We interviewed the CEO of Snapchat

all of their concerns came true right Tik Tok actually was able to influence the president of the United States it was hypothetical now they're going to say it's not hypothetical anymore like we just saw that happen we've seen so much AR and it feels early to be launching wearables I think we should just have a lot more ambition for what computers are were they a big Advertiser of year huge no way what were you thinking at that time clearly we weren't thinking how much money can you make on Snap we're in the middle of a

pretty big change on that when I think about Snapchat I think about competition and people copying Snapchat were you like angry when stories hit Instagram [Music] um today on the Colin miror show we are joined by Snapchat founder and CEO Evan Spiegel we wanted to sit down with Evan first of all just to be able to talk to Evan Spiegel like it's super interesting but also to understand the lens of creators on Snap to understand his perspective on what's going on with Tik Tok and to understand his perspective on where technology is going like are

weables real where is where does entertainment go where does communication go we also just ask him how does it feel to have so many of your ideas just blatantly copied how does that feel yeah as just a creative person as a Founder yeah what's that like so Evan is also from the Pacific Palisades which is uh where I'm born and raised as well and where both of us were living um you know up until recently until the uh Palisades fire um so we started the conversation just reflecting on our community and and what's going on

in Los Angeles right now and then once the episode is over Samir and I going to be back here and we're going to debrief a bit on what was said so we hope you enjoy this episode with the founder of Snapchat Evan Spiegel Evans Spiegel welcome to the show thank you so much what a what a time to be what a Time Los Angeles wow a time man how are you guys doing uh it's been up and down it's been up and down I I you know it's a prompt that you're given like what would

you do if your house burns down never given that or like what would you grab from your burning house and you could rebuild it all how would you rebuild so it's bizarre to like you never think that's a real thing that's G to happen so it's a it's a bizarre thing to happen um in some ways this feels familiar right like this is our studio this this is a before fire type of thing that we would do so it's a nice distraction yeah but it does feel a bit right now like I keep saying to

Samir vacation's not the right word but it feels like we're on a trip feels temporary yeah but it's not and obviously we're from the same Hometown so like that place just doesn't exist anymore uh which is a tough thing to wrap your head around I still have not yeah yeah yeah it's gonna take take a while it's gonna take a really long time um well obviously we're we're thankful for you coming in and and chatting um this morning we got a a demo of spectacles and that's a product that's been you've actually spent a lot

of time on that product I was thinking about how interesting it is that we got our hands on spectacles in 2016 snap Snapchat launched in 2011 it's pretty quick to go into wearables and what I wanted to ask you was I was I was reading into your story and I I actually didn't know that you had launched a uh a site prior to Snapchat which was future fresh.com and the lesson you said from that was that like your mom signed up for it but no one else used it and after that you said you want

to build stuff that people will actually use what signals did you get or have you gotten that wearables is a direction that people want to use yeah definitely well our our first um sort of foray with spectacles was really about getting the camera out of people's pockets so if you think about it Snapchat's always opened into the camera and it's really been this invitation to create and just Express Yourself wherever you are in the the moment um but there's a lot of friction in terms of pulling your phone out of your pocket and you know

uh snapping a a photo or video to share with friends so the original goal was just to get the camera out of folks pockets and uh you know somewhere more convenient uh for for making snaps what we found was that that wasn't 10 times better than the phone right uh you know it was really useful for people who were rock climbing maybe or you know on a jet ski who wanted to capture hands-free point of view video but that's not a very large uh Market Market but what we did find was there was a huge

opportunity to make computer something that actually keep you grounded in the real world I think people feel really frustrated that the phone gets in the way of their day-to-day lives they feel really frustrated uh that screens in general take them away from their friends and I think ultimately the solution is not to not use technology we have to change the way technology works so that it keeps folks grounded in the real world is more easily shared uh with friends and the early generation of spectacles gave us a little Glimpse at that so we just started

taking steps in that direction you know adding two cameras for 3D adding a display um and now you know launching the the operating system to help people build for for glasses when I even think back to spectacles and it being 2016 I think about how early that seems or feels and for better or worse when I think about Snapchat I think about competition and people copying Snapchat how do you sort of internalize that feeling and emotion of of being copied especially when it's like spectacles of 2016 that feels early to be launching wearables and then

obviously stories and everything that's come after it how do you stay motivated and energized because I will say as a Creator when someone copies our stuff it makes me like it less makes me like what I'm doing less yeah and I imagine there's like no one who's been through it more as a tech founder than you yeah I I'm have several minds of it I think fundamentally as a designer it's actually quite exciting to influence the world Beyond just our products right and I think that that's a really cool opportunity to to lead and we

love innovating we love making new things and so in many ways it's cool that our inventions don't just benefit you know the 850 plus million people on Snapchat but billions of people around the world who use our inventions and in all sorts of different products but as like the public company CEO uh it can be annoying so I think think um you know I think our our team ultimately is motivated by creating things and so when things are copied it doesn't take away from that if anything I think uh our teams get excited about the

opportunity to lead you know where technology is going where the world is going but pretty early on we learned that we had to start working on things that were a lot more complicated and hard to copy right stories are very easy to copy that's a feature in uh you know in our app and of course we have the patents or whatever but it's very difficult to enforce software patents so I I think what we found was if we didn't move very quickly to applying our Innovation to things that are much harder to copy things like

uh you know glasses but more importantly platforms right so when we look at all the lenses uh people have made you know millions of lenses for our augmented reality platform it's very hard to copy that you can't move hundreds of thousands of creators and millions of lenses to a new platform very easily and so as we've invested over time we've thought about how do we invest in areas that are hard to copy so that when we're innovating you know we're primar benefiting our business and our community even if you know our competitors follow what we're

doing but were you like angry when when stories hit Instagram like was there like an internal like like ah this sucks a little bit in a way it was different than what they had done before because before they had always tried to copy it but then make it their own and ultimately it would fail right so like they made poke to copy Snapchat but it was like a total disaster and ultimately raised the profile uh of Snapchat and and drove more people to Snapchat with I think Kevin C was very smart he just came out

and said we're going to copy it exactly we're not going to try to make it make it our own or make it different or better we're just going to like literally carbon copy it because we think it's really great and I think that was a very smart approach and it was a very good fit for Instagram which was Creator focused right Snapchat's always been about friends and family but to bring you know the story's medium to creators in that way I think was very smart and something we hadn't invested as much in because we were

