← The Tim Ferriss Show
The Tim Ferriss Show
#800: Ev Williams — The Art of Pivoting (e.g., Odeo to Twitter), Strategic Quitting, The Dangers of Premature Scaling, Must-Read Books, and More
01:03:37
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- [00:00]
Tim Ferriss
Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job each interview to deconstruct world class performers. To tease out the habits, routines, influences and resources that you can apply to your own lives. From people from every discipline imaginable ranging from entertainment to the military to technology and beyond. Today my guest is Ev Williams and what a story he has. Ev is the co founder and Chairman of Mozi, a new social network that helps you connect in person with the people you care about most. Over the past 25 years, EV has co founded several companies that have helped shape the modern Internet including Blogger, Medium and Twitter. Ev is also the co founder of Obvious Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on world positive companies addressing major systemic problems. Ev grew up on a farm in Clarks, Nebraska, has two sons and lives mostly in the Bay Area. This particular episode, this conversation was recorded live in Austin, Texas at the Dig Nation relaunch. That's dignation show for the show itself and that is where digg.com was relaunched. It was recently acquired by its original founder, my good friend Kevin Rose and Reddit co founder Alexis Ohanian, formerly arch Nemesis. But they have joined forces and invited me along for all the fun and surprises as they celebrated the relaunch. Go to dig.com and sign up to get early access when the invites go out one more time. Digg.com, that's D I G G. You can find Mozi that is Ev's newest creation at Mozi app that's available on iOS right now. You can find obviousventuresbvious.com and you can find him on Twitter that is also known as Xev. We're going to get right into this wide ranging conversation with just a few words. First, from the people who make this podcast possible. I am always on the hunt for protein sources that don't require sacrifices in taste or nutrition. I don't want to eat sawdust. I also don't want a candy bar that's disguised as a protein bar. And that's why I love the protein bars from today's sponsor David. They are my go to protein source on the run. I throw them in my bag whenever I am in doubt that I might be able to get a good source of protein. And with David protein bars you get the fewest calories for the most protein ever. David has 28 grams of protein, 150 calories and 0 grams of sugar. I was actually first introduced to them by my friend Peter Attia, MD, who is their chief science officer. Many of you know of Peter and he really does his due diligence on everything. And on top of that, David tastes great. Their bars come in six delicious flavors. They're all worth trying and as I mentioned before, I will grab a few of those from running out the door if I think I might end up in a situation where I can't get sufficient protein. And why is that important? Well, adequate protein intake is critical for building and preserving muscle mass, especially as we age. And why? One of the biggest things that you want to pay attention to is counteracting sarcopenia, age related muscle loss. And for that you need enough protein. When in doubt, up your protein. Protein is also the most satiating macronutrient.
- [03:14]
Kevin Rose
What does that mean?
- [03:15]
Tim Ferriss
It means that protein out of carbohydrates, fat and protein inhibits your appetite while also feeding all the things you want to feed, which helps you consume fewer calories throughout the day. You're less inclined to eat garbage. All of that contributes to fat loss and reducing the risk of various diseases. And now you guys. Listeners of the Tim Ferriss show who buy four boxes, get a fifth box for free. You can check it out. You can also buy one box at a time. Try them for yourself at davidprotein.com Tim learn all about it. That's davidprotein.com Tim to get a free box with a four box purchase or simply learn more. Check it out. Davidprotein.com Tim I want to give my pooch Molly the best of everything. She is my companion. She is my guardian. She's been with me for almost 10 years now, 24 7. I want to give her the absolute best. And that includes food, especially food. It is the bedrock of her health. That's why I give her Sundaes for Dogs, this episode's sponsor. Sundaes is air dried which locks in more nutrition and flavor than other cooking methods while also making it ultra convenient to store, scoop and serve. As you guys know, I'm on the road all the time and Sundays is convenient. I no longer have to spend time prepping meals or figuring out what is best for Molly. I'd rather spend that time playing or hiking with her. I'm in the mountains right now. She wants to be in the snow. Sundays for Dogs meets or surpasses industry standards using high quality ingredients. That's the focus, not through synthetic vitamins, which is what most other dog food companies do. Sundays knows your pup is an important member of your family so they only use USDA Grade meat which is fit for human consumption. So check it out. Get 50% off of your first order of sundaes. Go to Sundays for dogs.com Tim or you use code Tim at checkout. That's S u n d a y dash S f o r d o g s dot com Tim Sundays for dogs dot com Tim.
- [05:12]
Ev Williams
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
- [05:17]
Kevin Rose
Can I answer your personal question?
- [05:19]
Ev Williams
Now? It is in a perfect time.
- [05:21]
Tim Ferriss
What if I did the opposite?
- [05:22]
Ev Williams
I'm a cybernetic organism.
- [05:24]
Tim Ferriss
Living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.
- [05:35]
Ev Williams
Hello.
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Kevin Rose
Hello.
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Alexis Ohanian
Good Lord.
- [05:41]
Ev Williams
Wow.
- [05:42]
Alexis Ohanian
I can't see anything cause there's so many lights. But thank you for coming. I'm Kevin Rose. Tonight is gonna be a really fun night. Lot of surprises, lot of fun. In 2004, when I was first out here, I would pull up my cell phone and I would text a number, which was. What number was it? 404-404-0404, which was for Twitter. And you would say, I'm gonna be at this bar or this is what I'm eating. Which is basically what you would say back then. And people would show up and it was awesome. So it is really cool to have this kind of throwback this time, this, this new reboot in many ways. And to kick it off, I have an old, old wooden friend as an anchorman reference. Tim Ferriss, who is here. We were reminiscing on the old times. He had more hair back then. I had less gray hair. And for Ev, we were texting things, not using apps. So, Ev Williams, co founder of Twitter, and Tim Ferriss.
- [06:54]
Kevin Rose
Hey guys, Good evening. Welcome to Austin. Beautiful, beautiful, warm Austin. You guys ready for a fun night? I have my party pants on and it's nostalgic to be here because the last time I was in this venue was probably 2007. I think for a Dig Nation event may have been a little bit earlier. Oh, stubs. Excuse me, Mohawk. That's my early onset dementia kicking in yet again. So we're going to pretend that didn't happen and we're going to move on to discussing cutting edge technology with EV right here. And I know the question you all want to ask, which is what is the past, present and future of vhs? And we're going to begin with your history with vhs.
