1 00:00:00,177 --> 00:00:05,496 No matter how well you're doing, people will tell you you're not and that you're about to fail. 2 00:00:05,876 --> 00:00:09,209 Even when I was leaving in 2008 3 00:00:09,250 --> 00:00:13,998 the narrative was like, “This is a fad. 4 00:00:14,082 --> 00:00:17,413 It's going to be replaced by these other up-and-comers.” 5 00:00:17,497 --> 00:00:19,834 Later Snapchat came around. 6 00:00:19,834 --> 00:00:24,060 And that gave me some armor going into entrepreneurship the second time. 7 00:00:24,143 --> 00:00:27,375 Oh yeah, everyone is finding it terrible. It's never going to work. 8 00:00:27,458 --> 00:00:30,959 And I just have to judge for myself and judge with the co-founder. 9 00:00:31,959 --> 00:00:33,211 Welcome to the Eric Ries Show. 10 00:00:33,295 --> 00:00:36,744 Today I sit down with my longtime friend Dustin Moskovitz, 11 00:00:36,828 --> 00:00:39,998 one of the founders of Facebook and Asana. 12 00:00:40,082 --> 00:00:45,551 Founding Facebook would be enough entrepreneurial success for many of us, but Dustin didn't stop there. 13 00:00:45,635 --> 00:00:50,542 He created the company Asana, maybe the leading project management software tool in the world. 14 00:00:51,042 --> 00:00:56,709 In its own way, both Facebook and Asana defined an entire era of technology startups. 15 00:00:56,750 --> 00:00:59,875 First, the social media era and the SaaS era. 16 00:01:00,271 --> 00:01:04,711 And in addition to a success as entrepreneur Dustin has become a significant philanthropist 17 00:01:04,795 --> 00:01:10,251 working behind the scenes on countless causes, significant and many obscure. 18 00:01:10,551 --> 00:01:13,875 You may not know it, but you owe a lot to Dustin. 19 00:01:14,297 --> 00:01:17,625 In this episode, Dustin and I have a wideranging conversation. 20 00:01:18,058 --> 00:01:20,851 We talk about what he's learned as an entrepreneur, 21 00:01:20,934 --> 00:01:24,613 how he took what he learned from Facebook and applied it to Asana, 22 00:01:24,696 --> 00:01:28,376 how he's built an incredible team-first employee-centric culture 23 00:01:28,792 --> 00:01:32,376 how he manages his own mental health while running a publicly traded company 24 00:01:32,625 --> 00:01:35,158 even what he thinks of Facebook's current state, 25 00:01:35,241 --> 00:01:39,583 how he's built a value-driven culture, what he sees next in AI, and so much more. 26 00:01:40,376 --> 00:01:43,583 I'm really excited to share this conversation with Dustin Moskovitz. 27 00:01:44,625 --> 00:01:48,521 I've started a lot of companies and I've helped a lot more people start companies too, 28 00:01:48,604 --> 00:01:51,667 and therefore, I've had a lot of banks and a lot of bank accounts. 29 00:01:51,667 --> 00:01:55,551 And I'm really delighted that this episode is brought to you by Mercury, 30 00:01:55,634 --> 00:01:57,750 a company I trust for startup banking. 31 00:01:58,875 --> 00:02:03,542 Every time someone on my team uses their Mercury-linked debit card, I get an email with the details. 32 00:02:03,542 --> 00:02:06,969 And just that little bit of financial intelligence, always in my inbox, 33 00:02:07,052 --> 00:02:10,084 gives me a much clearer understanding of what we're spending. 34 00:02:11,084 --> 00:02:13,792 That's what Mercury is like through all its financial workflows. 35 00:02:14,084 --> 00:02:18,126 They're all powered by the bank account. Everything's automatic. 36 00:02:18,126 --> 00:02:20,689 And for those of us that remember the recent banking crisis, 37 00:02:20,772 --> 00:02:23,292 Mercury was there for a lot of startups who needed them. 38 00:02:24,084 --> 00:02:27,167 They've since launched features like Mercury Treasury and Mercury Vault 39 00:02:27,209 --> 00:02:31,792 with up to five million dollars in FDIC insurance through their partner bank in their SWIFT networks. 40 00:02:32,334 --> 00:02:35,750 Certain conditions must be satisfied through FDIC insurance to apply. 41 00:02:35,792 --> 00:02:39,000 Apply in minutes at Mercury.com and join over 42 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:43,709 100,000 ambitious startups that trust Mercury to get them performing at their best. 43 00:02:44,583 --> 00:02:47,459 Mercury, the art of simplified finances. 44 00:02:47,459 --> 00:02:50,542 Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. 45 00:02:50,792 --> 00:02:55,500 Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. 46 00:02:59,792 --> 00:03:04,750 This episode is brought to you by DigitalOcean, the cloud loved by developers and founders alike. 47 00:03:05,292 --> 00:03:09,000 Developing and deploying applications can be tough, but it doesn't have to be. 48 00:03:09,542 --> 00:03:13,126 Scaling a startup can be a painful road, but it doesn't have to be. 49 00:03:13,542 --> 00:03:18,750 When you have the right cloud infrastructure, you can skip the complexity and focus on what matters most. 50 00:03:19,542 --> 00:03:23,251 DigitalOcean offers virtual machines, managed Kubernetes, 51 00:03:23,251 --> 00:03:26,583 host new solutions like GPU compute, with a renewed 52 00:03:26,625 --> 00:03:29,834 focus on ensuring excellent performance for users all over the world. 53 00:03:29,834 --> 00:03:34,298 DigitalOcean has the essential tools developers need for today's modern applications 54 00:03:34,381 --> 00:03:37,000 with the predictable pricing that startups want. 55 00:03:37,500 --> 00:03:43,974 Join more than 600,000 developers who trust DigitalOcean today with $200 in free credits 56 00:03:44,057 --> 00:03:48,959 and even more exclusive offers just for listeners at do.co/eric. 57 00:03:48,959 --> 00:03:50,917 Terms and conditions apply. 58 00:03:50,917 --> 00:03:53,197 Dustin, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on. 59 00:03:53,281 --> 00:03:55,383 Absolutely. It's great to see you, Eric. 60 00:03:55,467 --> 00:03:56,877 Always a fun time. 61 00:03:56,961 --> 00:04:01,209 Mind you start by telling me about you've been doing an interesting creative project with AI recently? 62 00:04:01,209 --> 00:04:02,863 Let's start with that. 63 00:04:02,994 --> 00:04:09,557 Sure. I've actually been doing a number of creative projects with AI 64 00:04:09,640 --> 00:04:15,411 and feel like I have this new access to a bunch of creative tools that weren't available to me before 65 00:04:15,494 --> 00:04:21,856 including things like Midjourney, and Dall-E, that allowed me to actually draw on paint 66 00:04:21,940 --> 00:04:25,532 and a skill I didn't have at all, but especially with writing. 67 00:04:25,709 --> 00:04:29,667 And there are a lot of workload I do day to day where 68 00:04:30,459 --> 00:04:33,834 I take just some ideas and I draw out some bullet points and 69 00:04:33,875 --> 00:04:38,875 then I work with an AI to build it out into a strategy memo or a discussion doc. 70 00:04:38,875 --> 00:04:44,709 and it's particularly good at this more generative creative aspect. 71 00:04:44,709 --> 00:04:48,917 I'm talking about Asana functionality and then I want a customer use case. 72 00:04:48,917 --> 00:04:53,376 You struggle a lot with that. at least I do, partially because 73 00:04:53,418 --> 00:04:57,583 I know some, but maybe I don't have permission to talk about them and 74 00:04:57,583 --> 00:05:02,042 while I know our internal Asana use cases, but you don't want to talk about your own use cases. 75 00:05:02,084 --> 00:05:04,042 You want to talk about somebody else's. 76 00:05:04,251 --> 00:05:07,334 And Claude can just do a better job within those constraints and 77 00:05:07,376 --> 00:05:09,500 give you something, pretty rich and detailed. 78 00:05:09,584 --> 00:05:14,565 Okay, so let me take you back because, frankly there aren't that many people on this planet 79 00:05:14,648 --> 00:05:18,625 that have started a multi-billion dollar company let alone two of them. 80 00:05:19,167 --> 00:05:22,209 And I want to just, first of all 81 00:05:22,251 --> 00:05:27,833 I would like to just give you a chance to reflect on that process, you've been at this long enough. 82 00:05:27,917 --> 00:05:30,931 I don't know what it feels where people are trying to talk to me, especially 83 00:05:30,973 --> 00:05:34,042 AI founders talk to me about the social media era and how it went and 84 00:05:34,042 --> 00:05:36,167 the SaaS era and how it went. 85 00:05:36,464 --> 00:05:39,714 How does it feel to have been kind of a leader of iconic companies now? 86 00:05:39,798 --> 00:05:43,084 I mean that this is long enough that multiple of these companies have become iconic 87 00:05:43,084 --> 00:05:46,167 companies of define an entire era of entrepreneurship. 88 00:05:46,331 --> 00:05:53,170 Yeah, it is really interesting because my story is, people kind of project on this idea that 89 00:05:53,253 --> 00:05:57,833 I've been at Facebook for 20 years and then I recently started Asana. 90 00:05:57,833 --> 00:06:02,084 and the reality is there was Bush in the White House the last time I worked in Facebook. 91 00:06:02,750 --> 00:06:07,334 and that was a much different company than we have now. 92 00:06:07,376 --> 00:06:10,542 It was just at the very beginning of news feed. 93 00:06:10,542 --> 00:06:15,464 But, well before, maybe Instagram acquisition was right as I was leaving, 94 00:06:15,547 --> 00:06:18,829 but before Instagram and WhatsApp and Oculus 95 00:06:18,912 --> 00:06:24,126 and the empire that has since been built is totally after my time. 96 00:06:24,459 --> 00:06:30,084 And even in the last year I was at Facebook, I was working on internal communication tools and not product. 97 00:06:30,334 --> 00:06:36,488 It's a little weird to get credit for building that behemoth when really I built a particular app 98 00:06:36,571 --> 00:06:42,209 that was important and it's honestly not even that important to their strategy anymore. 99 00:06:42,209 --> 00:06:45,583 And then almost my entire career has been building Asana. 100 00:06:45,834 --> 00:06:51,251 And I think of myself as a SaaS CEO first and foremost used to do stuff in consumer. 101 00:06:51,583 --> 00:06:55,126 I got to ask, how do you feel about how the empire is unfolded? 102 00:06:55,126 --> 00:07:01,292 If you think about year of you, the original intention the founders had for Facebook and what it's become? 103 00:07:01,334 --> 00:07:03,292 Yeah, it's interesting. 104 00:07:03,292 --> 00:07:06,251 There are a lot of things I really quite love. 105 00:07:06,292 --> 00:07:10,875 It's no secret. I'm a big fan of Threads, for example. 106 00:07:11,917 --> 00:07:18,750 I think, in some ways I think Threads will do a better job of realizing the real potential 107 00:07:18,750 --> 00:07:22,295 the vision we had at the beginning of a global connected community, 108 00:07:22,378 --> 00:07:28,264 whereas Facebook ended up more in little silos. 109 00:07:28,264 --> 00:07:31,740 I think most of the activity that still exist on Facebook happens in groups. 110 00:07:31,740 --> 00:07:34,209 So it's a lot more like Reddit than people understand. 111 00:07:34,209 --> 00:07:36,834 They go to their news feed and they're, where's all the content? 112 00:07:36,875 --> 00:07:40,803 Well, it's in the groups. And there are a lot of groups are actually quite good and active 113 00:07:40,887 --> 00:07:46,025 but it's not the same thing as the one global conversation like people experienced on Twitter. 114 00:07:46,235 --> 00:07:51,251 and I think that's quite valuable and I have some of the most interesting conversations I've ever had were there. 115 00:07:51,251 --> 00:07:55,376 And now we're seeing that rebuilt of Threads, this is phenomenal. 116 00:07:55,376 --> 00:07:58,334 Thank you Zuck, thank you team for building this. 117 00:07:58,917 --> 00:08:01,958 That's really great. I really love the Quest. 118 00:08:01,958 --> 00:08:06,251 I know there's a lot of strong opinions on it, but I think it's just a quite good device 119 00:08:06,292 --> 00:08:12,353 and I've been able to do valuable things with it, like starting to learn playing piano, 120 00:08:12,436 --> 00:08:15,376 Quest, our stuff, I think it's really cool. 121 00:08:15,376 --> 00:08:20,920 And then, of course, there's been a lot of controversy and it's been tough watching that. 122 00:08:21,003 --> 00:08:25,666 In a lot of cases, I think, Facebook is misunderstood and a lot of cases, 123 00:08:25,749 --> 00:08:31,917 I think they're really just running up against the reality of having something really powerful 124 00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:36,355 that has consequences that are hard to predict and hard to manage, 125 00:08:36,355 --> 00:08:39,251 and that's been tough to watch. 126 00:08:39,251 --> 00:08:41,231 I can see it both ways. 127 00:08:42,334 --> 00:08:46,084 Mostly I think the problems are really big and really hard, 128 00:08:46,084 --> 00:08:50,209 and they do a pretty good job with them, considering. 129 00:08:50,583 --> 00:08:53,625 I've heard you say that because opinion about them is 130 00:08:53,667 --> 00:08:56,459 so polarized, they're in a lot of no-win situations. 131 00:08:58,917 --> 00:08:59,376 Yeah, totally. 