Twitter 前产品主管谈 Elon、消费产品、文化及更多话题 | Kayvon Beykpour
Twitter 前产品主管谈 Elon、消费产品、文化及更多话题 | Kayvon Beykpour
访谈实录
初识 Elon
Kayvon Beykpour: 我第一次见到 Elon 是通过 FaceTime。他当时就说,“你要不要过来聊聊?你可以选择来或不来。”
Lenny Rachitsky: 你在 Twitter 以一个改变产品团队乃至整个 Twitter 文化的人而闻名——把一个停滞不前、毫无变化的产品团队,变成了一个不断上线的团队。
Kayvon Beykpour: 我们想要改变那种缺乏雄心、缺乏创造力、用户感觉产品完全没有变化的状况。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这是一份你在任期间团队上线的功能清单:Super Follows、Communities、新闻通讯、Topics、Fleets、表情回应测试、全屏照片、Twitter Blue、Spaces,当然还有直播视频。
Kayvon Beykpour: 那些”神圣不可侵犯的东西”本身就像一份路线图。你们觉得有哪些东西是我们不能动的?我们就从那里开始。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这一切推进得相当快。
Kayvon Beykpour: 我当时想,“我可能完全搞砸,但如果不去试试,那就太不甘心了。“
嘉宾介绍
Lenny Rachitsky: 今天的嘉宾是 Kayvon Beykpour。Kayvon 曾是 Twitter 备受爱戴、任期最长的产品负责人,同时也是 Twitter 消费者业务的总经理,一直任职到 Twitter 被卖给 Elon Musk 的那天。他通过自己的公司 Periscope 被 Twitter 收购而加入,Periscope 曾是全球最大的直播平台,后来启发了 Instagram Live、TikTok Live、Facebook Live,基本上推动了所有其他社交网络进军直播领域。2015 年他把公司卖给了 Twitter,继续领导 Periscope 数年,随后转而领导产品团队,最终掌管整个消费者业务。
在这次广泛的对话中,Kayvon 分享了让 Elon 快速了解 Twitter 的经历,以及被 Twitter 解雇的经历——这件事实际上发生在他陪产假期间。他还分享了将 Twitter 的内部文化从畏首畏尾、停滞不前的产品组织,转变为能够定期上线重大功能的团队的各种教训和故事。我们谈到了他们如何利用收购式招聘(acquihire)和充满干劲的年轻产品负责人来推动新项目、打破许多”不可触碰”的禁区。我们还会谈到 jobs-to-be-done 理论、Elon 收购后大规模裁员的始末,以及他在创建和关停 Periscope 过程中总结的经验教训,还有打造消费类产品的普遍心得,以及更多内容。这期节目充满了故事和教训,还有许多你在其他地方听不到的内容。
Elon 入主 Twitter 的头两天
Lenny Rachitsky: Kayvon,非常感谢你能来,欢迎来到播客。
Kayvon Beykpour: 非常感谢你的邀请,Lenny。很高兴终于见到你。
Lenny Rachitsky: 很高兴见到你。我觉得这会是一期相当独特且有趣的播客。非常感谢 Scott Belsky——他曾是一位杰出的播客嘉宾——为我们牵线搭桥。他介绍我们认识的时候,跟我说了一件事:“希望 Kayvon 能分享当初帮 Elon 快速了解 Twitter 的那段经历。“我很想听这个故事,我猜其他人也想听。你能讲讲吗?
Kayvon Beykpour: 当 Twitter 那场风波尘埃落定,Elon 最终买下了公司,经过八个月来回拉锯的法律博弈之后真正接管了公司,那最初两天里 Twitter 完全是混乱状态——带着水槽进场、Elon 四处伸展触角试图弄清楚哪些人他想留下、哪些项目值得关注。在这一切当中,Scott 被联系上了,被问到”Elon 应该找谁聊聊?“Scott 推荐 Elon 跟我谈谈。
于是我第一次见到 Elon 是通过 FaceTime,Elon 非常好奇地问,“你在 Twitter 待了挺久,看起来做了不少事。我应该深入挖掘什么方向,应该跟谁谈?“在那次对话结束时,我们安排了一次当面会面,Scott 和我一起去了 Twitter 总部见 Elon。我想那大概是 Elon 带着水槽进场后的第二天。所以我们有了这个非常离奇、疯狂但又确实有趣的经历——走进 Twitter 总部,而对我来说,这是被解雇后第一次重新走进 Twitter 总部,那种感觉非常奇怪。我们从后门被悄悄领进去,因为我不想惹人注意、引起……当时有很多传言说 Kayvon 要回来了,我只是想避开这一切。所以那种被悄悄领着穿过电梯、走后门、进入二楼 110 号楼那个巨大的会议室的经历,真的很诡异。
在那间巨大的会议室里,有我、Scott、Elon,然后在房间最最里面,坐着 Walter Isaacson——顺便说一句,我当时有点犯嘀咕。我觉得他看起来很面熟,我从来没见过 Walter 本尊,但心里在琢磨,“那是 Walter Isaacson 吗?“不过他全程一句话没说。我们大概聊了两个小时,谈 Twitter 的过去、未来、好的、坏的、糟糕的。对话快结束的时候,Walter 走过来做了自我介绍,说,“你好,我是 Walter。能留个联系方式吗?万一我需要追问一些问题。“我心想,“哦豁。看来刚才那整段对话都是 on the record 的。我完全不知道啊。”
所以,这一切非常超现实,原因有很多——包括对我来说本身就挺别扭的,因为我对回到 Twitter 这件事内心非常矛盾,哪怕只是 physically 踏进办公室。但我必须说,那确实很有意思。能跟那样一个人交谈很过瘾。Elon 当然是我以前从未见过的,他也是我们这个时代最成功的企业家之一。所以走进那场会面本身就很令人兴奋。而且,我花了那么多时间梦想着 Twitter,试图把 Twitter 塑造成我认为有吸引力的方向,和一群志同道合的人一起做这件事——然后见到一个也有着类似抱负的人,虽然方式显然不同……他有自己的 Twitter 梦……但看到另一个人眼中也闪着那种光芒,“是啊,我也刚买了这东西,所以我想干什么就干什么。顺便说一句,我有一些疯狂的想法要去做。“这种感觉真的很奇特、很独特、很超现实。
作为一个对这款产品怀有自己梦想的人,亲眼目睹这一切,确实很不寻常,也很酷。我想 Scott 说”你应该问问 Kayvon 那段经历”时,大概指的就是这个——我觉得我们都隐约意识到这里即将发生什么。当然,你看到的是一场非常公开的奇观——某人实质上在接管一家上市公司——但撇开所有这些不谈,你也能感觉到 Elon 正在盘算、酝酿:“我要拿这个东西做什么?“能看到这一幕确实很酷。
对 Elon 有没有产生影响
Lenny Rachitsky: 这个故事太精彩了。我很喜欢其中 Walter Isaacson 的部分。你觉得你对他的思路和方式产生了影响吗?显然他后来做了很多激进的大变革。你觉得你在 Twitter 应该走向何方这件事上,对他产生了影响吗?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我不确定。我当然不认为我对他的运营方式产生了什么影响。我觉得 Elon 会以他自己的方式做 Elon 会做的事。他在运营公司方面确实做出了一些激进举动——做的决策、裁了多少人、公司结构、文化——所有这些东西……我们当时甚至都没聊这些。
我觉得我们花时间聊的是,我跟他分享了我的看法——我认为公司里哪些人非常出色,如果我是他,我会跟谁多交流、重用谁。我提到的大多数人现在还在公司,这很棒,而且他们看起来,一是得到了赋权,这很好;二是干得很开心,这也很好。所以希望这些信息是有用的。
我们还花了不少时间头脑风暴产品方面的事情。有一批项目我非常投入,因为它们是我们亲手孕育出来的。看起来其中不少项目 Twitter 仍在持续投入和大力推进,比如 Community Notes——当时还叫 Birdwatch。我一直非常看好它,认为它本质上代表了 Twitter 内容审核的未来方向,原因很简单——很显然,我们之前处理内容审核的方式,在诸多缺陷之中,最致命的一点就是不可扩展。
Spaces、Communities,以及帮助平台上的人赚钱的 Creator Program——这些都是我们在 Elon 接管前大约一年里启动的项目。我离开公司、新领导层上任之后,最大的期望就是这些项目能得到更多的资源和空间。看到它们持续成长、朝着不同方向演化,真的很令人欣慰。是的,在这方面,我希望我们的头脑风暴对他有用,但谁知道呢,说不定他根本不记得那次对话了。
被解雇的经过
Lenny Rachitsky: 我太喜欢 Community Notes 了。这个产品简直太棒了。让我再问两个关于 Elon 和 Twitter 的、比较有戏剧性的问题,先把它们解决掉。第一个是,你说你被解雇了。我不确定你是否公开说过这件事。大家一直很好奇到底发生了什么。我知道你在陪产假期间发了条推文说”我要离开 Twitter”,但据我所知,没人真正知道背后的故事。究竟发生了什么?
Kayvon Beykpour: 说来话长,至少可以说非常奇怪。说实话,我花了一段时间才释怀,因为这件事既令人沮丧又很出乎意料。我想事情的起因要从 Jack 辞职说起。Jack 大概是在2021年11月底辞的职。董事会选了 Parag 担任公司 CEO。我跟 Parag 认识很久了,我很尊敬他,但对此我心情复杂。
公平地说,Parag 非常迅速地解决了我最后一个痛点——基本上是我在 Twitter 最后三年里最头疼的一件事。我最大的意见和困扰之一就是公司的组织架构——我们采用的是职能型组织模型,也就是说,我们有消费者产品负责人,也就是我;有商业化产品负责人,Bruce;有工程负责人、设计负责人、研究负责人。这是一个按职能划分运营的组织。
这种模式加上 Jack 作为领导者的风格,在我看来是不奏效的。我认为,如果你要采用职能型组织,就需要一个极度投入的 GM 或 CEO 来做裁决、化解冲突、确保团队快速推进。而 Jack 尽管有很多了不起的品质,但并没有以这种方式运作。于是你就有一群高度有主见的人,经常意见不合,要么需要达成共识,要么就陷入僵局。这让很多人抓狂,包括我自己,我认为这确实阻碍了 Twitter 发挥其潜力。
总之,这一切对我来说非常令人沮丧,再加上 Jack 离开、Parag 上任这一剧烈的领导层变动,我当时的情绪并不算高涨。但公平地说,Parag 成为 CEO 后,迅速做出了改变,把公司调整为 GM 制架构。他把我提拔为消费者业务 GM。所以,在此之前大约三年里,虽然我一直负责发展 Twitter 的消费者产品,但我只管产品管理团队——我手底下没有工程,也没有设计。说实话这很难。一只手被绑在背后去改变文化,真的很难做到。
依然不后悔。过程中有很多快乐。我认为我们产生了一些影响,但确实令人沮丧。所以 Parag 做了改变。顺便说一句,讽刺的是,他其实是职能型架构最大的拥护者之一。当他成为 CEO 后,他改变了架构,提拔我担任消费者业务 GM。而那个时候,距离我休陪产假只有一个月——因为我女儿快出生了。
陪产假期间的剧变
于是,我带着这样的心情进入了陪产假:“好吧,我要试一试。走着瞧吧,看看会怎样。” Parag 解决了我对公司运营方式最大的不满。所以,我心里还有些忐忑,但带着乐观的情绪开始休假。需要说明的是,这一切发生在 Elon 出现在画面之前。他还没有成为董事会成员,没有传出他与高管团队有矛盾的消息,也没有试图收购公司。
我大概在预产期前一周半开始陪产假。三周过去了。在这三周里,Elon 加入董事会,退出董事会,提出收购要约,又经历了一段关于交易能否达成的短暂而戏剧化的拉锯。同样在这段时间里,我的女儿出生了。我们在医院还经历了一些波折,但一周后我们回家了。妈妈健康,女儿也健康。
我们从医院回家的第二天,Parag 打电话给我,说他要让我走人,他要带团队走一个不同的方向。那天晚上,Twitter 与 Elon 签署了出售公司的意向书。短时间内发生了太多事情。Parag 给出的理由就是我后来公开分享的那个——他想让团队走不同的方向。他唯一还说的另一句话是,鉴于那个新方向,他认为我擅长的事情 Twitter 不再需要了,而 Twitter 需要的事情又不太在我的技能集和兴趣范围内。
他没有特别具体地说明那个方向到底是什么,但那就是他给我的理由。对我来说这是一个巨大的打击,原因有很多。其一,我热爱这家公司,热爱这个产品,而且不以自己的方式离开,感觉真的很糟糕。其二,我就是很困惑。这个时间节点让我非常沮丧和困惑,尤其是因为我刚从医院回到家,还处于陪产假中。而且,那个时候,特别是 Elon 正在收购公司这件事……
说实话,我很矛盾。一方面我非常兴奋,因为 Elon 是我极其崇拜的人,看看他在世界上取得的成就,你不可能不受到启发。另一方面,尽管 Twitter 在我看来取得了很多影响和进展,但它的治理存在大量问题,而且作为一家上市公司,它始终处于脆弱状态。所以,作为一家上市公司——甚至在此之前作为一家私有公司——Twitter 总是被各种风波缠绕,这让身为 builder 的人非常难以真正做出成绩,让产品发挥出应有的潜力。
这次收购的一个好处是,Elon 提供了一条解决所有这些问题的路径。就好比,“哦,太好了,现在你有一个唯一的所有者,而且碰巧对产品有极度强烈的见解,同时又是这个产品的大量使用者和创造者。” 我觉得这里面蕴含着巨大的机会——你有了这个组织、这个产品和这个不可思议的生态系统,可以摆脱作为上市公司所附带的一切政治性麻烦。现在它有了一条通往发挥自身潜力的通道。
所以,在没有任何自主选择权的情况下被排除在外,确实令人失落。这对你那个问题来说是个很长的回答,但事情到了后期就是这样的。就像我一开始说的,我花了一段时间才接受这一切,才真正释然。不过我最终还是做到了。听我说,这件事有一个巨大的好处——我陪伴了女儿生命中的第一年,和我的家人在一起。我的妻子 Sarah 在我离职前八个月就离开了 Twitter,否则什么时候我们一家人才能有这样的时间和空间,好好享受彼此和新组建的家庭?坦率地说,也避免了很多后来发生的、很少有人能预料到的风波。交易成了,交易黄了,各种大戏连篇。而我恰好躲过了这一切,这算是因祸得福吧。
是否回归的犹豫
之后有一阵子我很困惑,因为当 Elon 最终真的收购了公司之后,在我和他的那次对话中,我的确……内心很矛盾,不知道自己是否还想继续花时间在这上面。Elon 的态度非常随和……他在我们对话最后用了一个说法,我至今想起来还觉得好笑。他就是说,“你要不要直接过来?你看起来很在乎这个产品,而且你没有蠢主意。你要不要过来待着?” 我问,“那我的职位是什么?” 他说,“不知道,就是待着,你可以向左滑或向右滑。” 他用了向左滑、向右滑的 Tinder 比喻,我觉得从他嘴里说出这个太搞笑了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 意思就是冒出来一个想法的时候,“嘿,我有个主意”这样?
Kayvon Beykpour: 不是,是向右滑决定你想不想留在这里,或者向……他的意思是,“我们不用把这搞得太正式。你就是想不想过来跟我们一起做产品?”
Lenny Rachitsky: 太好笑了。
Kayvon Beykpour: 所以我最终决定,实际上我已经准备好了。我准备好往前走了。我在这家公司、在这个产品上花了足够多的时间,试图把它塑造成我热爱的样子。我觉得该轮到别人了,尤其是 Elon。如果你买下了它,那就轮到你了,你可以随心所欲地对待它。
所以有一阵子我确实很矛盾,但到了年底的时候,我心里已经很清楚了:我准备好继续前行,开始思考其他问题了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我想到的是,在一家有一个非常强势、有产品导向的创始人的公司里做 PM,总是存在这种张力。而我觉得你可能处在最极端的处境——作为产品负责人夹在 Elon 和整个组织之间。所以我觉得那大概率是行不通的。
Kayvon Beykpour: 我不确定自己能像你刚才那样简洁地表达出来,但我心里的感觉确实如此——这里已经不再是属于我的地方了。我不再有一块画布可以在上面施展我对这个地方的设想。我觉得 Elon 接过了那个使命,我很期待看到他会做出什么——这就是我当时的感觉。
如何改变产品文化
Lenny Rachitsky: 对。你之前提到过这一点。你在 Twitter 以这样的人设闻名:把产品团队乃至整个 Twitter 的文化,从一个停滞不前、一成不变的状态,转变成不断交付、各种东西层出不穷。所以我整理了一份清单,是你的团队在你任期内推出的产品:Twitter Blue(现在应该叫 Premium),Spaces,Super Follows,Communities,通讯(newsletters),Topics,Fleets,Instagram 照片内联显示,表情回应测试,全屏照片,大量 UX 改进,当然还有直播视频。从一个非常规避风险、基本上不怎么发布新东西的公司,变成敢于下大赌注、对新事物开放得多的公司——你在这个过程中学到了什么?