- [07:48]
Ev Williams
Great. Thanks, Tim. Hey everybody. I don't get asked about VHS enough these days. In fact, I don't even know what it stands for. I think what Tim is referring to is my very first Internet product.
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Kevin Rose
That's right.
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Ev Williams
Which was a video cassette that was about how to use the Internet. You watched it on your TV. The year was 1994, folks. This is. It wasn't that odd for the time. But how are you going to learn about computers on the computer when you don't have the Internet? So I made a tape in my basement with my college buddies and that was my very first Internet product. It was two hours basically of me explaining how to FTP by terminal. I think I talked about the web for about three minutes. There's this new thing called the web, so we're talking Usenet, Gopher, that type of stuff. Did it sell well?
- [08:45]
Kevin Rose
Was it a bestseller?
- [08:49]
Ev Williams
I think we broke even on a very low budget production.
- [08:55]
Kevin Rose
So you're known for a lot of different things. Blogger, Twitter, you now have Mozi. And I wanted to ask you because here we are in person. How nice is that? Remember Covid, it's easy to take things like this for granted. And I wanted to talk about relationships because I imagine how you think about relationships, cultivating relationships, using technology to enhance.
- [09:19]
Tim Ferriss
Relationships may have changed over time.
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Kevin Rose
Could you just walk us through perhaps that trajectory?
- [09:26]
Ev Williams
Yeah. We were talking earlier today actually about social media and social, how the word social has changed. Remember when social used to mean like getting together in real life, getting to know people and now the social is just this catch all word that kind of just means the Internet. That was I think an evolution that started in maybe Facebook days. Facebook was actually in the news feed, was I think a social media new format really because it was media from people you knew. We borrowed from some of that for Twitter. We also borrowed from blogs for Twitter. But Twitter we never saw as necessarily social. I wasn't very focused on social personally. I think that's the somewhat ironic thing is that I come from a very small town in Nebraska and the farm didn't know a lot of people. And maybe subconsciously I liked the Internet because I actually wanted to make friends, but I didn't know that at the time. So in all these technologies I was really focused on information and ideas until fairly recently. This current stage of life, I don't want to say later stage of life.
- [10:33]
Tim Ferriss
The golden years.
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Kevin Rose
EVs golden years.
- [10:37]
Ev Williams
I started thinking a lot more about relationships and I personally had under invested in relationships and over invested I think in just like maybe business.
- [10:50]
Kevin Rose
Yeah.
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Ev Williams
So yeah, been thinking about that a lot lately.
- [10:52]
Kevin Rose
You seem to me to be a thoughtful.
- [10:55]
Tim Ferriss
You don't seem.
- [10:56]
Kevin Rose
You are a very thoughtful. I want to Say systematic guy. How have you translated thinking about.
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Ev Williams
Maybe.
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Kevin Rose
Countering the trend of under investing in relationships? Have you done anything?
- [11:08]
Ev Williams
I started a company. Started a company. Let's hear about it.
- [11:12]
Kevin Rose
Because I'm sure there are people here who haven't.
- [11:13]
Ev Williams
I started a company called Mozi within the last year. And Mozi is a app for finding out where your friends are and getting together. We like to say it's actually social app because it's really about getting together with friends by knowing where they are. So I'm in Austin. Who do I know in Austin? I know a bunch of people in Austin. I may have forgotten who I know in Austin, but Mozi tells me who's in Austin, tells me what they're doing, that type of thing. The way I look back on some of the early ideas about social and the Internet is of course we connected with people, we've all made friends through the Internet. We've built meaning relationships or maintain relationships. We're wired to be deeply social. But that wiring was way before screens and that wiring to be social didn't happen in public. And so Mozy is a very simple idea where we said, well, what would an actual social network look like? And so that's what we're building.
- [12:06]
Kevin Rose
So I want to edge into a question about sort of initial product design and what your expectations might be just by rewinding the clock a little bit and talking about Odeo a little bit. So I've read about board meetings and you'll have to tell a bit of the context related to Odeo in which you're presenting usage metrics at the time wasn't growing, but it wasn't dead. Maybe it was semi growing. And as a lot of people here read in the media, as they used to see on magazine covers, the stories of perseverance. Against all odds, it failed 100 times. But then we succeeded the 101st time, get a lot of airplay. But I think that something that doesn't get as much attention is strategic stopping or strategic quitting. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to keep.
- [12:59]
Tim Ferriss
Beating your head against a wall.
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Kevin Rose
So could you take us back to Odio and walk us through that experience?
- [13:05]
Ev Williams
Yeah. So Odeo was a podcasting company that I co founded in 2005, which if you recall, was pre iPhone. So. And not to correct Kevin, But Twitter was 2007 when it was here. So this was before Twitter and podcasting seemed cool. I don't know if you've heard about it, Tim, but we're like, let's build a platform for podcasts. And we worked on it for maybe six months. We raised some money because I had previously sold the company to Google. I was fortunate enough to get some VC funding before we even had a product, which turns out isn't always fortunate. So we had high expectations from kind of get go. This is in 2005. Apple released podcasts in iTunes that summer in 2005, which completely blew us away. It was totally unexpected. This is very, very early for podcasts, even though the name comes from the ipod and they basically obsoleted what we had been doing for six to nine months overnight. Then we, you know, we were like, oh, maybe we create a podcast creation tool. You know, we were trying to pivot and whatnot. And I think I just came the conclusion at some point. The way Biz Stone tells the story is that I wrote this big strategic doc about how to succeed in the podcasting business. And it was very convincing about the pivot we could do and to do. And I was like, I don't want to do this. And so I went to investors and said, I don't think this company is on a great trajectory. Maybe we should just stop. But that was unusual. This is kind of pivoting now, of course, is taken for granted that your idea isn't right the first time out. That was less assumed back then. So I was embarrassed. I was like I said I was going to start a podcasting company and I raised this money. I mean, these employees, I have these investors, But I don't believe in it. I don't believe in this vision anymore. Even though it wasn't dead, as you.