132 00:08:59,376 --> 00:09:04,356 A lot of the controversies that were talking about are about content moderation, 133 00:09:04,542 --> 00:09:11,334 and there can be a feeling reading the news of everyone disagrees with Facebook and 134 00:09:11,334 --> 00:09:14,917 therefore it's obvious what Facebook should do, and there's a trick going on 135 00:09:14,917 --> 00:09:17,920 there because actually everyone disagrees with Facebook in different directions. 136 00:09:17,961 --> 00:09:20,800 Some people want more content moderation. Some people want less. 137 00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:24,307 And there's not actually anything they could do that would resolve that. 138 00:09:24,349 --> 00:09:29,309 And right now they're just kind of somewhere in the middle, and it's multi-dimensional, 139 00:09:29,392 --> 00:09:33,771 there can be proto-efficient wins and things that. I think they look for them. 140 00:09:33,771 --> 00:09:37,247 but mostly I think they're caught between a rock and a hard place 141 00:09:37,330 --> 00:09:42,292 and Congress doesn't agree on what they should do because the public doesn't agree either. 142 00:09:42,667 --> 00:09:47,418 and I don't think people appreciate quite how difficult a situation that is as a company. 143 00:09:47,904 --> 00:09:51,460 Yeah. So Asana is, another one of these overnight successes, 144 00:09:51,543 --> 00:09:56,625 10 years in the making, where you've been working on it longer than people realize. 145 00:09:56,625 --> 00:09:59,583 And I wonder if you could take us back to the founding of Asana. 146 00:09:59,625 --> 00:10:02,959 You had the experience of the rocket ship of Facebook and 147 00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:06,306 the lessons that you learned from that and you got your chance to kind of really 148 00:10:06,390 --> 00:10:09,209 start from scratch with a new company, new ethos 149 00:10:09,251 --> 00:10:12,625 new philosophy, all those learnings pile into it. 150 00:10:12,667 --> 00:10:15,709 So, just tell us a little bit about the story of how you started 151 00:10:15,709 --> 00:10:20,667 the company and what in particular you had in mind is your intention for what you wanted the company to become? 152 00:10:21,167 --> 00:10:24,918 Oh, yes, this is a big question. We have to unpack it into a few. 153 00:10:25,083 --> 00:10:26,547 No problem. 154 00:10:26,680 --> 00:10:33,918 The founding of Asana starts with Justin and I solving the problems of collaboration inside our own teams. 155 00:10:33,959 --> 00:10:39,083 And there's a history of him doing that at Google before he came to Facebook. 156 00:10:39,083 --> 00:10:45,417 And then when he came to Facebook, we started collaborating on it to help coordinate, especially the R&D 157 00:10:45,459 --> 00:10:48,626 teams of Facebook, but also teams across the entire company. 158 00:10:48,626 --> 00:10:52,016 And we ended up building a number of internal tools for this, 159 00:10:52,099 --> 00:10:56,424 one of which was effectively a collaborative work management system Asana, 160 00:10:56,507 --> 00:10:58,500 but there were also other things. 161 00:10:58,542 --> 00:11:00,500 So, project management system 162 00:11:00,626 --> 00:11:05,584 discussion and decision-making tool, a suite of ideas. 163 00:11:05,584 --> 00:11:12,459 And we came to feel that what we called the Tasks system was 164 00:11:12,500 --> 00:11:17,626 the most interesting of these and the most novel and that we had implemented it in a different way. 165 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:22,125 And at the time, there were a couple of competitors. 166 00:11:22,125 --> 00:11:25,292 There was YouTrack, Basecamp, Jira, but they're still pretty new. 167 00:11:25,334 --> 00:11:27,292 I mean, this is 2006-2007. 168 00:11:27,292 --> 00:11:33,500 And vast majority of people just used spreadsheets and documents and whiteboards 169 00:11:33,542 --> 00:11:35,626 and meetings and on email threads. 170 00:11:35,918 --> 00:11:42,209 And this sort of database way of thinking about communication 171 00:11:42,209 --> 00:11:46,476 really changed what was possible, how effective it was, 172 00:11:46,559 --> 00:11:53,459 and how you could align around shared source of truth about who was doing what by when. 173 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:58,125 So, we eventually decided this was not a Facebook-specific thing. 174 00:11:58,167 --> 00:12:03,709 This was a universal problem and we left Facebook to build it out for real. 175 00:12:03,751 --> 00:12:05,829 We didn't take that internal tool. 176 00:12:05,829 --> 00:12:12,751 We just started it over and thought about the basic vision of trying to make collaboration as effortless as possible. 177 00:12:13,250 --> 00:12:19,959 And that led to the product vision, but it also led us to think a lot about corporate culture 178 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:24,604 and what makes the softer parts of collaboration effortless as well, 179 00:12:24,687 --> 00:12:30,125 because a lot of it is just the messiness of human communication and conflict. 180 00:12:30,542 --> 00:12:36,918 And we not only sat down and thought about product design or architecture and 181 00:12:36,959 --> 00:12:40,709 things like that, but also things like our values and 182 00:12:40,709 --> 00:12:46,250 investing in communication practices, like non-violent communication from Marshall Rosenberg. 183 00:12:46,709 --> 00:12:51,750 Honestly, we recruited you as an advisor because we wanted to adopt the startup methodology. 184 00:12:51,750 --> 00:12:53,667 We cared a lot. 185 00:12:53,667 --> 00:12:56,709 One of the things that Facebook did really well, I think was a 186 00:12:56,709 --> 00:13:00,209 focus on leverage, which I think comes across in Lean Startup 187 00:13:00,250 --> 00:13:05,687 and that became a big part of how we thought what is the most impactful thing 188 00:13:05,770 --> 00:13:10,583 we could be doing with our time and the product and with our purpose. 189 00:13:10,583 --> 00:13:16,425 and just tried to, start building a culture that was built to last, 190 00:13:16,508 --> 00:13:22,083 because we were trying to engage with all of that stuff, head on. 191 00:13:22,500 --> 00:13:25,667 and then using some of the product principles to reinforce it. 192 00:13:25,667 --> 00:13:29,000 So, for example, 193 00:13:29,042 --> 00:13:34,292 we work with Conscious Leadership Group, they're great. 194 00:13:34,292 --> 00:13:40,114 They have a bunch of practices for how teams collaborate, 195 00:13:40,198 --> 00:13:44,261 and one of them is just really having clarity around decision rights 196 00:13:44,345 --> 00:13:47,874 and clarity which is similar to clarity around ownership 197 00:13:47,958 --> 00:13:51,209 and also the inverse of that is taking responsibility for thanks. 198 00:13:51,209 --> 00:13:54,539 And one of the outcomes you get in Asana is 199 00:13:54,622 --> 00:14:00,415 if you use it this way, you have very clear assignment and you have very clear due dates 200 00:14:00,498 --> 00:14:06,292 and that creates a clear expectation between you and your manager about what's expected. 201 00:14:06,334 --> 00:14:11,125 And a lot of the conflict that happens in those polarized relationships is just as simple as that. 202 00:14:11,125 --> 00:14:13,792 I thought you were going to do this thing by Friday and you didn't. 203 00:14:13,876 --> 00:14:17,209 I thought this was the priority and you did something else instead. 204 00:14:17,209 --> 00:14:22,709 And just by using Asana, you can avoid some of those landmines. 205 00:14:22,751 --> 00:14:27,542 And then if you hit them, then we'll also try and help you with the communication aspect of it. 206 00:14:27,542 --> 00:14:33,500 And only some of that exists in Asana right now, but I have plans to build quite a lot more. 207 00:14:33,542 --> 00:14:35,095 Oh yeah. 208 00:14:35,179 --> 00:14:37,813 What I think characterized that approach was 209 00:14:37,896 --> 00:14:41,534 just a very unusually long-term perspective about what you were trying to do, 210 00:14:41,617 --> 00:14:44,918 which I think reflected a certain confidence that you and Justin had 211 00:14:44,959 --> 00:14:47,547 that these things were not going to be a distraction, 212 00:14:47,630 --> 00:14:50,876 but were going to be the foundation for a really strong company. 213 00:14:51,334 --> 00:14:56,042 And I'm just curious where that confidence came from and if you ever had doubts about it as you were doing it. 214 00:14:56,083 --> 00:14:58,459 Oh, has an entrepreneur ever had doubts? 215 00:15:00,083 --> 00:15:03,250 No, Eric, just have one foot in front of the other. 216 00:15:03,250 --> 00:15:07,667 It's like I read that written in that book or that TV show or in the movie, right? 217 00:15:07,709 --> 00:15:09,667 Because everything just works out. 218 00:15:10,223 --> 00:15:14,510 Yeah, well, I'll answer the question about is it a distraction, second, 219 00:15:14,593 --> 00:15:18,077 but one of the lessons I took away from Facebook is that 220 00:15:18,160 --> 00:15:23,918 no matter how well you're doing, people will tell you you're not and that you're about to fail. 221 00:15:23,918 --> 00:15:27,292 Even when I was leaving in 2008 222 00:15:27,334 --> 00:15:33,959 the narrative was like, “This is a fad. 223 00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:37,167 It's going to be replaced by these other up-and-comers.” 224 00:15:37,167 --> 00:15:39,125 Later Snapchat came around. 225 00:15:39,125 --> 00:15:41,375 I mean, even in 2012 around the IPO it was like this. 226 00:15:41,375 --> 00:15:44,792 There's this huge depth and it's always thinking into Facebook. 227 00:15:44,792 --> 00:15:48,876 And, now they seem, 20 years on, they seem to be seen as a going concern. 228 00:15:48,876 --> 00:15:55,036 And that gave me some armor going into entrepreneurship the second time. 229 00:15:55,120 --> 00:15:59,209 Oh yeah, everyone is finding it terrible. It's never going to work. 230 00:15:59,209 --> 00:16:01,888 And I just have to judge for myself and judge with the co-founder. 231 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:08,500 but I take for granted that that will not match reality, it's just going to happen regardless. 232 00:16:08,966 --> 00:16:15,876 And, I think a lot of the hard work of entrepreneurship is really managing your own psychology. 233 00:16:15,918 --> 00:16:17,855 This is something Ben Horowitz says, I think. 234 00:16:17,855 --> 00:16:22,042 It's the number one job of CEO and I think that's right. 235 00:16:22,442 --> 00:16:29,250 And, I also think a lot about how you integrate work into your life in healthy ways and 236 00:16:29,292 --> 00:16:32,459 find boundaries and just try and invest a lot of time 237 00:16:32,459 --> 00:16:36,444 into my own physical health and mental health because 238 00:16:36,751 --> 00:16:39,226 it's the easiest way for the company to die. 239 00:16:39,310 --> 00:16:45,438 I burn out or I get discouraged and my psychology gets bitter at me. 240 00:16:45,438 --> 00:16:48,417 That's just really critical. 241 00:16:48,459 --> 00:16:51,240 And then why did we have confidence? 242 00:16:51,324 --> 00:16:54,209 Well, for one, we had seen a prototype system deployed 243 00:16:54,626 --> 00:16:57,000 and we saw it working and we saw how good it was. 244 00:16:57,042 --> 00:17:00,083 And I think that's just something a lot of entrepreneurs don't 245 00:17:00,083 --> 00:17:02,876 get to have, and but it's really nice if you can. 246 00:17:03,829 --> 00:17:07,709 It's we basically we proved product market fit before we started the company. 247 00:17:08,334 --> 00:17:11,417 Poor-related product, again, not the 248 00:17:11,459 --> 00:17:14,219 same code, not the same UI... 249 00:17:14,303 --> 00:17:16,488 To give you a conviction. 250 00:17:16,572 --> 00:17:18,334 Yeah, not to give us conviction. 251 00:17:18,375 --> 00:17:20,918 And then why would it not be distractions? 252 00:17:20,959 --> 00:17:26,036 we had a really important design principle based on our observation of the other tools, which was 253 00:17:26,119 --> 00:17:32,584 this had to be not only the team collaboration product, but also the individual productivity platform. 254 00:17:33,167 --> 00:17:36,626 because what was happening is a system 255 00:17:36,626 --> 00:17:41,167 some of the older systems and some of the systems today, they're 256 00:17:41,209 --> 00:17:44,500 just too high friction to get a piece of work into the system. 257 00:17:44,500 --> 00:17:50,633 And you only do it when you have a big enough piece of work to warrant it 258 00:17:50,717 --> 00:17:53,209 like you're building a house and then you need gantt charts. 259 00:17:53,209 --> 00:17:59,459 And this results in basically having a centralized project management team 260 00:17:59,500 --> 00:18:03,209 that is running those systems and then everyone else has something else. 261 00:18:03,209 --> 00:18:06,250 They've got a, a legal pad on their desk. 262 00:18:06,250 --> 00:18:09,876 They've got sticky notes on their monitor. They've got a vim file, if they're an engineer. 