focused on helping people you know share with their friends and family it's really interesting because it was kind of we were talking about mobile video like we were you know creating on YouTube at the time when snap Snapchat launched and when uh stories came out but like uploading video to mobile was not a seamless process at all which it it seems foreign now that that was a problem back then but it wasn't frictionless um stories was the first product that was like oh this is this is pretty frictionless like I can just record into my

phone and it's like a a story like it's a beginning middle and end of my day um we we were watching people like Jerome J obviously you remember him but like Casey neistat um I remember uh DJ khin when he was lost on a jet ski yeah the key is not to drive your jet ski in the dark and like everyone watching and following yeah and and it was kind of the first entrance into Mobile first vertical video is that fair to say I do think video was a big component of of story's success for

sure but I I think to your point the chronological order was also really important because when we looked at the way that everyone was sharing at the time everything was in Reverse chronological order it was very bizarre so you'd go into your feed and if someone posted three photos from a birthday party you would see the end and then the middle in the beginning and it was just a very odd way I think to experience uh content so I think the chronological order was really important I think having it start fresh every day was really

important and it was really in cont to all the like cataloged public likes and comments that ultimately I think a lot of people look at their social profile and they're like wow that was me S years ago like that's not how I would represent myself today and there was almost like a dissociation with all the public historical content people had posted so I think that freedom of you know starting fresh every day was something people really valued as well did you have any sense at the time when like you mentioned snap was very friends to

friends right like it was a very uh intimate experience did you have any sense at the time that this type of medium would open up the doors for monetization and advertising where independent people could become media platforms like did you have a sense that that's where this was going we thought that if stories worked it would be really helpful for our business it's hard to monetize messaging we do that now with like added value features with Snapchat Plus uh which is now grown to more than 14 million subscribers so that you know that's that's grown

um but I think you know we've just seen the success of advertising and of course um you know Creator driven uh growth so I I think we knew that it would open up new adver you know new avenues for for advertising but certainly not the extent uh to which it would and in the first six months nobody used it I mean at all uh which was a little nerve-wracking because we you know our board was like you guys made the stories thing you said it was going to be and our board at the time I

think was like four people total but they're like you know we thought this was going to be a thing and what happened and you know it took some time for it to really take off and for people to learn how to use it you you mentioned you know that Snapchat opens to the camera and from what I understand that's something you feel pretty strongly about but my assumption would be that if if you wanted to build a real culture of creation you would open to the feed right of like immediate consumption to show people what

they could be a part of can you talk about that Dynamic of you know wanting to be an intimate experience and a place where people can connect with friends and family but also wanting to be this platform form where people can be creators and monetize how do you deal with that that friction and those types of decisions of whether to open to the camera or not yeah I I think that's a really great point so when we look at that sort of creativity what we're really talking about is empowering the largest number of people possible

to feel comfortable expressing themselves we've done that a bunch of different ways whether it's ephemerality right that lowers the barrier to that creativity because it's more like talking than saving a moment or lenses right which give people an excuse to create you know photo or video or stories like we just uh discussed we really try to broaden that base of creativity and ultimately for us what we felt was when you open to a feed or you experiencing other people's content first you're constantly thinking of yourself in comparison to other content and when that feed is

then ranked in terms of popularity for example that can actually stifle creativity rather than inspiring it for a really broad base of people I think for creators or folks who are trying to you know maybe uh make a living by making the most popular content right opening to a feed makes a lot of sense but for your average individual who you know I don't know has just made some macaroni and cheese in the the microwave you know and is comparing it to you know a dinner at noou Malibu that's at the top of the feed

that sort of comparison I think can actually stifle creativity so for us opening into your own experience I I think ultimately is a way to get as many people as possible to say whatever you're experiencing or feeling in the moment like you can share that moment and connect with your your friends and family which is different than the sort of feed driven consumption and it inherently you know because like the comp comparative nature of the other apps creates more creators like Colin saying and it creates like a competitive nature and an urgency to create and

to build businesses so the inverse is like suggestive of I I really like that sentiment because I think for me as a creative person I almost don't know my own creativity anymore in a in a relative vacuum do you know what I mean like I don't know what I think anymore about my own creativity without the immediate thought of but would that work right like we've lived almost impossible not to once you open up an app and it does show you what success looks like immediately at least in the eyes of that app it's hard

to act like you haven't seen it yeah right and to follow that cue of I can make something like that and show up in the same place what what what would you say what does like the model citizen Creator look like on Snap right now because I think when I open Snap today and even when I talk to my family about snap it is preferred messaging app for almost all of my cousins anyone who's like in their 20s even people up to like their early 30s it's the preferred messaging app right and I think um

when I think about uh creators on snap I remember the era where you know discover was primarily media publishers um and now when you go to discover go go to like um you know watch content a lot of it is creators now um I think about like David do who you can watch hundreds of of you know story slides in a day um but what what does like the model citizen Creator look like on Snap right now and are there any other case studies outside of Dober that you know you're aware of yeah I think

Do's a great example and there are other really large creators too like Charlie Deo or Snoop Dogg or you name it but I I I think you know if you look at where our Focus has been over the last year or two it's really been on homegrown creators and folks who just grew up using SnapChat talking with their friends decided to make a public profile and have since grown their followings or built a business I think you know Brook monk might be a great example like started using SnapChat at 16 now has three and a

half million followers so I think for us what we're finding now there are so many different voices of folks who you know might have normally just used the app to chat with their their friends and family but are bringing that authenticity to connect with a wider audience and I think that's been really cool to see what can can you break down the kind of where videoos distributed on Snap right now because there's a couple different places like stories is obviously one of them but there's also Spotlight and there's also well I guess if you you

could probably just break it down better than I could yeah definitely so um sto stories uh I think pretty well well understood uh at this point but certainly a place that a lot of creators focus and are able to I think really deepen their relationship with their audience I think that's something that we always hear back from creators who are who are sharing on on Snapchat is that like authentic connection they feel and then how that translates into business results so I think there was even there was like an e- marketer study recently that basically

showed that social Shoppers are far more likely to purchase on Snapchat when compared to like a Tik Tok or an Instagram I think that's because the connection is is more authentic and maybe that's because of our Revenue share program as well so creators instead of trying to constantly sell you something on their story are just sharing their authentic day-to-day lives but then when they go out and build their personal brand you know I think Alysa McKay is probably a good example you know using her story you know was able to get a huge amount of

free distribution and build her clothing brand uh to like over a million dollars in in revenue and I think that authentic connection is is really really important so stories um you know continue to be a place where there's there's a lot of focus and then we've been growing Spotlight uh really nicely spotlights our short video platform it's more geared towards Discovery so I think with stories folks are normally engaging with creators they already know uh and want to connect more deeply with um with Spotlight folks are really trying to to get more Discovery um and

