CEO Diaries: The Brutal Mistake That Almost Crippled Snapchat!

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

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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:

1. 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]).
2. 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.

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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.

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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])

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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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[C]

Absolutely.

[B]

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

[C]

Oh, absolutely.

[B]

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]

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.

[B]

What are the other factors if you were to make a perfect Snapchat employee now, what would their personality be? Their psychology? Their attributes?

[C]

We have three values and three leadership behaviors. Three values are kind, smart and creative. Those have been the value since the very beginning. Really, because Bobby and I were just having a conversation like, what kind of people do we want to work with? Kind, smart, creative, like, great. But since then, and we can spend some more time talking about this. I think what was really fascinating over time was to learn. And by the way, 10 years ago, people were not talking about kindness at work. I mean, people would be like, sorry, what? You know, no, kind, smart, creative. Like, why kindness? What we found was that the relationship between kindness and creativity is really, really important. Because unless people feel comfortable coming up with crazy ideas, unless they feel comfortable that if they say, you know, they have some new idea and it actually isn't that great, that they're not going to be laughed at, that they'll be supported, right? Unless you have that sort of supportive culture, it's very hard to be creative. And so we learned over time that actually, wow, kindness is kind of the essential ingredient if you want to have a creative culture. But Anyways, kind, smart, creative, smart, pretty, self explanatory. And then when it comes to leadership behaviors, there's three leadership behaviors or attributes we look for.

[B]

I just wanna pause on that point of kind. Do you make a distinction between someone being nice and being kind? Because in your environment, you also mentioned that you do these critique sessions and you're giving people critical feedback. And if a culture gets a little bit too kind, then isn't that gonna inhibit innovation and feedback?

[C]

We always differentiate between kind and nice. There's a couple examples that I think help with that. So, like, for one, I think it's really kind to tell someone, somebody that they have something stuck in their teeth. You have something stuck in your teeth, you want to know about it, right? It might make you feel awkward. Certainly as the person pointing it out, it's a little awkward, right? If you just want to be nice, you pretend nothing's going on and you just say, oh, you know, nice to meet you, whatever. But if you're really being kind and you want to help that person, you say you got something stuck in your teeth, you got to take care of that. And I think that helps distinguish between niceties and being kind and really wanting to help somebody. I think another great example is if somebody is really struggling, you know, at work, or they're struggling to grow, or they're struggling with, you know, to, to perform, you know, their duties at snap, you know, the nice thing to do is maybe just make them feel good about it. Oh, don't worry, you know, I'm sure it'll be okay. The kind thing to do is really help them succeed, right? Say, hey, this isn't working because you're doing X, Y and Z. Here are some things to do to think about that differently. Provide that really direct feedback that allows people to grow, and that's the kind thing to do, rather than just making them feel good about not meeting expectations.

[B]

Leadership values.

[C]

You said there's three leadership values. Okay, there's three of them. The first one is T shaped leadership. So we talk a lot about T shaped leadership. What we mean by that is that you have a real depth of experience, a depth of expertise in a given area, and then a real breadth of understanding of the business overall and an ability to connect with lots of different types of people who think different ways. Because you need to be able to connect your expertise to all the different areas of our business to really drive impact as a leader. I mean, I think that's one of almost the hallmarks of running a business today, is it's basically impossible to do anything interesting without a team. Right. The way that the world works today is very complicated and it's really important that you have folks who have deep expertise, but then they have to apply it to all these other cross functional areas. So they have to have a familiarity with it and an ability to relate to people with different viewpoints or other areas of expertise.

[B]

And as we proceed with these leadership principles, are you saying that in order to become a leader at Snapchat you need these three things or are you saying everybody at Snapchat needs these three things?

[C]

We think everyone is a leader, so we do apply it broadly. But of course, I think it's really important as we're thinking about hiring or bringing in a new leader, that this is something that we talk to folks about.

[B]

So if someone's not quite T shaped, if they're a little bit I shaped, is there something they can do to become a bit more T shaped?

[C]

Yeah, that's almost maybe the easier one. Right. If you can build on a real depth of expertise by going engaging with folks maybe outside of your comfort zone or in different parts of the business and build that curiosity and understanding that helps develop, I think, that breadth of understanding. I think what's harder is if you're a generalist and you don't have that deep skill set or that deep area of expertise, it's really, really hard to bring enough value to the team. And I think that's where people get frustrated with the idea of middle management, where it's like, oh, this is just a person who knows a little about a lot but can't really help me solve this problem because they don't really know the details. They don't really understand how to help me grow as an individual or solve this tough technical problem. And so I think that's why that area of expertise is so important, because it's so hard to inspire people that you're working with if you don't know a lot about the area that you're working in.

[A]

And do you need to be a.