263 00:18:10,209 --> 00:18:13,292 and the PMO is basically trying to 264 00:18:13,334 --> 00:18:16,683 synchronize that status information into the centralized repository. 265 00:18:16,767 --> 00:18:18,674 and then it's always out of date. 266 00:18:18,760 --> 00:18:22,150 They've got it for one minute when they first hear it directly from the engineer 267 00:18:22,233 --> 00:18:25,451 and then they've got to talk to the engineer again to get a status update. 268 00:18:25,677 --> 00:18:30,751 But Asana is built to be your personal command center. 269 00:18:30,751 --> 00:18:35,932 It opens up into my tasks, not into the team page or the project page 270 00:18:36,058 --> 00:18:40,876 and we had a design goal of faster than Notepad, faster than them, which 271 00:18:40,918 --> 00:18:44,375 sounds hard because they're just text boxes, but you can enter 272 00:18:44,375 --> 00:18:48,209 a line into Asana, press enter, enter a new line, press enter 273 00:18:48,500 --> 00:18:53,021 and then something you can't do in those text editors is you can re-order them with keyboard shortcuts. 274 00:18:53,734 --> 00:19:00,375 You can select multiple and do batch actions like adding a follower, changing due data or assignee. 275 00:19:00,375 --> 00:19:03,834 And that's how you get to faster than Notepad for an individual productivity system. 276 00:19:03,876 --> 00:19:07,529 And then as a byproduct, you're collaborating with people, you're able to organize it 277 00:19:07,612 --> 00:19:12,125 into projects and portfolios and goals you get this shared collaborative structure. 278 00:19:12,125 --> 00:19:15,292 It's also a problem, by the way, in a lot of the document systems is 279 00:19:15,292 --> 00:19:18,334 people are reinventing their hierarchy and fighting over it. 280 00:19:18,745 --> 00:19:19,751 Oh, yeah. 281 00:19:20,564 --> 00:19:23,876 Well, I remember even in early days and I wonder if this is still true. 282 00:19:23,876 --> 00:19:25,901 One of the hard things about getting people that try Asana 283 00:19:25,984 --> 00:19:28,264 and I'm sure there's people who are listening who have tried it 284 00:19:28,347 --> 00:19:31,161 because they think they know what a task management system is 285 00:19:31,244 --> 00:19:34,598 and they know it's bad and cumbersome and annoying. 286 00:19:34,792 --> 00:19:37,792 and it's actually very challenging to explain 287 00:19:38,053 --> 00:19:41,876 that once you try something where they fit and finish where the attention to detail is 288 00:19:41,918 --> 00:19:46,481 as it should be where speed and the single player mode is really good. 289 00:19:46,628 --> 00:19:51,197 People don't go back after they've made that switch, but getting them to switch initially is kind of a challenge. 290 00:19:51,281 --> 00:19:52,614 That's totally right. 291 00:19:52,698 --> 00:19:56,308 And in fact, we screwed it up because we missbuilt our architecture 292 00:19:56,391 --> 00:20:00,501 and getting and had to rebuild it and kind of the 2015 to 2017 time frame. 293 00:20:00,626 --> 00:20:05,491 And we were not meeting the design principle for a while and it was very sad. 294 00:20:05,575 --> 00:20:09,667 It was frustrating and we lost some customers then and I'm sure we 295 00:20:09,667 --> 00:20:13,842 lost a lot of first impressions that we made poorly. 296 00:20:13,842 --> 00:20:18,500 And if you used Asana then and it felt slow to you, I definitely encourage you to come back to try again. 297 00:20:18,542 --> 00:20:21,810 I mean, it really is quite an engineering accomplishment 298 00:20:22,090 --> 00:20:25,792 and a UI design accomplishment apart from its other many virtues. 299 00:20:25,834 --> 00:20:26,857 Thank you. 300 00:20:26,941 --> 00:20:31,731 The reason I was asking about the distraction and the commitment to those values from the beginning is 301 00:20:31,814 --> 00:20:37,067 I think there's kind of a narrative floating around in entrepreneurial circles that doing the nice stuff, 302 00:20:37,150 --> 00:20:42,970 the soft values, treating people with respect, being responsible and being a trustworthy counterpart. 303 00:20:42,970 --> 00:20:47,126 It's like almost that's wishy-washy or it's almost that's for nonprofits. 304 00:20:47,167 --> 00:20:51,195 If you were want to really compete and create value, you should be a ruthless exploiter 305 00:20:51,279 --> 00:20:56,229 and there's kind of a macho, I don't know, swash buckling ethos about 306 00:20:56,313 --> 00:20:59,851 so, work as hard as you can, work your people under the ground. 307 00:20:59,851 --> 00:21:03,068 That's how you create value. That's how you make money. 308 00:21:03,068 --> 00:21:05,875 And anyone who's talking about something else, doesn't understand that. 309 00:21:05,959 --> 00:21:10,425 And, you obviously built Asana in a totally different way. 310 00:21:10,425 --> 00:21:13,625 And what's interesting to me is I don't really, I mean, it's a very heart centered 311 00:21:13,667 --> 00:21:17,917 approach to break compassionate approach, but I don't really see it as a weak approach. 312 00:21:17,917 --> 00:21:20,418 In fact, it's been an incredibly value creating approach. 313 00:21:20,418 --> 00:21:24,665 And I don't know that you could have sustained this level of ambition and therefore, 314 00:21:24,748 --> 00:21:29,667 some of the things you're talking about took a really long time to build out and to accomplish. 315 00:21:29,667 --> 00:21:33,215 I don't think it would have been possible if you had gone kind of the conventional way. 316 00:21:33,215 --> 00:21:36,292 I'm curious how you react to this idea that is like 317 00:21:36,292 --> 00:21:39,625 treating people with respect, you taking your responsibility seriously is 318 00:21:39,667 --> 00:21:42,750 a sign of weakness or somehow it takes away from value creation. 319 00:21:42,792 --> 00:21:46,000 Yeah, I mean I think that the right way to think about this. 320 00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:48,320 Is it Simon Sinek that wrote The Infinite Game? 321 00:21:48,404 --> 00:21:50,553 Yup, I'll add a link in the show note story. 322 00:21:50,637 --> 00:21:54,875 Okay. These are repeated interactions 323 00:21:54,875 --> 00:22:00,000 and you can be successful in the short run, but eventually your reputation kick catches up. 324 00:22:00,042 --> 00:22:03,334 I am surprised at how long it can take 325 00:22:03,334 --> 00:22:08,292 but there has been a lot of eventual justice and eventual karma lately. 326 00:22:08,625 --> 00:22:11,126 and I think we can improve on how long it takes to. 327 00:22:11,126 --> 00:22:15,629 I think this is partly a journalism issue. It's partly a governance issue, 328 00:22:15,712 --> 00:22:21,834 but ultimately people eventually see who is a good and trustworthy business partner and who isn't. 329 00:22:21,875 --> 00:22:24,125 So, for example 330 00:22:24,209 --> 00:22:27,542 there was recently a well-known company that went through an acquisition and 331 00:22:27,542 --> 00:22:32,251 post-acquisition, the new owner stopped paying vendors. Just existing legal contracts. 332 00:22:32,292 --> 00:22:36,542 There's no ambiguity about whether they continue to need to be paid by the new owner. 333 00:22:36,542 --> 00:22:42,376 And I saw this as a vendor, and said, well, that's crazy. 334 00:22:42,418 --> 00:22:45,376 Why don't we give advanced terms to a company like that 335 00:22:45,418 --> 00:22:50,834 at least until they show that they're able to operate more normally, which then eventually happened? 336 00:22:52,376 --> 00:22:58,825 And that's a very quick cycle of there are consequences. If you don't honor your contracts. 337 00:22:58,825 --> 00:23:05,167 Another one from the same company is they violated the SEPA agreements of the old employees. 338 00:23:05,209 --> 00:23:10,042 And now if you're a new employee signing, you shouldn't trust those contracts at all. 339 00:23:10,334 --> 00:23:12,604 They don't mean anything. 340 00:23:12,798 --> 00:23:16,834 And, maybe that's fine. 341 00:23:16,834 --> 00:23:20,126 Maybe the company doesn't care about the employee trusting 342 00:23:20,126 --> 00:23:23,334 but I think it has real consequences for them when you're talking about when 343 00:23:23,376 --> 00:23:28,376 you're trying to compensate them with employee equity, especially, because 344 00:23:28,376 --> 00:23:33,477 if it's a private company, for example, and you have constraints on 345 00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:38,987 whether they can sell on secondary markets if they're an alumni versus a current employee, 346 00:23:39,070 --> 00:23:43,750 then I think it is rational for those people to be like, I should just assume this equity doesn't exist. 347 00:23:43,792 --> 00:23:45,750 Only my cash comp exists. 348 00:23:45,750 --> 00:23:49,459 If I get lucky, I'll be able to turn the equity into liquidity. 349 00:23:49,459 --> 00:23:52,292 And I think a lot of companies in the 2010s we're doing this in other ways. 350 00:23:52,292 --> 00:23:55,792 They're just staying private for 15 or 20 years and 351 00:23:55,834 --> 00:23:59,542 had transfer restrictions and all that sort of stuff. 352 00:23:59,542 --> 00:24:03,640 And if you don't meet employees on the other side 353 00:24:03,834 --> 00:24:07,126 with the commitment of, we're restricting you 354 00:24:07,126 --> 00:24:12,167 but we're going to help you get the liquidity that you were promised because this is part of your compensation. 355 00:24:12,167 --> 00:24:14,084 Then eventually it becomes really hard for you 356 00:24:14,084 --> 00:24:17,542 to hire the that next round of people and the pressure is building and 357 00:24:17,542 --> 00:24:20,717 people are discounting their compensation and the way you're going to have to fix that 358 00:24:20,801 --> 00:24:23,327 in the short run is with cash, which will create a burned problem. 359 00:24:23,418 --> 00:24:26,583 And, basically these are all various 360 00:24:26,583 --> 00:24:29,625 stories and how I think it's shortsighted to operate that way. 361 00:24:29,667 --> 00:24:34,542 but the lesson that some people have taken away is it works while it works. 362 00:24:34,583 --> 00:24:39,000 And you can fool some of the people a lot of the time. 363 00:24:39,666 --> 00:24:46,151 and that's very frustrating for me to see that it seems as much as it does. 364 00:24:46,235 --> 00:24:48,900 But I see how the reputation builds, 365 00:24:48,983 --> 00:24:53,302 and how it becomes a problem and how you get into a corner 366 00:24:53,386 --> 00:24:58,271 where all of a sudden you need a $400 million bond and nobody trusts you with that kind of thing. 367 00:24:58,355 --> 00:25:04,875 and it can cause much bigger problems for you and let you know what that reference is about. 368 00:25:04,875 --> 00:25:06,834 But yes I do. 369 00:25:06,918 --> 00:25:12,655 Yes, I know exactly all these stories you're referring to, but I feel we'll let it go... 370 00:25:12,738 --> 00:25:16,084 Or say ten billion to build out your auto company. 371 00:25:16,418 --> 00:25:20,667 No, the karma is real. 372 00:25:20,667 --> 00:25:23,709 But I guess, apart from there's the negative side 373 00:25:23,709 --> 00:25:27,000 of you burn your reputation and I know I've 374 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:30,292 had plenty of VCs, especially telling me so what as long 375 00:25:30,292 --> 00:25:35,292 as we cash out before the reckoning it's still over. This is model. 376 00:25:35,292 --> 00:25:38,500 I mean, I had somebody, a very prominent VC tell me the other day that their 377 00:25:38,542 --> 00:25:42,251 explicit advice they give to entrepreneurs is squeeze all the value out you 378 00:25:42,251 --> 00:25:46,043 can before you take your company public and let the public have the burned out husk 379 00:25:46,126 --> 00:25:49,582 because once you go public, your ability to innovate and 380 00:25:49,665 --> 00:25:53,588 it's the end which just a very sociopathic antisocial perspective, but also, 381 00:25:53,671 --> 00:25:58,792 I don't think it's really good advice if your goal is to really accomplish something in this world. 382 00:25:58,792 --> 00:26:01,209 Yes, you could make money in the short term. 383 00:26:01,251 --> 00:26:04,418 But I mean, I think funny you mentioned founder mental health as a main 384 00:26:05,167 --> 00:26:07,126 it's a critical responsibility. 385 00:26:07,126 --> 00:26:09,583 I know of sure you do too, quite a lot of people who 386 00:26:09,625 --> 00:26:12,792 have had nominal success with their entrepreneurial career 387 00:26:12,792 --> 00:26:16,084 made you know quite a lot of money and are totally miserable because 388 00:26:16,126 --> 00:26:19,006 of the compromises that they had to make along the way. 389 00:26:19,090 --> 00:26:21,602 So maybe, talk a little bit about the positive side of this. 390 00:26:21,686 --> 00:26:23,292 Like that's the negative side of it. 391 00:26:23,292 --> 00:26:26,548 If you do this, if you behave in this short term way, you're going to regret it. 392 00:26:26,632 --> 00:26:32,656 But talk a little bit about, for Asana and for other companies that you counseled or invested in and 393 00:26:32,739 --> 00:26:38,229 talk about the ways in which trustworthiness is an asset that allows you to accomplish your goals. 