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Kevin Rose
Said, was the reason you didn't believe in it based on the emergence of itunes and what that represented, or was there more to it?
- [15:12]
Ev Williams
I wasn't that into it personally. I wasn't a podcaster. And I think that was another principle that I've learned over and over is I think some people can build products for other people, and thank goodness they do. But I just build products for myself. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know what the product is here. We need to build. That I want. But I think to your question about strategic quitting, I think a ton of companies and a ton of people just getting in these life situations where they just keep going. And that's certainly what I was taught. In fact, Blogger, which is the company I sold to Google, I completely ran out of money after the dot com bust, had to lay off all my employees, was barely able to pay my rent, and kept working on it kept working on it, kept working on it, eventually sold it to Google very happily. And to me that was like, yes, that is the triumph of perseverance and that's why you should stick to things. And then odio. Thankfully we didn't. We did create another company out of that. But I think this idea of it's okay to quit is underappreciated. And the main reason everyone knows about Sunk Cost Fallacy. There's a great book by the way by Andy Duke called Quit, which I highly recommend and it's actually was part of the reason a couple years ago I, I stepped down from Medium, which is my last company I was running for a long time. I quit my job, the company's still going, but I was like, I realized that I was just working as like it was ego, it was pride, it was expectations of other people. And the book is really great if you don't know it because it just points out all the reasons beyond Sunk Cost Fallacy that people do things way longer than it makes sense to do them. And the biggest thing is they underestimate opportunity costs. If you're working on one thing and there's identity and ego and all those other things, but it's like you don't know what else there is until you clear that your attention away from the thing that you've been struggling with. And so I think if you're in a situation where it feels like a slog, quitting it is probably a good idea.
- [17:13]
Kevin Rose
So Andy Duke, for people who might not recognize the name, well known poker player, also wrote Thinking in Betsy I believe so let me ask you then, if you look back now, hindsight 2020 at EV who persevered with Blogger and then ended up selling it to Google at a very good time to get Google equity, did he just get lucky in that perseverance or was there some type of scent trail that in retrospect you can say, well it was actually the right thing to do at that time.
- [17:42]
Ev Williams
I've struggled with this because I don't have a clean way to understand it. But I think one big difference is I believed in the vision Blogger the whole time. And that was where Odo was like, I'm keep coming to work and make it succeed. It was also I was lucky because Blogger being my first real company and I was a little bit younger, I believed in vision, but I also just was petrified of failing. I just couldn't accept that possibility for myself. I also didn't have a lot of other prospects. I'd never really had a job, I didn't have a degree. The dot com boom was like, well, I don't know what the hell else I'm going to do if I don't make this succeed, so I'm going to stick with it. But it didn't really make sense.
- [18:23]
Kevin Rose
So it speaks to your prior comment about the opportunity cost.
- [18:26]
Ev Williams
Yeah, right, exactly. Actually, good point. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:30]
Kevin Rose
Like your opportunity cost was not as high, maybe at that point.
- [18:33]
Ev Williams
Fair. Yeah.
- [18:34]
Kevin Rose
By pursuing something else.
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Ev Williams
Yeah.
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Kevin Rose
So you mentioned something came out of Odio. What came out of Odio?
- [18:40]
Ev Williams
A company called Twitter. I still call it that. I don't know about you guys.
- [18:48]
Kevin Rose
How did that happen?
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Ev Williams
Well, the investors, thankfully my board, I went to board, said, this is my honest assessment of Odeo. And they as good investors do, said, well, we didn't believe invest in podcasting. We invest in you. You have a great team. You got any other ideas? And I thought, I must have other ideas. So I always prided myself on having ideas. But I went back to the team and said, I don't have any ideas. You guys got any ideas? And we ended up doing a hackathon where we basically, for a couple of weeks.
- [19:24]
Kevin Rose
Internal hackathon.
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Ev Williams
Internal hackathon where we just said, hey, let's all.
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Kevin Rose
How many employees did you have at the time?
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Ev Williams
I think it was around 12, 12, 14, something like that. People worked on a bunch of stuff. A lot of it was related because we were doing audio and, you know, recording in the browser with Flash and stuff like that. Again, pre smartphones, but we were dabbling with text messaging. There's a couple of the engineers that were familiar with how to send text messages en masse, which was little known at that time. There was no real APIs for that. And so people were trying a lot of things along those lines. Maybe we send an audio voice memo, maybe we record some of the browser little kind of social things. Then there. One of the ideas was to the way I remember, first it was record a message actually via your phone. And then it got broadcast text to people and then they could listen to it. And then that quickly involved with evolved to what if we got rid of the audio? Maybe it was just. It was just text broadcast. And then, you know, having come from the blogging world that we were familiar with RSS and subscribing, which turned into following and yeah, kind of evolved from there that was to mention names, that was of course Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey's project. And it also was informed by Jack's previous work on Careers and status systems.
- [20:45]
Kevin Rose
And at what point did you or anyone else for that matter realize that there was a there there, like, oh, there might be something very interesting with this.
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Ev Williams
We were pretty intrigued right away. I mean, we certainly didn't know the extent of it by any means, but it felt new and interesting. We kept evolving it. It definitely wasn't right. I mean, I think no ideas come out fully baked. And so there was a lot we had to get right. Like, what is the graph? The very first version actually was highly informed by status messages, which were a thing in Facebook. But this is pre Facebook being available to outside of colleges. And we were too old to be on Facebook, so we didn't even know about status messages on Facebook. But it was kind of like that. And it was kind of like AIM messages. And the very first version, there wasn't a whole feed. It was just the latest person who had updated their status was on top and it went out via text message. But we're like, interesting. And we felt it was interesting when we had maybe 10 people on it. Ten people worked at the company. And then we started getting our partners on it and we were intrigued. But so this is 2006 and it really wasn't growing for months and months. And really we hit an inflection point here in Austin in 2007.
