Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:09:17 · Evan Spiegel, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:09:17] S1: Oh gosh. Well, I just saw Instagram plus launch, so I think that's the latest rip. Which is a subscription. Yeah, I think we just hit 25 million subscribers on Snapchat plus more than a billion revenue run rate. So was I think probably enough to get Meta's attention that it's a good time to copy. [00:09:35] S0: And the plus, he's just even taking the plus as the name. Oh my God. Let me just ask you, as a human, how does it feel just to see this consistently happen to you? You guys come up with something awesome, someone rips it off, benefits hugely from it, and you just have to keep doing that again and again.
00:09:55 · Evan Spiegel
[00:09:55] S1: It's certainly better than making stuff that people don't want to copy. So I think in many ways it's a blessing that we've been able to continue to innovate to make new things that really resonate with folks and that ultimately people want to end up copying from Snap. So I think it certainly beats the alternative, but it does mean that we have to be really thoughtful about our strategy. And so I think one of the things, it's been an interesting time for me to reflect a lot on our strategy over the last 15 years, because 15 years ago, we essentially learned that software is not a moat, which is something that everyone is discovering today with AI. But 15 years ago, because all the software features that we could create were so easily cloned by our competitors, we started to think about how to build a more durable business, how to build a business that had bigger and more effective modes. One of the first things we did was focus a lot on building ecosystems, whether those are the relationships between creators and Snap-chatters, whether that's the platform we built around augmented reality where developers have built millions of these lenses. So it's very easy to copy software features. It's very hard to copy or to replicate a full ecosystem or a platform. And so we realized that the more that we could build a platform around our business, the more that we could build an ecosystem with creators and developers, the harder it would be for folks to just copy that. And then it also informed a lot of our thinking about investing in other places that are really hard to copy, including hardware, where it's really, really challenging to copy our fully vertically integrated stack around augmented reality. So I'm certain there's a lot more to talk about there, but I think we learned early on that software's easy to copy, and so it's really important to build more durable modes.
00:11:40 · Lenny Rachitsky, Evan Spiegel
[00:11:40] S0: That's really interesting hearing this from you. And I was going to get to this later, but we can talk about this now, this big investment you've been putting into hardware. You would think network effects would be the moat. That's what everybody's always trying to get to because that's classically a great moat. Are you saying that that's maybe not even as great a moat or that's just not enough and then you need something more like say hardware? [00:12:02] S1: I think network effects are certainly an important piece of the puzzle for sure, but I don't think they're enough when it comes to these sorts of software cloning. And so despite the fact that we've got a ton of patents and we protected all these ideas, the way that it works in software is that it's quite easy for folks to copy or iterate on top of these ideas. And so I think in addition to network effects, it's really important to try to build businesses that are more defensible by truly building out a platform that can support relationships between creators, developers, and the community, because that in and of itself we found is incredibly difficult to copy.
00:12:02 · Evan Spiegel, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:12:02] S1: I think network effects are certainly an important piece of the puzzle for sure, but I don't think they're enough when it comes to these sorts of software cloning. And so despite the fact that we've got a ton of patents and we protected all these ideas, the way that it works in software is that it's quite easy for folks to copy or iterate on top of these ideas. And so I think in addition to network effects, it's really important to try to build businesses that are more defensible by truly building out a platform that can support relationships between creators, developers, and the community, because that in and of itself we found is incredibly difficult to copy. [00:12:38] S0: It's so interesting. If you think about it, you're working on two of the hardest types of businesses, a consumer social platform and hardware. And I love that you're doing that. And this hardware investment, you've been at it for a long time. You had spectacles, you had drones. I don't think people are remembering yet this drone that could take photos of you. And then you have specs coming out. Is it specs or spectacles the name of what's coming out today, by the way? [00:12:59] S1: Specs is coming out this year. [00:13:00] S0: Specs. [00:13:01] S1: Yep. [00:13:01] S0: Okay, cool. We're going to talk about it, but just maybe you've already answered it, why this is something you're so passionate about, but why this kind of ongoing investment in hardware?
00:13:10 · Evan Spiegel
[00:13:10] S1: Well, I think to take a huge step back, I love computers. I grew up using computers all the time. I built my own computer when I was in middle school. I fell in love with graphic design and would spend every lunch period in the computer lab. And I think one of the things that I noticed about computers and I think today with mobile phones is that in many ways they isolate us from one another. They actually take us out of our social interactions. They took me off the playground at recess and put me into the computer lab. Or if I look at our 15-year-old today and his friends, sometimes when they're hanging out, they're all looking down at their phones, even though they're all together. And so I think there's just such a big opportunity to build technology that actually brings us together, that keeps us grounded in the real world rather than removing us from it. And that's something that we realized early on with Snapchat. We were innovating, building lenses and augmented reality, but ultimately we saw that people were using AR on these tiny little phone screens that required you to use your thumbs to interact. And so it was almost like interacting with the world through a keyhole rather than actually staying grounded and being able to interact together with friends. So it just seems so obvious that as computers play a bigger and bigger role in our lives, I think today people spend seven or eight hours a day on average on screens that something has got to change to make this technology fit better into our lives. We get enormous value from computers, but at the same time, I think the cost is quite meaningful and I think they need to evolve. So with the early version of Spectacles, I guess that was back in 2014 or something like that, the initial idea was just to get the camera off the phone out of your pocket and allow you to more easily take snaps out in the world. But we've then sort of built a roadmap from there where we added a second camera to get depth. We added a display to be able to overlay digital objects into the world and help you interact with them. And then with the last generation in 2024, we released our operating system, which now allows developers to build full featured software inside of specs in preparation for the consumer launch. So I don't know, I think the time is right for a new type of computer.
00:15:28 · Evan Spiegel, Lenny Rachitsky
I think people are frustrated with the cost of using phones and computers today. They're kind of all hunched over like gremlins and we can build a new computer. We have built a new computer that brings people outside, that helps them connect together with their friends, that frees them up to actually use their hands to interact with the world. And that to me is really exciting. I think it's a whole new chapter. And gosh, I mean, what? It's been 20 years or something since the iPhone. So it's about time for something new, I think. [00:16:00] S0: So I got an early preview of the specs and it's extremely cool. I learned how to be an air bender. I put plants all over my house drawing all over the place and there's multiplayer features, which is very cool, which I think is part of the idea, is you're connecting with people versus sitting in a VR environment on your own. I worry about being connected all the time. So I imagine that's like a new thing we have to figure out. How do we not just get hooked on just watching things onto the side instead of looking at someone with? Do you have any thoughts there? Just is there a solution to that other than just like social norms?