394 00:26:38,625 --> 00:26:42,131 Well, let's go there because I just want to understand the VC thing 395 00:26:42,214 --> 00:26:47,414 because you said it's not a good strategy if your goal is to accomplish something, but is the goal that? 396 00:26:47,771 --> 00:26:49,209 No, clearly not. 397 00:26:49,293 --> 00:26:52,654 VCs definitely very much, listen, if I get my money in and out, 398 00:26:52,737 --> 00:26:57,636 I mean this person made a fortune on crypto, you won't be surprised to know 399 00:26:57,719 --> 00:27:01,376 on projects that ultimately delivered no value to the world 400 00:27:01,376 --> 00:27:04,709 but, they got in and got out with good timing and 401 00:27:05,251 --> 00:27:10,209 they're everyday praise in the press for their savvy for pulling off this deception. 402 00:27:10,251 --> 00:27:14,418 But I guess the founders that they're counseling, I think generally have different goals. 403 00:27:14,418 --> 00:27:16,523 I mean, I'm sure you have the occasional scam, 404 00:27:16,606 --> 00:27:20,334 true scam aren't as to the entrepreneurial fold, but most founders that I meet 405 00:27:20,917 --> 00:27:24,512 have some kind of sincere desire to accomplish something with their life 406 00:27:24,554 --> 00:27:29,128 and they've started a company not just to make money or maybe not even primarily to make money, 407 00:27:29,211 --> 00:27:30,829 but because as you did, they see, 408 00:27:30,912 --> 00:27:35,849 there's a problem with the way that work is done by human beings and have a vision that could be better. 409 00:27:35,891 --> 00:27:39,862 And for them to sacrifice that vision on the altar of a quick buck 410 00:27:39,945 --> 00:27:43,917 is actually kind of painful to watch, and lead to a lot of regret. 411 00:27:43,917 --> 00:27:47,625 Yeah, totally. You just have to keep in mind that they have misaligned in sentence with these VCs 412 00:27:47,625 --> 00:27:50,733 because the VCs only care about what happens up to the IPO. 413 00:27:50,816 --> 00:27:52,459 These VCs. That's not to all VCs. 414 00:27:52,741 --> 00:27:54,370 Certainly not. 415 00:27:54,700 --> 00:27:58,000 And as an entrepreneur, you should not take what they're saying at face value. 416 00:27:58,000 --> 00:27:59,959 It's not necessarily good advice for you. 417 00:28:01,084 --> 00:28:07,218 And I also think there's a problem where you don't necessarily know 418 00:28:07,310 --> 00:28:10,708 how your VC is going to act until you are a public company. 419 00:28:10,909 --> 00:28:15,486 And in the meantime, they've raised four funds, and four new generations of companies. 420 00:28:15,625 --> 00:28:21,792 And again, there's this reputational issue of the facts don't come out until very late. 421 00:28:21,792 --> 00:28:26,586 And it's kind of too late for it to feed back into self-cracking the system. 422 00:28:27,209 --> 00:28:30,084 and I hope it eventually does, but I don't know for sure. 423 00:28:30,084 --> 00:28:33,542 And again, I think that there is a role for the legal system here. 424 00:28:33,542 --> 00:28:37,883 I mean, crypto is almost like a, 425 00:28:37,966 --> 00:28:41,792 what's the word for a comical drawing? 426 00:28:41,876 --> 00:28:43,895 Character? 427 00:28:43,979 --> 00:28:48,542 Crypto is a caricature of the sociopathic behavior, just totally attractive. 428 00:28:48,583 --> 00:28:54,823 I heard there was like a new crypto offering where they literally said 429 00:28:54,906 --> 00:28:58,707 they were going to rug pull at the beginning and it spiked by 40% 430 00:28:58,790 --> 00:29:03,489 and they're great we want to be in on that red rug pull 431 00:29:03,572 --> 00:29:07,045 and it's nobody's trying to do anything here, create value. 432 00:29:07,045 --> 00:29:11,312 We reckon such practices. I mean, there's one obviously in the news at the moment where 433 00:29:11,395 --> 00:29:16,215 its prospectus is just we intend to defraud our investors and let's lease them for their money. 434 00:29:16,334 --> 00:29:19,542 and it's like somehow we've lost the thread 435 00:29:19,583 --> 00:29:24,957 because this scam is being disclosed. It's okay? 436 00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:28,000 It's really, I think we've actually gotten really confused in 437 00:29:28,042 --> 00:29:32,586 our governance of our society about what are we trying to accomplish with these businesses? 438 00:29:32,946 --> 00:29:35,000 And I think this is a legal issue. 439 00:29:35,042 --> 00:29:38,334 I think most reasonable people would be, this is predatory behavior 440 00:29:38,334 --> 00:29:41,625 and it should be illegal, just like certain kind of telemarketing 441 00:29:41,959 --> 00:29:45,292 and that will happen. 442 00:29:45,292 --> 00:29:52,126 and there may be a lot more of that legal nuance that 443 00:29:52,126 --> 00:29:55,146 we should be exploring with bucks. 444 00:29:55,146 --> 00:29:58,167 and I'm hopeful, but it won't happen quickly. 445 00:30:00,019 --> 00:30:05,667 but crypto is like the most perverse version of this. 446 00:30:05,667 --> 00:30:11,334 And I'm two minds on the psychology part because 447 00:30:11,418 --> 00:30:18,138 I do worry that some of these people are sort of genuinely sociopaths in the psychological sense 448 00:30:18,221 --> 00:30:22,334 in which case they don't actually feel guilt or remorse. That's the definition. 449 00:30:22,334 --> 00:30:29,002 And I'm not convinced they retire, and lament how they wasted their career 450 00:30:29,044 --> 00:30:32,917 or anything like that and feel bad about it. Maybe they're just sociopaths. 451 00:30:32,917 --> 00:30:37,598 but if you're not a sociopath, that is going to happen. You're going to feel guilty. 452 00:30:37,682 --> 00:30:42,008 and you should be careful not to use sociopaths as role models 453 00:30:42,092 --> 00:30:45,837 because they may actually be a different kind of human than you. 454 00:30:46,117 --> 00:30:49,729 And if you're, a more normal human, 455 00:30:49,812 --> 00:30:54,334 there are many positive mental health aspects to doing things with purpose. 456 00:30:54,418 --> 00:30:57,459 In fact, I have felt this even in the past few weeks 457 00:30:57,459 --> 00:31:02,418 where I was sort of unsure about Asana vision 458 00:31:02,459 --> 00:31:06,625 I directionally knew where were going and I was excited about it and trying things. 459 00:31:07,042 --> 00:31:12,418 but then in the past few weeks, it just all crystallized, and became super clear what was important. 460 00:31:12,459 --> 00:31:17,042 And that has been so useful for me because now I'm going into meetings 461 00:31:17,084 --> 00:31:22,667 I'm just like, this is not the important thing. I'm going to leave. I delegate more. 462 00:31:23,083 --> 00:31:26,670 Roadmap ideas come up and I'm just like, that's a good idea, 463 00:31:26,754 --> 00:31:30,364 but it's not as good as this other idea and we're not going to do it. 464 00:31:30,406 --> 00:31:36,580 and it's just become a lot easier and a lot easier for my health. 465 00:31:36,622 --> 00:31:39,760 I'm just not second guessing everything. 466 00:31:39,844 --> 00:31:42,208 That's great, you have it that clear. 467 00:31:42,572 --> 00:31:44,373 Yeah, it's a great feeling when you have it. 468 00:31:44,457 --> 00:31:48,418 and then actually having the collaboration be effortless is also a great feeling because 469 00:31:48,459 --> 00:31:51,251 the work about work is part of what makes work miserable. 470 00:31:51,292 --> 00:31:54,459 And a big part of our vision was improving the 471 00:31:54,459 --> 00:31:58,084 individual subjective experiences of knowledge workers at work. 472 00:31:58,126 --> 00:32:02,781 And I think we're really living up to it and have a lot more that we can do. 473 00:32:02,865 --> 00:32:07,406 and I think that will have positive mental health aspects for people. 474 00:32:07,489 --> 00:32:11,406 Hope it doesn't make it easier for the sociopaths to cooperate. 475 00:32:11,448 --> 00:32:14,487 We can talk about how to address that as well. 476 00:32:15,292 --> 00:32:21,622 But, there's a lot of personal benefits to clarity of purpose. 477 00:32:21,706 --> 00:32:25,084 There's also obviously a lot of personal and interpersonal benefits 478 00:32:25,167 --> 00:32:30,933 to being able to communicate well and resolve conflict, and not have that sort of a thing 479 00:32:31,016 --> 00:32:35,925 that's between you, and it's an energy vampire in every conversation. 480 00:32:36,009 --> 00:32:38,542 And honestly, we work with Conscious Leadership Group at Asana 481 00:32:38,583 --> 00:32:42,116 also, basically I work with it in my marriage. 482 00:32:42,236 --> 00:32:47,226 Cari is quite trained on it and it's just our natural language. We're working through conflict. 483 00:32:47,226 --> 00:32:51,167 You know about the line, below the line, you on the geometry angle right now. 484 00:32:51,251 --> 00:32:55,625 And our marriage is never better. It's great. 485 00:32:55,625 --> 00:33:00,583 Yeah, so just a lot of positive benefits, I think, from being well grounded and 486 00:33:00,625 --> 00:33:05,558 having coherence to your culture and values and integrity. 487 00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:10,563 I think part of what happens psychologically is anxiety comes from that decoherence, 488 00:33:10,646 --> 00:33:16,667 like something in my brain isn't fitting well with something else in my brain. 489 00:33:16,667 --> 00:33:20,552 and individual practices are meant to restore coherence from the individual 490 00:33:20,635 --> 00:33:23,915 and our team practices are meant to restore coherence for the team, 491 00:33:23,998 --> 00:33:27,893 and Asana, the system is meant to try and do it for the entire organization. 492 00:33:28,706 --> 00:33:31,599 It's really interesting you pick those two words coherence and integrity 493 00:33:31,599 --> 00:33:37,236 because when I've been, developing this new theory of corporal government we talked about it many times 494 00:33:37,319 --> 00:33:41,676 to really put human flourishing at the center of the purpose of a corporation. 495 00:33:41,717 --> 00:33:46,719 And one of the things I've noticed is that people are really confused about what the purpose of governance is. 496 00:33:46,761 --> 00:33:49,817 What are we trying to accomplish when a company is well governed and 497 00:33:49,817 --> 00:33:53,883 there's even people who think governance and operations are two separate and separable disciplines. 498 00:33:53,924 --> 00:33:56,709 And so you get these really incoherent outcomes. 499 00:33:56,709 --> 00:34:02,625 So, to me, the two critical dimensions at that organization level, a well-functioning culture 500 00:34:02,625 --> 00:34:05,000 and a well-designed governance system is that coherence. 501 00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:08,084 We have alignment of the stakeholders, alignment between employees and 502 00:34:08,126 --> 00:34:11,334 customers, our business model is aligned with our customers' best interests. 503 00:34:11,376 --> 00:34:15,387 The economics are aligned with what our investors seek 504 00:34:15,471 --> 00:34:21,771 and we find our own little bubble of utopia that we're trying to grow and expand. 505 00:34:21,771 --> 00:34:23,727 I think about the bubble of utopia. 506 00:34:23,727 --> 00:34:28,935 It's when the company is successful, we literally transmute more of the world into utopia. 507 00:34:28,976 --> 00:34:33,087 Like we actually make the world better, not in some abstract activist way, 508 00:34:33,170 --> 00:34:37,722 but like in the way of we literally transform it into a different form of human embracions. 509 00:34:37,764 --> 00:34:40,962 An integrity is simply the dimension to which we can be influenced or 510 00:34:41,045 --> 00:34:46,625 not knocked off course by outside factors in this thinking about structural integrity as well as, personal integrity. 511 00:34:46,667 --> 00:34:49,289 The promises we make are kept. 512 00:34:49,289 --> 00:34:52,572 And even if you had to take an extended absence, if you were ill, 513 00:34:52,655 --> 00:34:57,195 or something, God forbid, the company would preserve its purpose and mission. 514 00:34:57,195 --> 00:35:00,378 It wouldn't just, fall apart at the first sign of adversity. 515 00:35:00,462 --> 00:35:03,667 And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about the steps you've taken as 516 00:35:03,709 --> 00:35:06,917 a leader to structure the company such 517 00:35:06,917 --> 00:35:09,920 that it has both coherence and integrity. 