so you can post a spotlight and then drive people to your story with a spotlight post I think Spotlight is now used by like 500 million people um and the you know the the the time span growth there has been really nice too so you guys share Revenue in stories we do and now we actually share uh Revenue with Spotlight creators as well we tried to unify our our Revenue program vertical video Revenue share has been very challenging like I think attribution has been something that almost every company has said like you know either they've

done a fund right where it's like here is this like finite amount and we're going to figure out how to how to split this but like attributing uh attributing advertising dollars to certain content in vertical video feeds has been uh not as easy or as simple as like a YouTube right with AdSense so H how have you thought about how does that even work on stories um and then how does it work in Spotlight and why do you think it's not so Universal like I know YouTube shorts now has a monetization program which is revenue

share but it's really not Universal across all short form video platforms how revenue is shared I think you know YouTube long form and stories have something in common which is that they can insert ads in the middle of the content um and so I think that really helps and and it also I think helps align incentives right if you watch the video longer of creators make more compelling content people watch more of their stories will pay out more uh you know against that um content and we've extended that to longer form Spotlight videos as well

um a lot of our Publishers and Creator partners want to make longer form video uh for for spotlight and and you know of course uh publish quite long stories as you mentioned um and so I think that is sort of the the ad insertion inside those stories makes it a lot easier whereas you know some other platforms mostly have interstitial advertising in between those videos and I I do understand why it's harder to apportion yeah that Revenue especially if the ad insertion is is dynamic is snap thinking about long form content at all with that

understanding that there's like oh there's some similarities actually in ad attrib bution and obviously seeing like what's happened with YouTube and watch time on televisions is that anything that snap looks at seriously and thinks oh maybe we will go longer maybe we'll go to TV screens like we'll expand in different areas we we have thought a little bit about that I I don't necessarily know about you know bringing our content to TV necessarily although it's something we we might experiment with but I think you know definitely the the opposite happening where F you know Publishers

or creators are realizing they can drive more TuneIn to their television shows by cutting up you know some of the content of their show and then publishing that out as a 5minute video uh for example on on Spotlight um and so we we definitely are seeing creators and Publishers Embrace that so you know maybe longer form for mobile is five minutes or something like that makes sense where do you think like what's your perspective on the landscape right now of of media because you've been involved now for a long time and this is you you've

actually been at the Forefront and probably a lot of the reason why media looks the way it looks today is um you know largely because of a product you design meaning that individuals are more trusted sources of information now than uh media companies first I guess I would ask do you agree with that and second like where do you think we are going as a media landscape uh in the future yeah it's a it's a great question um I think one of the challenging things even before we start thinking about trust in traditional media it's

it's more that a lot of that news is now behind very expensive pay walls and so as you look at young people you know if you want to access the New York Times or the financial times or the Wall Street Journal or any of these sorts of of newsrooms that can afford to really invest in investigative journalism and this sort of thing it's just not accessible to most people at this point and I think that that's really a challenge for the media landscape of course some of those companies are cutting up some of those videos

and and sharing them but they're living alongside content as you point out that's made by individuals is really really widely um distributed and uh you know I think um I think obviously there are there are pros and pros and cons to that I I do think it's really helpful that people are sharing a lot of alternative perspectives that maybe haven't uh been shared before but I I also think you know the human brain is predisposed to enjoy conspiracy theories right especially when we're trying to make sense of things that are very complex and we now

live in a very complex world I mean almost all the interesting problems that we're solving today have to be solved by teams of people with vast you know and varied sets of expertise and so you look at all the complex and interesting challenges we're facing today and we're always trying to find what's the simple explanation and unfortunately in in most cases there there isn't one there there is no simple explanation for a lot of the big challenges that we face today so it's I I think the media formats today a very short form content right

combined uh you know with typically as you point out an individual perspective rather than a wide set of perspectives sometimes just makes it harder to make sense of of really complex things it's interesting that during the the like as the the the Palisades fire and the fires in La were going on I actually found out basically that my house was on fire through snapchat because there was a couple people posting stories showing what was going on in real time and so I was watching I was shifting between Twitter and the news and trying to see

was going on and then I found a source you know through Snap which was like keeping me updated in in real time so it is like the immedi of an individual right now it is very hard for anyone else to compete with that right like the immediacy of information and how fast information travels now I I do think though like to that experience specifically there was a level of verification that came through local news sure that I found to be very helpful like I would watch you know CNN and they're looking at a much broader

perspective but the mix for me was like yes let me check X let me check Snapchat see what's coming up and let me verify it with local news it was like this interesting Dynamic where I found local news to be this uh crutch that like I I never really thought of it as before and and interestingly kind of connecting back to what we were talking about you know making snaps with the Snapchat camera one of the things that's really interesting is you're more likely to trust a snap on the snapmap for example because we're actually

authenticating that that was made with our camera and so I think one of you know we're also trying to figure out how can we better use you know people are submitting public snaps all over the world of everything going on that are geotagged and made with our camera so we can actually verify that that's a real snap with made with our camera so we're trying to think about you know for disaster relief in the future if you look at how you know what watch duty is doing how can we you know help integrate some of

these you know public snap data sources but that you know have that layer of at least understanding it was made you know in our app with our camera you know at a certain lat long or whatever yeah that I mean it's really interesting that like the through this experience peer-to-peer communication seems even now to be like the like individuals are organizing thems organizing right now into peer-to-peer communication during during the event after the event and that's likely how things will continue to look or probably progress in the future is this peer-to-peer communication um I want

to come back to now like the the concept of like creators on Snap like how much money can you make on snap I know that's a broad question but like you know I remember the when the fund hit and there was a Creator named uh Camy cam Casey who was like telling stories of of uh he like I made a million dollars in a day yeah there's people and and of course like there's been various funds and and experiences but I think when we as creators are looking at the landscape of of platforms like what's

the the what's the case for for SNAP for creators who are running a business or even individual creators who are looking to make a career out of their creativity yeah absolutely so you know I guess for perspective we paid out last year in 2024 more than half a billion dollars to creators and Publishers so you know that's it's a decent amount uh uh of money and certainly more than enough we hear a lot of stories from from creators it's enough to take a risk on dedicating their life to pursuing this passion and becoming a Creator

right often times we talk about these homegrown creators folks kind of just get started but oh wow now they have a following of you know a couple million uh folks they're earning money through our Revenue share program they can come and move to LA and think about you know expanding their business or starting their own brand um and so I think the you know at least from the stories I've heard from from uh creators I think our Revenue share program has really helped people kind of take that leap um you know to to being a

