CEO Diaries: The Brutal Mistake That Almost Crippled Snapchat! - The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Summary

Episode Summary: CEO Diaries – The Brutal Mistake That Almost Crippled Snapchat!

Podcast: The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Episode Title: CEO Diaries: The Brutal Mistake That Almost Crippled Snapchat!
Release Date: June 4, 2025
Guest: Evan Spiegel, CEO and Co-founder of Snapchat

Introduction to Hiring and Culture

The episode begins with a focus on the pivotal role of hiring and organizational culture in building a successful company. Host [A] underscores the relentless nature of running a startup, emphasizing that "switching off is never really an option" ([00:00]). Evan Spiegel ([C]) agrees wholeheartedly, stating, "I think it's everything," when discussing the importance of the initial team composition ([00:51]). Spiegel highlights the unique blend of creativity and technical expertise among Snapchat’s early engineers, noting, "the early folks who were working on the engineering side of SNAP were unbelievably creative and unbelievably talented" ([01:21]).

Early Hiring Challenges and Mistakes

Host [B] delves into Spiegel's early hiring experiences, prompting him to reflect on mistakes made during Snapchat’s formative stages ([00:40]). Spiegel acknowledges, "Oh, absolutely," indicating that missteps were inevitable ([01:54]). He elaborates that Snapchat initially prioritized hiring leaders with extensive experience from large corporations, such as an engineer from Amazon managing a team of 300 joining a startup of eight ([02:03]). While this strategy aimed to scale rapidly, it sometimes led to a mismatch in domain expertise. Spiegel explains, "We were over indexing on the wrong types of experience... people who had very specific domain expertise" which occasionally stifled innovation ([02:30]).

Evolving Hiring Criteria: Adaptability Over Specificity

Spiegel emphasizes the shift in hiring focus from specific expertise to adaptability. He remarks, "Now one of the things we're always looking for in the interview process is adaptability" ([03:20]). This adaptability allows employees to "change and adapt the way that you see things, change your perspective to be able to meet the needs of our business" ([03:35]). This approach ensures that team members contribute to Snapchat’s unique vision rather than adhering to conventional frameworks used in larger corporations.

Defining the Ideal Snapchat Employee: Kind, Smart, Creative

When discussing the attributes of an ideal Snapchat employee, Spiegel outlines three core values: Kindness, Intelligence, and Creativity ([03:59]). He elaborates on the importance of kindness, stating, "kindness is kind of the essential ingredient if you want to have a creative culture" ([05:02]). This environment fosters comfort in sharing unconventional ideas without fear of ridicule, thereby driving innovation.

Distinguishing Kindness from Niceness

Host [B] seeks clarification on the distinction between kindness and niceness within the workplace ([05:09]). Spiegel provides practical examples to illustrate this difference:

Constructive Feedback: "It's really kind to tell someone... you got something stuck in your teeth" vs. "being nice" by ignoring the issue ([05:27]).
Performance Improvement: Instead of simply reassuring struggling employees, "the kind thing to do is really help them succeed" by providing actionable feedback ([05:50]).

This distinction ensures that kindness promotes growth and honesty without compromising the supportive culture.

Leadership Behaviors: Embracing T-Shaped Leadership

Spiegel introduces the concept of T-Shaped Leadership, emphasizing the need for leaders to possess both deep expertise and broad business understanding ([05:55]). He defines it as having "a real depth of experience" combined with "a real breadth of understanding of the business overall" ([06:00]). This duality enables leaders to connect with diverse teams and drive cross-functional collaboration, which is essential in today's complex business landscape.

He further explains, "It's impossible to do anything interesting without a team" and highlights the necessity for leaders to "relate to people with different viewpoints or other areas of expertise" ([06:30]).

Applying Leadership Principles Across the Organization

Host [B] inquires whether these leadership principles apply to all employees or just leaders ([07:26]). Spiegel clarifies, "We think everyone is a leader," advocating for a leadership mindset throughout the organization. However, he notes the importance of these traits being particularly crucial when hiring new leaders to ensure they align with Snapchat’s values ([07:36]).

Advice to His Younger Self

Reflecting on his early days, Spiegel offers poignant advice to his younger self: "everything's gonna be okay" ([09:51]). He emphasizes the importance of decision-making agility, stating, "how quickly are you changing your mind when you receive new information?" and the ability to "fix a problem or a mistake if you didn't make the right decision" ([09:55]).

Spiegel also highlights the significance of identifying and empowering team members who can candidly point out mistakes and suggest alternative paths, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and resilience ([10:20]).