- [22:07]
Kevin Rose
So I have to just mention that that particular Saat by is very nostalgic for me because I launched the four hour workweek with an overflow presentation in 2007 after haranguing the shit out of Hughes Forest. Thank you for letting me fill in for a cancellation. And basically next to a cafeteria, my laptop failed. So I ended up having to improv the thing without my slides. And I remember the big screen TV in the ground level of the conference center showing tweets going through. And I was like, huh, look at that.
- [22:45]
Ev Williams
Yeah, that was the idea we had. It was starting to take off amongst the people we knew in south by was always the conference where like the indie cool tech people came. And these were our people and they, they were the ones our early adopters Twitter, because they came from the blogging world and their friends. And so we sensed that we could get critical mass here. So we talked to Hugh and whoever from his team and of course they were like, well, you could have a trade show floor and like, no, no, no, no one goes to trade show. Can we buy a screen and put it in the hall where everybody's hanging out? And that was the move. And people saw that and like, oh, that's Amazing.
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Kevin Rose
I didn't realize that backstory.
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Ev Williams
And this tossed $11,000.
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Kevin Rose
It's a great investment. $11,000. A little more expensive these days, I think, since you're competing against AT&T and God knows who else. But this ties into Mozy in part because I'm wondering how much your expectation is that you will design and deliver to spec. Maybe like an Uber where the business model has changed relatively little over time. Right.
- [24:00]
Tim Ferriss
It's been very reliable.
- [24:01]
Kevin Rose
It's kind of stayed very similar with obviously bells and whistles and changes along the way. Or is your expectation maybe along the lines of a Twitter or Odo in some sense morphing into a Twitter, that Mozy is just a starting point and your expectation is it's probably going to end up being something very, very different a year or two.
- [24:23]
Ev Williams
I'm sure it'll end up with something very, very different. It's early for Mozy the way we think about it in our wildest dreams. It is a ubiquitous social network in the way Facebook was it one time, but actually designed for enhancing people's social lives and relationships, which means it's not a media platform, it's not an advertising platform, it's not a performative platform, it's not a status building platform. It's really about sharing information that's important to you with people you care about and enabling. It won't all be about irl, but that's where focused on right now. But it's early. We haven't figured it out yet. And I think that's part of the fun is figuring out where it goes.
- [25:03]
Kevin Rose
So you embrace me at a whole lot of levels. I've always found you to be a very deep thinker. You think a lot and you choose your words carefully and ask a lot of good questions. And I'm always curious about the inputs, what you feed yourself in terms of information. And I've read that you're fond of a few books. This may have changed because this is from 2016, but Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Robert Pirsig, the Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. I don't know if you would still stand by those, but I'm curious if so, why those books? And if there are any others that you would add to that list.
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Ev Williams
Where'd you get that list?
- [25:43]
Kevin Rose
That is New York Times. Evwilliamsfavoritebooks, HTML.
- [25:51]
Ev Williams
Yeah, I probably wouldn't pick those now. It's been a while, I'm not an executive anymore, so I mean that's not as useful then The Art of Martyr Psycho Manias is great, but I will mention one book very related to the conversation, which is have you read why Greatness Cannot Be Planned?
- [26:08]
Kevin Rose
No. Great title though.
- [26:10]
Ev Williams
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. I Recommend this to 100 people. Love this book. The subtitle is the Myth of the Objective. And the premise is by a guy named Ken Stanley and another guy who were AI researchers. And the way it starts out is they. This is early AI researchers. Ken Wen worked at OpenAI. Later they were building bots. And the example they talk about is trying to build a robot to go through a maze and how they tried to program all kinds of smart algorithms into it. And then they found that the most effective strategy was just try something new. And they go on from that and extrapolate this idea that if you are trying to do something that hasn't been done before, you know, we're taught from birth and from school and everywhere is like, set your goal, make a plan to get to the plan, persevere, go through that. And the premise of the book is that works if it's something that's been done a lot and that's formulaic. You can set a goal to run a marathon and you can download a training regime and you can go run the marathon. And probably you can't do that to invent the computer or Twitter or create amazing art. You can't plot it. And to the extent you try to plot it, you shoot yourself in the foot because you cut off the possibilities that lay before you. And I read this book when I was running Medium, my last company. It had a great effect on me because I felt this deep sense of relief because my entire business and startup career, I've been deeply driven to create things. I saw companies, in particular products, as a creative process. You know, it's like writing a book or painting. A painting is like you have to figure it out as you go. You don't have it fully baked in your head from day one. But what I've seen happen a million times and happen to me is you have this intuition. You kind of know what it is. You start develop it. You're like, oh, it's this, not that. Let's try this, not that. And you feel your way into what's the best first version of it. If you're lucky and good enough that that first version meets with some success in the world, then at least in the tech world, employees and investors and business people come in and it's like, okay, where are we going next? What's the plan? What's the roadmap? How are we going to make the numbers go up? And it doesn't work too very far. It works a little bit to get that next stage, but it doesn't work to really innovate. It doesn't work. And so you have to be comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing where you're going to go. And this book is good and it makes its point. It's very short. It also talks about evolution a lot and how like the most creative force in the world is clearly nature and like it has no plan, it just tries shit.
- [29:12]
Kevin Rose
Trial and error.
- [29:13]
Ev Williams
Yeah.
- [29:15]
Kevin Rose
All right, taking notes. That's going to be one of my next reads.
- [29:21]
Tim Ferriss
Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. It's the new year and many of you no doubt are planning for the year ahead. I'm doing the same. And of course one thing that tends to be top of mind is Saturday Setting financial goals, getting your finances in order. And it's a mess out there. The hyper complexities of the US economy, global economy, can be very confusing and there's a lot of conflicting advice. But saving and investing doesn't have to be complicated. Here's something refreshingly simple to use, and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now you can earn 4% APY, that's annual percentage yield on your cash from partner banks. With the Wealthfront Cash account. That's nearly 10 times of the national average according to FDIC.gov so don't wait. Earn 4% APY on your cash today. Plus it's eligible for up to 8 million in FDIC insurance through partner banks. And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. There are already more than 1 million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more and build long term wealth.
- [30:28]
Kevin Rose
So check it out.