Creator fulltime which is really cool can you talk a little bit more about how Discovery works for you know for us I remember we were um sitting down with Daniel E from Spotify and he was talking about how Spotify is actually more alator so it's a mid of it's a bit of the algorithm and it's a bit of the editorial of like this is what is deemed good content for you how does SNAP think about that when it comes to surfacing what is good content yeah we're in the middle of a pretty big change on

that because I think one of the ways that the service currently works today on that we call like the fourth tab but really on the stories page you have those little story tiles um and far too much of the content Discovery you know was actually driven by that tile clickthrough rate in order to get people into content and so people were really trying to game the tiles um just like thumbnails on YouTube yeah exactly um and so as a result sometimes you know maybe the best tile but not necessarily the best content was Rising uh

to the top and I think you know we we were early back I guess must have been before 2017 on on doing sort of algorithmically ranked content remember at the time it was what your friends liked right would go into your feed and we said uh I think that's a pretty limited way to approach filtering content we want to broaden that out to a much bigger base of of Publishers and creators and then algorithmically rank it but we did that in a tile based UI and I think you know as we're looking to the Future

we've been testing uh simple Snapchat which is a a pretty radical simplification of the app into three screens really your friends in the map uh you know in the chat page the camera and then just a full screen content consumption experience and I think that's going to make it a lot easier um for to make sure we're Distributing the most relevant content and you know kind of stop the gamification around the tiles wow that's really interesting still opening to the camera still opening to the camera yeah yeah although if you're a Snapchat Plus subscriber you

can set your set your default entry entry page okay yeah that's interesting I mean I think you know the landscape of um of short form vertical video has obviously been through a lot like what do you make of the conversations around the Tik Tok ban and like the the realistic nature of that happening um well just you know looking at the events of the last couple of days I think that's going to really feed the fire uh on the National Security side because essentially all of their concerns came true over the past couple days right

right Tik Tok actually was able to influence the president of the United States to issue an executive order that you know essentially undermines Congress and the Supreme Court right in a 90 ruling and so I think all the National Security folks were like whoa this platform has way too much influence to be controlled by what they deem to be a foreign adversary they now kind of it was hypothetical now they're going to say it's not hypothetical anymore like we just saw that happen and so I do think uh you know in many ways even though

folks are maybe breathing a brief sigh of relief and hoping a deal will get done I I do think that the National Security Community is really going to now use this as concrete evidence that there's a problem oh that's really interesting what is so interesting I had not heard that I haven't heard that argument anywhere but it makes logical sense but yeah that is nowhere to be found at least as far as I know certainly not on Tik Tok yeah what is your relationship to uh you know even the government the White House it seems

like now we're watching social platforms obviously have really direct relationships even the the image at the inauguration of seeing uh you know Mark Zuckerberg Elon Musk um uh Sun Pai like you're like oh interesting there's like direct there's a lot of direct relationships I I'd assume with the complex content platforms that we use as creators as well like directly there yeah I I guess it was like one of the first images for me that was like oh yeah that is this is the the the media right I I guess like the media platforms that we

all are producing media on I don't know I don't know what to make of it guess in in like the relationship between um the government and these content platforms well it does seem to me that there's a real recognition regardless of the administration of the importance of technology platforms right I think the Biden Administration was very focused on them being too powerful right and there was a lot of litigation you know especially uh you know around sort of monopolistic business practices and these sorts of things I think it's too early to say what this Administration

will do but I I do think the inauguration was a real example of the importance of understanding you know how powerful these technology platforms are um and I think you know many of these technology platforms have huge very strategic important relationships with the government um so I I I understand why they're so focused on that relationship I think generally if I look at how we've built snap we've stayed out of the political uh you know we don't make political donations and this sort of thing we don't um you know typically engage politically unless it's you

know in service of our community right so we engage with folks a lot on the trust and safety side so you know around the world we engage with law enforcement for example to really make sure that we can protect our community and work to keep you know Predators or criminals off our platform and that sort of thing so we we when we engage with government it's really like in service of our um and service of our community outside of that are there any aspects of you know the relationship with the social platform and the government

that could impact content creators in the way we distribute and create content outside of like harm and safety to users uh here in the United States with the First Amendment um you know I think creators and platforms have a huge amount of latitude there's sort of I think been a distortion of what the First Amendment actually means right a lot of platforms are basically saying you know we support the First Amendment so anyone on our platform should be able to say anything but that's sort of misconstruing what the First Amendment does it says the government

can't tell a platform or a Creator what to do right so actually the platform can choose whatever content guidelines or policies it wants right under the First Amendment and so I think there's been a little bit of misdirection mostly probably because folks don't want to moderate content because when they do engagement goes down I mean I think that's that's been pretty well uh understood but I think um here in the United States at least which is different even frankly than Europe Europe has a huge very complex regulatory regime around content um but here in the

United States I think creators and and platforms have a lot of latitude to decide what they want to distribute is it ever lost on you that like you made future freshman then you make this app and it's do you know what I mean your whole life has changed forever your second go at it was like I'm sure there was more goes at it right like as as creative individuals you have a lot of ideas and a lot of goes at it but like it's pretty crazy that it's completely wild yeah yeah kind of unimaginable can

you just talk me through a little bit of what the the rise of it was like just like even as a as just like a creative person who like for us anytime we've made things like you never know when you put it out into the world if people are going to be into it or not and it's the best feeling in the world when people are into it you know when you put something out in the world you're oh my God people people see it the way I see it like to to have a perspective

on the world and design it into something and then have it be adopted at this scale the experience of that must have been pretty wild it's so it's so much fun and and you know we got to do that with our friends which is even crazy more like that's that's what's made it you know being able to do it with Bobby I you know went was living across the hall from him in school and like to be able to do this together and you know all of our friends that joined in the early days there

were seven or eight of us living in my dad's house on on toyopa until his then girlfriend now wife like I think walked in and one of one of the guys was sleeping on the couch with like a uh blanket she had gotten my dad for Christmas and she was like enough you guys need to get an office so um yeah just so many great memories but I think to be able to do it together with with our you know with friends has just been the the best part it's just so crazy to me that

we're having the conversation about like you know relationship to the government and how like big these plat like all these platforms from you know the era of us being I guess you know in our early 20s have now influenced the way humans engage with each other and uh the way we get information and what we trust and you know what we are entertained with and um it is just so amazing to me that this cohort of individuals like yourself have have impacted at such scale and also created situations for people like us to launch businesses