Kayvon Beykpour: 推动文化变革既是最具挑战性的事情之一,也是最有成就感的事情之一。在我担任这个角色的第一年……先回顾一下,我在 Twitter 的经历可以分阶段来看。第一个阶段大概两年,主要是在领导 Periscope,那时候我不怎么参与 Twitter 的事务。当我们真正开始把 Periscope 和 Twitter 整合的时候,这种情况才开始改变。而我在 Twitter 的第二个阶段,就是成为产品负责人。担任产品负责人的第一年,是我职业生涯中最困难的时期之一——不是因为工作本身困难,而是因为试图以一种各方没有共识的方式推动文化变革,在政治上和官僚体系上极其消耗精力。
这又回到我之前提到的那个观点——公司的组织架构是职能制的。我自己有一些想法、计划和策略,觉得很有说服力,这是一回事。但当你不得不去推动其他职能部门同级同事之间的共识时,那就是另一回事了。那不是执行,那是政治和共识构建。我既非常讨厌这些东西,但我又觉得……这话听起来像是在自吹自擂,但我确实够擅长它,也有足够的耐心去投入时间和精力。一个耐心差一些的人恐怕就不会去费这个劲,早就两手一摊放弃了。
说实话,我觉得很大程度上只是因为我有过经验。我和大学最好的朋友之一 Joe——后来也是 Periscope 的联合创始人——一起创办了第一家公司,我们被一家叫 Blackboard 的大型上市广告技术公司收购了,当时我们才 19 岁。我们被直接扔进了一家上市公司——我成了一个上市公司的高级管理人员,而且那还不是一家典型的科技公司。在那样的环境里把事情做成要困难得多。所以在那里度过的四年里,我学到了很多关于如何在那种环境中斡旋的经验。
从泥泞中走出
当我获得 Twitter 的产品负责人角色时,这些经验全都涌了回来。改变文化的那第一年就像是在泥里行走,非常困难。但当我们开始建立起共识、激发出”也许我们应该放手一搏”的热情时,当我们开始看到这些计划付诸执行并取得成果时,事情变得越来越容易了,甚至开始让人上瘾。大家开始觉得,哦,原来那些所谓的神圣禁区(sacred cows),也未必真的那么不可触碰。
所以在那第一年之后,事情变得有趣多了。虽然仍然困难,但感觉大家更多地朝着同一个方向游了。但我的心得是:没有最高层的共识,你就无法改变文化。如果只是公司的一个角落在推动变革,那是非常困难的。
我认为我们最终走到了那一步。但我们推动的紧迫感还不够,我们不够快,不够大胆。我一直对自己和团队取得的成绩不满意。但我认为我们确实带来了改变。Twitter 曾经是一个有很多神圣禁区的组织,变得非常固步自封。我在公司的头两年,Twitter 公开的产品策略就是”精炼核心”(refine the core)。就是告诉团队:我们不做任何大的赌注,我们的目标是继续转动那些已经在转的旋钮。
“精炼核心”策略的利与弊
话说回来,虽然我在 Periscope 的那段时期——我们在离母公司几个街区之外的独立办公室里——一直在旁边”扔石头”批评,但那种聚焦确实在一段时间内帮助了公司。Twitter 之所以从 DAU(日活跃用户,Daily Active Users)增长停滞甚至下降的状态恢复到再次增长,就是因为他们精炼了核心。这就是他们从逆序时间线转向排序时间线的时期,接下来的一年则做了大量微调工作——如何让推荐更精准,如何让推送通知更相关。
当然,这算不上一个令人振奋的产品策略。它不会让产品有实质性的不同感受,也不会增加新功能,但它确实让公司恢复了用户增长。而我认为正是因为它确实奏效了,反而更加固化了组织对冒险的抵触。所以这是一个非常有趣的困境:当我接手这个角色时,目标并不是要改变已经取得的进展。我们希望继续收获那些行之有效的产品优化带来的成果。我们想要改变的是缺乏雄心、缺乏创造力、以及用户感受不到产品有任何变化的问题。
来自用户的声音
因为你会听到人们说——在 Twitter 做产品最美妙的事情之一,就是用户的反馈简直像是被直接注入你的血管。每一天,无论你改变了什么或没有改变什么,他们都在告诉你他们喜欢什么、讨厌什么。这既令人精疲力竭,又令人兴奋。这是产品开发中最不可思议的奢侈之一:做一个很多人使用的产品,从而获得海量的反馈。
我们经常听到人们说:“你们那边到底在干什么?这个产品八年都没变过。“这话听着很难受,而我也有同感——不管是在旁边作为批评者,还是作为还没成为员工时的用户,我都有同样的反馈。所以这就是我的使命。我想,我不知怎的获得了这个幸运的位置,被赋予了这里的某些责任。我可能会彻底失败,但无论如何我得试一试。所以这段经历既有趣又令人疲惫,就像我说的。
但出发点其实很简单:我们自己就是这个产品的狂热用户。顺便说一句,如果我们不是,那本身就是个问题。我认为要做出优秀的产品,你就必须是产品的用户。当然,我相信你能举出一些反例,我也相信这套哲学肯定有它的漏洞,但我一直相信,打造产品最好的方式之一就是自己成为用户,找到自己的痛点,做出一个你自己想用的产品。所以如果你是 Twitter 的用户并且能批判性地思考,这件事其实并不难。到处都是机会。所以能制定一个计划,开始对这些事情发起挑战,其实是非常有趣和令人兴奋的。
神圣禁区即路线图
另外我想补充的是,Twitter 有太多神圣禁区,以至于这些禁区本身就构成了一份路线图——一份现成的免费路线图:好吧,所有那些你们觉得我们不被允许改变的东西,我们就从那里开始。从逆序时间线到排序信息流,那是神圣禁区。纯文本加 140 个字符,那是神圣禁区。不让任何人控制他们在平台上看到的推文——“Lenny 拥有自己的回复空间”这种概念在 Twitter 简直是异端邪说。
就好像如果一条推文被 @ 提到了,你不喜欢或者它是辱骂性的,我们不去碰那个。我们不能给推文加注解——这些都是神圣禁区。逐一解决这些问题的过程,揭示了大量根深蒂固的文化犹豫。
我永远不会忘记我们做的一个最早的功能。这是我就任后着手的一个非常小的功能——隐藏回复(hide replies)。这个功能至今仍在产品中存在。如果有人回复了你的推文,在推文详情区域里,以前你没有任何办法——你唯一能应对不良内容的方式就是举报它。那就等于让 Twitter 充当警察,完全无法规模化,而且充满挑战,尤其是当有人回复你的推文时的情况。
所以我们想加一个功能,让你可以隐藏对你推文的某条回复。这并不影响人们说什么,也不影响言论自由——你仍然可以广播任何你想广播的内容。但如果你要跑到我的回复空间里来说些我不想在信息流里看到的东西,我应该有权把它隐藏掉。你想发什么就发什么,但别 @ 我。你不能对着我的脸大喊大叫。
我记得我们团队有一位 PM 负责推进这个功能,项目进行几周后她跟我说,她和工程团队的某个人聊过,那个人告诉她:“别做这个功能。这对你职业生涯不好。这个东西不会上线的,你不想做这个,你不想被认为参与过这个项目。“因为让人们隐藏自己推文下的回复,这在当时简直是异端。我听到这件事时简直血脉偾张。这是对那种文化最有趣的缩影——不仅仅是犹豫尝试新事物,顺便说一句,那个产品也许会失败,那没关系,但这不意味着你不该去尝试。
而是竟然走到去劝阻一个对验证假设充满热情的人——她想通过实验看看能否帮助平台上的用户——你去告诉她:“别做这个,对你 career 不好。“这正是我们在做大胆尝试时所面临的文化挑战的一个缩影。而且说实话,这甚至都算不上什么大胆尝试,只是一个无害的小功能而已。但类似的事情很多,没有纯粹的意志力和大量努力,很难推动。所以类似的事情确实很多。
Lenny Rachitsky: Kayvon,这些故事就像分形一样,我可以无限追踪下去,这里有太多有趣的东西了。其中一个特别突出的就是你说的”神圣禁区就是未来的路线图”——把它从”这是我们所有人都害怕的东西”翻转为”不,这正是我们该做的”。我觉得这真的很有意思,对很多人来说也是一个教训。
另一件我特别喜欢的,是你提到的那个观点——增长的最大加速器恰恰是专注核心,这才是真正有效的。大家总爱批评优化现有体验、做微优化,觉得不如去做那些大胆的尝试和实验。当然,那些也有价值。但我觉得很有意思的是,恰恰是精炼核心重新点燃了增长,并且在一段时间内持续推动增长。
投资组合与精炼核心的平衡
Kayvon Beykpour: 顺便说一句,现在依然如此。我们需要把握的一条线是建立一个赌注组合,其中一些根本没有任何投机性。我们知道,如果继续投资机器学习,在主信息流的推荐、通知推送等方面做得更好,以及改善新用户引导流程——这些地方充满了机会。
你会遇到一些非常愚蠢的问题,而我们从中学习。有一次非常奇怪又令人难以置信的会议——我们终于在引导流程的数据埋点上做得更严谨了。结果我们发现,在几个国家,我们的短信验证流程有 bug——我们想验证用手机号注册的用户,但我们与运营商的短信验证码集成就是不工作。于是在阿联酋等国家,大量注册用户根本无法使用 Twitter。
所以,在我们运营的规模上,数亿用户,你必须能够精炼产品的基本构建模块,这才能带来可靠的增长。但我们想在此基础上平衡一组其他的赌注和产品改进,这些会实质性地增加新的能力。这种平衡,我认为以前并不存在。顺便说一句,我也不认为在我的任期内我们做到了完美,但这是我想要实现的核心驱动力——创造一个更好的平衡,从而推动产品演进、引入新的能力。这就是我们努力做的。
讲故事与招募创业者
Lenny Rachitsky: 关于到底是什么帮助扭转了局面,从你目前分享的内容来看,我能总结出几点。一是积累一些势能,通过一些快速胜利的新产品让人们开始兴奋起来,从而在内部创造更多期待——“哇,我们真的可以尝试新东西了。“另外我感觉到,你和 Jack 以及高管层之间建立了一种信任感——“好吧,我们可以信任这个团队了。”
同时,因为增长重新启动了,大家可能也会觉得”好吧,我们可以尝试一些疯狂的新想法了”。我还感觉到你策略中的另一部分是招聘——把这些有创业精神的人带进来,让他们主导一些大的想法。你能谈谈这个吗?这是你有意识去做的吗?对你的影响大吗?
Kayvon Beykpour: 完全正确。是的,我想补充几点。首先,关于你提到的那些要素中,我还想加一条——就是讲故事,而且是反复讲故事:这是我们的愿景,这些是我们下的赌注,这是为什么。你不能只讲一次。我说的都是内部。对外还有另外一整套工作——尤其像 Twitter 这样的消费品,数亿人在使用,利益相关方很多——有用户,有广告主。所以对外讲清楚”我们在做什么、为什么做”非常重要。“这是为什么你应该相信我们。顺便说一句,也请给我们所有建设性的批评,因为我们在听,我们会把这些反馈纳入……”所以这种讲故事真的非常重要。
虽然这么说有点过度简化,但内部团队大致有两种人。一种是听到那个故事的人——他们可能一直在一个行动迟缓的组织里,或者他们作为 Twitter 的外部用户,之前从没想过要去那里工作,因为那看起来不像一家特别有雄心的产品公司。当你听到那个故事后,两种反应之一是:你被激励了,你说”我们终于可以放手去改善这个产品了”。也许我之前对加入这家公司没兴趣,但这毕竟是一个标志性产品,有机会重新塑造它真的很令人兴奋。另一种——再次声明是过度简化——是那些非常悲观、对这个愿景并不兴奋的人。“我们还是坚持已知的做法吧,不做任何大胆尝试,那是浪费时间。“
文化变革与团队alignment
Kayvon Beykpour: 我认为在领导层面推动文化变革,有一件事非常重要——就是判断一个人到底是上了车还是没上车,然后要么迅速说服他们上车,要么如果他们就是上不了车,那他们就不应该留在这个团队里。而这正是我们非常不擅长的事情,我们也没有相应的组织架构来执行这一点。
Lenny Rachitsky: “上了车”是指他们对愿景感到兴奋、认同并希望它实现?
Kayvon Beykpour: 没错,而且愿意为之贡献力量。而”没上车”就是你不在公司里了。我们既没有能够支撑这种做法的组织架构,坦率地说,也没有那个魄力。我自己也包括在内。我觉得我在如何做出这种判断上学到了很多。所以我认为我们在这方面做得很差。而 Elon 呢,如果说这是一条光谱的话,Elon 处在光谱的另一个极端。他对不与自己保持一致的人、对低绩效的容忍度,众所周知,极低。而这也是我所说的 A/B 测试的一个方面——看到他运作的极端程度,确实非常有趣。
我觉得我学到了很多。我们没有那样的组织架构,也没有那样的魄力来更迅速地行动,这使得文化变革的速度慢了很多。我们确实还是改变了文化,但没有达到应有的程度,当然也没有应有的速度和效率。因为顺便说一句,很多认同变革和建设欲望的高绩效者,他们并没有——耐心并不是均匀分布的。如果你极其有才华,却要忍受组织里的一堆破事,你就会去另找一个能让你发挥专长、产生影响的地方。所以这非常困难。
收购式招聘作为文化变革的加速器
但回到你的问题,我们发现一个推动文化变革非常有效的方式,同时也帮助推动了一些特别具有 speculative(投机性)的产品项目,就是做小型收购。这个做法的真正好处在于,首先,你引入了一个创始人类型的人——一个有企业家精神、有紧迫感、有雄心壮志的人,而且最理想的情况是他也足够精明,能在一个大组织的环境中运作。这有时候完全是另一种能力。我的意思是,它确实是完全不同的能力。而我们那些最大胆的赌注——风险最高、与产品现有运作方式最不匹配、或者没有现成的基础设施可以借助的那些——其中很大一部分都是由我们收购来的创始人推动的,我们基本上把人收购过来,然后说:“来,你来负责这个。”
他们对此深信不疑,能够围绕自己凝聚一支团队,这具备了创业公司的所有特质,但使用的画布是数亿人在使用的产品,还拥有更多资源。所以 Spaces、Communities、Community Notes——当时叫 Birdwatch——这些都是由……Fleets 也是。这些全部是由被收购的创业者带领的小团队运作的项目。Keith Coleman 负责运营 Community Notes,也就是之前的 Birdwatch。他其实是我的前任。我们收购了他的公司,让他担任产品负责人。后来当他从那个角色退下来之后,他对众包审核(crowdsource moderation)这个想法充满热情——让用户来标注平台上的误导性内容,而不是由 Twitter 来充当警察。
这是一个非常 speculative 的赌注,而且顺便说一句,很多人——大多数人——认为这是一个糟糕的主意。我们给了 Keith 一个小隔间去构建他的愿景,然后我们的工作是确保这个赌注不会在一个对它没有耐心的大组织环境中被扼杀。
所有的社区方向的努力,或者说创作者方向的努力——从 Super Follows 到打赏功能——所有这些都由 Esther Crawford 主导,我们收购了她的公司,而她在 Elon 收购期间也有过几次病毒式传播的时刻。但她是一个杰出的领导者,再次说明,她是平衡创业肌肉与在大组织中推动事情落地能力的完美典范。Fleets 由 Mo Oladam 负责运营,他是一个创业者;Communities 则经历了几次迭代,现在仍然在产品中存在,由 John Barnett 和我们从 Chroma Labs 收购来的一个团队负责。
所以我认为,收购那些饥渴的、有雄心的创始人,给他们责任和空间——这是 Twitter 的一个成功故事。我自己也是这种赌注的受益者。我的公司 Periscope 被收购,我获得了最终领导产品团队的机会。所以我觉得,无论是通过公司的历史还是通过我们自己的学习,我们最终意识到这实际上是一种推动文化变革和产生影响非常有效的方式——因为你需要一种特殊类型的人,既能既在现有结构中运作,又能改变这个结构;知道什么时候利用体系,知道什么时候该掀翻体系。
我觉得我整个人生都受益于别人这样在我身上下注,甚至到了我自己都说:“真的吗?你确定?“的程度。所以我很喜欢把这种机会传递下去,为其他人做同样的事情,而且我从来没有后悔过。在别人身上下注——尤其是把他们扔到深水区,让他们去干纸面上看起来不胜任的事——我认为这是推动变革最好的方式之一。顺便说一句,对于个人成长也是如此,当你被扔到深水区时学到的东西远比其他场景多得多。所以我认为这非常棒。如果你要通过买下一堆公司来做这件事,这是一种昂贵的策略,但对于我们在 Twitter 所处的情境来说,这是一个非常好的策略。
Lenny Rachitsky: 感觉每一个大赌注都是你刚才列举的那些被收购公司中的一个项目。很高兴你提到了 Periscope,这显然也是一个很好的例子。我有一个后续问题——关于如何做好这件事,你学到了什么吗?我知道你提到了给团队创造一个小隔间的做法,因为很多公司收购和收购式招聘(acquihire)之后,什么成果都没有。
所以我想问两个问题:第一,在公司里做好这件事有什么技巧?第二,我们之前线下聊过,我觉得这是一个很有意思的观点——很多公司在人员配置上是基于谁有空,而不是谁适合这个角色,然后等那个人到位了才去押注这个方向。你能谈谈这方面的教训吗?