518 00:35:09,961 --> 00:35:13,127 One thing is we have the Asana map for the work. 519 00:35:13,127 --> 00:35:18,265 And this literal thing you're talking about of someone leaves or perhaps someone joins, 520 00:35:18,348 --> 00:35:21,893 would normally happens if you're not using a system Asana is 521 00:35:21,976 --> 00:35:26,102 that they go through an onboarding process, and go to lectures 522 00:35:26,185 --> 00:35:30,859 and then they have a manager or mentor that's showing them the work. 523 00:35:31,132 --> 00:35:33,592 And it's easy to just have a lot of things lost in translation 524 00:35:33,592 --> 00:35:37,129 there and you onboard materials go out of date and things like that. 525 00:35:37,463 --> 00:35:42,289 And in the Asana world, you come into the team workspace 526 00:35:42,372 --> 00:35:44,875 and you can see just here are the goals. 527 00:35:44,875 --> 00:35:48,208 Here's the next milestone. Here's what my teammates are working on. 528 00:35:48,208 --> 00:35:52,167 And it's much easier to jump in without say 529 00:35:53,084 --> 00:35:56,418 having to create some new starter project on the sides. 530 00:35:56,459 --> 00:35:59,418 You have your own little sandbox to learn in. 531 00:35:59,459 --> 00:36:02,500 And then similarly when somebody leaves 532 00:36:02,500 --> 00:36:06,936 hopefully it's a mutual conversation and, and they hand off work, 533 00:36:07,019 --> 00:36:11,564 but inevitably they're going to hand off work and the former just reassigning tasks. 534 00:36:11,564 --> 00:36:14,292 and then all that history of the prior conversations 535 00:36:14,292 --> 00:36:17,251 and the assets and how decisions were made is all right there. 536 00:36:17,292 --> 00:36:20,625 And it's there not only for the stuff they're working on, but anything in the company. 537 00:36:20,667 --> 00:36:26,642 And you can be a new employee in Asana, and you can just go spunk in 2014 conversations 538 00:36:26,642 --> 00:36:33,466 and see how our values came to be and exactly like these six of them. 539 00:36:33,508 --> 00:36:38,692 What was the B.2. and reconstruct any decision you warrant. 540 00:36:38,733 --> 00:36:43,752 And then of course, we also have Google Doc and discussion culture 541 00:36:43,835 --> 00:36:46,752 and same thing, just less structured. 542 00:36:46,836 --> 00:36:51,220 And that's part of what we do, too, is in recruiting you want people to really rock the company 543 00:36:51,220 --> 00:36:55,817 not because they need to homogeneously fit into it, but they need to be compatible. 544 00:36:55,859 --> 00:37:02,967 and then, there will be some self-, what's the word? 545 00:37:03,459 --> 00:37:05,490 Yeah, self-selection, 546 00:37:05,573 --> 00:37:11,750 into trying to make the company a bit more like itself because people are joining who are like it. 547 00:37:11,792 --> 00:37:15,709 But it's not going to really be like that because there's still going to be heterogeneity 548 00:37:15,750 --> 00:37:19,094 and people coming from different cultures and bringing in their own practices. 549 00:37:19,094 --> 00:37:24,151 And we're always evolving but we want to be continuing to evolve 550 00:37:24,151 --> 00:37:27,000 in a continuously apparent way to as much as we can. 551 00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:32,084 And I also have a pretty strong point of view that a lot of companies try and resist. 552 00:37:32,126 --> 00:37:35,022 I often get the question, how do you scale your culture? 553 00:37:35,022 --> 00:37:39,979 I'm just like, I'm not trying to scale this culture. I just want to actively steer it. 554 00:37:39,979 --> 00:37:42,638 but we should embrace the change. 555 00:37:42,638 --> 00:37:47,798 In fact, we recently hired some new gold market executives from Salesforce 556 00:37:47,881 --> 00:37:52,971 and there's been a lot of fear internally about that. Are we becoming more like Salesforce? 557 00:37:52,971 --> 00:37:58,824 And I'm like, yeah, that was the point they know the things we don't. 558 00:37:58,824 --> 00:38:04,209 and it's just a different mindset to evolve in culture, but you have to be very grounded 559 00:38:04,251 --> 00:38:08,084 in what is most important to preserve while your mission, your values 560 00:38:08,459 --> 00:38:11,251 everything else I think is scaffolding this way. 561 00:38:11,251 --> 00:38:13,209 How do you preserve those things? 562 00:38:14,959 --> 00:38:18,459 Well, I know it's the same things we've been talking about. 563 00:38:18,500 --> 00:38:21,625 It's the slow boring parts, right? 564 00:38:21,625 --> 00:38:27,542 And it's a lot of storytelling and a lot of correcting and maybe you have to correct about hires 565 00:38:27,542 --> 00:38:32,295 or, manager director makes an exception somewhere 566 00:38:32,337 --> 00:38:38,042 that was out of line with the values and you got to not let that cut scar. 567 00:38:38,042 --> 00:38:40,126 It's easy for things to set precedent. 568 00:38:40,126 --> 00:38:43,292 And then all of a sudden, one manager made an exception 569 00:38:43,334 --> 00:38:47,042 here to or values or a policy and other 570 00:38:47,042 --> 00:38:49,126 managers see that's a thing you can do. 571 00:38:49,917 --> 00:38:54,126 You got to pick your battles, but some of those battles are very much worth fighting. 572 00:38:54,667 --> 00:38:58,292 This episode is brought to you by my longtime friends at Neo4j, 573 00:38:58,292 --> 00:39:01,562 the graph database and analytics leader. 574 00:39:01,646 --> 00:39:04,834 Graph databases are based on the idea that relationships are everywhere. 575 00:39:05,126 --> 00:39:07,126 They help us understand the world around us. 576 00:39:07,625 --> 00:39:10,667 It's how our brains work, how the world works, and how 577 00:39:10,709 --> 00:39:13,875 data should work as a digital expression of our world. 578 00:39:14,376 --> 00:39:16,334 Graph is different. 579 00:39:16,334 --> 00:39:18,542 Relationships are the heart of graph databases. 580 00:39:18,542 --> 00:39:23,500 They find hidden patterns across billions of data connections deeply, easily and quickly. 581 00:39:23,959 --> 00:39:27,126 It's why Neo4j is used by more than 75 of the Fortune 582 00:39:27,126 --> 00:39:30,583 100 to solve problems such as curing cancer, going 583 00:39:30,625 --> 00:39:34,334 to Mars, investigative journalism, and hundreds of other use cases. 584 00:39:35,625 --> 00:39:39,042 Knowledge graphs have emerged as a central part of the generative AI stack. 585 00:39:39,334 --> 00:39:42,917 Gartner calls them the missing link between data and AI. 586 00:39:42,959 --> 00:39:46,334 Adding a knowledge graph to your AI applications leads 587 00:39:46,376 --> 00:39:51,084 to more accurate and complete results, accelerated development and explainable AI decisions. 588 00:39:51,834 --> 00:39:55,292 all on the foundation of an enterprise strength cloud database. 589 00:39:55,292 --> 00:40:00,798 Go to neo4j.com/eric to learn more. 590 00:40:02,627 --> 00:40:04,836 I'm going to make sure I give credit to the right person. 591 00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:07,629 I can't remember now who I originally heard this concept for, but 592 00:40:07,713 --> 00:40:11,089 there's this idea called the Culture Bank, basically when I create a strong culture. 593 00:40:11,173 --> 00:40:16,251 You have to adopt a very simple rule, which is there's going to be these moments in the company's life 594 00:40:16,292 --> 00:40:21,791 when somebody has to make a decision that's for the customer's benefit at the expense of the company or 595 00:40:21,875 --> 00:40:27,066 has some short term pain and some sacrifice in defense of value. 596 00:40:27,066 --> 00:40:30,000 And whenever you do that, that's you're making a deposit in the culture bank. 597 00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,042 You do the reverse, it's you're making a withdrawal a simple 598 00:40:33,084 --> 00:40:38,770 advice that he gave me was only make deposits, never make withdrawals. 599 00:40:38,854 --> 00:40:42,060 You're going to say just have a surplus, but 600 00:40:42,101 --> 00:40:45,851 if you just have that rule that's never appropriate to do that, just don't do it. 601 00:40:45,851 --> 00:40:48,917 Of course, people still make mistakes, but it's just as an intention 602 00:40:48,959 --> 00:40:51,167 you say, look, that's how you build a strong culture. 603 00:40:51,167 --> 00:40:53,126 Does that resonate with you? 604 00:40:53,126 --> 00:40:56,612 Yeah, actually, I often tell a very similar story with respect to trust 605 00:40:56,640 --> 00:41:01,660 which is like you build trust by putting one ball in the jar at a time 606 00:41:01,744 --> 00:41:06,606 but whenever you lose trust, you just turn the jar over and throw out. 607 00:41:07,457 --> 00:41:11,084 And there is like offense defense and balance here for sure. 608 00:41:11,418 --> 00:41:14,042 I've been likening it to the flow state. 609 00:41:14,042 --> 00:41:18,750 You can get into it as an individual, extremely difficult to get into easy to get out of. 610 00:41:19,668 --> 00:41:22,167 And there's an organizational version of that. 611 00:41:22,209 --> 00:41:25,251 Just tell me what it's to work in a company that's in that flow state. 612 00:41:25,251 --> 00:41:28,875 Most people have never experienced it. You've gotten to live it for many years now. 613 00:41:28,917 --> 00:41:31,551 Well, it's interesting because I think 614 00:41:31,635 --> 00:41:34,169 my subjective experience is 615 00:41:34,252 --> 00:41:37,263 I'm like constantly battling in between. 616 00:41:39,251 --> 00:41:45,834 and we're living it, but it's only some of the time. 617 00:41:45,875 --> 00:41:52,628 And, I don't even have the good sense of how consistent it is. 618 00:41:52,712 --> 00:41:54,834 When some things happen in a meeting that I'm in and 619 00:41:54,834 --> 00:41:58,620 I'm like oh wow, this was not the flow state I wanted. 620 00:41:58,704 --> 00:42:01,413 I'm like, this was with the CEO. 621 00:42:01,454 --> 00:42:04,807 Like people don't even understand that they need to do it a certain way with me, 622 00:42:04,890 --> 00:42:07,129 what's happening in all the meetings I'm not in... 623 00:42:07,213 --> 00:42:08,509 That's very wise. 624 00:42:08,596 --> 00:42:13,671 Yeah, so I don't want to be too pessimistic, but the thing I have in mind here 625 00:42:13,754 --> 00:42:17,900 that I think is really works against flow is readout meetings. 626 00:42:18,000 --> 00:42:21,987 They know what a readout meeting is, because at most companies it's all kind of meeting they have. 627 00:42:21,987 --> 00:42:23,250 Yeah, it's the only kind of meeting you have. 628 00:42:23,250 --> 00:42:29,902 If somebody comes with a slide deck or a document and they're basically reading a bunch of facts to you. 629 00:42:29,986 --> 00:42:34,199 and the most perverse version, they're literally reading what is on the slide verbatim. 630 00:42:34,241 --> 00:42:35,584 It's the worst way to run a meeting. 631 00:42:35,779 --> 00:42:39,250 and I think the right way to run a meeting is you just send that as a pre-read. 632 00:42:39,250 --> 00:42:41,292 Everybody reads it on their own. 633 00:42:41,292 --> 00:42:44,861 and then you have a discussion in the meeting and 634 00:42:44,944 --> 00:42:48,250 the discussion is where flow happens and where progress happens. 635 00:42:48,334 --> 00:42:53,785 And I have been surprised how often I find myself in a readout meeting, 636 00:42:53,868 --> 00:42:56,417 no matter how hard I push on it. 637 00:42:56,417 --> 00:42:59,514 I'm just going to keep pushing on it because I think it's important. 638 00:42:59,514 --> 00:43:03,587 And it's a big unlock because I also think they're slow 639 00:43:03,670 --> 00:43:06,408 and not having value and there's a better way. 640 00:43:06,450 --> 00:43:09,170 There's a smart way as one saying in our corporate marketing. 641 00:43:09,254 --> 00:43:13,518 and I'm still motivated to fix it, 642 00:43:13,601 --> 00:43:17,083 and also just, it's a lot. 643 00:43:17,125 --> 00:43:23,417 and then, when I'm in flow, it's with the people who have been here the longest, they know me the best. 644 00:43:23,417 --> 00:43:26,777 They know my modes of working and how to talk to me 645 00:43:26,860 --> 00:43:29,901 and when to come to me with certain kinds of requests. 646 00:43:29,985 --> 00:43:36,338 and, it's like being in a great relationship or a friendship 647 00:43:37,882 --> 00:43:44,085 or as I just say in a band or something, where you're just really in harmony with people 648 00:43:44,169 --> 00:43:47,369 and, it feels really good. 649 00:43:47,518 --> 00:43:51,167 It feels like co-creation. 650 00:43:51,651 --> 00:43:56,859 There's been this whole this conversation about so-called stakeholder capitalism and ESG and a lot of this is like 651 00:43:56,951 --> 00:44:01,650 I think it's well-intentioned, but very vague, 652 00:44:01,734 --> 00:44:04,767 almost you just kind of compromised between the stakeholders or 653 00:44:04,851 --> 00:44:08,650 I just feel you're, oh, a little food, a little poison, you don't want too much of one or the other. 654 00:44:08,692 --> 00:44:10,823 And it's, nah, that doesn't make sense. 655 00:44:10,990 --> 00:44:14,463 Whereas I feel like when you started the company, even from the very beginning, 656 00:44:14,546 --> 00:44:19,959 had almost a fanatical devotion to your employees and their experience and just its idea 657 00:44:20,042 --> 00:44:25,275 that if you made that commitment to them, if you were a trustworthy employer they would return that. 658 00:44:25,275 --> 00:44:28,169 They would reward the company with a lot of benefits. 