Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:56:22 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:56:22] S0: You had a really interesting way of describing Snap in the market. You called Snap the middle child. Talk about just what that means.
00:56:29 · Evan Spiegel
[00:56:29] S1: Yeah. I think one of the things that's so funny about our service is that while we're very, very large in terms of the scale of our audience, in terms of the scale of our business, we're much larger than a Pinterest or Reddit, for example, we're also way smaller than Meta and Google. And so we occupy this very interesting sort of middle position in the market. And I think that comes with a lot of benefits because we're big enough. We have enough scale to do really interesting things, but it also comes with the challenges of being overshadowed in some cases by our older brothers and maybe sometimes the younger kids are getting more attention. And so I think again, as in this crucible moment, it's part of defining who we are as a company and who we are as a business. And I think one of the things that will play an important role in that is getting specs out to consumers because I think right now we've talked so long about the role that specs will play in the world. We've worked on developing the platform for so long, but without something that you can really play with and hang onto and use yourself, it's hard to really understand the next chapter of Snap's journey. So I think one of the biggest challenges that middle children face is defining themselves, standing out from their older siblings and younger siblings. And so I think this is a moment and a year when Snap is really going to define itself, and I'm really excited about that.
00:57:52 · Lenny Rachitsky, Evan Spiegel
[00:57:52] S0: Speaking of middle child, you have a number of children and I'm curious, there's a whole going in a whole different direction. What's your just policy on screens and devices? Having built Snapchat and then also specs, just how do you think about devices and your kids? [00:58:09] S1: Well, we've got a real range. We've got four boys, two, six, seven, and 15. So we approach it very differently for all the kids at different ages. For the two-year-old, it's like zero screen time. We really just want to essentially read with him and play, explore outside and those sorts of things, but not really focus on screens unless he is getting a haircut because he really struggles with getting his haircut. So when he gets a haircut, he really loves Bobcat tractors, those four-wheel sort of Bobcat tractors, and he loves to watch YouTube videos of people driving Bobcat tractors around. So when he gets his haircut, he can watch people drive Bobcat tractors. But other than that, no screen time. For the six and seven-year-olds, they are, I would say, infrequent movie watchers. But other than that, again, we don't give them phones or anything like that. In fact, it was really fun over the holidays for Christmas, I gave them that new ... I think Palmer Luckey has a startup where they are sort of remaking Gameboys. [00:59:15] S0: Yeah, I have one of those. [00:59:17] S1: Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah. [00:59:19] S0: Mod retro.
00:59:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Evan Spiegel
[00:59:19] S0: Mod retro. [00:59:19] S1: Yeah, mod retro. So the TBPN guys gave me two of them for our kids for Christmas. And so they get to spend a little time on those in addition to watching movies every now and then. And then with the 15-year-old, he is all in on technology, whether he's using it for school or whether he's using it to talk with his friends or using Snapchat. So it really depends on kids and where they're at developmentally, but I think for us, that's been our approach. [00:59:44] S0: Is there anything you're doing with AI in your kids, maybe even the older one, just AI education sort of tools, ChatGPT?
00:59:44 · Lenny Rachitsky, Evan Spiegel
[00:59:44] S0: Is there anything you're doing with AI in your kids, maybe even the older one, just AI education sort of tools, ChatGPT? [00:59:52] S1: Yeah, it's so funny. At the breakfast table the other morning, actually, I was just asking them a lot about how are their teachers talking about AI at school? How are they thinking about integrating in the curricula Are you guys using AI all the time? And I think the answer so far has been not really, which I think is interesting, but certainly our kids play around with it at home. Our beta testers for specs, which is really fun. I really love using the glasses together with them and some of the really cool experiences there. And Flynn, who's the eldest is probably most fluent in using AI tools. But what I think is so fun, as a kid, I think all of us as kids are incredibly imaginative. We're all born creative. We have all these amazing ideas to share. And I think what's so cool about AI is how in nearly an instant, you can take any idea you have and make something. And so I think that's so empowering for young people. It's certainly an experience I want our kids to have. And I think it's going to be so important to deeply integrate into the way that education works today. [01:00:51] S0: Yeah. It's interesting. Snapchat has always been really good at allowing you to create and feel like a superstar, just create all these really crazy lenses and filters and all these things. And it's interesting AI, just like vibe coding just unleashes so much creativity. And kids are so imaginative already. [01:01:07] S1: Absolutely.
01:01:07 · Evan Spiegel, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:01:07] S1: Absolutely. [01:01:08] S0: So interesting. Okay. Well, to close out our conversation, I've got a couple. I'm going to take us to a couple corners, recurring corners on the podcast. One is AI corner. So the question is, what's a way you use AI in your, let's say, work that is just interesting that might be interesting for other people to learn from? [01:01:27] S1: Well, one of the things that I really love about AI, at Snap, I've got access to all of our dashboards and documents and data. And so we have Glean that integrates all this data for me. And I've built just an agent that will go and comb through everything that's happening in the company and let me know what's up, what I need to focus on, what I need to catch. And every now and then it really catches something that I hadn't realized or need to focus a bit more on. And so I think we're just so fortunate to have so much structured data in our company. I mean, for our leaders, they also send me every week the three things from the week and three things looking ahead. And so I can very, very easily get a sense for the hotspots in the company, the priority areas, and combined with all of our dashboards and metrics about the way that people are using our service. I feel like I have a really good sense for what's happening in the company. So I think what's been most exciting for me in terms of AI is that it's enabling, I think, the type of leadership structure that I've always wanted, which is very flat, very fast moving. And I think having an AI copilot to help me do that's been a big deal.