用对人而不是用有空的人
Kayvon Beykpour: 最后这个问题是我一个很大的痛点,我觉得我们是吃了苦头才学到的。特别是,我认为这是一个在运转良好的组织中很常见的模式——由不同的人来做项目人员配置的决策,这本身并没有什么问题。但我觉得在我们所处的那种情境下——我们正在经历一场文化变革,有些人根本不同意我们优先考虑的事情,他们只是勉强顺从——再加上团队人员配置的方式本身就不是……最终除了 CEO 之外没有一个单独的决策者,而 Jack 又不会深入到细节层面去争论一个团队的人员配置决定——这些因素叠加在一起,导致了一种局面:经常出现的情况是,我们有一些项目——比如我之前提到的隐藏回复那个——团队内部甚至对于这是不是一个好主意、值不值得尝试、或者该怎么做,都没有达成一致。
想象一下,从无到有地打造一样东西本来就够难了。如果团队本身都不相信这件事,那就更难了。这已经到了有毒的地步。一个创业公司要想成功,所有参与其中的人必须对那个想法有一种近乎非理性的痴迷才行。当然也要能看清真相——你需要能判断这件事到底行不行,但如果一开始你就不相信它,我不会押注它能成功。
这种情况很常见,有时候没有我举的那些例子那么极端,但我学到的教训之一——其实挺直觉的——就是你需要为项目配备这样一支团队:从技能角度他们胜任,但更重要的是,他们对要追求的想法有一种痴迷。这会让他们工作更努力,更有创造力,让他们有足够的雄心和渴望,把这件事变成现实。因为每个项目,无论大小,都有一种你必须把它变成现实的成分在——因为这很难。你能熬过那些痛苦的唯一方式就是拥有那种渴望。我认为一个组织可以用的非常简单的”作弊码”就是:如果你要做一件事,尤其是那些探索性的或有风险的事,就让一群相信它、真心想知道这是否能解决客户问题的人去做。因为如果没有这个要素,它会拖垮所有人,结果也不会那么好。
框架的陷阱:jobs-to-be-done 与 OKRs
Lenny Rachitsky: 这正好触及一个我想聊的话题,就是 jobs-to-be-done。这可能是这档播客里最有争议的话题之一了——jobs-to-be-done 到底是很厉害,还是其实很糟糕、不应该去做?我们请过很多嘉宾分享过他们的看法。我感觉在 Twitter,jobs-to-be-done 被执行得如此严格,以至于让很多人对此彻底反感了。就是那种,天哪,这东西任何人都别碰。我很好奇你在框架方面的经验教训,不管是 jobs-to-be-done 具体来说,甚至 OKRs 也行。
Kayvon Beykpour: 我只看过你节目里有一期谈过这个话题。Sriram 谈 jobs-to-be-done 的时候特别辛辣,这也不意外,因为……我跟 Sriram 就 jobs-to-be-done 讨论过很多次。我想先说,我对我们在 Twitter 运用 jobs-to-be-done 的方式并不认同。我觉得它令人筋疲力尽,也没什么特别的帮助。所以这对我来说是一个特别敏感的话题,因为我恰恰被指派去推广和落地它。当你自己并不真正相信一件事的时候,去推广它是很困难的。但……
对我来说,批评与其说是针对 jobs-to-be-done——虽然它确实有很多值得批评的地方——不如说是关于所有框架的一个共性:任何一个框架被推到极致、被当作教条一样奉行时,就没什么用了。你在运用这些框架时需要有分寸感。否则就会见木不见林,最终沦为为了流程而执行流程。jobs-to-be-done 就落入了这个境地。所以我认为这才是我真正的批评。
我的意思是——听我说,jobs-to-be-done 的前提,以及我对它最善意的理解——即它真正有用的地方在于:它强迫你从客户的视角来看问题,理解他们的需求,理解他们在你的产品之外的真正替代方案。我认为这就是健康的产品思维。你不需要一个叫 jobs-to-be-done 的框架,你不需要去想什么奶昔的例子才能做到这一点。你可以凭借常识,或者借助 jobs-to-be-done 之类的东西,来强迫自己通过那个视角来思考。所以这是我对 jobs-to-be-done 能帮你做什么的善意解读,但作为一个框架本身,作为决定做什么的唯一指导原则,它就是没什么用。
指标与客户利益的错位
顺便说一下,同样的道理——我觉得 Twitter 在绕道搞 jobs-to-be-done 之前也有这个问题——如果一个组织被训练成只通过 OKRs 来思考该建什么、不该建什么,到了极端同样没用。因为当然,你可能对应该建什么来驱动指标有很好的判断,但话说回来,你可能关注了错误的指标,或者那不能帮你建立正确的建设优先级平衡,也不能帮你发现你正在做的东西实际上对客户是有敌意的。
举个有意思的例子,我记得你和 Shriram 那次访谈——如果我没记错的话,我觉得他提到了……我喜欢 Shriram,我很乐意在他的播客上跟他辩论这个——他举的一个例子好像是亚马逊。当你收到亚马逊的订单确认邮件时,他们故意把订单详情埋起来。你必须点击链接并验证身份才能看到你买了什么。我根本不在乎那为亚马逊驱动了什么指标。这是我在日常生活中经历过的对客户最敌意的设计之一。我在亚马逊上买很多东西,我很讨厌我没法在邮件里搜索我买了什么。所以我认为这些框架的问题在于你失去了分寸感,最终——在这一点上我同意 Shriram,他其实在你播客里也提到了——你需要能够做出权衡决策,在对组织有利和对客户有利之间取得平衡。
有时候,取决于你如何设计你的框架,你的指标实际上并没有与客户的利益对齐。就像亚马逊那个例子。我们在 Twitter 历史上也有过很多类似的著名案例。我们一直优化的核心增长指标之一就是 DAU,显然算法时间线(ranked timeline)对增长 DAU 起到了奇效,对很多用户来说也是很好的体验。但我们经常有一些功能并不能带来好的客户体验,而团队却对那些对客户有敌意的体验视而不见,因为从汇总指标来看它是好的。这方面最著名的例子是,我们有一个开关,我们很亲切地称它为 Swish,就是一个闪亮的小图标。
从 Swish 到产品判断力
Kayvon Beykpour: 在你可以在算法时间线和”关注”——也就是逆序时间线之间切换之前(这个功能现在产品里还有),当时就只是一个开关。你按一个按钮,信息流就变成逆序的,我们的用户中真正使用逆序时间线的比例很小。但那些深度用户非常在意拥有逆序时间线,在这个产品的演进过程中我们走了很多小步。最初的一小步是,你按下开关,它把你切到逆序,然后我们会从你脚下抽走地毯,大概 24 小时还是多久之后,又把你的体验切回算法时间线。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇。
Kayvon Beykpour: 团队之所以强烈倾向于保持这种做法,是因为这对指标有利。为什么?即便 Lenny 想要逆序信息流,我们知道如果把他放在算法时间线里,他在应用里花的时间会更多。我们为此进行了无数次辩论,因为团队理所当然地认为”这对指标有利”,但与此同时,会有用户说,“我他妈讨厌这个体验。我告诉过你我想要逆序。别再莫名其妙地给我改回去。”
Instagram 在这方面我觉得也经历过自己的挣扎。他们一步步试探,最终给了用户控制权。做产品决策的困难,归根结底就是做这些权衡决策,你必须透过客户的视角来看待问题。你必须把它与驱动正确业务成果的东西加以平衡。有时候这两者是一致的,有时候不是,答案不是任何一个框架。有时候就是老式的判断力和产品品味。所以这就是我的看法不同的地方。我认为问题不在于 jobs-to-be-done,虽然我也不是 jobs-to-be-done 最大的粉丝。问题在于是否有正确的分寸感,以及最终是否有正确的领导力,能够权衡这些东西,看清楚你的框架什么时候并没有真正帮你做出正确的决策。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我觉得这是非常重要的建议,我很喜欢听到这些细节,因为当我真正去想这些问题的时候,在实际中找到这种平衡是非常困难的。我好奇你有没有什么可以推荐的,或者你学到的关于如何判断自己对一个框架走得太远了——比如有哪些信号表明你执行得太教条了,也许应该想得更宽一些。
Kayvon Beykpour: 有两个我觉得简单而明显的信号。第一,如果你的框架导致的结果是在做出主观上很糟糕的决策,那就得改变什么了。前提是做这个判断的人有好的产品品味——这本身当然是主观的——但我个人的看法是,在我那个角色上,如果我看到我们的组织被激励着做出一些决策,而且在相当不可忽略的比例下就是我不喜欢的糟糕决策,作为一个用户我无法忍受,作为一个建设者我也无法忍受,那就得改变什么了。要么是在执行过程中做出了糟糕的判断,要么是流程本身有问题,或者这个框架甚至没有引发正确的辩论——那就是你怎么知道的。要么你有一个激励问题,但团队做了他们被激励去做的事;要么就是判断力出了问题,那显然是另一个问题了。
框架与大胆下注的矛盾
但我觉得在我们所处的情况下,团队可以理解地高度专注于驱动 DAU,因为那是长期以来执行的战略。这几乎没有留下任何空间去承担一些短期内不会驱动 DAU 的雄心勃勃的下注,比如一些我至今仍然相信的下注在短期内会损害 DAU,但你需要眯着眼睛相信,从长远来看它们会改善某些指标——DAU 或其他指标——比如 Spaces 这样的产品。为了让 Spaces 真正被使用,你需要确保当 Lenny 发起一个 Space 时,有人会加入。那你怎么让人们加入 Lenny 的 Space 呢,当他们已经习惯了异步的信息流推文?你可以发推送通知,你可以占据应用顶部非常显眼的位置,让人们知道,“嘿,Lenny 现在正在直播。他在一个 Space 里,有人在这里,来加入吧。”
猜猜当你把一个横条放在应用顶部告诉人们直播动态时会发生什么?你把推文往下推了,你把广告往下推了,DAU 下降了,收入下降了。所以如果你的组织只是高度专注于季度复季度地驱动 DAU 这件事,那就没有留下足够的分寸空间来容纳新的、投机性的下注——这些下注可能会损害某一个指标,但随着时间推移会产生其他积极的、有益的后果,比如为平台启用一个全新的内容创作和对话维度。
我想对你的问题的另一个回答是,你怎么知道框架没有在正确地服务你?当你开始想象和规划一系列下注,而组织随后发现去做成这些下注是被打击激励的时候,那就得改变什么了。
要么你的战略本身就不是正确的战略,因为它不符合框架;要么框架需要容纳一个事实,即实际上我们会尝试一些短期内可能根本不会在我们的 DAU 雷达上显示为任何信号的东西,或者会帮助其他某个重要的指标。所以我们花了一些时间才走到那一步,我们尝试了各种方案来让它运转。Community Notes,我之前提到的 Keith 启动的那个项目,我们有意把它像创业公司一样来组织。真的就是我们对 Keith 和他的团队做了一个种子投资,然后告诉他们,“别担心 OKRs。我们不会基于 OKRs 来评判你们。”
这样做有一些利弊。我们的很多项目都是这样运作的。Fleets 是这样开始的。Community Notes 是这样开始的,还有一些其他项目则更多地融入核心组织,因为它们与产品的本质如此交织在一起,分开来做弊大于利。所以你必须根据执行情况来判断,你的框架是否正确,并且在它不工作的时候愿意做出调整。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这个真的很有帮助。我从这里带走的两点是:第一,你有多频繁地对自己发布的功感到不好?觉得它们对用户不好,甚至对你作为用户来说也是不好的。第二,它是否阻止了你做出那些不一定驱动你所关注的指标的大胆下注。
Periscope 的故事
好的,在让你走之前,我想花点时间聊聊 Periscope。我不知道是不是每个人都知道 Periscope 的历史和故事。基本上它曾是世界上最大的直播视频平台,我想象它基本上启发了所有其他社交网络去构建直播平台——Instagram Live、Facebook、TikTok,当然还有 Twitter。所以我想在这里花一些时间,看看你学到了什么,也包括更广泛的消费者产品方面的经验。但首先,我听说有一个关于 Kobe Bryant 和 Periscope 的故事,说他以某种方式使用过它。你能分享一下那个故事吗?
Periscope 内测与 Kobe Bryant 的故事
Kayvon Beykpour: Periscope 在 2015 年 3 月公开发布之前,我们有一个小型内测,到真正公开发布时总共大概有 500 人。在内测期间,我试图亲自引导每一个新用户上手。我有一套固定的流程:让用户进入应用,然后我开始一场直播。我们专门为此做了一个叫「私密直播」(Private Broadcasting)的功能——新用户加入后,我就上线,他们也加入进来,我通过实际演示教他们应用怎么用。那段时间我们大部分时间都待在办公室里,后来 Chris Saka 邀请 Kobe 加入内测。
Chris 帮我们牵了线,我做了一场私密直播,Kobe 加入了。当时大概是晚上十点,我在办公室里,按照惯例就在办公室里边走边演示 Periscope 的功能——“让我带你看看办公室,聊天是这样用的,点击屏幕可以发送爱心,如果你想让我去那边的房间,在聊天里打出来就好。”
Periscope 的一个独特之处在于:它是一对多的直播,但延迟足够低,感觉就像 FaceTime 一样,观众和主播之间可以实现双向交流。我一边教他用聊天功能,一边带他看办公室,他也在摆弄。演示快结束的时候,他发了一条评论说:“谁他妈的想看别人直播啊?“我清楚地记得我的心一下子沉了下去,开始手忙脚乱地解释:“呃,我们觉得这挺酷的。”
我还没来得及把话说完,他又发了一条:“我就是逗你玩呢,兄弟。这东西太棒了。“那真是一个超现实的时刻,我永远不会忘记。Kobe 当然是传奇人物,但他基本上是在逗我玩的同时,恰恰印证了这个体验最酷的地方——它是双向的,他作为观众发了一条评论,就让主播改变了行为、改变了体验。这恰恰是演示产品功能的一个极其讽刺又完美的闭环。这确实是我最喜欢的早期 Periscope 故事之一。
Lenny Rachitsky: 天哪,如果我一直在做那种手动引导新用户的事,我肯定会时刻紧张”下一个是谁来了?“——总担心又有什么大人物要加入。你永远不知道 Chris Saka 在联系谁、在和谁说话。太棒了。好的,Periscope 被收购大概有十年了,你不再担任 CEO 大概也有六年左右了吧。如我所说,现在基本上每个平台都在做直播视频。我很好奇你从与这些大平台竞争中学到了什么。
Periscope 失败的教训
Kayvon Beykpour: 关于 Periscope 最终为什么失败、为什么我们关闭了那个应用,有几个原因。当然,Periscope 的技术和机制仍然活着——你可以在 Twitter 上直播,可以在 Twitter 上观看直播,也可以在 Twitter 上做语音对话,所有这些都是 Periscope 的技术栈。它仍然在那里,以不同的产品形态延续着,这很棒。
Periscope 应用失败的原因,归结起来有几件事。第一,我们没有解决留存率不高的核心问题。我们糟糕的留存被令人难以置信的用户增长峰值掩盖了。对 Periscope 来说情况很有意思,因为每隔一两个月,我们就会在一个新市场爆发,带来一次惊人的使用量增长。我们先是在美国爆火,然后在法国,然后在土耳其,然后在中东——每一次都是令人难以置信的增长浪潮。但在这波浪潮之下,核心产品存在留存问题,而我们最终没有花足够的时间优先解决这些问题。事实上,我们发布的产品改动反而让留存问题更加严重了。
与此叠加的是,Twitter 收购我们的一个核心论点是:我们将利用 Twitter 的规模、社区和产品机制来让产品增长更快,也更具持久性。我认为这涉及到我觉得最重要的一点学习——也是我们其实知道但没能做到的事情——我至今仍然很怀疑是否可以存在一个仅专注于直播视频的消费产品。一个通用的同步直播短视频应用,我认为无法独立持久存在。你必须围绕这个产品提供足够多的功能和能力,让一个社区和用户生态既能同步地、也能异步地保持联系。这就是为什么你提到的很多其他产品,它们无耻地抄袭 Periscope 的成功之处,但它们周围有一个完整的脚手架,让人们也能异步地互相保持联系。Instagram 就是一个异步产品,拥有直播等同步功能。TikTok 显然也是一样。而我们当时的处境是:它只是一个纯直播产品。
当你在直播的时候,你和观众互动得很开心,但当你不在直播的时候,你不会用这个产品来维系那个社区。你一天能从手机上直播多少次?而且请注意,对于聚焦特定垂直领域的直播消费产品来说,情况是不同的——比如做电商直播的 Whatnot,或者做游戏直播的 Twitch——它们有非常不同的属性,使得作为独立的直播产品更加持久。但 Periscope 实际上是在做从手机进行的通用消费级直播,我认为让产品仅有直播功能是无法持久的。
而我们与 Twitter 整合花费的时间太长了。原因在于 Twitter 自己被其路线图和精炼核心(refine the core)策略分了心,他们基本上有其他更重要的事情要处理。
来自竞争的压力
所有这些最终引出了竞争的话题。因为在某个时间点,Facebook 醒悟过来,觉得这东西很酷,需要去构建这个功能。我显然不在 Facebook 内部,但据传说,Mark 说:“你们这 300 个人,停下手里的事,去把直播功能做成我们产品中的一等公民体验。”
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇,这个我不知道。
Kayvon Beykpour: 当你有这种级别的组织力量投入到构建某个东西上——而且你根本不需要花任何时间去想产品应该长什么样,基本上照抄那些功能就行——他们确实做了。而且他们从合作角度做了很多精明的事情。我们有很多知名的直播者,从网红和在 Periscope 上成名的内容创作者,一直到 Kevin Hart 这样的名人和其他热衷于 Periscope 的人,Facebook 直接把这些人都买了过去。
Facebook 的全面围攻与 Twitter 的执行困境
Kayvon Beykpour: 他们直接说:“好,我们付你一大笔钱,让你独家在我们平台直播。“所以他们从各个方向对我们发起攻击。整个公司全力以赴地在核心产品中构建直播功能——先是 Facebook,然后是 Instagram——同时还从创作者端发动攻势。而我们反应太慢了,回想起来非常痛苦,因为就像 Twitter 早期获得的许多洞察一样——Twitter 看准了方向,却在后续执行上一塌糊涂。我不是在指责别人,我同样责备自己。但 Twitter 有一个模式:它非常擅长发现有意义的消费者行为变化。它发现了 Vine 并收购了 Vine,搞砸了;发现了 Periscope,搞砸了;顺便说一句,甚至 Instagram 也是——在 Facebook 试图收购 Instagram 之前,Twitter 就在试图收购 Instagram,只不过因为其他原因没能成。但我觉得这很有意思,这是 Twitter 历史中一个很有趣的侧面。
他们在发现有意义的消费者社交行为变化方面堪称卓越,而且确实愿意真金白银地去跟进,把这些赌注收入麾下,但随后就在执行上搞砸了。所以当我担任 Twitter 产品负责人时,这件事给了我很大的动力——我不想重蹈覆辙。我们后来没有再做过类似收购 Vine 或 Periscope 然后保留独立产品的事情。当然我们做了不少小型收购式招聘(acquihire),但我们确实和 Clubhouse 有一段故事,最终的结果是我们构建了 Spaces 来与他们竞争。总之,这是一个很长、很发散的故事,希望这回答了你的问题。
Lenny Rachitsky: 嗯,信息量太大了。又是我脑子中无数条思路像分形一样展开,每个都想追问。关于 Vine 和 Periscope 这一点,我本来就想问这个。正如你所说,Twitter 在视频领域有那么多次机会可以赢。Vine 当年很棒,横扫一切,大家都爱它,然后就逐渐消失了。我猜你已经分享了很多 Twitter 在执行、交付、神圣禁区(sacred cows)方面面临的挑战。在视频方面有没有什么特别的原因?是不是就是觉得”这其实不是什么重大优先级,我们先凑合着用”?还是有更深层的原因?
内部竞争的悲剧:Vine 与 Periscope 的重蹈覆辙
Kayvon Beykpour: 不是,实际情况比那更令人沮丧。因为我认为 Twitter 确实相信视频,但它犯了一个经典的错误——我们在 Periscope 上不幸也重蹈了覆辙——那就是他们对短视频有了洞察,收购了 Vine,然后却在内部与 Vine 竞争。Vine 是 Twitter 内部一个独立的组织,办公室当然也在纽约,而 Twitter 没有把它整体地融入产品中、全力以赴地去推动,而是另起炉灶构建了一个原生的 Twitter 视频功能,用的是不同的技术栈、不同的团队。这就是你现在所看到的 Twitter 视频——最简单的视频上传功能,以及所有供像 ESPN 这样的发布者投放内容的专业视频工具(叫做 Media Studio)。这一切基本上都是由一个独立的团队、独立的组织、独立的产品构建的,跟 Vine 形成竞争关系。两种短视频愿景同时并存,这是让事情变得混乱最快的方式。
当然,那个独立的创业团队必然会受到掣肘——如果你在内部与被收购的公司竞争,就不可能兑现当初收购它并将其正确整合的愿景。Periscope 也遭遇了同样的事情。我们有独立的组织、独立的架构、独立的应用,专注于 Periscope。Periscope 当时主要聚焦于 UGC 直播视频,也就是用户从手机上直播的内容。然后 Twitter 决定进军高端直播视频业务,非常著名的就是收购了 NFL 周四夜赛的转播权。你猜怎么着?我们又在内部分头竞争,而不是形成一个统一的技术和产品愿景来全面拥抱直播视频——涵盖从 UGC 到高端直播的完整谱系。Twitter 另组了一个独立团队负责高端直播,用独立的产品、独立的技术栈。于是产品上出现了两种呈现直播视频的方式:一种是 UGC 直播视频,尴尬的是当时与 Twitter 的整合做得并不好;另一种是高端直播视频,交互体验完全不同,团队完全不同,架构完全不同。而且公司投入了巨大的精力和资源去宣传 Twitter 是一个可以观看 NFL 的地方。与此同时,我们却有一个蓬勃发展的 UGC 生态系统。这就像我们在犯同样的错误。好在 Periscope 的情况,经过大量的坚持、急迫感和据理力争,我们最终纠正了这个错误,但浪费了大量时间。中间有太多的冲突和内耗,最终我们花了很多时间才在技术上把一切重新整合到一起,现在终于干净利落了。
整合的代价与对竞争对手的敬意
ESPN 可以在温网用幕后花絮内容进行直播,它用的是和 Lenny 从 iPhone 上直播完全相同的技术栈和用户体验。但我认为这就是执行失败的一个典型案例——浪费了时间、资源,最终导致了一个次优的产品体验,而其他公司避免了犯这样的错误。Facebook 就是最典型的例子——尽管作为竞争对手我对他们抢占直播视频使用场景感到沮丧,但不得不承认,他们的执行非常出色,我对他们充满敬意。所以我们确保以后不再犯这个错误。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我猜造成这种情况是有原因的。部分原因可能是某种僵化——“我们没法推动你们把事情做成,我们只好另起一个新团队来做这件事”。我猜一开始总会觉得”这样做有道理”,然后走了一段路才发现”好吧,这是个糟糕的主意”。
Kayvon Beykpour: 对,是这个原因,但也有领导层的因素。当这些事情没有统一的领导时,你最终做出的决策就会相互冲突。就是需要一个在顶层有强烈主张的人,从产品和工程的角度来避免这种混乱。
借鉴与抄袭:产品理念的取舍
Lenny Rachitsky: 你提到了 Clubhouse,我觉得有意思的一点是,首先很多人抄袭了 Periscope 的产品。我不知道你是否会用”抄袭”来形容,但感觉 Spaces 很大程度上是受了 Clubhouse 的启发。你目前有没有一个判断准则——什么时候应该深受另一个产品的启发并将其融入自己的产品中,什么时候不应该这么做?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我认为归根结底是要做对用户正确的事。每个人从来都毫不犹豫地从别人的想法中汲取灵感,我不觉得这有什么问题。我认为抄袭想法可以有低劣的方式,也可以有有品位的方式。我觉得一些抄袭 Periscope 的人做得很低劣,但也不能怪他们。我不会用同样的方式去做,但它奏效了。所以你不能说这是错误的。我认为汲取灵感可以是有品位的,也可以是没有品位的。
Kayvon Beykpour: 至于 Clubhouse,其实我们之前就已经在做音频了。音频正是我之前提到的那些独立下注的项目之一,我们用一个非常独立的团队来运作,其中很多人就是原来 Periscope 的团队成员。当关闭 Periscope 的时候,我非常坚信同步对话这个理念仍然有它的价值。因为我们 Periscope 犯下的一个著名错误就是——我们一直以来的梦想和愿景,也是我们对外讲述的故事,是把它打造成一种”瞬间传送”的机制。你可以透过别人的眼睛去看,被瞬间传送到另一个地方。这就是我们告诉自己、也用来激励 Periscope 团队的故事。在某种程度上,确实有很多用户是以这种方式使用产品的——你可以去看看世界某个角落正在发生什么了不起的事,或者正在发生社会动荡,或者某个重大新闻正在发生。
但事实证明,绝大多数用户并不是这样使用 Periscope 的。它并不是一个后置摄像头的体验——让你向别人展示世界——绝大多数人只是在用它和别人聊天。他们无聊了,或者觉得孤独,想和其他人说说话。而视频和音频恰好是一种非常有趣的方式来实现这一点,它允许更细腻的表达、更长时间的对话、更深入的交流,尤其是与 Twitter 相比——Twitter 的机制天然地激励简短、快捷的广播式发言,很难产生深度。所以当我们关掉 Periscope 的时候,我们觉得,我们真的需要在 Twitter 上提供一种新的对话形式,具备那些特性。于是我们组建了一个团队,开始做一个内部代号为 Hydra 的项目。Hydra 这个名字是因为这个怪物有多个头,而那些头就是一场对话中的参与者。
在 Clubhouse 还没有进入大众视野之前,我们就已经有了很多不同版本的视频和纯音频体验的迭代,只是总感觉不太对,运作得不够好,但我们觉得自己在正确的方向上。当 Clubhouse 出现之后,它真正重新聚焦了我们,让我们看到了一种感觉更对的用户体验。在这方面我要给他们完全的肯定。Paul、Rohan 和他们的团队做得非常出色,精心打造了一种真正让那种机制和前提——让长对话得以展开——大放异彩的体验。所以我们确实毫不羞耻地从他们已经做成功的东西中汲取灵感,然后加上了我们自己的东西。Spaces 在 Twitter 内部的执行,我觉得有一些相似之处,但同时也真正利用了 Twitter 平台上你可以使用的那些独特机制。它是不同的产品。所以我们采纳了那些我们认为是让体验跑通捷径的想法,然后加上了自己的风格。所以我对我们在这方面做的事情没有任何问题。
而且,经历过 Vine 时从外部看着行动不够快的痛苦,以及 Periscope 的亲身经历,我们绝不愿意在这个用例上不成为赢家。这是我在 Twitter 期间最引以为豪的项目之一,因为我们的执行非常激进。Hydra 从一个只有六个人在做的、没人知道也没人在意的小项目,变成了我们把 Spaces 作为全公司第一优先级的项目—— literally 排在任何其他项目之上。我们投入了大量的人去加速这个产品,让它在 Twitter 内变成现实。很大程度上,这是因为我们曾经搞砸了 Vine 和 Periscope,那种痛苦和教训太深刻了。所以我对我们的执行力感到非常自豪。而且这对公司来说也非常振奋人心——让大家看到,哇,我们真的做到了。所以,是的,很好。能有一个完整循环的体验很好,就我个人而言,我也很高兴 Periscope 的某些方面继续活在 Twitter 之中。
Periscope 与 Clubhouse 的精神共鸣
Lenny Rachitsky: 我完全不知道这些。这太有意思了。说”完整循环”,我第一次加入 Clubhouse 的时候,Paul 在那里向我介绍 Clubhouse,用的恰好就是你描述 Periscope 的那种方式。所以我觉得他可能也从你那里汲取了灵感,往前倒了一步。
Kayvon Beykpour: Paul 非常厉害。我觉得我们是同类人,我看得出来……我最欣赏那个团队的一点就是,你能真真切切地感受到他们对正在构建的东西的热情和激情是如此强烈。在另一个平行宇宙中,我们可能会更紧密地合作,但我觉得他们打造的产品非常了不起,我们确实从中汲取了灵感。是的。
如何做好消费者产品
Lenny Rachitsky: 你打造了一些最成功、最受喜爱、使用人数最多的消费者产品。你也持续在帮助其他创始人做他们的产品。我很好奇,关于如何更好地打造消费者产品——不管是产品的工艺还是产品感觉——你有没有什么建议?关于打造一个成功的消费者产品需要什么,你学到了什么?