659 00:44:28,211 --> 00:44:29,920 So can you just talk a little bit about, 660 00:44:29,962 --> 00:44:34,626 I know Asana showing up on Best Places to Work lists 661 00:44:34,667 --> 00:44:40,860 way earlier the most startups are even in there, where I could ever conceivably qualify for such a thing. 662 00:44:40,860 --> 00:44:44,166 It's just you got a long track record of being very employees-centric, 663 00:44:44,250 --> 00:44:51,225 and I always got the sense it was, yes, it's part of your personal approach and how you would people to be treated, 664 00:44:51,308 --> 00:44:54,709 but it's also a critical part of the company strategy. So, just you talk about that? 665 00:44:54,709 --> 00:44:58,428 Yeah, I think you said it earlier of, I think it's good business. 666 00:44:58,512 --> 00:45:04,212 And, so, when employees feel well taken care of, and also, 667 00:45:04,295 --> 00:45:09,185 we were talking earlier about when they have clarity of expectations from the manager, things like that, 668 00:45:09,268 --> 00:45:12,029 they have higher engagements, which means they have lower attrition. 669 00:45:12,071 --> 00:45:14,758 They do better work. 670 00:45:14,758 --> 00:45:18,443 One of the things Asana does is it helps you see which work is most important 671 00:45:18,589 --> 00:45:21,457 it's not just that they're doing more work or working harder, 672 00:45:21,540 --> 00:45:25,768 but they're working in a more focused directed way when you pointed at the right goals. 673 00:45:25,810 --> 00:45:29,886 and you get into the flow state more often. 674 00:45:29,886 --> 00:45:34,225 Whereas if you're in a high conflict relationship 675 00:45:34,266 --> 00:45:36,745 with your employees, you're in flow state less often. 676 00:45:36,786 --> 00:45:39,177 And you have lower engagement and higher attrition. 677 00:45:39,261 --> 00:45:41,927 and these things have business consequences. 678 00:45:41,927 --> 00:45:46,593 One thing I've found talking to a lot of people kind of steeped in conventional business culture is 679 00:45:46,676 --> 00:45:51,108 when I talk to them about it, and I've pitched them the Asana way of working on many occasions 680 00:45:51,191 --> 00:45:54,162 because it's a touchdown for me in how to run a company. 681 00:45:54,282 --> 00:45:58,364 People often look at me and they're like, “Oh man, business is already so hard. 682 00:45:58,448 --> 00:46:02,989 And now you want me to do extra, and that sounds it's even more. I got to do conscious communication. 683 00:46:02,989 --> 00:46:06,323 I got to treat my employees well, and I got to be good to my customers 684 00:46:06,406 --> 00:46:08,563 and create products that are actually at high quality. 685 00:46:08,605 --> 00:46:11,531 It seems so hard. Business is already too hard.” 686 00:46:11,531 --> 00:46:15,279 And I often tell them, look, maybe if you consider the possibility 687 00:46:15,362 --> 00:46:19,693 that maybe the reason you find business hard is because nobody trusts you. 688 00:46:19,810 --> 00:46:23,996 If they trusted you, maybe you wouldn't have to over-communicate 92,000 times 689 00:46:24,079 --> 00:46:27,139 the strategy that your employees don't even understand 690 00:46:27,181 --> 00:46:30,721 let alone doesn't resonate with them in a deep level, would you be willing to try it? 691 00:46:30,805 --> 00:46:34,288 And they hear and I tell them stories about companies like Asana and others 692 00:46:34,371 --> 00:46:38,656 that I feel like do have a totally different experience of being in the company 693 00:46:38,739 --> 00:46:41,105 not to say that it's easy to build a company. 694 00:46:41,189 --> 00:46:44,618 I know it's been quite a challenge at many times, but the problems 695 00:46:44,659 --> 00:46:47,513 that you experience are different than what other people experience. 696 00:46:47,597 --> 00:46:51,919 You swim in that water. You may not even appreciate how rough it is out there. 697 00:46:52,025 --> 00:46:54,510 I'm just wondering if that resonates with you. 698 00:46:54,594 --> 00:46:58,294 That idea that in some ways kind of counter-intuitively harder is easier. 699 00:46:58,335 --> 00:47:02,654 You hold yourself to a higher standard, you make the investment to do things right 700 00:47:02,738 --> 00:47:05,354 and you actually get these counter-intuitive benefits 701 00:47:05,437 --> 00:47:08,569 that then make life easier when you're trying to accomplish something important. 702 00:47:08,663 --> 00:47:12,375 I mean, I think you made the whole pitch, but... 703 00:47:12,488 --> 00:47:13,479 Well, thank you. 704 00:47:13,563 --> 00:47:17,632 No, I think that's right. And I guess I just want to start by saying the time trade-off. 705 00:47:17,673 --> 00:47:20,978 That was real. That's hard for us too. That's hard for me day to day. 706 00:47:22,042 --> 00:47:25,634 and you have to... 707 00:47:25,717 --> 00:47:29,950 It's hard to invest in it until you've reaped some of the rewards and 708 00:47:29,950 --> 00:47:31,375 you're like, okay, your mind learns. 709 00:47:31,417 --> 00:47:34,948 If I do this thing, this conversation's going to go better. 710 00:47:34,990 --> 00:47:39,775 If I ground in goals with the team and build some buy in, the project's going to execute better. 711 00:47:39,775 --> 00:47:42,534 Well just like the marbles in the jar, right? 712 00:47:42,575 --> 00:47:45,608 Like it's just you keep emptying it all the time. 713 00:47:45,650 --> 00:47:47,668 You never find out what it's to have a full jar. 714 00:47:47,710 --> 00:47:53,273 Totally. And I think this is, again, I to relate the team psychology and the personal psychology. 715 00:47:53,357 --> 00:47:58,292 This is really at the root of a lot of anxiety and actually lower back pain too. 716 00:47:58,334 --> 00:48:03,780 I don't know if you know the Arno stuff, but basically a lot of anxiety and back pain 717 00:48:03,863 --> 00:48:08,396 comes from people not feeling their feelings and repressing emotion. 718 00:48:08,609 --> 00:48:14,866 And the Arno theory is basically your your body is trying to express this thing. 719 00:48:14,950 --> 00:48:19,283 And it's doing it by constricting your oxygen flow on your lower back. 720 00:48:19,417 --> 00:48:25,983 And the way that I solved my back pain, well, I did multiple things, 721 00:48:26,066 --> 00:48:30,119 but one of the bottom and the way I've heard from a lot of other people, 722 00:48:30,202 --> 00:48:33,594 is basically just by doing the inner work and processing my emotions, 723 00:48:33,677 --> 00:48:35,855 and feeling my feelings all the way through. 724 00:48:35,939 --> 00:48:41,421 and I was actually having this experience a few weeks ago 725 00:48:41,504 --> 00:48:47,342 where some stuff was happening in the world, my life, and I was just in a really bad place. 726 00:48:47,383 --> 00:48:51,916 I kind of burnt out and just spent a weekend 727 00:48:51,958 --> 00:48:58,317 just fully dedicated to, I did like a long meditation and I haven't meditated in six months, 728 00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:04,908 but I did like a 40 minute meditation, did some yoga, and 729 00:49:04,949 --> 00:49:10,208 I did some emotional work, which I won't get into and just felt so much better after. 730 00:49:10,292 --> 00:49:15,667 I just needed to lean into it rather than 731 00:49:15,667 --> 00:49:18,709 try and work around it or compartmentalize. 732 00:49:18,751 --> 00:49:21,125 And I think the same is true for teams. 733 00:49:21,125 --> 00:49:27,459 They are compartmentalizing their conflict and that's causing our back pain. 734 00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:31,383 Yeah, the organizational equivalent of those pains is very severe, 735 00:49:31,425 --> 00:49:35,850 you get used to it, you don't even realize that it's there anymore. 736 00:49:36,377 --> 00:49:39,459 I appreciate you being honest and you always have been, in 737 00:49:39,500 --> 00:49:43,918 your leadership style, just about the spiritual dimension, the interpersonal dimension of work. 738 00:49:44,083 --> 00:49:46,334 And I'll be just really honest. 739 00:49:46,375 --> 00:49:51,083 When I first encountered these ideas and that idea that they're going to somehow make my life better, 740 00:49:51,125 --> 00:49:55,659 I was extremely skeptical and I hadn't experienced it myself. I would be... 741 00:49:55,675 --> 00:49:57,459 Isn't your wife a coach? 742 00:49:58,169 --> 00:50:01,803 Yeah, I mean, I got a long, long exposure to them 743 00:50:01,908 --> 00:50:05,542 and I have found it well, worth my time. 744 00:50:05,542 --> 00:50:07,500 But I think it's important. 745 00:50:07,500 --> 00:50:11,108 I still meet people all the time for whom these ideas are new. 746 00:50:11,418 --> 00:50:14,727 And it just sounds like you go to a typical MBA program and they teach them 747 00:50:14,833 --> 00:50:18,356 corporate finance and they teach them, modern portfolio theory and 748 00:50:18,439 --> 00:50:21,957 theory of merges and acquisitions and there's a missing interpersonal dimension, 749 00:50:22,040 --> 00:50:24,012 except by the way, at the very best school. 750 00:50:24,012 --> 00:50:28,625 And I just wonder for those that are experiencing this with skepticism for the first time 751 00:50:28,709 --> 00:50:33,658 do you have a go-to resource that you recommend or how people want to start learning about that? 752 00:50:33,742 --> 00:50:36,847 is there an accessible place that you're telling to begin? 753 00:50:37,610 --> 00:50:41,910 Well, I really like “The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.” 754 00:50:42,209 --> 00:50:43,875 I think it's a very easy read. 755 00:50:43,875 --> 00:50:49,125 I'm only a third of the way through it, but Tim Ferriss's answer is this book “Awareness.” 756 00:50:49,125 --> 00:50:55,768 it's a pretty short read, but it's certainly more spiritual, but it's also very funny 757 00:50:55,851 --> 00:51:02,035 and there's a live audience that's responding to it on the Audible version. That's really good. 758 00:51:02,124 --> 00:51:05,876 I like Brené Brown's work, like “Dare to Lead”? 759 00:51:05,918 --> 00:51:08,959 It would be a particularly good one or her Netflix special, which 760 00:51:08,959 --> 00:51:13,125 I think of it as a comedy special that is also very accessible. 761 00:51:13,167 --> 00:51:15,125 That's probably the best answer. 762 00:51:15,125 --> 00:51:19,607 If you want to do laugh and have a good time, and learn some really deep things, 763 00:51:19,690 --> 00:51:24,002 watch Brené Brown's Netflix special or her TED Talk kind of started at all. 764 00:51:24,125 --> 00:51:27,305 Let me switch gears a little bit because, you're well known 765 00:51:27,388 --> 00:51:30,603 because of your work at Facebook and your work at Asana, 766 00:51:30,686 --> 00:51:34,093 but you've also been a really important philanthropist 767 00:51:34,176 --> 00:51:38,605 and one who doesn't seek the public limelight, which I think is really interesting 768 00:51:38,688 --> 00:51:41,320 and for that I mean, most people don't know this, 769 00:51:41,403 --> 00:51:46,153 but I've gotten to witness the work you've done behind the scenes is helping so many. 770 00:51:46,236 --> 00:51:49,291 I could do you a whole episode just on all the people that you have helped 771 00:51:49,375 --> 00:51:52,584 get their things started or made it a critical investment or back them. 772 00:51:52,584 --> 00:51:56,156 And unlike almost anybody else, never demanded the credit for it 773 00:51:56,239 --> 00:51:59,128 don't feel the need to impose your will on the thing 774 00:51:59,211 --> 00:52:02,072 you really have supported them and allowed them to flourish. 775 00:52:02,072 --> 00:52:07,314 I think it's an awesome way to use the privilege and the power that you have. 776 00:52:07,356 --> 00:52:10,667 I was called the other day by a journalist who were doing a profile of you. 777 00:52:10,667 --> 00:52:16,167 We chatted about it, but I tryied to get him to use this quote, he didn't use it in the piece. 778 00:52:16,167 --> 00:52:18,052 I'll tell it to you and see what you think. 779 00:52:18,052 --> 00:52:21,918 It didn't occur to me until I was talking to him about it. 780 00:52:21,918 --> 00:52:24,542 He was just asking me to kind of make sweeping generalizations 781 00:52:24,542 --> 00:52:27,432 about your life, as these as these folks do. 782 00:52:27,612 --> 00:52:33,036 And one of the things I realized was that you've been right about a lot of stuff, 783 00:52:33,119 --> 00:52:36,699 big important issues that, talk about being a contrarian, 784 00:52:36,782 --> 00:52:41,721 you were the first person to ever talk to me about the importance of preparing for pandemics 785 00:52:41,805 --> 00:52:47,950 long before COVID, that was before, I think even SARS COV-1, let alone the one we just left through. 