of insanity, a lot of resilience, and
the ability to fail over and over again.

Speaker 5 (01:02:57):
Yeah, you know, I don't feel sensitive. I feel many
things in terms of like here's an idea that I
think would work and doesn't work, and I've gotten much
better about embracing being wrong. But that that's a different thing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
I feel like I can imagine that it felt. It
felt I saw something you wrote. You were talking about
some of the stuff you kind of put yourself through
and building a company and you were saying I certainly
would have would have made more progress overall, had I
gotten more sleep and taking care of myself. But I
don't feel like I could have done it any other
way given the person I was, I needed total immersion,

(01:03:35):
driven out of fear and lack of knowledge. What were
you so afraid of? Like when building a company?

Speaker 5 (01:03:43):
Depends on what time I was talking about, but it
was like in blogger times where I went when laid
off my whole team and almost went out of business.
I just didn't see any alternative that was acceptable. It
was a lot of pride. I think an ego didn't
want to fail, Yes, and I didn't want to. I

(01:04:05):
didn't think I was qualified to get any sort of
job that I would want. This is during the kind
of the dot com bust, and so it just seemed
like unacceptable to fail.

Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
You know, we talk about money and this bubble. You
have a lot of money in Silicon Valley's problem is
at two degree. No matter how optimistic you guys are,
and I know you are an optimist and you've claimed
to be an optimist, you guys live in a bubble
and increasingly it's smaller. So how do you fix the

(01:04:39):
problems in the world that are created by the tech
that much of the tech that you guys have built
when the bubble you live in is kind of shrinking, shrinking,
and it's probably harder. I can imagine that it's probably
harder for you to understand and grasps the real world
when you live in such a bubble. And I granted
you live in New York. You aren't as Silicon Valley
as many of the founders. I know. You speak a

(01:05:02):
little bit more openly than some of the Silicon Valley
founders I know, but it is a bubble.

Speaker 5 (01:05:08):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's the biggest thing is just
try to be open. I mean I and that is
part of moving to New York and getting different perspectives
and talking to people, but I can't I think the
biggest thing is not It was having people in the
company who who have different perspectives and really building diversity

(01:05:32):
into the company and a culture of listening. And then
also relates to a willingness to be wrong. I think
that that exchange. I'm happy to debate things and be
wrong and have opinions, and that's something we try to
engender in the company. So I think just it's not

(01:05:53):
I don't know everything. I have to keep reminding myself
of that, and I've I feel like I know a
lot less than I used to think I know, So
that's good.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Is that hard to do? I know a lot of
the people we've had on the show so far have
talked about it's hard and harder to speak truth to
power in Silicon Valley, especially in these tech companies where
there's a billion dollar bottom line, it is harder sometimes
to go to the top and say what's actually happening.
Maybe that's not the case as much as medium.

Speaker 5 (01:06:18):
I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I probably can't
say whether that's hard a medium or not. But it
feels like there's a lot more of that happened in
Silicon Valley than there used to be. But in terms
of people, well maybe not then there used to be
a Silicon Valley. I would say that's one thing that
people underestimate that has always been a really healthy aspect

(01:06:39):
of Silicon Valley companies, certainly compared to the rest of
corporate America and corporate the world, is that there is
sort of an attitude of everybody smart and has something
to contribute, and I remember when I was at Google
in two thousand and three and two thousand and four,
lots of people the company was a couple of thousand people,

(01:06:59):
and engineers and other people didn't have any problems standing
up on all hands and calling out Larry or Sergey
or Eric on something in front of everyone and the
whole or in email more likely, and the do not
be evil thing was taken very seriously, and now there's walkouts,
and so I think that that tension in people's willingness

(01:07:22):
to do that is a good thing and healthy, and
it keeps founders in check. And a big reason that
founders are I think not as much in a bubble
as they would be is because their employees don't let
them be.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
Do you believe that the products you were responsible for
will do more good than bad when you look back
at history.

Speaker 5 (01:07:44):
Yes, I have to believe they will do more good
than bad, especially the one I'm working on now.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Cool. How do you want to be known?

Speaker 5 (01:07:52):
I don't need to be known.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Huh. How would you want your children to view you?

Speaker 5 (01:07:59):
I would want them to view me as working very
hard to do what I thought was the right thing.

Speaker 4 (01:08:11):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
I hope you enjoyed getting inside EV's brain a bit.
Now we're trying something new this go around. We're adding
show notes so you can get a bit more context
from these conversations. So for that photo, we spoke about
my first contact with Ev back in twenty ten. See
our show notes and you can also find a link
to the full transcript of this episode. Also, let me

(01:08:43):
know what you thought of it. I'm trying out this
new community number so you can text me, and I
swear this actually goes directly to my phone. The number
is nine one seven five four zero three four one zero,
So text me and here's a personal request. If you
like the show, lead give us a review on the
Apple podcast app or wherever you listen to your podcasts

(01:09:04):
and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You can
follow me. I'm at Lori Siegel on Twitter and Instagram,
and the show is at First Contact podcast on Instagram
and on Twitter. We're at First Contact pod. First Contact
is a production of Dot Dot Dot Media executive produced
by Lori Siegel and Derek Dodge, and this episode was
produced and edited by Sabine Jansen and Jack Reagan. Original

(01:09:25):
theme music by Xander Singh. First Contact with Lori Siegel.
Is a production of Dot dot Dot Media and iHeartRadio.