- [30:29]
Tim Ferriss
Visit wealthfront.comtim to get started one more time. That's wealthfront.com Tim this is a paid endorsement of Wealthfront. Wealthfront Brokerage isn't a bank. The APY is subject to change. For more information, see the episode description.
- [30:46]
Kevin Rose
You mentioned AI and it is the topic du jour. But can't believe everything you read on the Internet. But I believe that 25% of the latest Y Combinator class wrote 95% plus of their code using AI. And I'm curious, you have kids. What would you suggest your kids study.
- [31:09]
Ev Williams
In school My kids are here. In fact, whatever they want. I mean, it's. It depends on what, what the goal is. I mean, I think I could.
- [31:20]
Kevin Rose
I can frame it a little more. I can strain it. I would say if people are wondering here how to. I don't want to say AI proof themselves because good luck predicting where that's going to go. But are there any fundamental skills or specific skills that you think will increase in value over time? For instance, I don't know if I had kids if I would suggest they take a legal path necessarily, since I already use AI in 30 seconds to draft most of my legal documents. Before I send it to human eyes. Do you have any thoughts?
- [31:54]
Ev Williams
I haven't thought about this deeply, but what comes to mind is social, human things. Two things. One is I do encourage them to read and write still, because I think that's how you figure things out. That's like the best way to think and have ideas and get clarity is to write. And you can't write if you don't read. So even if they can write for you, that's fine if it's a paper or, you know, a report or some analysis that. Where the product is very important. Like this is the information and text that I need. But it robs you of the process of thinking. So I think problem solving, creative ideation is useful no matter what you do ever. So I think those core skills and then social skills, and one of the reasons I love the school they go to is actually they have a thing called sel, which maybe you all had, but I sure as hell didn't have in rural Nebraska in the 70s is social, emotional learning. And that's just like, how do you connect with people? I mean, we know that's critical to any job no matter what you're doing. And I think that's probably, well, hopefully not going to go away. Who knows?
- [33:07]
Kevin Rose
Who knows A lot of trouble if that we don't know removed from you in life. So let's shift gears a bit and I'll just ask a question I like to ask. If it goes nowhere, it goes nowhere. But. All right, so metaphorically speaking, the billboard question, right? So if you were going to put a message on a billboard, could say anything, could be an image, anything at all that you would want a lot of people to see and understand. What might you put on that?
- [33:37]
Ev Williams
I love this question. I might overthink it and understand. So we can assume though the and.
- [33:47]
Kevin Rose
Understand I threw on there with a little creative flourish. It may complicate your thinking.
- [33:52]
Ev Williams
I'M going to build on that. And thinking about this, what comes to mind first of all, is the category is something that will help people heal, you know, just be their whole and true selves. Because I think that's where all our problems come from, is the lack of that. And as much as I care about climate, I think the. The key to solving climate is to heal ourselves, to heal culture, to heal the planet. And so I start with the self, and then my mind goes to what's a big fundamental truth that we want? Everyone, let's pretend if they read it, they'll actually get it and know it. Then I think there's a little bit of tension between the most fundamental truths and how actionable they are. So if we said we are all one, which I believe, it's like, okay, we're all one. The universe is one big thing. We're all connected. What do I do with that? Maybe if you really ponder that and meditate on that a long time, it will do you some good. But then if you move toward the spectrum of usefulness, what's a fundamental truth that's more useful? You might some, you know, have like, some Buddhist or saying, like, all of our suffering comes from, you know, our thoughts or inability to accept reality, which is a little bit more useful, but maybe for the masses, not still not very actionable. And then you could move to, like, feel your feelings, which I think would do a tremendous amount of good. If people adopt, oh, feel your feelings. It's a little bit easier to imagine that, like so much of our suffering. I say this as someone who told their first therapist, I don't understand the point of feelings. I was like, they are just a nuisance and get in the way. So it took me a long time to appreciate that and the avoidance that so many of us go through. And then one step further might be stop drinking alcohol for six months and see how you feel. Not tonight, though. It's fine. We're in a.
- [35:53]
Tim Ferriss
Not tonight.
- [35:54]
Kevin Rose
Nice. Starting tomorrow. Starting tomorrow.
- [35:55]
Ev Williams
Consider it.
- [35:56]
Kevin Rose
So following up just on the feeling, your feelings, you said for a long time. And you said this to your first therapist, right? They're just a nuisance. I'd like to know how to rid myself of these irritations. What changed? How did you end up going on to team Feelings?
- [36:12]
Ev Williams
So, I mean, it was a long, long process. I mean, the, the therapy helped, the psychedelics helped, meditation growth, learning, reading books, having friends, stopping drinking, actually, just for six months. And I've gone through a lot. I've done a lot of Work, particularly in the last couple years, that's been just super, super important. Yeah.
- [36:36]
Kevin Rose
Just a note on alcohol. Look, I'm going to have some drinks tonight. I do enjoy drinking, but. Yeah, so. But just a PSA for people because ketamine is in the air. Ketamine's probably in a few people's pockets here. They're both dissociative anesthetics. So if you want to feel your feelings, it's a good idea not to engage with those things excessively. And if you have a history of alcohol overuse, I would also stay away from any at home ketamine. But in terms of books or types of therapy, did you find if there are people in the audience who are like, yeah, you know what? Actually that makes sense to me, but I've never been able to find a handhold to get started. Is there any advice you might give?
- [37:17]
Ev Williams
Probably the best thing I've ever done in that realm is Hoffman. Have you done Hoffman?
- [37:25]
Kevin Rose
Hoffman? I haven't done Hoffman, but quite a few of my friends have.
- [37:28]
Ev Williams
So there's this thing called the hoffman process. It's 20 years of therapy in a week. In terms of the effect, I mean, I got much more out of it than I ever got in therapy. It's a week long retreat. There's a few different places. The main ones in Petaluma, California, you hand over your phone, you go and do some exercises with 36 strangers and yourself for a week, and you come out a new person.