like growing up in La you know by by no means was connected to anyone in Hollywood my parents are are immigrants but I really wanted to be a filmmaker like a creative and I really struggled to find a pathway in and then like uploading videos to YouTube was the path which is insane that like to to in order to do that 10 years prior you just it just wasn't even possible so it's it's just amazing to me and I think about now the next chapter again as we talked about getting a demo of spectacles this

morning um one of my thoughts about as I we we were joking that like we've seen so much AR in the past even year you know we've gotten a lot of demos and sometimes I feel like I'm sounding the alarms to my parents cuz I'm looking at them and I'm like want to shake them I'm like you don't even know what's coming and like somewhat closed door briefings on AI as well like just you're like oh my God it's all happening but I I wanted to get a sense from you you know one of one

of my not concerns but things that I think about for us as creators is as technology gets more entertaining itself like wearing spectacles is an entertaining experience will we have a limited capacity for entertainment and content uh like is is technology going to be entertainment does that make sense yeah that that does make sense I mean I have a couple thoughts here I think one is that like we shouldn't forget that content is at the center of of Human Relationships right whether it's like you want to you know whether we cutle up as a family

and watch a you know a movie or people share a video that they think their friend will like or be interested in I I I do think content is such an important part of the way we all relate to one another um and so I don't think that's going away at all but I I think we should ask the question like how can we make computers something that are much more engaging much more enriching right much easier to use together uh with friends and I think you know just looking at the educational potential of augmented

reality is is extraordinary and so I do think there there's no reason why those sorts of experiences shouldn't transcend the screen I I do think in many ways screens are very uh limiting so I do think content creators in the future are going to spend more time on more immersive experiences in in augmented reality um and I think that will become uh you know an important form of entertainment but also learning productivity of course and those sorts of things what's the expected timeline and I'm sure this is difficult to answer but when I'm trying to

explain to my mom what's happening with ar and I'm like I'm telling you they're on your face and you can see this and you can touch that when can I tell her that like this may be a reality for you truly moving throughout the world I think by the end of this decade I mean we we sort of have felt that way for quite uh some time and kind of invested against that on our uh road map so I I think you could definitely see much more widespread adoption uh by the end of the decade

almost at the latest at this point I think and that has to do with you know advances in the technology going into like a smaller formfitting size and yeah th those are definitely big drivers I mean one of the big things we focused on is the optical engine so the you know the little projector that uh projects light on the wave guide which is that glass in the um you know in the frame um that's a big area of investment for us making that a lot more efficient will be a big driver of power consumption

um and then we're doing a lot on the the sort of op operating system side to optimize that for lower power chips and those sorts of things so that you get a much more streamlined pair of glasses I liked that with the spectacles um we didn't have to wear anything to be able to no no handcuffs yeah well like you know we we tested Orion when we were up in in pal Alto and uh you wear like a wristband for that and that was a really cool experience um but it was interesting to me that

you didn't with with spectacles you don't have anything else you're just operating like that but I think from a form factor perspective what meta has done with Rayban is actually really interesting and really smart um because there's there's people who will wear those and obviously those don't have the computing power of AR glasses but it's interesting that people will wear those and you almost don't notice um and it's like a recognizable brand that people are wearing so I I'm really interested to see when and how that materializes largely because whenever I've experienced AR um and

this morning with with the spectacles the one thing we've been talking about is do we think that you know in 20 or 30 years from now people will look back at humans hunched over phones in the same way that we look at people smoking on airplanes you know like do you think our kids will be like what you guys all like these images of families at dinner like this like it's it's a bizarre experience and of course it's also bizarre to have you know an interface around you while I'm talking to you but with with

with the glasses it does feel like you get your engagement with the world back you get your posture back in an interesting way you get your hands back um and I don't know how to explain that to people who haven't experienced it I do think that even people listening and watching this will be like this is a far-fetched re that these guys are talking about it's not real but when you experience it you go like oh as humans eye contact matters a lot and your posture matters a lot and like it's a and we haven't

even started talking about all the implications for eyesight right myopia all these issues people are struggling with because they're staring at screens all day long right they can be solved with these sorts of products yeah so that that fascinates me because you know it could be a very long time from now but you know on the precipice of of having a kid I think a lot about like what is his version of being 15 years old going to be like what what's that in your mind like what does the future look like yeah our our

vision like I you know um what I what I've really talked about with our team what we're really trying to make real in the world is like I I want to be sitting at home look out the window see our four kids running around outside and look at my wife and be like they won't get off the damn computer right like that should be our vision for computers that our kids can be outside wearing glasses running around playing together doing something is fun and teaches them something hopefully but in a way that's supports all those

things we know are so important to human interaction you mentioned uh you know things like eye contact but also like getting outside running around being together with friends and so I think we should just have a lot more ambition for what computers are I mean they've basically been screens for a very very long time uh and I think pretty soon they're going to be you know much more immersive in the world and something that people can share that's so crazy yeah I mean for me I'm definitely in line with that I I always say that

I'm so great ful that I you know was in elementary school before I had a smartphone or even in high school really because that's all it was it was like I'd come home call my friends and see if they were there and we'd go play and we would just stay out you know all day go to the Village that's right Razor scooter yourself to the Village you go go to P skates get a new deck go to Savon skate the yeah listen I did it all I did it all um what what advice then like

with all these changes happening like what do you think creator should be thinking about you know even even back to what we're talking about in the context of Tik Tok or in the context of even as we look into the future of wearables like what what what matters in the in the new world like with with AI AR with changing platforms like what's in your perspective what matters well I do think you know in many ways I think a lot of folks were sort of in denial about some of the Tik Tok changes and I

think you know this 75 day period whatever happens at the end it I think is an amazing opportunity for people to take it seriously and to think about how to diversify across a set of platforms because ultimately I think what endures you know regardless of the platform and over time I'm sure there will be many more new platforms that that arise is that like authentic connection with your audience and so I think so many folks have that I think it's something that that creators really love to cultivate on Snapchat with uh stories and now with