Kayvon Beykpour: 想要变得更好,打造产品的最佳”作弊码”就是做一个贪婪的产品使用者。去不断尝试新东西,感受什么好用、什么不好用、你喜欢什么、不喜欢什么。没有别的东西能替代这一点。这是一种非常有效的方式来磨练你自己的品味——去分辨什么是花哨但没用的、什么是丑但好用的、什么是既美又好用的。你通过实践来磨练这些,建立肌肉记忆。所以我觉得这里面没有太多科学可言。当然科学可以帮助你在很多事情上变得更高效,但我感觉自己一直对尝试新事物充满好奇心。我是一个非常饥渴的新产品消费者,而且我不会急于下判断。即使某个东西看起来很蠢,我也会去试试,因为有时候一开始看起来很蠢的东西后来会变得非常有意义。
所以这对我来说一直是一个非常有用的”作弊码”,而且这件事本身也很有趣。每一个工具,哪怕是看起来很傻的那些,人们都把自己的心血和灵魂注入其中,这是他们自我表达的一种方式。看到这些总是很有趣——去看人们的创作,从中学习,看看你喜欢什么、不喜欢什么,以及你可能会如何借鉴这些来创造属于自己的东西。所以如果我能通过”什么对我有效”这个角度给别人一些建议的话,就是这一点。
Kayvon 的新项目
Lenny Rachitsky: 说到尝试新事物,你最近在忙什么?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我正在消费者领域做一个新东西。去年年底,我和几位联合创始人一起创办了一家公司。我们还没准备好公开谈论它,但希望你很快就会听到我们的消息。不过能重新开始打造东西的感觉真的很好,尤其是再次和一个小团队一起,在经历了大型公司的另一个极端之后。我们刚才聊了很多大公司的事。但是的,希望你很快就会听到我们的消息。
Lenny Rachitsky: 天哪,我觉得这算是独家新闻了。这么神秘,这么令人兴奋。Kayvon,在我们进入非常令人期待的闪电问答环节之前,你还有什么想分享的或者想对听众说的吗?
Kayvon Beykpour: 没有了,我觉得我们已经聊了很多。
Lenny Rachitsky: 确实是。我们确实聊了很多。那么,我们进入了非常令人期待的闪电问答环节。你准备好了吗?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我先喝口水,然后就准备好了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好,开始了。第一个问题:你向别人推荐最多的两三本书是什么?
推荐书籍
Kayvon Beykpour: 我喜欢读科幻小说。我觉得科幻和悬疑小说对激发想象力特别有好处。我最喜欢的一些书是 Neal Stephenson 的作品,我很喜欢《Cryptonomicon》,也很喜欢《Reamde》。我还很喜欢 Patrick Rothfuss 写的一本叫《Name of the Wind》的书,那更偏奇幻类。但我就是喜欢逃离现实,去想象科幻、想象奇幻,这对心灵和想象力都有好处。所以这些是我最喜欢读的东西,因为它们对我有帮助。我觉得以一种奇怪的、迂回的方式,它们帮助我变得更有创造力和想象力。顺便说一句,阅读之外也是如此。塑造了我、激发了我的好奇心和许多我做出来的东西的内容,其实是科幻电视剧,对吧?《星际迷航》(Star Trek)太棒了。我们以前把《星际迷航》当作 Periscope 的隐喻——要是能传送到世界上另一个地方,那该多酷。我们不够聪明,造不出那种设备,但通过软件能实现的最接近的东西是什么?直播。所以我觉得这类文学或内容一直是我的灵感来源,通过书籍来获取这些非常有益。
Lenny Rachitsky: 顺着这个话题,除了早年的《星际迷航》,最近有没有哪部电影或电视剧特别启发你?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我最近在影院看的电影是《沙丘2》(Dune Two),太棒了。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我刚看了。
Kayvon Beykpour: 简直疯了。我也觉得《奥本海默》(Oppenheimer)……我是 Nolan 的超级粉丝。《奥本海默》令人着迷。在一部传记片里连续两个半小时保持那种高强度的紧张感,这是非常难做到的。我觉得它非常出色。电视剧方面,我们最近在看《东京罪恶》(Tokyo Vice),我很喜欢。我最近看过的最好的剧集之一——嗯,《继承之战》(Succession)当然很棒,不过我提一个不那么主流的吧:《开发者》(Devs),也是科幻类的。好像是 Hulu 上的剧。但如果你对技术和 AI 感兴趣,又想看 Nick Offerman 的精彩表演,《Devs》是一部相当出色的剧。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我没听说过这个。顺便问一下,你看《三体》(3 Body Problem)了吗?感觉完全在你的兴趣范围。
Kayvon Beykpour: 还没看。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。
Kayvon Beykpour: 有意思的是,有些内容大家讨论得太热烈了,以至于我现在反而不太想看了。因为一部剧正处于热度最高的时候,它很难达到你的预期。所以我还没去看,但它肯定在我的片单上。我知道这是我会喜欢的那种剧,只是还没点开而已。
面试问题
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。你在招聘时最喜欢问候选人什么问题?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我觉得既很有说明性又很实用的做法,就是让别人谈谈他们做过的失败的项目,也谈谈他们做过的成功的项目。但我觉得你可以从中了解到很多关于他们自我反思能力和热情的东西,尤其是自我反思。如果他们讲述一个自己非常在意的项目,讲它为什么没成功——有哪些教训?你从中学到了什么?我觉得这能告诉你一个人愿意承担风险的程度,他们是否经历过失败,从失败中学到了什么。所以我觉得这个方法总是能让你真正了解一个人。如果你能深入挖掘这些,最终会得到对一个人全面的了解。
最近喜欢的产品
Lenny Rachitsky: 最近有没有发现什么特别喜欢的产品?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我很喜欢 Perplexity。让我觉得很有意思的是,Perplexity 是一个融入你日常生活的产品,它替代了一个在人们行为中根深蒂固的东西——用 Google 搜索来满足某些需求。Perplexity 如此之快地取代了它,这让我觉得非常不可思议。如果你已经习惯用 Google 搜索十五、二十年了,要重新改变你的肌肉记忆其实是非常困难的。但我的首选如此之快地变成了 Perplexity,这真的很神奇。坦白说,它也是为数不多的非开发工具类 AI 产品中真正留住了用户的一个。很多人尝试消费级 AI 产品,但留存率并不高。而 Perplexity 是我每天都在用的工具,它在主屏上,我很喜欢它。我对它印象非常深刻。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我也是超级粉丝。
Kayvon Beykpour: 是的。接下来这个有点偏心——我妻子实际上正在做一个叫 Particle 的创业项目,是用 AI 打造的新闻体验。我喜欢她们正在做的事情的地方在于,她们第一次重新思考了新闻故事的形态和内容单元应该是什么样的。我认为文章是一种失败的格式,她们也这么认为。所以她们创造了一种优雅而引人入胜的体验,让你用纯 AI 驱动的方式来了解世界上正在发生的事情。非常棒。再次声明,标签是偏心的丈夫,但它确实很厉害。现在还在测试阶段,可以在 particlenews.ai 注册等候名单。
再给你一个非软件的答案——其实是一个桌游,是我生日时收到的礼物。叫 Crokinole。你听说过这个游戏吗?
Lenny Rachitsky: 没有。
Kayvon Beykpour: Crokinole 是加拿大的一款桌游。让我惊叹的是,我从未见过一款游戏能让所有年龄段的人都着迷。我很喜欢它,和朋友一起玩。我父母圣诞节时对这个游戏着了迷。我女儿也很喜欢。它是一个实体游戏,你弹射一个圆片,类似沙狐球(shuffleboard)的风格,但是微缩版,有一套完全不同的机制。看到这个游戏能让各个年龄段的人都为之着迷,对我来说太震撼了,而且它真的很好玩。所以这算是一个出其不意的答案吧,但这些就是我最近一直在享受和欣赏的产品。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这些答案太棒了。那个游戏叫什么来着?我要——
Kayvon Beykpour: Crokinole。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。我不知道怎么拼,但我相信 Google 会帮我搞定。我们会在节目笔记里放上链接。
Kayvon Beykpour: C-R-O-K-I-N-O-L-E。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的。我喜欢里面那个 K,很有趣。顺便说一下,我看了一下,Particle 的网址应该是 Particle.news,做得确实很酷。基本上就是新闻条目的要点,然后链接到所有写过这个话题的文章。所以它就是帮你总结——这些是你需要知道的事情,而且界面很漂亮。
Kayvon Beykpour: 对,基本上她们通过摄取文章等方式,消费和聚合世界上正在发生的所有事情,然后通过 AI 生成这些故事模块进行摘要。然后她们还让你可以质询新闻、提出问题。借助 LLM 和工具调用(tool calls),它能够真正帮助你理解世界上正在发生的事情。她们也在构建社交层。非常酷。我一定让你进测试版。
人生座右铭
Lenny Rachitsky: 这个时机太巧了,因为我一直是 Artifact 那个新闻应用的忠实粉丝,而它马上要关闭了,所以这就是下一个新闻应用了,感谢分享。好了,最后两个问题。你有没有一个最喜欢的人生座右铭,经常回想起来的,或者会分享给别人的,在工作中或生活中觉得特别有用的?
Kayvon Beykpour: 有一句话确实深刻影响了我的工作态度和工作方式,它其实来自我的第一位老板。我14岁那年有一份暑期工,基本上就是更换灭火器和做维护。我会开车进旧金山,我的老板开着他的卡车来接我,然后我们去大型商业建筑、医院、高楼,把楼里所有的灭火器——几百个——搬到车库里,排空、充填、贴标签、检查。那是我的第一份工作。我甚至不记得有没有拿到报酬。大概拿了很少一点钱,但那毕竟是我的第一段工作经历。我记得有一个时刻,我处理完了手头的灭火器,就坐在他的卡车里无所事事地晃着大拇指。我的老板走过来对我说:当你没事情做的时候,去扫地,永远不要闲坐着。
那件事很奇妙,只是一个很微小的瞬间,但我从来没有忘记过。“当你没事情做的时候,去扫地。“这句话对我的工作态度产生了极为深远的影响——总有些事情是你可以做的,去推进、去产出、去产生影响。我非常感激我的老板 Fred 给了我那个瞬间。我觉得他自己可能都不知道那句话有多大影响,但对我来说它几乎就是一条人生座右铭,它确实一直伴随着我,塑造了我的工作方式。
Lenny Rachitsky: 你能分享这个故事真好。我之前在 GQ Magazine 的一篇文章里找到了这句引言和这个故事——原来你在那里面讲过这件事,我本来想问的但没问,很高兴你自己分享了,因为我特别喜欢。
关于 Scott Belsky
最后一个问题,我们来个首尾呼应。Scott Belsky,你是他的朋友。关于 Scott,有什么人们会感到意外或者不知道的事情,可能比较有意思的?
Kayvon Beykpour: 我先讲一个有趣的故事,然后先说一件我很欣赏 Scott 的地方。Scott 是一个非常好的例子,我觉得他在一家庞大而传奇的公司——显然是 Adobe——推动了巨大的文化变革。Scott 在 Adobe 监督、主导和参与的转型数量是惊人的。我自己在 Twitter 有过一小部分类似的经历,所以我能体会那有多么困难、多么充满挑战,又多么令人有成就感。从套装软件转型到云端,从非 AI 转型到 AI,从离散工具转型到一套无缝衔接、优雅协作的集成工具套件。我认为 Scott 主导了大量这样的变革,而 Adobe 的转型如此成功,确实令人钦佩。这一点我非常喜欢。
关于 Scott,人们可能不知道的一件趣事——我认为他是第一个 Periscoper。Scott 在 Periscope 还不是 Periscope 的时候就相信它了。在我们把它做成直播视频之前,我们的测试版有一个前身,是静态照片分享——同样的愿景、同样的理念,但产品叫 Bounty。就好像你在世界某个地方放一个图钉,比如东京鱼市场,然后就会有人用一张照片回应你那里看起来是什么样子。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我不知道这个。
Kayvon Beykpour: 我们的愿景仍然是帮你透过别人的眼睛看世界,但第一个形态确实是静态的,有这种市场交易的机制。我们花了一段时间才走到那一步——按一个按钮,直接开播,变成实时直播视频,因为直播视频本质上就是实时的,而不是静态的。
总之,在我们做出这些东西之前,当我们还在探索这个方向、Scott 在鼓励我们往这条路上走的时候,我记得大概是我第二次见 Scott,我们打了一个 FaceTime,他当时在 TED 大会,应该是在温哥华。为了展示这会有多酷,他接通 FaceTime 后说,“好,我现在就带你做一个 Periscope。“然后他把摄像头翻转过来,开始在 TED 大会现场走动,基本上是在用 FaceTime 假装他在做产品原型。那是一次非常奇妙的体验,因为一个投资人通过演示而不是说教来鼓励你走向一个产品方向——这完美地概括了 Scott 作为我们最坚定的支持者之一,是多么地给予支持和启发。我非常尊敬他为 Periscope 所做的一切,也非常感激他对我们下的赌注,因为他是第一批答应投资的人之一。他当时并不认识我们,只是相信我们。这帮助其他一切也都顺利地汇聚到了一起。他真的很了不起。
Lenny Rachitsky: 真是个好人啊。
Kayvon Beykpour: 真是个好人啊。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我们得请他再来上一次播客。这个故事让我想起你讲的 Elon 的故事——他给你打 FaceTime——同时也让我想到你关于做消费者产品的经验:亲自使用它、痴迷于它。Scott 也是这样,直接说”它可能是这样的”,然后实际去用产品,而不仅仅是纸上谈兵。
Kayvon Beykpour: 对,他也是一个很好的例子。他确实是所有工具和产品的热心使用者,这也是为什么他有非常非常好的产品感觉。
尾声
Lenny Rachitsky: Kayvon,你太棒了。这次对话真的太精彩了,这里有太多干货了。迫不及待想让听众们听到。
最后两个问题。如果大家想联系你、了解更多,或者在有什么事情想跟进的话,可以在哪里找到你?然后,听众怎样可以帮到你?