- [37:54]
Kevin Rose
So I've spoken. Well, not directly. I've more listened, but had a conversation on this podcast where the Hoffman Process process came up. And a lot of listeners have gone to the Hoffman process. And I get letters literally every week from people who are thanking me for not really the proper credit because there's someone else who brought it up for the Hoffman process. I'm very curious. You mentioned the strangers. Part of the reason I haven't gone is I'm like, I don't want to air all of my dirty laundry in front of 20 strangers. I don't know these people. And I know you're also, I think it's fair to say, pretty introverted. I would say I am. Even though I'm on stage, like safely speaking, into the darkness. Was that an issue at all for you or how did you get past that?
- [38:44]
Ev Williams
It wasn't easy, but it's just in the context of it, it just feels very safe. One of the fascinating things is it's strangers. You are not allowed to say your last name or what you do in the real world when you get there. So you connect with people. And I realized after a few days I relied so much on people knowing who I was or what I did that it was this veil between me and other humans. So you get to know people at such a deep level without really knowing any of the normal things that we would say, you meet someone here, oh, what do you do? You know, where do you live? And that it just feels incredibly safe. But the process is. They've been doing it for 50 some years. It's very evolved, it's very well done. You take any of it out of context, that sounds weird. Like, I knew nothing going in. And about five people brought it up to me in random conversations over a week and were like, okay, this is a message. Go sign up for this thing. Show up. I had no idea. And then you just dive in and it's incredible.
- [39:48]
Kevin Rose
Yeah. From what I can tell, it's somewhat like Fight Club. It's like, first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club. You're not going to find much detail on the Hoffman process. This also ties into a question I was planning on asking anyway, which is, are there any habits or beliefs that have really positively impacted your life in the last handful of years? Could also be 10 years ago, but you've talked about doing a lot of work in the last handful of years. Any new habits, beliefs, tools, anything come to mind that have been really helpful?
- [40:23]
Ev Williams
Yes. But I feel like they're the ones that everybody knows well, I mean, sometimes.
- [40:29]
Kevin Rose
The fundamentals are worth a review.
- [40:31]
Ev Williams
It is exercise and meditation I dabbled in for a long time, and then I got much more serious a couple years ago about both and really, really dramatic life improvement.
- [40:45]
Kevin Rose
Why did you get more serious about them? You just wake up one day and you're like, today's a new day. Or was there a breaking point?
- [40:53]
Ev Williams
Early Covid I was like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm gonna turn 50 and I need to work a hell of a lot harder to be in shape than I was. So I just started doing it. I was at home at the time, so I did that. Although that's, that's increased and you know, because you get the positive reward cycle and it feels great. And meditation, I've always found super valuable. And I just. Last year, on January 2, 2024, I had meditated the day before and I was like, I could meditate every single day this year. And it was just that, that sort of psychological hook that you find motivating even Though it's arbitrary. And was like, yes, I'm going to meditate every single day in 2024. That's a goal. And I don't normally set goals like that. But I. I was like, okay, let's see what happens. And my teacher says, you can't boil water if you keep turning off the flame. And so the consistency of meditation, I underestimated what dramatic difference that makes and how fast you can drop in if you do it every single day.
- [41:58]
Kevin Rose
What type of meditation did you decide on?
- [42:01]
Ev Williams
Mindfulness meditation. Breath and awareness. Not tm, just.
- [42:07]
Kevin Rose
Just like an open monitoring. Feel what you feel, See what you see.
- [42:11]
Ev Williams
Yeah.
- [42:12]
Kevin Rose
Are you noting things or are you just sometimes noting.
- [42:15]
Ev Williams
Sometimes noting. And I know you. You like to know about products. You know about this product. But the. I was using the Way. Yep, you probably talked about that before. The Way is a meditation app. I hadn't used a meditation app for years. The Way I started using the Way, Kevin sent it to me, actually around when it was still in beta, and I started doing that around that time. Yeah. The Way is fantastic.
- [42:38]
Kevin Rose
Yeah. Henry Shookman, just an incredible guy. I mean, we'll hope to meet him in person someday. Do you have a favorite failure or any favorite failures that come to mind? I mean, you've got a greatest hits list that's pretty outstanding. I'm just wondering.
- [42:55]
Ev Williams
I have a lot of failures and.
- [42:57]
Kevin Rose
Anything that has either taught you a lot or in some way set you up for successes later, that's two possible ways of approaching it.
- [43:08]
Ev Williams
Well, we already talked about Odeo, which kind of failure that led to Twitter, so that's obvious. But a thing that took me very long time to appreciate that felt like the biggest failure possible was getting fired from Twitter, which I did. I co founded the company. I was CEO for two years and then I got fired, to my great shock and dismay. And I was just devastated. Absolutely. Now I looked and I was like, wow, I'm probably way happier today than I would have been had I. Had I not. But it took me a while. Took me a long while to appreciate that.
- [43:49]
Kevin Rose
What was the silver lining on that in retrospect?
- [43:53]
Ev Williams
Kind of goes back to all our unhappiness comes from thinking things shouldn't be how they are, because I was very upset because of the injustice of it and like. And what I thought was just dumb. Now, in retrospect, and even at the time, I knew I was in over my head to a certain extent. And Dick, who became the CEO was much better at certain aspects of the job. I wasn't even that attached to being the CEO long term. I was just like, maybe we should talk about it before you fire me. That seemed rude, but I mean it was my company. But the silver lining Lion, I didn't have to do the job anymore. That's one. I mean, I still owned a bunch of the company. I didn't have to do the job. I mean that's like. Objectively it wasn't that bad, but as an identity and ego hit, it was tremendous. I also, I thought the best thing for the company was for me to stay and even not in CEO role. And I tried to negotiate that and that wasn't accepted. But it was more like, this is so wrong. It was like, okay, what can I learn from this? What is. Once I was out of that, some deep reflection happened and I think a long term path of personal growth.
- [45:18]
Kevin Rose
Are there any people who come to mind who you're tracking right now or anyone you think people should pay more attention to? Innovators, technologists, thinkers, alive or dead?
- [45:35]
Ev Williams
I'll mention another book. What I've been geeking out on recently is how the Universe Works.
- [45:44]
Kevin Rose
Small side project, you know.