Spotlight but I think that authentic connection is what transcends any platform uh change and so I think you know as creators think about just investing in you know making sure they diversify their platforms while staying true to who they are I think that's how you how you build a following that you know can last you know a lifetime do you have any sense of what gen Z and even gen Alpha look for when it comes to content and out of your platform because obviously Snapchat is one of those platforms that does and has retained a

very young user base and something that like the Facebooks of the world and even YouTube are looking at of like how do we how do we make sure we hold on to and attract younger audiences what do you think it is about Snapchat that has retained younger users I think fundamentally people come to Snapchat for their friends and family for a better way to communicate right I think what's so fun about communicating visually is that you can you know share things that can't be said right I mean that's that's sort of the the value proposition

in a moment you can share how you feel or what you're doing rather than you know spending you know I don't know a minute two minutes uh you know punching it out on text message I just I think as soon as folks realize how powerful and simple it is to communicate visually they don't want to go back to to texting so um for us that's always driven the the the growth of the business and then ultimately you know as people are sharing snaps with their friends and communicating you know sometimes they want to share to

their story and ultimately they end up watching stories from friends and then watching stories from creators and Publishers and and other uh content partner so I think as long as we continue to stay focused on that core value proposition of helping people communicate with their friends and family in a way they really can't do anywhere else we'll be able to continue to to grow our audience and and ultimately to to grow um the our content um business as well is there a problem that snap is facing right now that that is top of mind for

you that like when you get up you're like this is the thing we need to try and figure out this is what we're spending a lot of our energy on you know a lot of what we spent time on over the last two years has been our advertising platform um you know it's really tough to compete with the Googles and metas of the world um at at their uh scale we have a unique audience that's hard to reach on other platforms I think that's a real asset for us but we've been investing a lot over

the last two years on improving our advertising platform and and driving better results uh for advertisers especially especially in the direct response business and for small mediumsized customers because ultimately for us to be able to reinvest in the platform we've got to drive uh the growth of our ad business so we've made a lot of progress there but that's still a real priority for us and we're spending a lot of time thinking about the the future I think you you're right to uh mention AI uh which is hugely important to our business that's a big

uh Focus for us but then thinking about how are people going to be using AI in in the future and we think that's going to be with classes um and so ultimately making sure that we're making the right long-term Investments so that when these platform shifts uh occur that we can really support our community and and hopefully build you know the leading product what's it like being a a public Company CEO uh you know I I really like it actually I didn't necessarily think I would but but I I like it a lot I like

the discipline I like the quarterly Cadence actually um you know I think we're very fortunate that Bobby and I control the business so even though we're on this quarterly Cadence we can make long-term Investments I think if we weren't able to make if we weren't able to do that it wouldn't be interesting at all really um because you guys have have held firm on your perspective like like since 2011 like we keep bringing it up but like the the UI is like yes it's different but it has the same perspective and a lot of the

apps that we engage with very few of them have retained the like original perspective you know from a design and and UI U standpoint so I find that to be really interesting because like being a a public CEO and um having a design perspective and like a perspective on how things should feel sometimes those can be at odds right like the perspective of the board would kind of take yeah I I think we're fortunate that like we've now been right enough times that even when it's early so I think glasses are a great example you

know over the last 10 years this is an area we've been investing it wasn't really till this year people are like oh wait a minute this whole VR metaverse thing like never mind actually we know that's not going to be yeah a meaningful platform people don't actually want it we think glasses are the future and that's what we've been investing against for 10 years so I think often times it takes you know the broader industry a while to come around but I think we've just found that if we can stay focused on you know delivering

value for our community really building great products that ultimately over time you know that uh what do you know about human nature in that like you've you've come up with a lot of products that you know again we talked about have been adapted by the rest of the industry like what do you feel like you've learned about human connection human nature um through your perspective and lens and what have you known across all these years to be right those that manytimes that's a great question I I think we really try to have empathy for the

little things so for example when we first started the service you know back in the day on your smartphone camera you had to toggle between photo and video mode do you remember the little switch like make hit the toggle to to record a video and that feeling of just how annoying is that that like every time I want to make a video I have to go toggle and it flips over it takes you know then I miss the moment right that's what led us to create like tap for photo hold for video the idea that

you can use the same button and make a photo or a video or with you know with stories we were just listening to people and they were talking to us about the way they felt using social media right they felt like they were just being judged by their friends in a giant popularity contest that the reverse chronological feed like made no sense right and didn't feel human and then we're just like how have people shared with each other historically oh they tell stories in chronological order right there isn't this like huge permanent record people don't

like you know uh laugh at them and make fun of them all day long that you know actually people can feel comfortable expressing themselves without those sorts of likes and comments um yeah I heard you talk about ephemeral messaging mirroring human conversation that's such an interesting note that like when obviously right now this doesn't count this doesn't count because we're being recorded from every direction but like in a normal the conversation we had prior to getting in here was ephemeral like there there was no record of that conversation so like the comfort that we speak

in that environment is very different it's going to be different than when you have a mic in front of you and when you have cameras in front and I think too often especially in the technology business we let the Technology Drive the product rather than really putting the human needs at the center so I mean ephemerality is a good example of that back in the day was more expensive to write over the hard drive to erase the data than to just store it because the more that you write over it right you actually wear out

the disc and ultimately you need to get a new hard drive so it's it's actually better to say you know what we're not actually going to go back and delete it we'll just leave it and at some point we'll write over it right so so I think like a lot of these interesting paradigms we have in technology are actually driven by the technological constraints rather than like what's best for people and so I think one of the reasons why we're having so much fun with the glasses is you know the entire UI you experience it

is a natural UI like it's wild to be able to just look at your hand you know press the button you know use your hands to pinch and grab things I think we're getting closer and closer to computers that have change to to fit what humans need rather than forcing humans to change to fit the computers right I think that's really going to be valuable something I've been saying a lot is that I'm really excited that the future of technology uh is a world where there's no right way to necessarily operate it like I think

that's very liberating that as voice comes into the picture as AI comes into the picture that when I'm older when my parents continue to get older that they could potentially be using a piece of tech where they just talk to it and it understands the way that they talk and it does what they want it to do right and that we can go into this world where technology is not this like pain point it just works more with us and how we actually live yeah I love that looking back on the journey is there anything

you would have done different to this point I'm sure there's a million things would would have done different would never have let Tik Tok advertise um no I um were they a big Advertiser of yours huge no way what were you thinking at that time yeah I mean you know um clearly we weren't issue um no I think there are tons of tons of mistakes um and things we would have done um differently over the years but I think you know to the team's credit we've tried to just learn from all those and uh you

know that's so interesting that Tik Tok was an Advertiser you an Advertiser on every major platform but did you did you when you first saw it like that were you like oh there'll be a cultural Force because I remember when I first saw it I was like this is not this is not interesting the first time I played with Tik Tok I was like this is not interesting at all yeah and and I think we really underestimated how quickly you know because they were subsidizing both the Creator side of the ecosystem and the viewer side