Kayvon Beykpour: 大家可以在 Twitter / X / 现在不管叫什么了上面找到我。我的账号是 @kayvz,K-A-Y-V-Z。如果你是这档播客的听众,正在做一件很酷的事情,需要帮助或建议,或者在找天使投资人,别犹豫,直接联系我,我很乐意试试你在做的东西。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太好了。另外大家去看看 Particle.news。
Kayvon Beykpour: 没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: 支持一下太太。
Kayvon Beykpour: 正是如此。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,Kayvon,非常感谢你来。
Kayvon Beykpour: 谢谢 Lenny,很高兴和你聊。
Lenny Rachitsky: 大家再见。
感谢大家收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。也请考虑给我们评分或留下评论,这真的能帮助更多听众发现这档播客。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这档节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| acquihire | 收购式招聘(acquihire) |
| Adobe | Adobe(知名软件公司,保留原文) |
| Artifact | Artifact(Instagram 联合创始人创建的新闻应用,保留原文) |
| Birdwatch | Birdwatch(Community Notes 原名,保留原文) |
| Blackboard | Blackboard(收购 Kayvon 第一家公司的上市科技公司,保留原文) |
| Bounty | Bounty(Periscope 早期的静态照片分享产品原型名,保留原文) |
| Bruce | Bruce(指 Bruce Falck,Twitter 前营收产品负责人,保留原文) |
| Chris Saka | Chris Saka(科技投资人,将 Kobe 介绍给 Periscope 内测的人,保留原文) |
| Chroma Labs | Chroma Labs(被 Twitter 收购的公司,保留原文) |
| Clubhouse | Clubhouse(语音社交应用,保留原文) |
| Communities | Communities(Twitter 社区功能,保留原文) |
| Community Notes | Community Notes(Twitter 社区笔记功能,保留原文) |
| Creator Program | Creator Program(Twitter 创作者计划,保留原文) |
| Crokinole | Crokinole(加拿大弹射类桌游,保留原文) |
| crowdsource moderation | 众包审核(crowdsource moderation) |
| DAU | DAU(日活跃用户,Daily Active Users) |
| Elon | Elon(指 Elon Musk,保留原文) |
| Esther Crawford | Esther Crawford(Twitter 创作者产品负责人,保留原文) |
| Fleets | Fleets(Twitter 阅后即焚功能,保留原文) |
| Fred | Fred(Kayvon 14岁时做灭火器维护暑期工的老板,保留原文) |
| GM | GM(General Manager,总经理,保留原文缩写) |
| Hydra | Hydra(Twitter 内部音频/视频项目的代号,保留原文) |
| Jack | Jack(指 Jack Dorsey,Twitter 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| jobs-to-be-done | jobs-to-be-done(待完成 jobs-to-be-done 理论,保留原文术语) |
| Joe | Joe(Kayvon 的好友、Periscope 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| John Barnett | John Barnett(Communities 项目负责人,保留原文) |
| Kayvon Beykpour | Kayvon Beykpour(Twitter 前产品主管,保留原文) |
| Keith Coleman | Keith Coleman(Twitter 产品负责人,Community Notes 负责人,保留原文) |
| Kevin Hart | Kevin Hart(知名演员、喜剧演员,Periscope 活跃用户,保留原文) |
| Kobe | Kobe(指 Kobe Bryant,篮球传奇巨星,保留原文) |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky(播客主持人,保留原文) |
| Mark | Mark(指 Mark Zuckerberg,Facebook/Meta 创始人,保留原文) |
| Media Studio | Media Studio(Twitter 的专业视频发布工具,保留原文) |
| mensch | mensch(意第绪语,意为品行高尚、值得尊敬的人,保留原文;对话中两人均直接使用此词) |
| Mo Oladam | Mo Oladam(创业者,Fleets 项目负责人,保留原文) |
| Neal Stephenson | Neal Stephenson(科幻小说作家,保留原文) |
| NFL | NFL(National Football League,美国国家橄榄球联盟) |
| Nick Offerman | Nick Offerman(演员,保留原文) |
| Nolan | Nolan(指 Christopher Nolan,知名电影导演,保留原文) |
| Parag | Parag(指 Parag Agrawal,Twitter 前 CEO,保留原文) |
| Particle | Particle(Sarah 创办的 AI 新闻初创公司,保留原文) |
| Patrick Rothfuss | Patrick Rothfuss(奇幻小说作家,保留原文) |
| Paul | Paul(Paul Davison,Clubhouse 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| Periscope | Periscope(被 Twitter 收购的直播应用,保留原文) |
| Perplexity | Perplexity(AI 搜索引擎,保留原文;原转录稿误作 Proplexity) |
| Premium | Premium(Twitter Blue 更名后的称呼,保留原文) |
| Private Broadcasting | 私密直播(Private Broadcasting,Periscope 的私密直播功能) |
| ranked timeline | 算法时间线(ranked timeline,Twitter 的算法排序信息流) |
| refine the core | 精炼核心(refine the core,Twitter 曾有的产品策略) |
| Rohan | Rohan(Rohan Seth,Clubhouse 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| sacred cows | 神圣禁区(sacred cows,指不可触碰、不可更改的产品规则或惯例) |
| Sarah | Sarah(Kayvon 的妻子,保留原文) |
| Scott Belsky | Scott Belsky(Behance 创始人、Adobe 首席产品官,保留原文) |
| silo | 隔间/独立小团队(silo,指组织中相对独立运作的小团队) |
| Spaces | Spaces(Twitter 语音聊天室功能,保留原文) |
| Sriram / Shriram | Sriram / Shriram(Sriram Krishnan,科技投资人、创业者,保留原文) |
| Super Follows | Super Follows(Twitter 付费订阅创作者功能,保留原文) |
| Swish | Swish(Twitter 内部对产品中一个闪亮图标开关的昵称,保留原文) |
| Thursday Night Football | 周四夜赛(Thursday Night Football,NFL 周四晚间比赛转播权) |
| Topics | Topics(Twitter 话题关注功能,保留原文) |
| Twitch | Twitch(专注于游戏直播的平台,保留原文) |
| Twitter Blue | Twitter Blue(Twitter 订阅服务,保留原文) |
| UGC | UGC(User-Generated Content,用户生成内容) |
| Vine | Vine(Twitter 收购的短视频应用,保留原文) |
| Walter Isaacson | Walter Isaacson(知名传记作家,保留原文) |
| Whatnot | Whatnot(专注于电商直播的平台,保留原文) |
| Wimbledon | 温网(Wimbledon,温布尔登网球锦标赛) |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)
Twitter’s ex-Head of Product on Elon, consumer products, culture, more | Kayvon Beykpour
Meeting Elon for the First Time
Kayvon Beykpour: The first time I ever met Elon was over FaceTime. He was just like, “Do you want to just come hang out? You can swipe left or swipe right.”
Introducing the Guest
Lenny Rachitsky: You’re known for at Twitter someone that turned the culture of the product team and Twitter in general from a very stagnant, nothing-is-changing product to shipping all the time.
Kayvon Beykpour: We wanted to change the lack of ambition, the lack of creativity, the lack of customers feeling that the product had changed at all.
Elon’s First Two Days at Twitter
Lenny Rachitsky: Here’s a list of stuff that your team shipped while you were there, Super Follows, Communities, newsletters, topics, Fleets, testing reactions, edge-to-edge photos, Twitter Blue, Spaces, and obviously, live video.
Kayvon Beykpour: The sacred cows are like their own roadmap. What are all the things that you think we’re not allowed to change? Let’s start there.
Impact on Elon
Lenny Rachitsky: This was all relatively quickly.
Kayvon Beykpour: I was like, “I might flame out completely, but Hell if I don’t try.”
How I Got Fired
Lenny Rachitsky: Today, my guest is Kayvon Beykpour. Kayvon was the beloved and longest-tenured head of product at Twitter and also GM of the consumer business at Twitter up until the day that it was sold to Elon Musk. He landed at Twitter through an acquisition of his company, Periscope, which was the world’s largest live-streaming platform, which ended up inspiring Instagram Live, TikTok Live, Facebook Live, and basically every other social network getting into live video. He sold the company to Twitter in 2015, continued leading Periscope for a number of years, and then moved into leading product and then the entire consumer business.
In our wide-ranging conversation, Kayvon shares what it was like getting Elon up to speed at Twitter, what it was like to be fired from Twitter, which actually happened during his pat leave. He also shares all kinds of lessons and stories from transforming Twitter’s internal culture from a risk-averse, stagnant, product org to one that was shipping major features regularly. We talk about how they used acquihires and up-and-coming hungry product leaders to lead new initiatives and break through many of their sacred cows.
We also get into jobs-to-be-done, Elon’s layoffs of most of Twitter’s staff after the acquisition, his lessons from building and shutting down Periscope, and also building consumer products in general, and so much more. This episode is full of stories and lessons and a bunch of stuff that you haven’t heard anywhere else. With that, I bring you Kayvon Beykpour after a short word from our sponsors. And if you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It’s the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.
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Kayvon, thank you so much for being here, and welcome to the podcast.
Kayvon Beykpour: Thanks so much for having me, Lenny. Great to meet you finally.
Hesitation to Return
Lenny Rachitsky: It’s amazing to meet you. I think this is going to be quite a unique and interesting podcast. A big thank you to Scott Belsky, illustrious former podcast guest for introducing us. When he introduced us, the one thing that he told me is that “Hopefully, Kayvon will share the story about our time getting Elon up to speed at Twitter.” I would love to hear that story. I bet other people would too. Are you able to share that story?
Kayvon Beykpour: When all the drama went down with Twitter and Elon ended up buying the company and after the eight months saga of legal back and forth ended up actually taking control of the company, there was that first two-day period where it was complete chaos at Twitter with the sink and Elon spreading his tentacles trying to find out who are the people that he wants to keep and what are the projects that are interesting. In the midst of all that, Scott ended up getting contacted and being asked, “Who should Elon talk to?” Scott recommended that Elon chat with me.
So, the first time I ever met Elon was over at FaceTime where Elon was just very curious to ask, “Hey, you were at Twitter for a while. You seem to have done some things. What should I be digging into, and who I be talking to?” At the end of that conversation, we ended up arranging an in-person meeting where Scott and I went to Twitter HQ to actually meet Elon. I think this was day two of Elon having brought the sink in. So, we had this really bizarre, wild, but really fun experience of walking into Twitter HQ, and in my case, walking back to Twitter HQ for the first time after having been fired, which was a very strange experience for me, and we walked into the building.
I was scurried through the back door because I didn’t want to make a scene and make it … There was a lot of rumors around is Kayvon coming back, and I just wanted to avoid all of that. So, it was just a very weird experience of being scurried through the elevator and through the back door and go to this massive conference room, which we had on the second floor of the 110th building.
In that massive conference room, it was me, Scott, Elon, and then at the very, very end of the room, Walter Isaacson, who by the way, I had a hard time. I knew I recognized. I’d never met Walter in person, but I was like, “Is that Walter Isaacson?” But he said nothing the entire time, and we had probably a two-hour conversation talking about the past, the future of Twitter, the good, the bad, the ugly. At the very end of the conversation, Walter came up and introduced himself and was like, “Hi, I’m Walter. Can I get your information just in case I need to ask any follow-up questions?” And I was like, “Oh, shit. I guess that whole conversation was on the record. I don’t know.”
So, it was a very surreal experience for a bunch of reasons, including just being weird for me since I was very conflicted about coming back to Twitter, even physically in the office. But I must say it was really fun. It was fun talking to someone. Obviously Elon, I’d never met him before, and he’s one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. So, that was exciting to go into that meeting. Also, I had been spending so much time dreaming about Twitter and trying to mold Twitter in a direction that I thought was compelling and working with a team of people to do that, and to meet someone who also had a similar ambition, but obviously, in different ways … He had his own dream for Twitter … but it was really bizarre and unique and surreal seeing that glimmer in someone else who was like, “Yeah, I also just bought this thing, so I can actually do whatever the Hell I want. And by the way, here’s some crazy dreams I have for doing it.”
It was just a really … As someone who had had their own dreams for the product, witnessing that it was really unusual and cool. I think that’s probably what Scott meant when he said, “You should ask Kayvon about that,” was that I think we both kind of recognized that something’s about to happen here. Obviously, you have this very public spectacle of someone essentially having a takeover of a public company, but all of that stuff aside, also, you could tell Elon was scheming and cooking up, “What am I going to do with this?” It was cool to see that.
How to Change Product Culture
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s an amazing story. I love the Walter Isaacson component of it. Do you feel like you made a dent on his approach and way of thinking? Obviously, he made a lot of big radical changes. Do you feel like you made a dent in his view of where Twitter should go?
Emerging From the Mud
Kayvon Beykpour: I don’t know. I certainly don’t think I’ve made any impression on how he should run the company. I think that’s Elon’s going to Elon in his way, and I think he certainly has had some radical moves in terms of how he’s running the company, the decisions he made, how many people he let go, how the company is structured, the culture, and all that stuff is like … We didn’t even talk about that stuff.
I think what we spent time talking about is I shared my perspective with him of people I thought who were exceptional, who were at the company, and if I was in his shoes, who I would spend time with and embrace. Most of the people that I mentioned are still there, which is awesome, and they seem to be A, empowered, which is great, and B, having fun, which is awesome. So, hopefully, that stuff is useful.
We spent a bunch of time brainstorming products, and I had my set of projects that I was very passionate about because we’d given birth to them. I think a bunch of those projects, it seems like Twitter’s still investing in and putting a lot of energy behind like Community Notes, which at the time was called Birdwatch. But I always felt really bullish on that being the future of essentially how content is moderated on Twitter, just because it was very clear that the way we were handling content moderation among many other flaws just wasn’t scalable.
Spaces and Communities and the Creator Program of helping people make money on the platform, those are projects that we started over the year-ish prior to Elon taking over. My hope, having left the company and having had a new leader come in, was that those things would be given more oxygen. It’s been awesome to see that those have been continuing to grow and be molded in different directions. Yeah, I think in that sense, I hope that our brainstorm was useful, but for all I know he doesn’t even remember the conversation.
Lenny Rachitsky: I freaking love Community Notes. It’s such an amazing product. Let me ask two more dramatic-oriented Elon Twitter questions just to get these out of the way. The first is you said you were fired. I don’t know if you’ve shared that publicly. People always wondered, I think, what happened. I know you tweeted during your pat leave, “I’m leaving Twitter,” and no one really knows the story as far as I know. What actually went on there?
Pros and Cons of Core Refinement
Kayvon Beykpour: It was weird, to say the least. Honestly, it took me some time to come to peace with it because it was frustrating and surprising. I guess the story of what happened starts with Jack resigning. Jack resigned in … It was like November of 2021 at the end of the year. The board chose Parag to be the CEO of the company, and I’ve had a long relationship with Parag. I respect him, but I had mixed feelings about that.
To his credit, Parag very quickly addressed one of the biggest things that I was really frustrated about in the last three years essentially of my time at Twitter. One of my biggest points of feedback and points of consternation was the structure of the company in that we had a functional organizational model, meaning we had a head of consumer product, me, we had a head of revenue product, Bruce, we had a head of engineering, we had a head of design, we had head research. It was a functionally run organization.
And the combination of that model and the type of leader that Jack was wasn’t working in my view. I think if you’re going to have a functional organization, you need to have a GM or a CEO who’s extremely leaned-in to tiebreak and resolve conflict and make sure the team is moving quickly. And Jack, for all of his amazing qualities, just wasn’t operating that way, and so you had a group of highly opinionated people that often disagreed and would create either the need for consensus or deadlock. That just was driving a lot of people crazy, including me, and I think it really held us back from living up to Twitter’s potential.
Anyway, all of that was super frustrating for me, and the combination of that and a dramatic change in leadership with Jack leaving and Parag coming in, I wasn’t feeling too stoked. Parag to his credit, when he became CEO, quickly changed that and shifted the company to be a GM structure. And he promoted me to being the GM of consumers. So, for the prior three-ish years, having been responsible for growing Twitter’s consumer product, I was only responsible for the product management team. I didn’t have engineering or design, and that honestly was difficult. It’s very difficult to change culture with one hand tied behind your back.
Still no regrets. Had a lot of fun. I think we had some impact, but it was frustrating. So, Parag changed that. The irony of this, by the way, is he was one of the biggest proponents of the functional structure. When he became a CEO, he changed the structure, promoted me to be the GM of consumer, and I was, at that point, one month … This is one month before I went on pat leave because my daughter was due.
So, I went into my paternity leave being like, “All right, I’m going to give this a shot. We’ll see. We’ll see how this goes,” as Parag addressed the biggest frustration that I had with the company and how it was being run. So, I had some trepidations but went into my pat leave feeling optimistic. Mind you, this was all before Elon was even part of the picture. He had not become a board member. There was no news about him having beef with the executive team or for that matter, trying to buy the company.
So, I went on pat leave maybe a week and a half before our daughter’s due date. Three weeks goes by. In that three weeks, Elon joins the board, leaves the board, makes an offer, has a short dramatic feud about whether that goes through. And also during that time, my daughter was born. Some drama at the hospital for us, but a week afterwards, we come home. Mom’s healthy. Daughter’s healthy.
The day after we get home from the hospital, Parag called me and said that he was letting me go and that he was taking the team in a different direction. That night, Twitter signed a term sheet with Elon to sell the company. So, a lot happened in a very short period of time, and the reason that Parag gave is exactly what I shared publicly, which was that he wanted to take the team in a different direction. The only other thing he said is that given that new direction, he thinks that the things that I’m good at, Twitter doesn’t need anymore. And the things that Twitter needs are not particularly in my skill set or in my interest.
He wasn’t particularly expressive about what that direction was, but that was the reason he gave me. That was a huge bummer for me for a bunch of reasons. One, I love the company. I love the product, and also it just sucks to leave not on your own terms. And two, I was just confused. The timing was very frustrating and confusing for me, not least of which because I had just come home from the hospital while on paternity leave. But also because at that time, especially the fact that Elon was buying the company was …
Well, I was conflicted, honestly. I was very excited because Elon is someone that I looked up to immensely, and you just look at the things that he’s achieved in the world and you can’t help but be inspired by that. And two, Twitter for all of, I think, the impact and progress that we had made, had a lot of challenges associated with its governance and the fact that it was constantly vulnerable as a public company. So, there’s just always this drama associated with Twitter as a public company, even a private company before that, that made it extremely hard as a builder to get shit done and have the product live up to its potential.
One of the benefits of this particular takeover was that Elon offered a path towards solving all of that. It was like, “Oh, cool, now you’ve got one owner who happens to be, by the way, extremely opinionated about the product and a voracious consumer and creator of the product.” I think there was an incredible opportunity in that that now you have this organization and this product and this incredible ecosystem that can be devoid of all the political bullshit associated with being a public company. Now, it has this conduit to just living up to its potential.
So, it was a bummer to be removed from that, I suppose, without having any agency myself. That was very a long-winded answer to your question, but that’s what happened towards the end there. Like I said at the beginning, it took me a while to come to terms with it and to be at peace with it. I did eventually. Listen, there’s a huge silver lining of I spent the first year of my daughter’s life with her and my family. My wife Sarah had left Twitter eight months prior to me leaving, and so when’s the next time we could all be together and have time and space to just enjoy each other and our new family, and frankly, to avoid a lot of the drama that ended up ensuing that not a lot of people could have predicted? The deal was on. The deal was off. It is just a whole lot of drama that I got to miss, which is the silver lining.
Then it was confusing there for a bit because when Elon did end up buying the company, in that conversation that I had with him, it was definitely … I was conflicted about do I want to maybe spend some time working on this still? Elon was very cool about … He actually used this phrase at the end of our conversation, which I still find hilarious. He was just like, “Do you want to just come? You seem like you care about the product, and you don’t have dumb ideas. Do you want to come hang out?” And I was like, “What would my job be?” And he was like, “Don’t know, just hang out, and you can swipe left or swipe right.” He used the swipe right, swipe left Tinder metaphor, and I thought that was hilarious coming from him.
Lenny Rachitsky: For ideas that come up just like, “Here, I have this idea [inaudible 00:19:41]?
Listening to User Voices
Kayvon Beykpour: No, like swipe right on whether you want to be here or swipe … He’s like, “We don’t have to make this a thing. Just do you want to hang out and work on the product with us?”
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s so funny.
Sacred No-Go Zones as Roadmap
Kayvon Beykpour: So, I ended up deciding that actually, I’m just ready. I’m ready to move on. I spent enough time at this company, at this product trying to shape it into something that I was passionate about. I think it’s someone else’s turn, and especially Elon. If you buy it’s your turn. You can do whatever you want with it.
So, that was conflicting for a bit, but I would say towards the end of the year, it was pretty clear in my mind that I was ready to move on and start thinking about other problems.
Lenny Rachitsky: What I think about is there’s always this tension being a PM at a company with a very strong-minded, product-oriented founder, and I feel like you would’ve been in the epitome worst possible situation there, where you’re a product leader between Elon and the rest of org. So, I think it probably would not have worked out.
Balancing Portfolio and Core Refinement
Kayvon Beykpour: I’m not sure I would’ve been able to articulate it as succinctly as you did just now, but I think that is the feeling that I had that it’s not my place anymore. I don’t have a canvas to try and exert my dreams on this place. I think Elon took that mantle, and I’m excited to see what he going to do with it is the feeling I had.
Storytelling and Recruiting Founders
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah. You’ve touched on this. You’re known for at Twitter someone that turned the culture of the product team and Twitter in general from a very stagnant, nothing-is-changing product to shipping all the time, all kinds of stuff. So, here’s a list of stuff that I’ve gathered your team shipped while you were there. Twitter Blue, which is I think called Premium now, Spaces, Super Follows, Communities, newsletters, topics, fleets, being able to see Instagram photos in line, testing reactions, edge-to-edge photos, tons of UX improvements, and obviously, live video. What did you learn about how to change a product culture from a company that’s very risk-averse and essentially just not shipping a lot to taking big, bold bets and becoming a lot more open to new stuff?
Cultural Change and Team Alignment
Kayvon Beykpour: Trying to drive culture change is both one of the most challenging things and rewarding things. For the first year of my role … There was a chapter of my time at Twitter, maybe just to backup, that was just leading Periscope. In that first chapter of maybe two years, I was not really involved with Twitter stuff all that much. That started to change when we really tried integrating Periscope with Twitter, but chapter two of my time at Twitter was when I became the head of product. That first year of being the head of product was one of the most difficult of my career not because the work was difficult, but because it was so politically and bureaucratically exhausting to try and change culture in a way that just there wasn’t alignment around.