- [45:48]
Ev Williams
Which I used to. I used to read a lot of physics books and quantum physics just for fun. And it had been a while, so I started delving into that.
- [45:58]
Kevin Rose
Set a bubble bath, light a candle, read some quantum physics.
- [46:03]
Ev Williams
There's a book I'm reading right now called the one by Henrik. Pos. I don't know about him. Yes, the one is about. It's about how it's monism, the idea that the universe is just one thing and nature and us in this glass is all one thing. And that the separation is an illusion, how that fits with quantum physics and the whole history of quantum physics and how this idea had come up but rejected. It was very interesting to learn how the implications of that, which we've heard about with multiverse and all these crazy ideas were rejected by scientists who were materialists. And it was interesting to learn that materialism in science is basically religion. And that's. That's fascinating.
- [46:50]
Kevin Rose
So how did you find this book?
- [46:53]
Ev Williams
My partner, James Joaquin at Obvious. We like to talk about how the universe works and then invest in startups.
- [47:01]
Kevin Rose
Sounds like a great job. All right. Do you tend to find books again, just riffing on how you choose your intake?
- [47:10]
Ev Williams
Right.
- [47:11]
Kevin Rose
And there's finding the signal and then there's tuning out the noise. I mean, I haven't had any social apps on my phone for years at this point because I just don't have the control to be like the heroin addict wandering into the heroin den. But then there's choosing the signal. And I think books are still, if you can do it with a slightly longer attention span or to cultivate that, a great way of finding these, like I said earlier, scent trails to follow. But you still have a problem because there are 100,000 plus books published in hardcover alone in the US every year.
- [47:47]
Tim Ferriss
How do you choose your books and.
- [47:49]
Kevin Rose
Do any other books come to mind?
- [47:50]
Ev Williams
I wish I had a better way. I should ask you, how many books do you read a month?
- [47:56]
Kevin Rose
Probably four or five.
- [47:57]
Ev Williams
Okay. You read a lot more than I do. But I may read two a month. But I think it's kind of haphazard, which is scary because you're gonna like select a very tiny portion.
- [48:10]
Kevin Rose
Yeah. Tim Urban style. Right. It's like you got time for however many books left in your life.
- [48:15]
Ev Williams
Right, Right. Great book, by the way. Tim Urban's book I have. It's pretty random. It's just like wandering. I'll buy tons of books. I read mostly on my phone, but I'll buy physical books to remember that the book exists. And then so I'll have a lane around the house and be like, oh, this is interesting. Then I'll go, because I'll just read it on my phone. But I feel like I should have a better way. I also watch a lot of YouTube, I have to admit.
- [48:43]
Kevin Rose
What do you watch on YouTube? It's got to be better than what I watch. I end up in some weird corners.
- [48:51]
Ev Williams
I watch music content, like how to make music. Like make music as a hobby as well. And then like quantum physics stuff.
- [49:02]
Kevin Rose
Do you have a background in physics?
- [49:05]
Ev Williams
No. I don't even understand it. I don't want to give the impression that I'm an expert on any of this. I just follow my curiosity. I used to just exclusively consume business and technology and startup stuff. Most of my adult life. I was CEO of a company and just waking up every day desperately trying to make that succeed. And so a lot of my new stuff, like music, it was like, it's just fun.
- [49:33]
Kevin Rose
Do you read any fiction?
- [49:35]
Ev Williams
I'm trying to read more fiction. I tried reading that book that you recommended a little while back, the little one so hard.
- [49:43]
Kevin Rose
Little Big.
- [49:44]
Ev Williams
Little Big.
- [49:44]
Kevin Rose
Little Big by John Crowley. This is the one book that I hesitate to recommend because 9 out of 10 people are just like, what the you even recommendation?
- [49:54]
Ev Williams
I'm like, I can, I can handle it. I got this. I'm going to couldn't do It. I gave up.
- [50:00]
Kevin Rose
Yeah. The more drugs one has done, the easier it is to eventually get into the talking fish section of the book. When then you kind of cross the Rubicon and it's all in. But yeah, John Crowley. Any other fiction books said you're trying?
- [50:15]
Ev Williams
I just read this Miranda July book, All Fours.
- [50:19]
Kevin Rose
Okay.
- [50:19]
Ev Williams
It's good. She's hilarious. It's random.
- [50:22]
Kevin Rose
Yeah, got it. All right, so if we look back at the products that you've built, if you were to build any of them again today, are there any features you would either remove or add that come to mind?
- [50:43]
Ev Williams
I think a lot of cases I was much too eager to add things, especially Medium. Medium, I definitely prematurely scaled and I just wanted to create a nice.
- [50:57]
Kevin Rose
Why do you say that? That it prematurely scaled?
- [51:01]
Ev Williams
I'm good at seeing systems and a product. Most of the things I build are systems. They're not just a product. And with Medium, I had lots of experience understanding the Internet and publishing some platform and I wanted to build everything new. And that may or may not have been possible, but I tried to do it all at once, which was, I think, the mistake. And so that's why I say we prematurely scaled is just that it takes time to get everything right and you know, the company, the product, etc. And because when you're trying to do a whole bunch of things at once, it's classic failure mode to try to bite off more than you can chew. And, and almost every, I'd say 80% of the time if I meet with a startup or founder, which I don't really do anymore, if they ask me their advice is I do less. And so Medium, it was like that. It was like build a great writing platform and that got impatient for growth.
- [52:06]
Kevin Rose
Was that due to outside pressure or was that an internally generated pressure?
- [52:13]
Ev Williams
It was internal, but it was self imposed by me. But it was also, this is part of prematurely scaling is if you get beyond a handful of employees, it's as much pressure from employees as it is from investors.
- [52:29]
Kevin Rose
Right.
- [52:29]
Ev Williams
You know, and if you have everyone around the table and everyone's seeing all, then then you can kind of take your time more. But if you like people are having doubts and you have to sell internally all the time before you figure it all out, that's a dangerous place to be. So that's where we were for a while.