how quickly the ml would improve right so I think they were really able to bring an audience and creators together and just iterate incredibly quickly I me they're the opposite of opening to the camera right like they truly are they're the opposite of why why is there why is the ranking system like different or better or like how why does it feel different why does Tik Tok feel different yeah from reals or or Spotlight or you know shorts like it it just feels different you you might be better positioned maybe than than me I I

think one of the things that they've invested in is actually the the manual curation and the editorial process so really try to boost Trends and I think one of the things that they did I mean I really admire this is the way that they use Trends to inspire creation so just like we were talking about lowering the barrier to creativity with ephemerality or lowering the barrier to creativity with lenses they lowered the creativity with Trends um and I think that makes people feel comfortable trying to practice making a new video or that sort of thing

um and so I think there's that sort of sense of community of people trying and experimenting with Trends that's so core to to who they are and the Gap like on a on a YouTube has actually gotten really big from a Creator and an audience member whereas when you go to other platforms like even a snap you're like I can actually be Creator and a consumer at the same time which is fun it's it's almost like a Interactive game right you get to watch a piece of content and you're like I could I could also

make that piece of content YouTube it's getting really hard to go I'm a viewer and I can be a Creator uh of similar content because YouTube's essentially you know what TV was when we were younger so yeah it's interesting to watch the landscape for sure the the last question that I have for you I know you've brought up Bobby a couple of times and considering that Samir and I have worked closely together for 13 years I'm curious what is it about your relationship with that has allowed you guys to work well to work efficiently to

get through problems together after all these years what a great you know sometimes you just click with people you know and that really happened for me and Bobby I think we both have very different perspectives we had different strengths but like man if if I can get you know words of wisdom from Bobby or his advice like there's almost nothing more valuable you know to me so I think like you know he the way that he thinks his creativity just kind of compliments mine and and I think we're able to just feed each other in

terms of how we think about growing the business or evolving the product or investing in some crazy new you know technology or something like that and we just we just love working together I mean that was the big the big takeaway from future freshman it was like a total disaster but we were like man this is so fun like this awesome and and I think that learning that like wow okay we found something we love doing we love working together that's been kind of the Cornerstone of the whole thing you got to have some failed

projects together we've had more failed projects than successful ones so I think that makes a lot of sense um what about for you guys I think it's it's similar it's like we've when you're when you get together every morning and the thing isn't working but you're still having fun doing it and you're like starting to push into your late 20s and like your friends are working at snap and finding you know having a ton of success and you're snap IPOs snap IPOs and they're buying bu house and we're like just making YouTube videos that very

few people are watching but having a blast doing it you're like and and we also had an early success so we had a really early success on YouTube and um we sold our company in 2014 which was a Sports Network on YouTube and then we got to see the world of like bigger media and and uh got to have a front row seat um we just were really arrogant and we like we could do it again and we just couldn't yeah took a long time we were just we were we felt like we were Invincible

you know we like we we are the greatest creatives the internet has seen and then you fall flat on your face and you're like oh my God no one cares uh it's it's a humbling experience I think to go through that together but to stay committed to the craft you know now you gain so much perspective you know as guys in their mid-30s who have been through a lot of ups and downs and now even from a life perspective like some pretty wild ups and downs that only we can experience like it's pretty rare that

we've had this exact same experiences so I think our perspective on what is important is pretty aligned and that's a rare thing as you get older in work and creativity um to find people that you align with from a values perspective and that's like you spend more of the time as a creative creating the work than enjoying the results of the work right so you have to enjoy the process of making the thing with someone and that's the whole thing so I think that that's what I would say about our relationship you know it's like

just like making the things that's awesome you're uh your your comment about the snap IPO is funny our equivalent of that was in our in our fraternity when you got a job you would get a job keg for everyone you know what I mean so one after one everyone's getting a job job everyone's so excited we're like no job this is probably good probably good for you for the yeah snap IPO was was tough from a pure comparison perspective living in Venice and like being like Oh man like all these young people are becoming you

know so well off and but at the same time we had an irrational belief and we always did like when when we left that first company we were so arogant and we did get humbled but we managed to hold on to the irrational belief that that when we work together something would come of it you know I we spoke to someone else who worked with a partner a creative partner for a long time and he said that it just seemed like when they worked together one plus one equal three like it was supposed to equal

two but for some reason when they worked together it equal three yeah and I think we we had proven that to ourselves and held on to it yeah it's awesome lightning does strike twice so there you go yeah well dude thank you so much uh really appreciate it um I hope we get more opportunities to chat and I'm I'm so curious to see um you know where where the future of all this goes I'm like now starting to think much further um down the line of of communication of uh our own you know trust in

each other or um you know how how humans and Technology will engage with each other and so excited to uh to be able to watch it firsthand awesome well thanks so much and congrats on all of your success and I'm so sorry about this total disaster but you have baby is coming soon which is going to make everything better so we're all we're all okay thank you cool thanks Evan was really fun to talk to like I mean you know before the episode during the episode after the episode we had we had great conversations with

Evan um and I think the uh the relationship of creators and snap has been not you know super linear uh and I think it's because it's one of those platforms that you open the platform for like a multitude of reasons and probably primarily to engage with your friends and so a platform where you're opening it to engage with your friends and then you know there's also creators on there is a very different platform yeah it's hard to compare it to YouTube you know there was even a question I asked about you know well YouTube's the

watch time's going up on TV is that something Snapchat would be interested in and you know it doesn't really sound like it it's it's hard to even compare an app like Snapchat to a YouTube right and I think we do that a lot with short form video apps we try and do it with reals and with Tik Tok and compare it to YouTube because we are obviously so YouTube Native but you realize they are such different platforms specifically with Snapchat because you're right it is about interaction and messaging it is it is not like a

entertainment for entertainment sake app kind of like YouTube is right like I don't we don't take the YouTube necessarily like update my closest friends on what's Happening YouTube's also not about speed right so again like we talked about when when the fires were going on like Snap was actually a really visual resource to see what was going on um and like the map itself is a resource to go oh what who is posting from the Palisades right now and you click in you're like oh that's what it looks like in this exact moment and when