It comes back to the point I was making earlier around the organization of the company was functional, and so it is one thing for me to have some ideas and a plan and a strategy that I felt compelling. But when you have to essentially drive consensus amongst your peers across the other functions, that’s a different game. That’s not execution. That’s politics and consensus building. I both can’t stand that stuff, but I think … This is going to sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but good enough at it and I have enough patience at it that I invested the time and the energy. I think a less patient person wouldn’t have bothered and would’ve thrown their hands up.
I think honestly, a lot of it just comes down to I had practice. At my first company that I started in college with one of my best friends, Joe, who I ended up co-founding Periscope with, we got acquired by a big, public, ad tech company called Blackboard, and we were 19 at the time. We got thrown into a public … I was a senior executive at a public company that was not your quintessential tech company. It was even more difficult to get things done. So, through the four years I spent there, I learned a lot about how to navigate that type of environment.
It all came coming back when I was given the product role at Twitter. That first year of changing culture was like-
… product role at Twitter. That first year of changing culture was like walking through mud, and it was really difficult. But I think when we started building that alignment and building excitement that like, oh, actually maybe we should be taking some bigger swings, and when we started seeing through the execution against some of those plans, I think it ended up, it got easier and easier. It becomes addicting. I think people end up feeling like, oh wow, maybe these sacred cows we had didn’t need to be so sacred.
And so I think after that first year, it became a lot more fun. It was still difficult, but it felt like we were all swimming in the same direction a lot more. But I think my takeaway there is you can’t change culture without having alignment from the top. It’s difficult to change culture when you have a pocket of a company trying to advocate for change.
So I think we got there in the end. We didn’t move as much urgency as I think we drove. We were not fast enough, we were not bold enough. I was consistently dissatisfied with what I was achieving and what our team was achieving. But I think we did make a change. Twitter was an organization that had a lot of sacred cows and became very [inaudible 00:25:24] in its ways. Literally the first two years I was at the company, the stated product strategy for Twitter was refine the core. It was like, we’re not making any big bets here, team. Our goal is to keep turning the knobs that are working.
And listen, as much as I was kind of throwing stones from the sidelines through that period when I was in Periscope land in our separate office a few blocks away from the mothership, that focus actually did help the company for some period. The reason why Twitter went from stagnant to declining DAU growth to growing DAU again is because they refined the core. This is when they went from the reverse chronological timeline to the ranked timeline, and the year after that was a lot of knob turning. It was like, how do we make these recommendations better? How do we make our push notifications more relevant?
Now, that is not an inspiring product strategy. That does not result in the product feeling materially different or adding new capabilities, but it did return the company to user growth. And I think that the fact that it did actually calcified the organization’s reticence to take any risky bets even more. So it was a very interesting predicament because when I got into the role, the goal wasn’t to change that progress. We wanted to continue reaping the benefits of refining the things about the product that were working really well. What we wanted to change was a lack of ambition, the lack of creativity, the lack of customers feeling that the product was changed at all.
Because you would hear people, I mean, one of the beautiful things about working on Twitter as a product is that you have literally customers being injected into your veins. Every single day, whatever you change about a product or whatever you don’t change, they’re telling you what they love and what they hate. And it is both exhausting and exhilarating. It is one of the most ridiculous luxuries of product development, is working on a product that many people use and therefore you get that much feedback around.
And it was a very common thing for us to hear people say, “What are you all doing over there? The product hasn’t changed in eight years.” And that was horrible to hear, and I felt it too, as a critic on the sidelines, as a user who wasn’t an employee who eventually became an employee, I had the same feedback. And so that was my mission. I was like, I am somehow ridiculously in this fortunate position that I’ve been entrusted some responsibility here. I might flame out completely, but hell if I don’t try. And so that was both fun and exhausting, like I said.
But it was as simple as starting with we are voracious users of the product ourselves, and if we aren’t, by the way, that’s its own problem. I think that in order to build something wonderful, you have to be a customer of the product. And sure, I’m sure you could point to businesses and products where that’s not the case, and I’m sure there’s a flaw in that philosophy somewhere, but I’ve always believed that one of the best ways to build products is to be a customer yourself and to find your own pain points and to build a product that you want to use. And so that’s actually not that hard to do if you’re a user of Twitter and you can think critically. It was ripe with opportunity. And so it was actually really fun and amazing to be able to craft a plan that started to take a swing at some of these things.
And the other thing I’ll add to this is that there were so many sacred cows at Twitter that the sacred cows are their own roadmap. It’s like a built-in free roadmap of like, all right, what are all the things that you think we’re not allowed to change? Let’s start there. Everything from moving from reverse chron to a ranked feed, that was a sacred cow. Text and 140 characters, that’s a sacred cow. Not letting anyone control any tweets that they see on the platform. The notion of Lenny owning his reply space was anathema at Twitter.
It’s just like if a tweet gets, if you get an at mention and you don’t like it or it’s abusive, we’re not touching that. We can’t annotate tweets with [inaudible 00:29:30], all that stuff, those are all sacred cows. And the process of starting to address those one by one reveals a lot of the cultural hesitations that existed.
So yeah, I’ll never forget one of the first features, and this is such a tiny feature that we worked on after I started the role, we were building this feature called hide replies. It still exists in the product today. If someone replies to one of your tweets, in the tweet details area as a reply to one of your conversations, before you had no ability, the only way you could address unwanted content was reporting it. So that was like Twitter acting as policemen and policewoman, completely unscalable and challenging, especially in the context of someone replying to one of your tweets.
And so we wanted to add a feature that let you hide a reply to one of your tweets, and it’s not impacting what people say. It’s not impacting free speech in the sense of you can still broadcast whatever you want, but if you’re going to come into my reply space and say some shit that I don’t want to see in my feed, I should be able to hide that. Tweet what you want, but don’t at mention. You can’t scream in my face basically.
And I remember we had a PM on our team who was leading this feature who a few weeks into this project mentioned to me that she had had a conversation with someone on the engineering team that told them, “Don’t work on this feature. This is bad for your career. This is not going to launch, and you don’t want to work on this. You don’t want to be seen as having worked on this.” Because it was so kind of anathema to we can’t let people hide replies to their tweets. And I just remember hearing that and my blood was boiling. That is the most, it was such an interesting representation of the culture, not just hesitation to try new things, which by the way, that product might’ve failed. And that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
But to go so far as to dissuade someone else who was excited about experimenting with a hypothesis to see if it could help customers on the platform and telling them, “Don’t work on this. It’s bad for your career.” As a microcosm for some of the cultural challenge we had around trying big, bold bets, which by the way, this wasn’t even a big, bold bet. It was such an innocuous thing to try. But there was a lot of that and it made it very difficult without some sheer force of will and also just a lot of effort. So there was a lot of that.
Lenny Rachitsky: Kayvon, there’s fractals of stories that I could infinitely follow. There’s so much interesting stuff here. One that just stands out is this idea of the sacred cows become your future roadmap. It’s like flipping it from here’s the thing that we’re all afraid of. No, this is not what we should be doing. I think that’s really interesting and could be a lesson to people.
The other is just, I love this point you made about the growth was most accelerant when you’re just focusing on the core, that’s what actually … Like optimize, people bash on optimizing the existing experience and just micro-optimizing, improving, versus trying to take all these big, bold bets and experiments. Obviously, that’s also valuable. But I think it’s really interesting that that’s what reignited growth and was responsible for growth for a while.
Acqui-hiring as a Culture Accelerator
Kayvon Beykpour: And continue to be, by the way. One of the lines that we had to maneuver was creating a portfolio of bets where some of them were not speculative at all. We knew that if we continue to invest in ML and getting better with recommendations in the main feed and through notifications and things like improving the onboarding flow, it was rife with opportunity.
You’d have really dumb things happen. We would learn. There was one just bizarre and incredible meeting we had where we finally had got more rigorous around instrumenting our onboarding flow. And we found that in a couple countries, like we had a bug with our SMS verification flow where we wanted to verify users who were signing up with a phone number and our telco integration to send SMS verification cards just wasn’t working. And so a huge percentage of people signing up in the UAE and other countries just couldn’t use Twitter.
And so of course at the scale that we were operating in with hundreds of millions of users, you need to be able to refine the basic building blocks of the product, and that’s going to lead to reliable growth. But we wanted to balance that with a portfolio of other bets and product improvements that would materially add new capabilities. And that was a balance that I don’t think existed. And by the way, I don’t think we nailed it either under my tenure, but it was the driving force of what I wanted to achieve, was to create a better balance that would result in evolving the product and introducing new capabilities. And so that’s what we tried to do.
Lenny Rachitsky: In terms of what actually helped turn things around, things that I kind of gathered from what you shared so far, one is just building a little momentum, having some quick wins of new products that people start to get excited about. So creating more excitement down the, oh wow, we can actually try new things. There’s also, it felt like there’s a sense of trust that you built with Jack and execs of just like, okay, we can actually trust this team.
Also, it feels like because growth started up, there’s probably a sense of like, okay, we can try some new crazy ideas. It feels like another part of your strategy was [inaudible 00:34:56] hires and bringing in these entrepreneurial folks to take the lead on some of these big ideas. Can you talk about that? Was that something you actively thought about and was that a big part of the impact there?
Hiring the Right Over the Available
Kayvon Beykpour: Totally. Yeah. So I think a couple things. One, the only thing I’d add to what you said in terms of the ingredients, it was also just storytelling and just repetitive storytelling around this is the vision, these are the bets we’re making. Here’s why. And you can’t just tell that story once. I’m talking internally, by the way. There’s a whole other component of this, which is externally how do you tell, especially for a product like Twitter where it’s a consumer product that hundreds of millions of people are using, and you have many constituents, you have users, you have advertisers. And so it was very important for us to tell the story of here’s what we’re doing and why. Here’s why you should believe in us. And by the way, give us all your constructive criticism too, because we’re listening and we’re going to build that into … So that storytelling was really, really important.
And this is oversimplifying the world, but there’s two types of internal team members. There are people who hear that story, who have been a part of the organization who’s been slow, or maybe they’ve been outside the company as a user of Twitter, and they’re like, I’d never really want to work there because it doesn’t seem like a particularly ambitious product company. And one of two things happens when you hear that story. Either you’re inspired and you’re like, yeah, we can finally take a swing at making this product better. And maybe I wasn’t interested in working in this company before, but I mean, this is an iconic product, and to have an opportunity to reshape it is really exciting. Or again, oversimplified world, but there are people who are very pessimistic and maybe aren’t excited by that vision. Let’s just stick to what we know works. We’re not going to take any big swings. That’s a waste of time.
I think one of the really important things about driving cultural change at the leadership level is you’ve got to identify whether someone’s on the wagon or off the wagon and either quickly convince them to get on the wagon or if they’re not on the wagon, they shouldn’t be there. And that’s something that we were terrible at, and we didn’t have the organizational structure to be able to enact that.
Framework Traps: Jobs-to-be-Done and OKRs
Lenny Rachitsky: The wagon is they’re excited and bought into this vision and want this to happen?
Metrics vs. Customer Benefit
Kayvon Beykpour: Correct, and contribute towards it. And off the wagon is like you’re not at the company. And we didn’t have an organizational structure that could allow for that, nor frankly, the fortitude. I include myself in this. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about how to make that determination. So I think we were terrible at that. And Elon is the whatever, if that’s a spectrum, Elon is the opposite spectrum of that. His tolerance for people who are not aligned and his tolerance for low performance is famously extremely low. And I think it’s one of the things that when I say A/B test, it’s very interesting to see the extreme to which he has operated.
And I think I’ve learned a ton around, we didn’t have the organizational structure nor the fortitude to be swifter, and that made cultural change way slower. We still were able to change the culture, not as much as we should have, and certainly not as quickly as we should have or efficiently as we should have. Because by the way, a lot of high performers who are aligned with that desire to change and build, they don’t have the, there’s not like an equal distribution of patients. If you’re extremely talented and you’re dealing with organizational shit, you’re going to go find someplace else that lets you do your craft and have impact. So it’s very difficult.
But anyway, going to your question, one of the things we found that was a really effective way of accelerating cultural change and also helping drive some of these product initiatives that were particularly speculative was doing small acquires. And really the benefit of that was, A, you bring in a founder type who is an entrepreneur, who drives urgency, who has ambition, who’s ideally savvy enough to also work in the context of a large organization, which sometimes is a totally different skillset. I mean, it is a totally different skillset. And a lot of our most ambitious bets that were the riskiest and most misaligned with how the product worked or there was no easy staff to build on top of, a lot of those bets were driven by founders who we basically acquired and said, “Here, you are going to run this.”
And they believed in it. They were able to rally a team around them, and it’s all the attributes of a startup, but with the canvas of a product that hundreds of millions of people use and more resources. So Spaces, Communities, Community Notes, called Birdwatch back then, these were all projects driven by … Fleets, as well. These were all projects that were run by small teams led by entrepreneurs who we acquired, like Keith Coleman runs Community Notes, last Birdwatch. He actually was my predecessor. We acquired his company so that he could be the head of product. And then when he moved on from that role, he was extremely passionate about this idea of crowdsource moderation and letting people annotate misleading content on the platform without Twitter acting as a policeman.
And that was a very speculative bet that by the way, a lot of people thought, most people thought was a terrible idea. We gave Keith a little silo to go build this vision, and then it was our job to make sure that bet didn’t get suffocated in the context of a big organization that would otherwise have not had patience for it.
All of the community effort or the creator efforts started with Super Follows and tipping, and all these things were led by Esther Crawford, whose company we acquired and who had her own couple of viral moments with the Elon acquisition. But she’s a phenomenal leader who, again, is a perfect example of balancing that entrepreneurial startup muscle with the savviness to be able to get things done at a large organization. Fleets was run by Mo Oladam, who’s an entrepreneur, and Communities has gone through a few iterations obviously and still is in the product, but John Barnett and a team of people who we acquired from Chroma Labs.
So I think that that story of acquiring hungry, ambitious founders and giving them responsibility and latitude is a success story of Twitter’s. I mean, I’m a beneficiary of such a bet as well. My company Periscope was acquired, and I was given the responsibility to eventually lead the product team. So I feel like that we ended up realizing, both through the company’s history and through learning, that this is actually a very effective way to drive cultural change and to deliver impact because you need a special type of person to be able to both operate within the existing structure and change the structure, to know when to use the system and to know when to fuck the system.
And I feel like my whole life has benefited from other people taking bets on me like that, to the point that even I was like, “Really? You sure you want to?” And so I think I’ve enjoyed trying to pass the buck and do that for other people, and I’ve never regretted it. You always, taking a bet on people and especially throwing them in a deep end, which on paper they may be unqualified for, I think is one of the best ways of driving change. And by the way, supporting growth, you’ve learned so much more when you’re thrown into the deep end than in other contexts. And so I think it’s fantastic, it’s an expensive strategy if you’re going to go buy a bunch of companies, but it’s a great strategy for the situation that we found ourselves in at Twitter.
Lenny Rachitsky: It feels like every big bet was one of these companies from the list that you just shared, and I’m glad you shared Periscope, obviously. That’s a great example, too. I guess maybe just a follow-up question here, is there anything you learned about how to do this well? I know you talked about maybe creating a little silo for the team, because so many companies acquire and acquihire and they just go nowhere.
So I guess just a two-part question, just like what are some tips for how to do this well at a company? And then, two, you also, we were talking offline about this previously and I think it’s a really interesting point, that a lot of companies staff based on who’s available versus who is right for the role, and let’s wait until that person is there for us to bet on this. Can you just talk about lessons there?
From Swish to Product Judgment
Kayvon Beykpour: That last one is a huge pet peeve of mine that I feel like we learned the hard way, and particularly it’s a common pattern I think in highly functional organizations where you have different people making decisions on how to staff projects, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But I think in the situations, in the situation we found ourselves in where we had this sort of cultural evolution that we were going through where some people just didn’t agree with the things that we were prioritizing, they were begrudgingly going along with it, but you would end up in a situation where the combination of that sort of cultural shift and strategy and the fact that the way teams were being staffed was not, there’s ultimately no single decision maker other than the CEO and Jack is not going to get in the weeds and debate a staffing decision on the team, resulted in a situation where oftentimes we’d have projects, like the one I mentioned about hiding replies, where there wasn’t even an agreement on the team about whether this was a good idea and whether this is worth trying or how to do it.
And imagine, it’s hard enough to build something from nothing. It’s even harder if the team doesn’t believe in it. This is to the point of just being toxic. The startup would never succeed if all the people who are working on that startup aren’t to the point of being perhaps irrational obsessed with that idea. And still willing to see truth, you need to be able to see whether the thing is working or not, but if you don’t believe it in the first place, I’m not betting on that succeeding.
And so this was common, and sometimes not as extreme as the examples that I mentioned, but I think one of the lessons I learned, and it’s quite intuitive actually, is you need to staff projects with the team of people that are well equipped from a skillset standpoint, but more importantly have an obsession with the idea they want to pursue. It’s going to make them work harder, it’s going to make them be more creative. It’s going to make them have the sufficient level of ambition and desire to will this thing into existence. Because every project, whether big or small, there is an element of you need to will this thing into existence because it’s hard. The only way you’re going to get through that pain is by having that desire, and I think a very easy cheat code for an organization to employ is to say, if you’re going to work on something, especially if it’s speculative or risky, staff it with a set of people who believe in it and really want to learn whether this solves a customer problem or not. Because if you don’t have that ingredient, it’s going to drag everyone down and it’s just not going to be as successful.
Lenny Rachitsky:
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Frameworks vs. Bold Bets
Kayvon Beykpour: I’ve only seen one interview on your show that covers this. Sriram was particularly spicy when he talked about jobs-to-be-done, which is unsurprising because. I spent a lot of time talking to Sriram about jobs-to-be-done. I mean, I guess I’ll just start by saying I was not a fan of how we leveraged jobs-to-be-done at Twitter. I thought it was exhausting and not particularly helpful, and so it’s a particularly sore subject for me because I was sort of charged with defending it and rolling it out. It’s hard to do that when you don’t really believe in something. But…
It’s hard to do that when you don’t really believe in something, but to me the critique is less about Jobs-to-be-Done though there are many critiques of it and more about every framework at its limit is followed to such a religious extent it’s just unhelpful. You need to have nuance in how you leverage these frameworks. Otherwise, you lose the forest through the trees and you end up following a process for the sake of following a process. And that’s what happened with Jobs-to-be-Done. So I think that’s my real critique of it. It’s not the… I mean listen, the premise of Jobs-to-be-Done and my most charitable take on Jobs-to-be-Done, which is actually useful is that it forces you to look at things through the lens of customers and understanding what their needs are and understanding what their true alternatives are outside of the narrow lens of your product.
And I think that’s just healthy product thinking. You don’t need a framework called Jobs-to-be-Done. You don’t need to think about milkshakes in order to be able to do that. It’s like you could employ common sense or you could leverage something like Jobs-to-be-Done, to be able to force your mind to think of things through that lens. So I think that’s my charitable view on what Jobs-to-be-Done can help you do, but as a framework into and of itself as a sole governing principle of what to build, it’s just not useful.
By the way, in the same way as, and I think Twitter had this problem as well prior to our detour around Jobs-to-be-Done, if the only way the organization is trained to think about what to build and what not to build is OKRs, it’s equally unhelpful at the limit because sure, you can have a good sense of what you should build to drive metrics, but by the way, you might be focusing on the wrong metrics or that might not help you have the right balance of things to build. That might not help you see when the things that you’re building are actually hostile to customers.
So just as an interesting example, the thing that I remember about your interview with Shriram, if I’m not mistaken, I think he mentioned, and I love Shriram, I’d be happy to debate him about this on his podcast, but he mentioned one of the examples I think was the Amazon. When you get order confirmation from Amazon, they intentionally bury the order details. You have to click the link and authenticate to go see what you ordered. I don’t give two shits what metrics that drive for Amazon. That is one of the most customer hostile things I experience in my daily life. I order a lot of things from Amazon. I hate the fact that I can’t search my email to see what I ordered. And so I think the problem with these frameworks is that you lose nuance and ultimately, and this is where I agree with Shriram, he actually mentioned this on your podcast as well, you need to be able to make trade-off decisions that balance what’s right for the organization and what’s right for the customer.