786 00:52:48,034 --> 00:52:50,816 You were totally right about what was going to happen in AI. 787 00:52:50,816 --> 00:52:55,764 You were the person who gave me the heads-up at this massive society level changes, 788 00:52:55,847 --> 00:52:57,875 happening. I could do it all day. 789 00:52:57,875 --> 00:53:01,568 There've been many things like that, where you've done the work to find out the thing that needs to be done 790 00:53:01,652 --> 00:53:06,541 and gotten serious about it at a time when nobody else was interested in that was a niche weird topic 791 00:53:06,625 --> 00:53:09,542 and now it's something that everyone's going around taking credit for how smart they were. 792 00:53:09,584 --> 00:53:13,169 and I was saying to this journalist, if you were a different person in your position 793 00:53:13,252 --> 00:53:15,934 who spent a lot more time on your own publicity, 794 00:53:16,017 --> 00:53:20,852 there'd be a hundred you'd be lauded as a super genius. I've been right about all this stuff 795 00:53:20,935 --> 00:53:24,679 because there's plenty of people who've been half right about one thing 796 00:53:24,762 --> 00:53:31,212 and they milked it for 10 years that's the thing that they've become famous for, 797 00:53:31,295 --> 00:53:38,291 and I wanted to get into what's your process for getting into these topics 798 00:53:38,374 --> 00:53:44,244 and going deep on them before it's a consensus thing that's something that's interesting 799 00:53:44,327 --> 00:53:49,411 because I feel like it reflects a level of intellectual curiosity, and rigor that is frankly unusual. 800 00:53:49,494 --> 00:53:52,209 I'm curious if you're willing to talk about that. 801 00:53:52,250 --> 00:53:56,406 Yeah, unfortunately, I may have to depedestal myself a bit here 802 00:53:56,490 --> 00:53:58,726 because I don't actually think I came up with any of that. 803 00:53:58,810 --> 00:54:01,917 I think it was entirely Open Philanthropy 804 00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:06,042 and it's because it's their strategy to just try and 805 00:54:06,500 --> 00:54:12,877 almost find the alpha in knowledge or find the alpha in doing good opportunities. 806 00:54:14,083 --> 00:54:19,111 The pandemic thing is really depressing from our point of view because this was no secret. 807 00:54:19,153 --> 00:54:22,751 It wasn't for, SARS one, there had been plenty of pandemics. 808 00:54:22,751 --> 00:54:30,764 Ebola virus, the Obama administration was on this before COVID-19. 809 00:54:30,764 --> 00:54:36,264 And just the problem was the rationality 810 00:54:36,417 --> 00:54:41,275 not only of the government, but I think of the public. 811 00:54:41,316 --> 00:54:45,705 I think Congress defunded that stuff because they were representing the American view, 812 00:54:45,788 --> 00:54:50,125 which is you don't plan ahead for disasters. You just provide relief for them. 813 00:54:50,167 --> 00:54:53,708 and you just see the disaster is an act of God that can't be mitigated. 814 00:54:54,027 --> 00:54:58,949 And that is the real insight, which just seems very obvious to me 815 00:54:59,032 --> 00:55:03,723 and applies across all of our global catastrophic risk work. 816 00:55:03,816 --> 00:55:10,082 and then once you have that pattern you just apply the pattern over and over. 817 00:55:11,183 --> 00:55:15,872 And AI risk for me was a long journey. 818 00:55:15,913 --> 00:55:18,292 I sound like a Cassandra now, but 819 00:55:18,334 --> 00:55:21,667 it's because everyone else sounded like a Cassandra to me 10 years ago 820 00:55:21,667 --> 00:55:25,539 and I just kept engaging with the conversation and trying to really understand it, 821 00:55:25,622 --> 00:55:27,755 and really understand what they were saying. 822 00:55:28,412 --> 00:55:34,956 And I came up with a bunch of what I think of as the strawman rebuttals to AI, 823 00:55:35,039 --> 00:55:38,667 we'll keep it in an air gaps location 824 00:55:38,709 --> 00:55:42,499 like we won't hook it up the critical clinic infrastructure. 825 00:55:42,541 --> 00:55:48,440 Like all these things that I now see is just totally nonsensical and not viable at the slightest. 826 00:55:48,524 --> 00:55:55,092 and I was the guy advancing them and having my team just very patiently explained why they wouldn't work 827 00:55:55,175 --> 00:56:01,166 until I kind of was left with nothing except for their arguments that were really compelling 828 00:56:01,250 --> 00:56:08,564 and then observing the sort of progress of AI, which is I pacing my expectations. 829 00:56:08,605 --> 00:56:13,226 And, I think the process is much more about 830 00:56:13,309 --> 00:56:17,003 holding my own stories lightly enough to change them, 831 00:56:17,086 --> 00:56:20,216 to be able to update on new evidence and new reasoning. 832 00:56:20,442 --> 00:56:25,279 And I do think that goes back to the inner work because for most people, that is an ego issue. 833 00:56:25,363 --> 00:56:28,810 The opinion is tied to their identity. 834 00:56:28,959 --> 00:56:32,126 And to change the opinion would mean also changing their identity. 835 00:56:32,126 --> 00:56:35,190 And then you put up all kinds of walls and 836 00:56:35,273 --> 00:56:38,916 yeah, very good at resisting that. 837 00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:45,792 And I think that inner work was important for being receptive to the dialogue that 838 00:56:45,792 --> 00:56:50,167 lets me align with the very good advice of the Open Philanthropy teams. 839 00:56:50,322 --> 00:56:53,364 Talk about the origin of Open Philanthropy if you're willing. 840 00:56:55,055 --> 00:56:59,750 Yeah, there's a few steps to it and I apologize in advance. 841 00:56:59,750 --> 00:57:03,042 It's a confusing family of brands and people. 842 00:57:03,042 --> 00:57:07,175 But Cari and I have been on a philanthropic journey for a while, 843 00:57:07,258 --> 00:57:11,435 and we founded a foundation Good Ventures about 10 years ago. 844 00:57:11,709 --> 00:57:15,209 And, basically started with the principle of leverage. 845 00:57:15,209 --> 00:57:19,196 We wanted to try and find the most important marks that we could do 846 00:57:19,279 --> 00:57:24,792 and had some trouble finding other people who could collaborate with us with that mindset. 847 00:57:25,459 --> 00:57:32,000 Until we met Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, who were the GiveWell founders 848 00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:36,608 because that's exactly what they were trying to do with global health and well-being with GiveWells, 849 00:57:36,650 --> 00:57:43,625 not just like really great charities, like Charity Navigator might do, or GuideStar, but the very best. 850 00:57:43,625 --> 00:57:48,365 And they only recommend a handful every year that they think just have unusually large 851 00:57:48,542 --> 00:57:53,500 ability to create great health outcomes. 852 00:57:53,542 --> 00:57:57,095 And we started working with them in 2011 853 00:57:57,178 --> 00:58:01,450 and we've basically abandoned the prime supporter of people at Percent. 854 00:58:01,792 --> 00:58:07,084 I think that may have changed in recent years, because they want to diversify their funding. 855 00:58:07,126 --> 00:58:11,583 And they also have a very large number of individual investors that are not foundation. 856 00:58:11,625 --> 00:58:17,528 It's just people giving as part of their paycheck. So, that's GiveWell. 857 00:58:17,667 --> 00:58:23,980 And then, their MO is proven cost effective, neglected. 858 00:58:24,022 --> 00:58:29,147 And that's really great for global health because there's often a lot of great research that can tell you, 859 00:58:29,230 --> 00:58:36,583 say what is the lifesaving value of deploying an additional bednet on the margin. 860 00:58:36,917 --> 00:58:40,542 But it doesn't work as well in other areas like pandemics 861 00:58:40,583 --> 00:58:45,126 because you don't know if there's going to be a pandemic 862 00:58:45,126 --> 00:58:51,290 or you might be advocating for a piece of legislation and it's just probabilistic whether you'll succeed 863 00:58:51,374 --> 00:58:54,842 and probabilistic whether you influence the outcome at all. 864 00:58:54,959 --> 00:58:58,418 And that's not a good candidate for the GiveWell donor base. 865 00:58:58,709 --> 00:59:01,792 And we decided to start a new organization that 866 00:59:01,792 --> 00:59:05,251 became Open Philanthropy that is basically the same principle 867 00:59:05,292 --> 00:59:09,875 of trying to find the most important work we can do, but without the constraint of proving it. 868 00:59:09,875 --> 00:59:13,150 It's much more about expected values 869 00:59:13,292 --> 00:59:16,625 and probabilistic math and reasoning 870 00:59:16,667 --> 00:59:20,126 than it is about, the GiveWell side 871 00:59:20,126 --> 00:59:23,583 randomized control trials and scaling up things that work. 872 00:59:23,625 --> 00:59:25,371 Does that make sense? 873 00:59:25,455 --> 00:59:28,727 Yeah, the reason I asked is because although I do enjoy putting you on a pedestal, 874 00:59:28,810 --> 00:59:34,067 I think you're right that what I think is actually special about your story is 875 00:59:34,150 --> 00:59:37,046 not much that you had some unique insight by living in a cave, 876 00:59:37,129 --> 00:59:41,780 but you've set up these systems to help you follow the evidence wherever it goes 877 00:59:41,863 --> 00:59:47,459 and to attract yourself really deep system thinkers with a long-term view to help you figure out what's right. 878 00:59:47,459 --> 00:59:50,497 And you've had the, as you say, because you've done the inner work, 879 00:59:50,580 --> 00:59:53,751 you're able to not get too attached to your own opinions, 880 00:59:53,834 --> 00:59:56,336 but really to learn from a wide range of people. 881 00:59:56,378 --> 01:00:01,000 So that, I think very clearly guided you into your thoughts about AI. 882 01:00:01,042 --> 01:00:03,042 I'm curious where you think this is all headed, like 883 01:00:03,042 --> 01:00:07,895 those are the things you were learning about 10 years ago that now the rest of us are all learning about now. 884 01:00:07,979 --> 01:00:11,602 What are the things that are on your radar, future now? 885 01:00:11,602 --> 01:00:14,713 What are the things that you're thinking about that maybe are not as well known? 886 01:00:14,875 --> 01:00:16,438 I in FIP? 887 01:00:16,521 --> 01:00:18,708 What's that? In general. 888 01:00:19,376 --> 01:00:22,376 Well, in philanthropy, 889 01:00:22,459 --> 01:00:27,736 one of the things I'm really excited about right now is less inventing of new institutions. 890 01:00:27,777 --> 01:00:33,709 I described three effectively new institutions, Good Ventures, Open Philanthropy, and GiveWells. 891 01:00:33,750 --> 01:00:36,283 Good Ventures actually doesn't have any staff. 892 01:00:36,283 --> 01:00:43,283 There are some contractors that work for us basically, but mostly they're taking recommendations 893 01:00:43,366 --> 01:00:48,042 from the Open Philanthropy staff and just writing checks. Good Ventures is pretty thin. 894 01:00:48,042 --> 01:00:50,709 But even Open Philanthropy, we would rather have not created. 895 01:00:50,709 --> 01:00:54,459 We'd rather just existed and we became an additional funder on the margin for it 896 01:00:54,500 --> 01:00:57,583 and we are starting to get there now. 897 01:00:57,625 --> 01:01:02,025 We are partnering more with other large funders. 898 01:01:02,345 --> 01:01:06,591 I think by the time that this goes out, we'll announce we're doing a elimination project 899 01:01:06,674 --> 01:01:09,886 that we're co-funding with another very large foundation. 900 01:01:09,970 --> 01:01:12,994 and then additionally we've started regranting program. 901 01:01:13,036 --> 01:01:16,756 So, we're giving grants to other existing organizations that we think are really good. 902 01:01:16,840 --> 01:01:20,204 We just did $45 million to USAID. 903 01:01:20,287 --> 01:01:25,451 We actually did a 50 million grant, I think it was 50 million to the Gates Foundation, 904 01:01:25,534 --> 01:01:28,537 which is crazy, right? They have plenty of money. 905 01:01:28,537 --> 01:01:31,634 But they actually think quite a lot like us, especially in global health. 906 01:01:31,634 --> 01:01:34,510 And often it's like, we think this program should exist, 907 01:01:34,593 --> 01:01:39,009 but actually the Gates Foundation is already equipped to do it better than we could. 908 01:01:39,009 --> 01:01:43,404 We'd rather just help motivate them to do it and co-fund it 909 01:01:43,487 --> 01:01:47,883 rather than create a bunch more bureaucracy unnecessarily. 910 01:01:47,883 --> 01:01:50,966 I'm hopeful that's where Open Philanthropy is going 911 01:01:51,049 --> 01:01:56,509 and that there will be more funders working together rather than carving out unique visions. 912 01:01:56,509 --> 01:02:01,709 And I admit we're on poor moral ground there, having carved out a unique vision and 913 01:02:01,800 --> 01:02:04,217 a trap we often get into with people. 