I think about T I think we compare Tik Tok and YouTube so much because they are both Lean Back experiences in a way right yeah that's true like those two are actually really similar where it's like I go there for entertainment primarily watching not interacting Instagram and snap are more similar in that they messaging I'm messaging my friends on Instagram I'm sending them content uh I'm I'm connecting with them and then on Snap you're messaging and then you are engaging with creators like a like a David Dober which we talked about I mean if you

want to see what a snap Creator looks like right now just watch David Do's stories that's what snap creation I think um to the masses really looks like um but that content does not look different from your friend's content MH you know what I mean yeah and on Instagram actually like my friend's content looks really different from Creator content but that's not the case on now in terms of production value visually yeah visually a Snap Chat like piece of content looks like a Snapchat pie content I think it's just because of the emphasis on the

the camera opening to the camera yeah opening to the camera and making sure or ensuring that people try and use the phone camera yeah maintains a certain aesthetic and I think to Evan's Point what he's trying to harp on is like it maintains a certain level of authenticity yeah yeah I I am uh I've always been interested in uh posting content on Snap I've always been a bit overwhelmed by it I don't know why I think like cutting content for it has just never been top of mind uh but over the past year have just

engaged with so many more people from the company have talked to more creators who are utilizing the platform and um you know I think the world of vertical video with potentially whatever is going to happen with Tik Tok is about to shift and it's about to shift in different ways I think snap is one of those platforms that really encourages an authenticity that is starting to get lost on social you know I've brought up this quote probably at nauseum but when Jake Shane said to us that the best Tik toks feel like you're on FaceTime

with a friend uh does ad nauseum mean like it should make you nauseous like I've said it so much that you might because I starting to feel like nauseous oh I think I understand ad nauseum because because I bring it up a lot yeah but I think Snapchat is like that to the extreme right where it's like that really still retains what social media originally was which was just this unfiltered look into human beings lives so thinking about the future of um platforms Creator platforms like I think YouTube will continue to go in the direction

of competing with Netflix and competing with this like sit down on your couch and watch premium programming now where we all engage with each other and that mix of like you know he said something in the episode about shopping and that snap actually has more influence on shopping than other platforms and I believe that because like purchase decisions are made through word of mouth and production value creates a barrier between me and Word of Mouth it no long feels like word of mouth but again you watch do snaps and you're like yeah he's just it's

him talking into a camera like a phone camera not into say that like Creator ads perform a lot better than yeah you know sense ads made by the companies and if you look at most of the ads on Snap something that I enjoy that I don't think other platforms do well is that most snap ads are shot through like they look like they're from the snap camera it's like everything on that platform feels native and that's really interesting so like that's not the case on you know YouTube or on uh Instagram right so uh that

that's really interesting to me and I I'm just really curious to see where the company goes because they've had an emphasis on wearables for 10 years now yeah so it's like is that is that the direction and every company now has an emphasis on webl seems like absolutely it's the direction it seems like and you know we we've talked about this before where we've been in rooms and seen a lot of demos and a lot of interesting things but it's hard to wrap your head around like is this really about to happen uh but it's

interesting to see that these Investments are being made in the direction of like a bet on 10 15 years from now yeah I appreciated uh the realism with which he talked about you know looking at screens being harmful right like he has a product for our screens where we look at our screens but it seemed like as a parent and with the information that's out there he has the understanding that yeah no like this could be harmful to our eyes like we don't know this this phone consumption is actually such a new thing and the

right thing to do is to rethink what a computer is and a computer does not just have to be a screen a computer should be something that fits more maybe I'm just drinking the wearables Kool-Aid over here but I do I hear that and I'm like yeah I I think you're right like we should push the bounds of what a computer is we shouldn't just think about looking at these screens and hunching over and should think about you know like in 15 years do our can our kids actually be running around again because they don't

not because we're asking them to run around and play outside but because they don't feel like they have the Reliance on the phone but also do you know the reality is the reason we should rethink that is because computers have not been a part of our lives for that long like we experienced at our age we've experienced going from computers not really being a part of our life to computers being a part of your life on a minute-by-minute basis mhm and you know now it's going to be even further right we're going to be like

almost we're moving in a direction where we're becoming like one with computers yeah and hopefully that's the right thing hopefully right because like what he said there was we because technology was advancing and it became so good we conformed as humans to what the technology could do right by putting it in these boxes and we had to operate the technology in a certain type of way and that hopefully the Paradigm is Shifting to technology and computers that work more with who we actually are and how our natural yeah our Natural State that's the optimistic lens

I think one part of our Natural State as as humans has been you know our desire to and and uh our ability to tell each other's stories and so I just wonder how that will take shape as time moves on because I think actually technology has Amplified and supported our ability to tell each other stories right at scale at scale and now we're seeing that I mean that that is also a spectrum of of all kinds of good and bad uh one thing Evan mentioned is that like Simplicity in storytelling is what really works and

uh that's why we are more susceptible to conspiracy theories because they boils a very complex uh topic into a very simple thing so I thought that was really interesting too that like technology has supported our ability to tell stories to each other that has many edges of that can send good and bad stories very far exactly and so now this next version of like Computing being even more ubiquitous with The Human Experience where does storytelling fit into that how does storytelling now permeate through human you know human existence when we are constantly plugged into something

and can technology be used to make sure we know what we're looking at is verifiably real right because like The Human Experience is to see something in front of your eyes and be able to tell someone no I saw it with my eyes of course conspiracies can start there too but like at least you know you believe something when you see it in front of your eyes that's what he was talking about with the snap with SNAP map that at least at least hey at least you know for the most part that this video was

taken in this location with the camera on the phone big questions yeah big questions it's just fascinating to me you know that these the young creative people from the past you know decade plus are the people solving for that isn't that interesting like what like Evans Spiegel Mark Zuckerberg yeah like you make an app to to connect your friends and then you're on a desktop yeah on a desktop and then you know fast forward 15 years later and you're talking about how humans should engage with computers in general I guess it it it makes sense

the dots connect When You Look Backwards but it's it's amazing to me that you know we're a show that talks about the Creator economy but that the Creator economy is like humans telling stories to other and you know the future of media and the future of trust and the future of uh of it is so much bigger than I think what I thought the Creator economy was the underlying subtext is like is all of this good for humans or bad right and of course it's a gradient there Shades of Gray yeah but that also is

this underlying conversation of the way that we're now able to tell stories is it good is it bad how do we make it safe and just better for every the immediacy at which we can get information out to each other is that positive or negative or what does the spectrum look like so so apparently we've left you with more questions answers yeah hopefully that's a good thing so hopefully you guys enjoyed this conversation uh it was really fun for us we' love to hear your thoughts on uh on this conversation with Evan on Snapchat on

the future of human connection all right make sure you subscribe and we'll see you on the next episode of the Colin and smear show