[B]

T shaped leader at Snapchat now? And when there was 10 of you in the bedroom or in your dad's house, has it always been important or is that a function of being bigger?

[C]

That's a great question. I wish we had been more thoughtful about the leadership values and characteristics we were looking for back then. I think when you're working on a team of 10 or a team of 20, you're not thinking as much about what leadership characteristics are really important to us. It's more about how do we survive tomorrow. But I think over time, as we learned leaders were really successful at snap, we were able to kind of look at those attributes and say, okay, these are the leaders who really succeed here and drive a lot of value for our business.

[B]

Before we move on to the second too, if this Evan could have gone back to the Evan that was running a team of 10 and he could have pulled him aside and said, listen, here's some advice that you're going to need to know about leadership in building this team. The most critical advice I could give you at this time, and this is for all the entrepreneurs out there that are building at. They're laying the foundations of a potentially very big company right now. What would you have whispered in his ear?

[C]

I would have said, everything's gonna be okay. Really, everything's gonna be okay. I think sometimes people are too focused on making the right decision and not as focused on fixing it if they're wrong. And I think what I would have put more emphasis on is just how quickly are you changing your mind when you receive new information? How quickly are you fixing a problem or a mistake if you didn't make the right decision in the first place? And that's the feedback loop that is so mission critical to building a business in the early days, it has very little to do. Obviously there's existential decisions and those can create some big problems for your business, but most decisions are not existential decisions. And the more important thing is to make a decision and then if you're wrong, fix it. And I think it's the when you're wrong, fixing it part that deserves most of the attention. And also how you can identify who your great leaders are, who really talented folks on the team are, because they're very quick to point out, I don't think we did that right. I think we should take this path, this other path that we maybe hadn't considered the first time. And I think it takes courage to say that in an organization rather than just say, oh, we're doing a great.

[B]

Job and when you're back there and you've made a mistake, there's something you've done wrong. In hindsight, did you know in your chat? Cause one of the things that I think of when I was a first time founder building a student notice board was I would get feedback and the feedback would be saying, you're wrong about this, you need to change. And I think sometimes there was a part of me that knew, but I was like too scared to act upon it. So I kind of like gaslit myself to just keep going. And I think a lot of founders do that. I know this because they come to me in my portfolio and they say, oh Steve, there's this guy we've hired.

[A]

And he's been there now for a.

[B]

Year and he's just not cutting it. I'm like, why the fuck are you telling me? And they're procrastinating, avoiding the conversation, but clearly they know, clearly they know it's not right.

[C]

It's funny you say that because anytime someone comes to ask me about like that type of people advice, like what do you think we should do? You know, do you think that I'm like, it sounds like you've already made up your mind. So yeah, I think it is really important to act on that feedback, not be afraid to change direction quickly if you realize that you made a mistake. But as you point out, it's hard to do and sometimes it is worth seeing if your bet plays out. You don't want to thrash the team and change your mind all the time. So sometimes it is sometimes worth seeing things through a little bit before you change.

[B]

Is there anything else you would have said to that younger Evan in that in your dad's house advice at that point?

[C]

Before we had scaled to a lot of thousands of people, I think we could have been much more clear on the culture, the kind, smart, creative piece, and really embedded that in the team prior to scaling. Because one of the biggest challenges that we confronted was as we went from 20 people to 2,000 people, we basically imported all of these different cultures from all sorts of different companies. We imported an Amazon contingent, they really love their six page documents. We imported a Google contingent and they're very focused on consensus based decision making. We imported a contingent from Meta as well. And I think we were too slow to be really clear about what our values were and what that looked like in practice, what those behaviors looked like. And I think if we had earlier and faster. So when we're evaluating performance, we look at our values. Kind, smart, creative, we have specific behaviors attached to that that are actually research backed and whatever. We did a whole study to understand which of those behaviors are really tied to performance and those values. But that gives people a really clear framework for the expectations for how to behave at Snap and our unique culture. And there was a moment in time where I felt like we were losing control of our culture and I wasn't happy with our company and the team. I remember I was complaining to a friend of mine this is probably like your story of folks coming to you and saying, oh, it's not working. I was complaining to a friend of mine and I was just like, man, I just don' I don't like it. I don't like my job. I don't like what our companies become. And she just looks at me and she's like, then fix it. Great point. And I think it had changed and grown so quickly that it was really hard to stay true to our values. But I think I really took that advice to heart and just started trying to fix it with our team getting really clear about the values, getting really clear about the behaviors, holding a higher bar and saying, hey, if you're not into the kinds of more creative thing, that's okay. There are other companies with different cultures, but that really matters to us here.

[A]

I hope you found today's conversation helpful and insightful.

[B]

If you're Ready to join 2 1/2.

[A]

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