914 01:02:04,259 --> 01:02:10,718 So, critics have said, called your position on AI doomerism and I know you have pushed back on that. 915 01:02:10,718 --> 01:02:14,452 And I also know there have been moments when you have felt the opposite position 916 01:02:14,535 --> 01:02:17,441 is really bordering on irresponsible in a way that 917 01:02:17,524 --> 01:02:22,535 we're counseling this next generation of founders who are working on this, they do technologies. 918 01:02:22,676 --> 01:02:26,009 and especially because there's so many AI founders 919 01:02:26,009 --> 01:02:30,676 who are actively seeking guidance for how to build their companies in a responsible way. 920 01:02:30,676 --> 01:02:34,748 So, what's the advice that you're giving to the builders of these new systems 921 01:02:34,831 --> 01:02:39,782 who often, who would like to hear from you on how you think that should be done? 922 01:02:40,649 --> 01:02:43,259 First of all, reject the false trade-off. 923 01:02:43,300 --> 01:02:49,467 Our opponents are deliberately creating a polarized frame that does not exist. 924 01:02:49,467 --> 01:02:56,217 There's the doomers who think everything is awful and they ban math and ban AI 925 01:02:56,217 --> 01:03:00,709 and then there's the libertarians who think AI is going to be amazing 926 01:03:00,850 --> 01:03:04,308 and why would you ever want to get it away of it? 927 01:03:04,392 --> 01:03:09,337 and it is purposely rejecting the third frame, which 928 01:03:09,509 --> 01:03:12,718 almost in the entire safety community actually exists at 929 01:03:13,009 --> 01:03:17,682 which is AI is going to be great and we need to mitigate some very real problems. 930 01:03:17,786 --> 01:03:23,384 and there are some unknowable risks. 931 01:03:23,384 --> 01:03:27,217 I'm not going to say there're probabilistic risks because that gets you into your own kind of language trap. 932 01:03:27,217 --> 01:03:31,509 but there are risks that I think are non-trivial. 933 01:03:31,551 --> 01:03:35,175 It's very plausible they could manifest. 934 01:03:35,718 --> 01:03:40,293 and there are very good reasons to think if you don't change anything, 935 01:03:40,376 --> 01:03:44,551 the thing that is likely to happen will be that they manifest. 936 01:03:44,592 --> 01:03:50,409 Of course, it is a dynamic system and people are in conversation, and they're identifying the risks and they're trying to battle down. 937 01:03:50,451 --> 01:03:57,321 And so for me, my personal view is all the concern lies in 938 01:03:57,404 --> 01:04:03,569 how quickly that might play out, and whether there is a race to the bottom on ethics and safety 939 01:04:03,652 --> 01:04:07,049 because everyone's just scrambling to be out on the frontier. 940 01:04:07,300 --> 01:04:12,221 And the types of things that I think are good solutions are 941 01:04:12,304 --> 01:04:17,676 things that can align those organizations and get them out of the game theoretic traps 942 01:04:17,676 --> 01:04:22,676 that they can cooperate and lead to the better outcomes for them and for the world. 943 01:04:23,175 --> 01:04:28,912 And that means slowing down a little bit, being a little more deliberative, having, 944 01:04:28,995 --> 01:04:32,685 at this point I feel pretty confident we need some regulatory enforcement 945 01:04:32,768 --> 01:04:35,993 of the red teaming that happens before a new model is released 946 01:04:36,076 --> 01:04:40,676 because otherwise it's just clear as day that you're going to have a lab on the frontier 947 01:04:40,718 --> 01:04:46,763 that just doesn't do it or cuts the corners or certifies something safe that they haven't really tested. 948 01:04:46,883 --> 01:04:49,967 And I think that is the highest purpose of government 949 01:04:50,009 --> 01:04:54,676 is to look out for those kinds of negative externalities and 950 01:04:54,676 --> 01:04:59,502 do the things that cause the companies to do what needs to be done. 951 01:04:59,634 --> 01:05:02,129 However, government is slow. 952 01:05:02,384 --> 01:05:07,942 And a lot of my concern is maybe the danger is playing out 953 01:05:08,025 --> 01:05:12,849 in the next few years, while we're all arguing about the governance. 954 01:05:13,842 --> 01:05:17,217 So, what happens in the meantime and my advice for AI entrepreneurs 955 01:05:17,301 --> 01:05:19,551 is “Be ethical in the meantime” because we need you to be. 956 01:05:19,882 --> 01:05:25,490 And we don't have any other defenses other than Anthropic approach, 957 01:05:25,574 --> 01:05:29,979 which is to try and create a race to the top culture we need drammatically, 958 01:05:30,075 --> 01:05:35,313 and more power to them, but I don't want like rest, hang my hat on that. 959 01:05:35,800 --> 01:05:41,240 And I would much rather have every single lab leader saying this is important 960 01:05:41,323 --> 01:05:46,909 and ideally tying their own hands through things responsible scaling policies 961 01:05:46,992 --> 01:05:51,217 so that you don't get to a place where you're always making a judgment. 962 01:05:51,259 --> 01:05:53,774 Do we go forward from here or not based on the evidence? 963 01:05:53,858 --> 01:05:58,107 You've agreed ahead of the time where the danger lies and where the red lines are. 964 01:05:58,342 --> 01:06:01,676 And so, that I think is really important. 965 01:06:01,676 --> 01:06:07,355 I think we're very fortunate that many of the lab leaders, not just Anthropic, do think this way, 966 01:06:07,438 --> 01:06:13,559 but they also live inside corporate environments and have investors and, various contracts. 967 01:06:13,559 --> 01:06:17,726 And it's just very easy to get up and caught in outcomes. 968 01:06:17,726 --> 01:06:23,827 Well, from the philosophical point of view, conventional thinking about this when we talk about regulation, 969 01:06:23,910 --> 01:06:26,303 in any technology, but certainly with AI, 970 01:06:26,303 --> 01:06:30,065 there's kind of this idea that it's the government's job to say what is allowed to be done 971 01:06:30,148 --> 01:06:35,839 and then our expectation is that businesses will be as exploitative as they possibly can within the boundaries of the law 972 01:06:35,922 --> 01:06:40,142 up to it including lobbying to have the laws change to allow more exploitative behavior. 973 01:06:40,475 --> 01:06:45,729 and I feel that skips over a really important question that I spent a lot of time with founders 974 01:06:45,812 --> 01:06:50,617 who are asking these questions now, which is like, Okay, the law says that I can do these things, 975 01:06:50,700 --> 01:06:55,183 but what should I want to do as a founder? what should my goal be? 976 01:06:55,642 --> 01:07:01,642 And I wonder if you can just talk about that, not as a natty state restrictive, oh, you shouldn't be ambitious. 977 01:07:01,684 --> 01:07:05,018 Oh, we can't develop the technology, but rather as a source of strength 978 01:07:05,059 --> 01:07:10,419 to be the trustworthy vendor who's actually developing the technology in a responsible way. 979 01:07:10,419 --> 01:07:13,142 Maybe I misunderstand the question is the question about 980 01:07:13,183 --> 01:07:16,934 how do you know when you want to go beyond the law with ethics? 981 01:07:16,976 --> 01:07:18,934 Or is the question how that benefit you? 982 01:07:18,934 --> 01:07:21,851 Well, my question is more like, what should companies want to do? 983 01:07:22,169 --> 01:07:27,026 Well, I was very philosophical. At some level, my answer is 984 01:07:27,123 --> 01:07:32,327 they should want to be built to last and they should be pretty long sighted about that, 985 01:07:33,018 --> 01:07:37,018 but it can be difficult. 986 01:07:37,059 --> 01:07:39,018 I had a conversation. 987 01:07:39,018 --> 01:07:42,960 We haven't talked about this recently and this is another sort of dangerous topic area, 988 01:07:43,043 --> 01:07:49,475 but there's this idea of which customers should you support and should you have any red lines around that? 989 01:07:49,475 --> 01:07:53,100 Cloudflare engaged very heavily with us a few years ago. 990 01:07:53,100 --> 01:07:59,976 and I had a conversation with one of our investors Generation, and we were talking about oil companies as an example. 991 01:08:00,517 --> 01:08:06,767 And they were like, well, you shouldn't want oil companies as customers because their business is dying. 992 01:08:06,767 --> 01:08:12,267 And your LTV calculations basically are wrong for those customers, 993 01:08:12,350 --> 01:08:15,976 but it really depends on timelines, right? 994 01:08:16,018 --> 01:08:19,225 maybe our LTV calculations are wrong in a 15 year time scale 995 01:08:19,225 --> 01:08:23,364 but are not wrong in a ten year time scale and kind of doesn't matter because the future is discounted. 996 01:08:23,475 --> 01:08:25,296 And then they're also depends on what they do 997 01:08:25,379 --> 01:08:28,809 because in some cases, they're trying to convert into renewable energy companies. 998 01:08:28,851 --> 01:08:32,018 And we got into all these weird discussions around like 999 01:08:32,018 --> 01:08:35,851 I guess we like to support this part of shelf, but not this part of shelf. 1000 01:08:35,851 --> 01:08:39,059 We don't actually have agency to implement those kind of roles 1001 01:08:39,100 --> 01:08:41,726 and it creates a really weird relationship with the customer. 1002 01:08:42,434 --> 01:08:47,183 Having a light touch on that kind of thing. 1003 01:08:47,726 --> 01:08:52,851 But I think it's a good principle to bring to other ideas. 1004 01:08:52,851 --> 01:08:55,364 Again, so your relationship with your employees. 1005 01:08:55,767 --> 01:09:01,100 Maybe you can do something exploitative in the short run and maybe you'll get away with it. 1006 01:09:01,142 --> 01:09:03,915 But if you're not a sociopath, you're going to feel bad about it later. 1007 01:09:03,915 --> 01:09:06,684 And also those people are going to tell the next generation of employees 1008 01:09:06,726 --> 01:09:10,321 and they're not going to trust you and that'll cause problems for you in the end of the game. 1009 01:09:10,559 --> 01:09:14,559 And just really encourage people to play that out. 1010 01:09:15,350 --> 01:09:21,559 And I think we're seeing this a bit with 1011 01:09:23,434 --> 01:09:27,225 some of the companies on the public market who I think are running into 1012 01:09:27,225 --> 01:09:30,517 the borders of regulation and causing a big outcry 1013 01:09:30,517 --> 01:09:34,267 and they may really not like what comes for them after that 1014 01:09:34,309 --> 01:09:40,059 like with TikTok where they messaged all of America with push notification. 1015 01:09:40,059 --> 01:09:45,142 And people are like, well, that's legal, but I probably should not have done that. 1016 01:09:45,142 --> 01:09:50,523 and now it won't be legal anymore, 1017 01:09:50,606 --> 01:09:55,961 and there's a calculated risk that I think businesses and entrepreneurs take there 1018 01:09:56,044 --> 01:10:01,183 and some of it is always, will I get caught will I get found out? 1019 01:10:01,183 --> 01:10:06,023 And I think that will happen more often than you think, but you'll always know. 1020 01:10:06,350 --> 01:10:10,573 And I think, again, if you're not a sociopath, you have to pay that tax. 1021 01:10:10,615 --> 01:10:14,309 Yeah. To me, the canonical example is SVB lobbying 1022 01:10:14,309 --> 01:10:17,809 Congress during in the Trump administration to have the rules relaxed 1023 01:10:17,851 --> 01:10:21,351 that would have prevented them from... 1024 01:10:21,435 --> 01:10:22,334 Yeah, so creazy. 1025 01:10:22,434 --> 01:10:24,100 That's seen as good governance. 1026 01:10:24,100 --> 01:10:26,976 Everyone applauding them, of course, be as exploitative as you can and then 1027 01:10:27,851 --> 01:10:29,809 They were like crypto, right? 1028 01:10:29,809 --> 01:10:32,851 all of these non-securities shouldn't be securities. 1029 01:10:32,851 --> 01:10:35,942 And they could have played that very differently. 1030 01:10:35,984 --> 01:10:40,721 Great Wall lasted and now I think it'll be a different world. 1031 01:10:40,762 --> 01:10:42,434 That's really terrific. 1032 01:10:42,434 --> 01:10:45,426 Dustin, how much I want to say thanks again, for all your leadership. 1033 01:10:45,509 --> 01:10:49,841 Congratulations again on the stage you're having with Asana. I'm very excited to see what happens next. 1034 01:10:49,924 --> 01:10:52,121 And thanks for taking time to have this conversation. 1035 01:10:52,361 --> 01:10:53,901 Yeah, of course. Will always do. 1036 01:10:54,475 --> 01:10:57,202 You've been listening to the Eric Ries show. 1037 01:10:57,202 --> 01:10:59,649 Special thanks to the sponsors for this episode, 1038 01:10:59,732 --> 01:11:02,309 DigitalOcean, Mercury and Neo4j. 1039 01:11:02,809 --> 01:11:06,698 Eric Ries show is produced by Jordan Bornstein and Kiki Garthwaite, 1040 01:11:06,781 --> 01:11:09,526 researched by Tom White and Melanie Rehak, 1041 01:11:09,610 --> 01:11:14,686 visual design by Reform Collective, title theme by DP Music. 1042 01:11:14,969 --> 01:11:16,767 I'm your host, Eric Ries. 1043 01:11:16,767 --> 01:11:19,934 Thanks for listening and watching. See you next time.