- [52:48]
Kevin Rose
So when you say do less. Right. I'm sure a lot of folks in this audience, I've been in a position where I'm trying to do more things than I should Taking a maybe shotgun approach to trying to impatiently get seven things done when I should probably put them in some type of logical sequence. So if you're trying to take a more rifle like approach and you could give the example with Medium or it could be with Mozy or otherwise, how do you choose the first few things to focus on when you have this ocean of possibilities? Looking back, we can use this as a starting point at say Medium. What would you have focused on in terms of feature set or otherwise?
- [53:30]
Ev Williams
I'll use Mozy as an example of this, all right, because it's fresher in my mind, but where we've done a much better job. So Mozy I originally conceived of as a better contacts app. And the idea was it's a very old idea, like the Plaxo idea, if you remember that.
- [53:47]
Kevin Rose
I do remember.
- [53:48]
Ev Williams
I remember hearing about Plaxo 2001 or something like that, and the idea of Plaxo Pre smartphone desktop, like a Rolodex on your computer. But if I have your business card in my Rolodex, you can update it on my Rolodex. I heard that idea. I'm like, duh, that's like one of the many things that the Internet is going to change is like the difference of being in a connected world versus a disconnected world and what utility and great stuff come from that. And then fast forward 2023, we still have that, which is kind of crazy. Like I have, I have this contacts app and it's like lacking information, it's incomplete, it's outdated. So I'm going to build a better contacts app. And then it led to the idea of, okay, if you managed to do that and got lots of people connected, then you would actually have this private social network. Then you could do all kinds of things. And one of the ideas we had was location sharing or like city level location sharing. But we also had these ideas around customizing. If it's a digital business card, it was like, what if you could customize it, make it look really cool and choose your fonts and colors and wouldn't that be just fun and kind of a throwback? So we actually built that, we built this whole system for making these cool looking cards that would show up for your friends in your Mozi. And then we killed it all. Thankfully, that was painful because you've gone down a path with the team. They work really hard. And actually, you know what, this is complicating our vision because what we're hearing from people and what we're sensing is that's kind of noise compared to the utility. What I just want to know is when my friend's in town or I just want to know when I'm going to a city. Like, where are my friends? And all the rest of this is noise. So we rip that out.
- [55:40]
Kevin Rose
How are you going to approach the invite process to show your contacts? Because this seems to have been a challenge with some previous attempts at this work. If I look at my contacts I've had, I mean, my contacts is this bloated monster full of people. A lot of them are sort of acquaintances I don't really want to keep in touch with. They're probably a handful of frenemies. Or I'm like, definitely don't want to see those people. Some crazies don't want to see them either. But they're still somewhere hidden in my contacts. So how do I just have my real friends notified?
- [56:19]
Ev Williams
Good question. We are assuming, for starters, who made this false assumption, if you are in the phone book of someone else and they're in yours, that you're willing to share more than your phone number, you're willing to share your private profile. And we're not sharing anything that's never public. But that's if you've given your phone number to them, then you can see what we build mode Z profile, which is just like, it's not address. It's like social handles. It's more or less what would show up on a social network profile. But some people are nervous about that. So, I mean, you can not sync your contacts and build it from scratch would be the answer. And then plans have a separate mode. So what people are most nervous about, and we want to make very clear is it's not going to tell everybody in your address book where you are. We don't even automatically update your location. You put in plans. And then at the plan level, there's another level of privacy where you just say you have to actually opt in to say, this person can see my plans. Does that make sense?
- [57:22]
Kevin Rose
Yeah, it makes sense.
- [57:23]
Ev Williams
We're trying to take a conservative approach to privacy, but balance that obviously with ease of use and growth and having enough nodes in the network, but we're not compromising on privacy. We never want to surprise someone that they're sharing information with that random X or crazy person who happens to be in their phone book.
- [57:42]
Kevin Rose
So we're coming up on time pretty quickly. You guys excited for a fun night? There's a lot. There's a lot coming. You mentioned, I think it was January 2024. I could meditate every day this year. Do you have anything on the docket for 2025 that's like that? Do you make resolutions?
- [58:03]
Ev Williams
No, that's the only one I'd made in years, actually, other than just general themes like dance more.
- [58:10]
Kevin Rose
Here we are tonight. You guys are in luck.
- [58:13]
Ev Williams
You guys ready?
- [58:15]
Kevin Rose
All right, well, we're gonna land the plane. Anything else you'd like to say? Have any closing comments, thoughts for the audience?
- [58:24]
Ev Williams
I would just say, Tim, thank you for having me. Tim and I have known each other for like 20 years. I've never been on the podcast. That was fun. And it's just a whole night of nostalgia because we're back in Austin and a Stig nation and it's. It's good time. So I hope you guys enjoy it.
- [58:43]
Kevin Rose
Yeah, I will say, guys, it feels like the mojo's back to south by after Covid. It took a few years and you have an amazing night in store. So we'll get more people out here in just a minute. I will be back out in maybe a half hour. I have a surprise and maybe even some gifts for everybody here. So stick around and ev. Thank you. So much fun. Have a great night, everybody.
- [59:09]
Tim Ferriss
Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on. That gets sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog Friday, type that into your browser. Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. I want to give my pooch Molly the best of everything. She is my companion. She is my guardian. She's been with me for almost 10 years. Now 24 7. I want to give her the absolute best. And that includes food, especially food. It is the bedrock of her health. That's why I give her Sundays for Dogs. This episode's sponsored Sundays is air dried, which locks in more nutrition and flavor than other cooking methods while also making it ultra convenient to store, scoop and serve. As you guys know, I'm on the road all the time and Sundays is convenient. I no longer have to spend time prepping meals or figuring out what is best for Molly. I'd rather spend that time playing or hiking with her. I'm in the mountains right now. She wants to be in the snow. Sundays for Dogs meets or surpasses industry standards using high quality ingredients. That's the focus, not through synthetic vitamins, which is what most other dog food companies do. Sundaes knows your pup is an important member of your family, so they only use USDA grade meat which is fit for human consumption.
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Kevin Rose
So check it out.
- [61:18]
Tim Ferriss
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Kevin Rose
What does that mean?
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Tim Ferriss
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Kevin Rose
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Tim Ferriss
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