And sometimes based on how you devise your frameworks, your metrics aren’t actually aligned with the customer’s benefit. Like the Amazon example, and we had many famous examples in Twitter’s history, which were the same. One of our key metrics that we always optimized Shriram growing was DAU and we had obviously the rank timeline did wonders for growing DAU and it was a great experience for many customers, but we often had features that would not lead to a good customer experience and the team would just be blind towards leaving hostile customer experiences in place because it was good for metrics and aggregate. And the famous example of this is we had this toggle, which we called Swish very affectionately, but it was like a sparkle icon.
Before you could switch between the rank timeline and the following, that reverse chronological timeline, which is still in the product right now, it was just the toggle. You would press a button and it would turn your feed reverse chron, which very few people use as a percentage of our users. But you had power users who really cared about having a reverse chronological timeline and we took so many baby steps on the evolution of this product. The very first baby step was you press the toggle, it turns you to reverse chron and then we would pull the rug out from underneath you and make the experience go back to the rank timeline after, I don’t know, 24 hours or something like that.
The Periscope Story
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh, wow.
Periscope Beta and the Kobe Bryant Story
Kayvon Beykpour: And the reason that the team felt strongly about keeping it this way is it was better for metrics. Why? Even if Lenny wants a reverse chron feed, we knew that he would spend more time in the app if we put them in the rank timeline and this was the number of debates that we had about this because the team understandably was like, “This is good for metrics”, but at the same time you’d have customers being like, “I fucking hate this experience. I’m telling you I want reverse chron. Stop randomly changing it for me.”
Instagram has I think gone through their own struggles with this as well. They tiptoed their way towards ultimately giving people control and the difficulty in making product decisions comes down ultimately to making these trade-off decisions and you have to look at things through the lens of the customer. You have to balance that with what’s driving the right business outcomes. And sometimes those things are aligned and sometimes they’re not, and the answer isn’t any one framework. Sometimes it’s just good old-fashioned judgment and product taste. And so that’s where my take is different. I don’t think the issue is Jobs-to-be-Done, although I’m not the biggest fan of Jobs-to-be-Done. The issue is just having the right nuance and ultimately the right leadership to be able to weigh these things and see when your frameworks are not actually helping you make the right decisions.
Lenny Rachitsky: I think that’s really important advice and I love hearing the details if I actually think about this stuff. Actually finding this balance is very hard in practice. I’m curious if there’s something you could recommend or have learned about how to know when you’ve gone too far with a framework like signs like you have implemented this to religiously and maybe you should be thinking a little more broadly.
Lessons From Periscope’s Failure
Kayvon Beykpour: There’s two, I think, simple and obvious ones. One is if the result of your framework is that subjectively bad decisions are being made, then something’s got to change. Assuming the person who’s making this assessment has good product taste, which is in of itself subjective obviously, but my personal view on this would be in the role that I had, if I saw that our organization was being incentivized to make decisions that to some non-trivial degree of the time were just bad decisions that I don’t like as a user, I can’t stand by as a user or builder, then something’s got to change. Either bad judgment was made in following the process or the process was wrong, or if that framework, it didn’t even lead to the right debates, then that’s how you know. Either you have an incentive problem but the team did what they were incentivized to do or that there was bad judgment and that’s a different problem obviously.
But I think in the situation we found ourselves in where the team was again understandably hyper focused on driving DAU because that was the strategy for so long. It left so little room for even taking ambitious bets that in the short term wouldn’t drive DAU, like some of our bets that I still to this day believe in hurt DAU in the short term, but you had to squint and believe over time would improve some metric DAU or otherwise, like a product like Spaces. In order for Spaces to be actually used, you needed to make sure that when Lenny starts a Space that people would join. And how do you get people to join Lenny space when they’re used to having an asynchronous feed of tweets? Well, you can send push notifications, you can occupy really trying real estate at the top of the app that lets people know, “Hey, Lenny’s live right now. He’s in a space, there’s people here, come join.”
Guess what happens when you put a bar at the top of the app that tells people when they’re live? You move tweets down, you move ads down, DAU goes down, revenue goes down. And so if you have an organization that’s just hyper focused on the thing that matters is driving DAU quarter over quarter, then that doesn’t leave enough room for nuance to accommodate new speculative bets that might hurt one metric, but over time have other consequences that are positive and beneficial, like enabling an entire new vector of content creation and conversation on the platform. I guess the other answer to your question in terms of how do you know when the framework’s not serving you right? When you start imagining and planning for a bunch of bets that the organization then sees is disincentivized to make successful, then something’s got to change.
Either your strategy is just not the right strategy because it doesn’t abide by the frameworks or the framework needs to accommodate the fact that actually we’re going to try some things that in the short term either might not show up as blips on our DAU radar or are going to help some other metric that’s important. And so that took us some time to get, and we tried a variety of schemes to make that work. Community Notes, the project that I was mentioning Keith started, we intentionally structured that like a startup. It was literally like we made a seed bet on Keith and his team and we were like, don’t worry about the OKRs. We’re not going to judge you on the basis of your OKRs.
And there’s some pros and cons to that. A lot of our projects worked that way. Fleets started that way. Community Notes started that way and some other projects started more part of the core organization because they were so intertwined with how we were the nature of the product that it just made sense to… Separating it was going to do more harm than good. So you just have to figure out based on how execution is going, whether you’ve got the right framework and you’ve got to be willing to make adjustments when it’s not working.
Pressure From Competition
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s actually really helpful. The two that I’m taking away here is how often are you feeling bad about the features you’re shipping? Like they’re bad for users and you think they’re bad for you as a user potentially. And the other is it keeping you from taking big bold bets that don’t necessarily drive the metrics you’re focusing on. Okay, so before I let you go, I want to spend some time on Periscope. I don’t know if everybody knows the history and story of Periscope. Basically it was the biggest live video streaming platform in the world and I imagine inspired basically every other social network to build a live-streaming platform, Instagram live, Facebook, TikTok, obviously Twitter. So I want to spend a little time here and see what you learned and also just broadly consumer products, but first of all, I hear there’s a story with Kobe Bryant and Periscope about him using it in some form. Can you share that story?
Facebook’s Siege and Twitter’s Execution Struggles
Kayvon Beykpour: Before Periscope launched publicly, which it was in March of 2015, I want to say, we had a small beta that grew to maybe 500 people in total before we actually released the app publicly. And in that time while we were still in beta, I was trying to personally onboard every single user and I had a shtick that I did, which was we’d get them in the app and I would start a broadcast. We had a feature called Private Broadcasting that we basically built for this use case, which is someone joins, I’m going to go live and they’re going to join and I’m going to show them how the app works. And we were spending a lot of time in our office, so Kobe, Chris Saka actually invited Kobe to the beta.
And so Chris connected us and I did a private broadcast and Kobe joins and I was like, it was like 10:00 PM in the office and my routine was like, let me just walk around the office talking through the mechanics of Periscope through the lens of this demo of like, “Hey, let me show you around the office and here’s how the chat works and you can tap the screen to send hearts and if you want me to do something, go to the room over there, just type it in the chat and it’ll come up.”
And sort of showed one of the things that was unique about Periscope was it was a one to many broadcasts, but still low latency enough that it felt like a FaceTime so you could have the bidirectional communication between multiple viewers and a broadcaster. And so I was teaching him how to use the chat and showing him the office and he was playing with it and at one point through the end of the demo he posts a comment that was like, “Why the fuck would anyone want to watch someone else stream live?” And I remember my heart sank and I started fumbling through like, “Well, we think it’s cool.”
And before I could even get the words out, he posted like, “I’m just fucking with you, bro. This is incredible.” And I just remember it was just such a surreal moment that has, I’ll never forget, I mean Kobe’s a legend obviously, but to have him essentially troll me while also putting a point on what was cool about the experience and that was bidirectional and something he commented on to cause the broadcaster to change their behavior or change the experience, it was a really ironic full circle of showing off how the product works. But yeah, it’s one of my favorite early Periscope stories.
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh man, if I kept doing that, the manual onboarding, I’d be like, “Who’s coming?” Just always worried that someone else fancy is going to join. You never know who Chris Saka is getting, who he’s talking to. That’s amazing. Okay, so it’s been about 10 years, I believe, since you sold Periscope and about six years ish since you stopped running at as CEO, something like that. Now as I shared, every single platform basically is doing this. They added live video streaming. I’m curious if there’s anything you learned about just competing with these major platforms.
Internal Competition Tragedy: Vine and Periscope
Kayvon Beykpour: Well, there’s a few reasons why Periscope failed ultimately and why we shut down the app. Obviously Periscope, the technology and the mechanics still lives on because you can go live on Twitter, you can watch live broadcasts on Twitter, you can do audio conversations on Twitter and all of that is the Periscope stack. Still there, which is awesome that the legacy lives on in a different form factor. The reason that the Periscope app failed, it really comes down to a few things. One, we did not address the core problem that retention wasn’t good. Our poor retention was mapped by just an incredible surge in top-line user growth. And for Periscope, it was interesting because every month or two we would blow up in a new market that would just bring along an incredible surge in usage.
We blew up in the US, we then blew up in France. We then blew up in Turkey. We then blew up in the Middle East and you had these incredible surges, but underneath that surge, the core product had retention issues and we ultimately just did not, we didn’t spend enough time prioritizing, addressing those. And in fact, we shipped product changes that made those retention issues worse. Compounding that was the fact that one of the theses behind our acquisition, the Twitter acquisition, was that we would leverage the scale and the community and the product mechanics of Twitter to make the product grow faster and also become more durable. And I think that’s connects to one of the reasons why I feel like one of my learnings and one of the things that we knew but just failed to execute on was that I still am very skeptical that there can be a consumer product that is just focused on live video, like a generalized synchronous live video application for short form video I don’t think can be durable on its own. I think you have to surround that product with enough features and capabilities to allow a community and an ecosystem of users to be able to stay in touch with one another asynchronously and synchronously. This is why a lot of the other products that you mentioned that incorporate live capabilities and we’re shameless about copying. What was working about Periscope, they’re surrounded by a scaffolding that lets people also stay in touch with each other. Asynchronously Instagram, it’s an asynchronous product that has synchronous features like live. Same with TikTok obviously. And I think we were in this position where it was a live only product.
You are connecting with your audience and having a great time when you’re broadcasting live, but you’re not using the product to keep in touch with that community when you’re not broadcasting. How often throughout the day would you broadcast live from your phone? And mind you, this is different for products that are live. There are live consumer products that focus on a specific vertical like whatnot for selling or Twitch for gaming that have very different properties that make it more durable as a standalone live product. But Periscope was really in this consumer generalized live-streaming from a phone land, and I think it was just not durable to have the product be live only. And the time it took us to integrate with Twitter was way too long. And there was reasons for that that come down to just how distracted Twitter was with its own roadmap and refining the core and they just had other fish to fry basically.
And all of that leads us to competition because at some point Facebook woke up and decided this is cool and we need to go build this. And I obviously wasn’t there on the inside, but legend has it, Mark says, “Hey, you 300 people, stop what you’re doing. Go basically make live exist in our product as a first [inaudible 01:04:56] experience.”
The Cost of Integration and Respecting Competitors
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh, wow. I didn’t know that.
Kayvon Beykpour: And if you have that level of organizational effort put on building something that by the way, you don’t have to spend any time wondering what the product looks like, just go copy these features basically and make them work. And they did a lot of other savvy things too from a partnership standpoint. We had a lot of prominent streamers that ranged from influencer or just creative people that became known on Periscopes, all the way up to celebrities like Kevin Hart and others who were prolific Periscopers that Facebook just went and bought out.
They were just like, “Cool, we’re going to pay you a bunch of money to stream exclusively with us.” So they hit us from all sides. They had the entire company put their effort towards building live in a way that was cohesive in the core product first with Facebook and then Instagram and then also attacked it from the creator as well. And we were too slow and it was very painful to think about because it was like many other insights that Twitter had early. Twitter had the right insight, but botched the follow through. I’m not pointing fingers, I blame myself for that just as much, but there’s a pattern where Twitter is really great at spotting meaningful consumer behavior changes. They spotted Vine and acquired Vine, botched it, spotted Periscope, botched it, spotted Instagram by the way, before Facebook tried to buy Instagram, Twitter was trying to buy Instagram, and there are other reasons why that didn’t fall through, but it’s interesting to me, it’s one of the interesting aspects of Twitter’s history.
They were phenomenal at spotting meaningful changes in consumer social behavior, and actually putting their money where their mouth is in terms of trying to follow through on bringing those bets in-house, but then botching the execution. And so that was one of the things that was really motivating for me when I was in my role leading product of Twitter was I didn’t want to make that mistake and we didn’t end as up buying anything like Vine or Periscope and keeping the product. We obviously bought lots of small acquirers, but we did obviously have a bit of a story with Clubhouse that ended up with us building Spaces and competing with them. But anyway, that was a long, rambly story. Hopefully that answered your question.
Borrowing vs. Stealing Product Ideas
Lenny Rachitsky: Yeah, there’s so many. Again, it’s all these fractals of thought threads I want to follow and ask you about. Real quick on the Vine and Periscope point, I was going to ask this. Twitter, as you said, had the opportunity to win in video in so many ways. Vine was amazing, killing everyone, loved it, and then it’s fades away. I guess, you already shared a lot of challenges Twitter had with executing, shipping, Secret Cows, things like that. Is there anything specific with video? Was it just like, oh, this is not actually a huge priority and we’re just going to ride it for now and that’s why it didn’t work out? Or is there anything more that?
Kayvon Beykpour: No, it’s even more like pathetic than that ‘cause I think Twitter did believe in video, but it made this classical mistake that we also unfortunately recreated with Periscope, which was they had the insight around short-run video, they bought Vine. They then competed with Vine internally. So Vine was a separate organization within Twitter, separate office obviously in New York and then Twitter rather than integrated holistically into the product and pour gasoline on it, they built a native Twitter video feature that was a different stack, different team. It became what you think of as Twitter video now. It’s like the most simple active uploading video and all the professional video tools called Media Studio that let publishers like ESPN put content. All of that was basically built as a separate team, separate organization, separate product that was competing with Vine. You had two visions for short form video that were manifesting, and that’s the quickest way for things to get messy.
And of course the separate startup team is going to get, you’re not going to be able to make good on the vision of buying the company and integrating it in all the right ways if you compete with it internally. And we had a similar thing happen with Periscope. We were very focused on Periscope with separate organizations, separate structures, separate app. Periscope at the time primarily was focused on UGC live video. So user-generated content being streamed from a phone. Twitter then decided to get in the premium live video business very famously with acquiring rights to Thursday night football, the NFL. Guess what happened? We competed internally rather than have a cohesive technical and product vision for how to embrace live video across the spectrum of UGC and premium live video, Twitter put a separate team in charge of premium with a separate product, separate technology stack. And so you had two ways to manifest live video on the product. It was like UGC live video, which was awkwardly not even really implemented well with Twitter at the time. And then premium live video, which had totally different UX, total different team, totally different architecture. And by the way, the company put a tremendous amount of energy and investment in talking about Twitter being a place to watch the NFL. And meanwhile you had this burgeoning UGC ecosystem, so this was like we’re making the same mistake all over again. Now, luckily in the Periscope case with a lot of persistence and impatience and table pounding, we eventually fixed that mistake, but we wasted a tremendous amount of time. It was just a lot of headbutting in politics and eventually it took us a lot of time to technically reintegrate things together and now it’s clean and awesome, right?
ESPN can go live with behind the scenes content at Wimbledon and it’s the same technology stack and the same user experience, the powers, Lenny going live from his iPhone. But I think that was one of the reasons why it was an example of failed execution that ended up wasting time, resources and just leading to a subpar product experience that other companies I think have avoided making such mistakes. Facebook being a prime example, as frustrated, I am with them as a competitor for having really taken over the use case for live video. Got to hand it to them, brilliant execution, have a lot of respect for them. So we made sure to not make that mistake moving forward.
Periscope and Clubhouse’s Spiritual Connection
Lenny Rachitsky: I imagine there was reason for that. Partly I imagine this calcification of just like, we can’t get you done, we just need to start a new team and do this thing. I imagine it always comes from like, oh, this makes sense. And then you realize, okay, this was a terrible idea down the road.
Kayvon Beykpour: Yeah, it’s that and also leadership. When you don’t have unified leadership around these things, you end up making decisions that are in conflict with one another. They’re just need a highly opinionated person at the top that avoids that kind of messiness from a.
That kind of messiness from a product and engineering standpoint.
How to Build Great Consumer Products
Lenny Rachitsky: You mentioned Clubhouse, so I think what’s interesting is one, many people copy Periscope as a product. I don’t know if you’ll describe it as copying, but it feels like spaces very inspired by Clubhouse. Do you have just a current philosophy on when it makes sense to be super inspired by another product and build it into your existing product versus like, no, you should not do this?
Kayvon Beykpour: I think it’s always about doing the right thing for the customer. Everyone has always been shameless to be shamelessly inspired by other people’s ideas. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think copying ideas can be done in poor taste and can be done with taste. I think some of the people who copied Periscope did so in poor taste, can’t blame them. I wouldn’t have done it the same way, but it worked. So you can’t say it’s the wrong thing. I think that it’s possible to take ideas in good taste and take ideas in poor taste.
And I think with Clubhouse, we actually had been working on audio. Audio was one of those bets I mentioned that we structured very separately with a team of people, many of which were the former Periscope team, that when we wound down Periscope, I felt very strongly that there was still something to the idea of synchronous conversations. Because one of the famous things that I think we botched with Periscope is that we always… Our dream and our vision for Periscope and how we talked about it was was a mechanism for teleportation. You could see through someone else’s eyes and be teleported somewhere else. It was like that was the story we told ourselves. That was the thing that inspired Periscope. And to a certain extent, a lot of people did use the product for that way. You could go see what it was like someplace in the world where it was something amazing happening or civil unrest happening or some important moment happening with breaking news or otherwise.
But it turns out the vast majority of our users were not using Periscope that way. It wasn’t a rear-facing camera experience where you were showing someone the world, the vast majority of people were using it to just talk to other people. They were bored or they were lonely and they wanted to just have a conversation with other people. And it turns out video and audio is a very interesting way of doing that that allows for more nuance, more long-form conversation, more in-depth conversation, especially in contracts to Twitter, which has mechanics to really incentivize quick, snappy broadcasts that don’t lead to much depth. And so when we shut down Periscope, we were like, man, we really need to enable a new form of conversation on Twitter that has some of those properties. And so we had a team that was working on a project that we sort of code named Hydra. Hydra because there were multiple heads on this monster and those heads are participants in a conversation.
And so well before Clubhouse was on the map, we had many different iterations of both video and audio only experiences that just didn’t feel right, weren’t working right, but we felt like we were onto something. And when Clubhouse came on the map, it really re-centered, it put into focus a user experience that felt a lot more right and now give them complete credit for that. Paul and Rohan and that team did an exceptional job crafting an experience that really enabled that mechanic and that premise of enabling these longer form conversations to shine. And so we did shamelessly seek inspiration from what they had done and what had worked and we put our own spin on it. The execution of Spaces within Twitter I think has some similarities, but also really took advantage of the mechanics that you had available to you in Twitter. It’s a different product. And so we took the ideas that we felt were shortcuts to making the experience work and then we put our own spin on it. And so I have no problems with what we did there.
And having had experienced the pain of not moving quickly enough with Vine from the outside and Periscope having lived that experience, we were not willing to not be the winner with this use case. It is one of the projects I’m most proud of that we worked on at Twitter because we were very radical in our execution. Hydra went from this tiny project that six people were working on that no one knew or care about to, we made Spaces as the number one priority of the company literally above any other project period. And we put a bunch of people on accelerating that product and making it come to life within Twitter. And a lot of that was having felt the pain and burn of fucking this up with Vine and Periscope. And so I’m really proud of our execution. And it was also really energizing. I hope for the company to see that, wow, we pulled that off. So yeah, it was good. It was nice to have that full circle experience and also nice that, personally, I love that aspects of Periscope continue living on within Twitter.