Maintaining and Scaling Company Culture

As Snapchat grew from a small team to thousands of employees, Spiegel reflects on the challenges of maintaining a unified culture. He admits, "we could have been much more clear on the culture, the kind, smart, creative piece" early on ([12:32]). The rapid expansion led to the incorporation of diverse corporate cultures from acquired teams, making it difficult to uphold Snapchat’s original values consistently.

To address this, Snapchat implemented clear frameworks linking their core values to specific, research-backed behaviors. Spiegel recalls a turning point where he realized the need to "fix it with our team getting really clear about the values" ([13:00]). This strategic focus on defining and enforcing cultural values helped Snapchat realign and strengthen its unique organizational identity.

Key Takeaways

Hiring for Adaptability: Prioritizing adaptability over specific expertise fosters a dynamic and innovative workforce.
Core Values: Emphasizing kindness, intelligence, and creativity cultivates a supportive and inventive company culture.
T-Shaped Leadership: Leaders must possess both deep expertise and broad business acumen to effectively manage and inspire diverse teams.
Agile Decision-Making: The ability to swiftly adapt and rectify mistakes is crucial for startup resilience and growth.
Culture Maintenance: Clear articulation and enforcement of core values are essential in scaling and preserving company culture.

Notable Quotes

Evan Spiegel: "I think it's everything." ([00:51])
Evan Spiegel: "We were over indexing on the wrong types of experience..." ([02:30])
Evan Spiegel: "Kindness is kind of the essential ingredient if you want to have a creative culture." ([05:02])
Evan Spiegel: "Everything's gonna be okay." ([09:51])
Evan Spiegel: "We think everyone is a leader." ([07:26])

This episode provides invaluable insights into the foundational aspects of building and sustaining a successful tech company. Evan Spiegel’s reflections on hiring, leadership, and culture offer actionable lessons for entrepreneurs and business leaders aiming to navigate the challenges of scaling while maintaining core values.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Today's moment episode features Evan Spiegel, the CEO and co founder of Snapchat. And he has a tremendous emphasis on hiring people and culture, which is one of the most important things in business. The reality of running a small business is that switching off is never really an option. Even when you try, the ideas, the excitement and all the responsibility is always there. And because you're always switched on, it's only fair that your hiring partner should be too. LinkedIn jobs, who are the sponsor of this moments episode has been that hiring partner for me and for years. Because it's always working away in the background, my team can post our jobs for free, share them with our networks, and reach top talent all in the same place. So let's get into today's conversation.

B (0:40)

Let's go back to those early days. You're in that office. When you think about the people in that photo that were part of the first order 20, how important in hindsight is hiring?

C (0:51)

I think it's everything. I think it's everything. And these were really, really just wonderful. I mean, still in many cases, close friends. And I think, interesting. There was a moment I realized David, Daniel, Bobby and a couple other of our original engineers, all of them original engineers, were musicians as well. And it was really interesting this moment because the early folks who were working on the engineering side of SNAP were unbelievably creative and unbelievably talented. And it was an interesting like, aha moment because I think oftentimes people think of the disciplines as separate, like, oh, there's designers and then over there there's engineers. And I think so much of the magic actually is when those disciplines combine or cross over or people who really love and appreciate both.

B (1:44)

Especially for a company that's aspiring to be creative.

C (1:47)

Absolutely.

B (1:48)

In everything that it's doing. I'm on this point of hiring, did you make any hiring mistakes in those early days?

C (1:54)

Oh, absolutely.

B (1:55)

And what were those mistakes? Not necessarily people, but the frameworks were off or the way that you've hired these people or what caused the mistakes.

C (2:03)

I think occasionally in the early days, we almost like over indexed on the wrong types of experience, if that makes sense. So one of the things we really wanted to do was bring in people who were very, very experienced, like leaders who had run much bigger teams. That was like, if we want to build a big company, we got to find people who have run big companies and big teams. And so one of the early engineering leaders who joined our team, I think he was coming from working on a team of 300 or something like that at Amazon was coming to a team of eight at Snapchat. But we were really thinking ahead about how can we hire people who can actually help us scale here and build something really big. And I think that sort of focus on leadership experience and experience leading at scale was really valuable. I think what was oftentimes a bit less valuable in those early days was almost more people who had very specific domain expertise. So there were people who would come into our, come for an interview or something like that and be like, well, I think what you guys should do is add likes, because every other platform has likes. So if you just add likes, then people will use your service more and not really coming with the same open mindedness and curiosity about, well, why is Snapchat doing it differently? Why don't you have likes and comments? How are you thinking about the service differently? And how can I change and grow and adapt to the way that you're thinking about it to help you grow faster. And so I think now one of the things we're always looking for in the interview process is adaptability. It's amazing to have prior experience, but the question is, how do you apply that prior experience to a new context and change and adapt the way that you see things, change your perspective to be able to meet the needs of our business, which is different than other businesses.