Kayvon’s New Project
Lenny Rachitsky: I did not know that. That is extremely interesting. Speaking full circle, when I joined Clubhouse the first time, Paul was there introducing me to Clubhouse and exactly the way you described Periscope, so I feel like he drew some inspiration from you one step back.
Books Kayvon Recommends
Kayvon Beykpour: Paul’s amazing. I feel like we’re kindred spirits and I could see… It was one of the things I love about that team is just you could just feel how palpable their excitement was and their passion was for what they were building. Another universe we could have worked together more closely, but I think what they built was incredible and we took inspiration from it for sure. Yeah.
Favorite Interview Questions
Lenny Rachitsky: So you’ve built some of the most successful, most beloved, most used consumer products. You continue to help other founders with their product. I’m curious just if you have any advice for how to get better at building consumer products in terms of maybe craft a product, product sense. What have you learned about what it takes to build a successful consumer product?
Kayvon Beykpour: The best cheat codes for getting better at building products is just being a voracious user of products. And just trying new things, feeling out what works well, what doesn’t, what you like, what you don’t like. There’s just no replacement for that. It’s such an effective way of honing your own taste and seeing what’s superficial but not useful, what’s ugly but useful, what’s beautiful and useful. And you hone that by having practice and building muscle memory. And so I think there’s not a lot of science to it, I think. I mean obviously science can help you become more effective at lots of things. But I feel like I’ve just always been very curious about trying new things. I’m a very hungry consumer of new things that people are building and I’m not quick to judge. I’ll try it even if it seems dumb because sometimes things that seem dumb at the beginning become very meaningful.
And so it’s always been a very helpful cheat code for me. And it’s also just personally interesting. Every tool, even the silly ones, people put their heart and soul into it and it’s like an expression of themselves and it’s always interesting to see that, to see people’s creations and to learn from them and see what you like, what you don’t like and how you might create something of your own that borrows from that. So if I could give people any advice through the lens of what’s worked for me, it’s that.
Products Kayvon Loves Right Now
Lenny Rachitsky: Speaking of trying new things, what are you up to these days?
Kayvon Beykpour: I’m building something in the consumer space. I started the company with a couple of co-founders late last year. We’re not quite ready to talk about it yet, but hopefully you’ll be hearing from us pretty soon. But it’s really nice to be back building something again, particularly building something with a small team again after seeing the opposite extreme with a really large company. We’ve just talked about lots of large company things. But yeah, hopefully you’ll be hearing about it soon.
Kayvon’s Life Motto
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh man, I think this is breaking news. So mysterious and exciting. Kayvon, is there anything else you wanted to share or leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?
About Scott Belsky
Kayvon Beykpour: No, no, I think we’ve covered quite a bit.
Final Thoughts and Outro
Lenny Rachitsky: We have. We have indeed. With that, we’ve reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Kayvon Beykpour: I’m going to take a sip of water and then I’ll be ready.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, here we go. First question, what are two or three books that you’ve recommended most to other people?
Kayvon Beykpour: I love reading sci-fi. I just feel like sci-fi and mystery books are so healthy for jogging the imagination. And so some of my favorite books are by Neal Stephenson, I love Cryptonomicon. I love Reamde. I love a book called Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, which is more like a fantasy book, but I just love escaping reality and thinking about sci-fi, thinking about fantasy is just, it’s helpful for the soul and helpful for the imagination. So those are some of my favorite reads because it helps me. I feel like in some weird circular or wandering way, it helps me be more creative and imaginative. And by the way, that’s true outside of reading as well. Some of the content that has shaped me, I feel like and help motivate my curiosity and a lot of things I built is sci-fi TV, right? Star Trek is incredible. We used to use as a metaphor for what Periscope was, we would think about Star Trek. It’d be really cool to be able to teleport or get beamed somewhere else in the world and we’re not smart enough to go build that device, but what’s the closest approximation to that that we can realize through software? Live streaming. So I think that kind of literature or content has always been inspirational for me and I think getting that through books is really healthy.
Lenny Rachitsky: On that note, is there a favorite recent movie or TV show that’s inspired you in addition to Star Trek back in the day?
Kayvon Beykpour: I mean the most recent movie I saw in theaters was Dune Two, and it was incredible.
Lenny Rachitsky: I just saw that.
Kayvon Beykpour: It’s insane. I also thought Oppenheimer was… I’m a huge Nolan fan. Oppenheimer was captivating. To have that level of high octane in a biopic consistently for two and a half hours is so hard to pull off. And I thought it was exceptional. TV shows we’re watching Tokyo Vice right now, which I really like. I think one of the best TV shows I’ve watched recently, I mean Succession was amazing, but maybe I’ll pull a less popular one, which is Devs also in the sci-fi realm. I think it was a Hulu show. But if you’re interested in tech and AI and you want great acting in Nick Offerman, Devs is a pretty amazing show.
Lenny Rachitsky: I haven’t heard of that. Have you seen 3 Body Problem yet, by the way? It feels like it’s squarely in your wheelhouse.
Kayvon Beykpour: I haven’t seen it yet.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay.
Kayvon Beykpour: And it’s funny, some content people are talking about it so much that I kind of want to not watch it now because I feel like it’s really hard for shows to live up to the hype when you’re mid-hype cycle. So I haven’t gone around to it yet, but it’s definitely on my list. I know it’s the type of show that I would love, but I just haven’t gone.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, great. Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates you’re hiring?
Kayvon Beykpour: The thing that I find is both very illustrative and helpful is just asking people to talk about something they worked on that failed and talk about something they built that succeeded as well. But I think you just learn a lot about self-reflection and their passions. But particularly their self-reflection. If they talk through something that they really cared deeply about that didn’t work and why didn’t it work? What were the takeaways? What did you learn from it? I think it teaches you about how willing people are to take risks. It tells you have they experienced failure, what they learned from failure. And so I think it’s always, you just get to know someone really well. It ends up in a well-rounded understanding of a person, if you can dig into that.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you really like?
Kayvon Beykpour: I love Proplexity. It’s really interesting to me how Proplexity is a product that fits in your life and replaces a product that is so ingrained in people’s behavior, which is using Google search for some set of use cases. And it’s just really incredible to me how quickly Proplexity took that over. It is very hard actually to rewire your muscle memory if you’re used to using Google for searching for 15, 20 years or whatever. It was just amazing to me how quickly my go-to became Proplexity. And frankly, it’s one of the only non-development tool AI products that actually has retained. A lot of people try and consumer AI products that just aren’t really, haven’t retained. But Proplexity is one that it’s a daily driver for me. It’s on my home screen and I love it. I’m very impressed by it.
Lenny Rachitsky: Also a huge fan.
Kayvon Beykpour: Yeah. Here’s a bias one, my wife is actually working on a startup called Particle, and they’re the news experience with AI. And what I love about what they’re doing is that for the first time they’re like they’ve rethought what the form factor and the unit of content for news stories should be. Articles are a failed format, is my belief, and certainly their belief. And so they’ve really come up with an elegant and engaging experience for understanding what’s happening in the world in a way that’s purely powered by AI. And it’s awesome. Again, hashtag biased husband, but it’s amazing. It’s in beta right now. You can sign up on the wait list. The URL is particlenews.ai. They’re letting people in on beta. If you sign up, use coupon code hashtag #KayvonLenny. That’s not a real code. But yeah, so that’s amazing. So that would be my second pick.
I’ll give you a non-software one, which is actually a board game that I ran into, that I was gifted actually for my birthday. And it’s called Crokinole. Have you heard of this game called Crokinole?
Lenny Rachitsky: I have not.
Kayvon Beykpour: So Crokinole is Canadian. I think it’s a Canadian board game and it’s amazing to me because I’ve never seen a game be captivating to all age ranges. I love it. I play with my friends. My parents over Christmas were obsessed with this game. My daughter loves. It’s a physical game. You flick a puck, like shuffleboard style, but miniaturized with a totally different set of mechanics. And it was just like seeing this game captivate, people of all age ranges was mind-blowing to me and it’s really fun. So maybe a curveball answer for you there, but I think those are some of the products that I’ve been really enjoying and appreciating lately.
Lenny Rachitsky: These are awesome answers. What’s the name of that game again? I’m going to-
Kayvon Beykpour: Crokinole.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. I don’t don’t know how to spell it, but I’m sure Google will help me figure it out. We’ll link to it in the show notes.
Kayvon Beykpour: C-R-O-K-I-N-O-L-E.
Lenny Rachitsky: Great. I love the K in there. That makes it really fun. And by the way, I think it’s also Particle.news looking at it. It’s so cool. It’s basically bullet points of news items and then it links to all the articles that have written about it. So it just summarizes, here’s the things you need to know and it’s beautiful.
Kayvon Beykpour: Yeah, basically they consume and aggregate everything that’s happening in the world by among other things, ingesting articles and then crafting these story modules through them that are summarized by AI. And then they let you actually interrogate the news and ask questions. So leveraging LLMs and tool calls, it’s able to actually help you understand what’s happening in the world. And they also are building a social layer as well. So it was very cool. I’ll definitely get you in the beta.
Lenny Rachitsky: This is actually amazing timing, because I was a huge fan of Artifact, the news app, and they’re going away, so this is the next news app, so thanks for sharing that. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to or share with people that you find useful in work or in life?
Kayvon Beykpour: Something that definitely shaped my work ethic and how I work that came from my first boss actually. When I was 14, I had a summer job basically replacing and doing maintenance on fire extinguishers. So I would drive into San Francisco, my boss would pick me up in his truck, we’d go to big commercial buildings, hospitals, high rises, and we would take all the fire extinguishers in the building, hundreds of them to the garage, empty them, fill them, tag them, inspect them. And that was my first job. And I don’t even remember if I was getting paid. I was probably getting paid very small amount, but it was just first work experience. And I remember there was this moment that I had finished dealing with my extinguishers and I was just sitting in his truck twiddling my thumbs doing nothing. And my boss came up to me and was like, when you’ve got nothing to do, sweep never sit around.
And it was so funny, it was just very tiny moment, but I’ve never ever forgotten that. When you got nothing to do sweep. And it had such a profound impact on my work ethic of there’s always something you can be doing to move the ball forward and being productive and being impactful. And I’m so grateful that Fred, my boss, had that moment with me. It was like, I don’t even think he understands how impactful that was, but it felt so much a life motto, but it definitely stuck with me and shaped how I work.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love that you shared that story. I found that quote and story in GQ Magazine turns out is where you talked about this and I was going to ask about it and I didn’t and I’m glad you shared it because I love it.
Final question, we’re going to go full circle. Scott Belsky, you’re friends with him. What’s something people would be surprised about or don’t know about Scott, that might be interesting?
Kayvon Beykpour: Well, I’ll tell you one funny story and then I’ll first tell you something I love about Scott. Scott is a great example of someone who I think has driven immense cultural change at a massive, legendary company in Adobe obviously. But the number of transformations that Scott oversaw and led and contributed to at Adobe are incredible. And I’m sure having a fraction of this experience at Twitter, I can appreciate how difficult and challenging and rewarding that was, right? Going from package software to cloud, going from non-AI to AI, going from discrete tools to an integrated suite that worked really elegantly together. I think Scott oversaw a lot of this stuff and it’s pretty incredible to see that transformation have been so successful at Adobe. So I love that.
I guess a funny story about Scott that people might not know, I consider him to have been the first Periscoper. So Scott believed in Periscope before it was Periscope, before we had turned it into live video, we had a previous version of our beta that was static photo sharing, same vision, same concept, but the product was called Bounty. And it was like you put a pin somewhere in the world like the Tokyo fish market and someone would respond with a photo of what it looked like there.
Lenny Rachitsky: I didn’t know that.
Kayvon Beykpour: Our vision was still to help you see through someone else’s eyes, but the first manifestation was really static and had this marketplace dynamic, and it took us a while to get to the point where we were like, press a button, go live and have it be live video because by definition it’s real time rather than static.
Anyways, before we built any of that, when we were playing with the idea and Scott was encouraging us to go in this direction, I remember probably the second time I ever met Scott, we did it FaceTime and he was at the TED conference, I want to say it was in Vancouver, and just to illustrate how cool it would be when he accepted the FaceTime and he’s like, “Cool, and I’m going to take you on a Periscope.” And he flipped this camera and started walking around the TED conference and basically pretending like he was prototyping the product, but using FaceTime. And it was such an amazing experience because having an investor essentially encourage you down a product direction by showing rather than telling, it was such a great encapsulation of how supportive Scott was and inspiring Scott was as one of our cheerleaders. And I respect him so much for everything he did to help Periscope make happen, and also for betting on us, because he was one of the first people who said yes to investing. He didn’t know us, he just believed in us. And that helped everything else come together. And yeah, he’s amazing.
Lenny Rachitsky: What a mensch.
Kayvon Beykpour: What a mensch.
Lenny Rachitsky: We’ve got to get him back on the podcast. The story reminds me of your Elon’s story, where he FaceTimed you, and it also makes me think about your lesson of building consumer products, just using it, being obsessed with it, Scott, just like, here’s what it could look like. And actually using the product, not just talking about.
Kayvon Beykpour: Yeah, he’s a great example of that as well. He’s definitely a gracious user of all tools and products, and that’s why he has really great, really great product sense.
Lenny Rachitsky: Kayvon, you’re amazing. This was so freaking fascinating. There’s so many nuggets here. Can’t wait for folks to hear this.
Two final questions. Where can folks find you if they want to reach out and learn more and maybe follow up on anything if there’s things you want to follow up on potentially? And then, how can listeners be useful to you?
Kayvon Beykpour: People can find me on Twitter/X/whatever we’re calling it these days. My handle is @kayvz, K-A-Y-V-Z. And yeah, if you’re of this podcast and you’re working on something cool and you need some help or advice or you’re looking for an angel investor, don’t hesitate to reach out and would love to try what you’re building.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. And also check out Particle.news.
Kayvon Beykpour: There you go.
Lenny Rachitsky: Support the wife.
Kayvon Beykpour: Exactly.
Lenny Rachitsky: Amazing. All right, Kayvon, thank you so much for being here.
Kayvon Beykpour: Thanks Lenny. Great to meet you.
Lenny Rachitsky: Bye everyone.
Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| acquihire | 收购式招聘(acquihire) |
| Adobe | Adobe(知名软件公司,保留原文) |
| Artifact | Artifact(Instagram 联合创始人创建的新闻应用,保留原文) |
| Birdwatch | Birdwatch(Community Notes 原名,保留原文) |
| Blackboard | Blackboard(收购 Kayvon 第一家公司的上市科技公司,保留原文) |
| Bounty | Bounty(Periscope 早期的静态照片分享产品原型名,保留原文) |
| Bruce | Bruce(指 Bruce Falck,Twitter 前营收产品负责人,保留原文) |
| Chris Saka | Chris Saka(科技投资人,将 Kobe 介绍给 Periscope 内测的人,保留原文) |
| Chroma Labs | Chroma Labs(被 Twitter 收购的公司,保留原文) |
| Clubhouse | Clubhouse(语音社交应用,保留原文) |
| Communities | Communities(Twitter 社区功能,保留原文) |
| Community Notes | Community Notes(Twitter 社区笔记功能,保留原文) |
| Creator Program | Creator Program(Twitter 创作者计划,保留原文) |
| Crokinole | Crokinole(加拿大弹射类桌游,保留原文) |
| crowdsource moderation | 众包审核(crowdsource moderation) |
| DAU | DAU(日活跃用户,Daily Active Users) |
| Elon | Elon(指 Elon Musk,保留原文) |
| Esther Crawford | Esther Crawford(Twitter 创作者产品负责人,保留原文) |
| Fleets | Fleets(Twitter 阅后即焚功能,保留原文) |
| Fred | Fred(Kayvon 14岁时做灭火器维护暑期工的老板,保留原文) |
| GM | GM(General Manager,总经理,保留原文缩写) |
| Hydra | Hydra(Twitter 内部音频/视频项目的代号,保留原文) |
| Jack | Jack(指 Jack Dorsey,Twitter 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| jobs-to-be-done | jobs-to-be-done(待完成 jobs-to-be-done 理论,保留原文术语) |
| Joe | Joe(Kayvon 的好友、Periscope 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| John Barnett | John Barnett(Communities 项目负责人,保留原文) |
| Kayvon Beykpour | Kayvon Beykpour(Twitter 前产品主管,保留原文) |
| Keith Coleman | Keith Coleman(Twitter 产品负责人,Community Notes 负责人,保留原文) |
| Kevin Hart | Kevin Hart(知名演员、喜剧演员,Periscope 活跃用户,保留原文) |
| Kobe | Kobe(指 Kobe Bryant,篮球传奇巨星,保留原文) |
| Lenny Rachitsky | Lenny Rachitsky(播客主持人,保留原文) |
| Mark | Mark(指 Mark Zuckerberg,Facebook/Meta 创始人,保留原文) |
| Media Studio | Media Studio(Twitter 的专业视频发布工具,保留原文) |
| mensch | mensch(意第绪语,意为品行高尚、值得尊敬的人,保留原文;对话中两人均直接使用此词) |
| Mo Oladam | Mo Oladam(创业者,Fleets 项目负责人,保留原文) |
| Neal Stephenson | Neal Stephenson(科幻小说作家,保留原文) |
| NFL | NFL(National Football League,美国国家橄榄球联盟) |
| Nick Offerman | Nick Offerman(演员,保留原文) |
| Nolan | Nolan(指 Christopher Nolan,知名电影导演,保留原文) |
| Parag | Parag(指 Parag Agrawal,Twitter 前 CEO,保留原文) |
| Particle | Particle(Sarah 创办的 AI 新闻初创公司,保留原文) |
| Patrick Rothfuss | Patrick Rothfuss(奇幻小说作家,保留原文) |
| Paul | Paul(Paul Davison,Clubhouse 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| Periscope | Periscope(被 Twitter 收购的直播应用,保留原文) |
| Perplexity | Perplexity(AI 搜索引擎,保留原文;原转录稿误作 Proplexity) |
| Premium | Premium(Twitter Blue 更名后的称呼,保留原文) |
| Private Broadcasting | 私密直播(Private Broadcasting,Periscope 的私密直播功能) |
| ranked timeline | 算法时间线(ranked timeline,Twitter 的算法排序信息流) |
| refine the core | 精炼核心(refine the core,Twitter 曾有的产品策略) |
| Rohan | Rohan(Rohan Seth,Clubhouse 联合创始人,保留原文) |
| sacred cows | 神圣禁区(sacred cows,指不可触碰、不可更改的产品规则或惯例) |
| Sarah | Sarah(Kayvon 的妻子,保留原文) |
| Scott Belsky | Scott Belsky(Behance 创始人、Adobe 首席产品官,保留原文) |
| silo | 隔间/独立小团队(silo,指组织中相对独立运作的小团队) |
| Spaces | Spaces(Twitter 语音聊天室功能,保留原文) |
| Sriram / Shriram | Sriram / Shriram(Sriram Krishnan,科技投资人、创业者,保留原文) |
| Super Follows | Super Follows(Twitter 付费订阅创作者功能,保留原文) |
| Swish | Swish(Twitter 内部对产品中一个闪亮图标开关的昵称,保留原文) |
| Thursday Night Football | 周四夜赛(Thursday Night Football,NFL 周四晚间比赛转播权) |
| Topics | Topics(Twitter 话题关注功能,保留原文) |
| Twitch | Twitch(专注于游戏直播的平台,保留原文) |
| Twitter Blue | Twitter Blue(Twitter 订阅服务,保留原文) |
| UGC | UGC(User-Generated Content,用户生成内容) |
| Vine | Vine(Twitter 收购的短视频应用,保留原文) |
| Walter Isaacson | Walter Isaacson(知名传记作家,保留原文) |
| Whatnot | Whatnot(专注于电商直播的平台,保留原文) |
| Wimbledon | 温网(Wimbledon,温布尔登网球锦标赛) |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py