Lecture 11 - Hiring and Culture, Part 2 (Patrick and John Collison, Ben Silbermann)

Part two of Culture and
Team, and

we have Ben Silverman, the
founder of Pinterest, and

John and Patrick Collison,
the founders of Stripe.

Founders that have obviously
sort of, some of the best in

the world at thinking about
culture and

how they build teams.

So, there's three areas that
we're gonna cover today.

One will just be sort of
general thoughts on

culture as a follow up to
the last lecture.

And then we're really gonna
dig into what happens at

the founding of these
companies.

And building out the early
team.

And then how that changes
and evolves as these

guys have scaled their
companies up to 100 plus.

I don't even know how many
people you have now,

but quite a lot.

Very large organizations and

how you adapt these
principles of culture.

But to start off I just
wanna ask a very

open-ended question which
is,

what are the core pieces of
culture that you found to

be most important in
building out your companies?

>> So what are the most
important parts?

>> It's on.
>> Oh, it's on.

Yeah I mean I think for

us, like we think about on a
few dimensions.

One is like who do we hire,

and what do those people
value?

Two is what do we do every
day, like why do we do it?

Three is what do we choose
to communicate?

And then I think the fourth
is what we

choose to celebrate.

I guess the converse of

that is like what you choose
to punish.

But in general I think
running a company based on

what you celebrate,

is more exciting than what
you punish.

But I think those four
things kind of make up

the bulk of it for us.

>> We've placed a large
emphasis on, as Stripe has

grown and probably more than
other companies is,

transparency internally.

And I think it's been
something that's been

really valuable for

Stripe, and also a little
bit misunderstood.

All the things people talk
about like hiring really

great people, or giving them
a huge amount of leverage.

Transparency for us plays
into that.

We think that, if you are
aligned at a high

level about what Stripe is
doing, if everyone really

believes in the mission, and
then if everyone has

really good access to
information, and kind of

has a good picture of the
current state of Stripe.

Then that gets you a huge
amount of the way there in

terms of working
productively together.

And it kind of forgives a
lot of the other things that

tend to break as you, as you
grow a start-up.

As we've grown, we started
off two people.

We're now over 170 people.

We've put a lot of thought
into the tooling that

goes around transparency,
because at 170 people,

there is so much information
being produced,

that you can't just consume
it all as a fire hose.

And so

how we use slack, how we use
email, things like that.

We can go into it more
later.

But I think that's one of

the core things that's
helped us work well.

>> I think culture to some
degree is basically kind of

the resolution to a
bandwidth problem.

In the sense that, maybe
when you start out working

on something, you're sort of
coding all the time, but you

can't code all the things
that you think the product

might need, or the company
might need, or whatever, and

you so you decide to work
with more coders, right?

And so the organization gets
larger.

And maybe, in some idealized
world,

I don't think this actually
true, but kind of ideally

you could be involved in
every single decision, and

every single sort of moment
of the company, and

everything that happens, but
obviously you can't, or

maybe you can if two people.

But you certainly can't at
even like five or

ten kind of that point comes
very quickly,

then by the time you're 50
it's completely hopeless.

And so culture is kind of
how you kind of,

what the strands are that
you sort of want to have,

the invariance that you want
to kind of maintain,

as you can get specifically
involved in sort of

fewer and fewer decisions
over time.

And I think when you think
about it that way it,

maybe its kind of importance
becomes sort of

self evident, right?

Because again, like the
fraction of things you

can be involved in directly
is diminishing, I mean,

almost exponentially,

sort of assuming your head
count growth sort of is

on a curve that looks like
one of the great companies.

And yeah that's super
important.

And again, it manifests
itself in a bunch of

different ways.

Like for example, in hiring,
I think a large part of

the reason why maybe the
first ten people you hire,

what kind of goes to ship,

decisions are so important
is because you're not just

hiring those first ten
people.

You're actually kind of
hiring 100 people.

Because you should think of
kind of

each one of those people as
bringing along sort of

another ten people with
them, and

sort of figuring out exactly
what 90 people, you would

like those first ten people
to bring along is obviously

gonna be quite consequential
for your company.

But really briefly I think
it's largely about sort of

abstraction.

>> So one thing that a lot
of speakers in this

class have touched on is how
hiring those first ten

employees, if you don't get
that right,

the company basically will
never recover but

no one has talked about how
to do that so.

What have the three of you
looked for

when you've hired these
initial employees,

to get the culture of the
company right?

How, how have you found
them, and

what have you looked for?

>> Sure.
So,

I guess this answer is
different for every

company and I'll say for us
it was very inductive.

So I literally looked for
people that I wanted to work

with and that I thought were
talented.

I think, I've read all these
books about culture,

because when I don't know
how to do something,

I first go read things and

everyone has all these
frameworks.

And I think one bit, big
misconception that someone

said once is that people
think culture is like

architecture when it's a lot
more like gardening.

You know, you plant some
seeds and

then you pull out weeds that
aren't working,

and they sort of expand.

So, when we first hired
people we hired people that

were like ourselves.

I often looked at like three
or

four different things that I
really valued in people.

You know, I looked for
people that worked hard and

seemed high integrity and
low ego.

I looked for people that
were creative, and

I usually meant that they
were really curious.

They had all these different
interests.

Some of our first employees
are probably some of

the quirkiest people I've
ever met.

They were engineers but

they also have all these
crazy hobbies.

Like one guy made his own
board game

with this elaborate set of
rules.

Another guy was really into
magic tricks.

And he had coded not only
like this magic trick on

the iPhone, but

he had shot the production
video with a preview.

And I think that, that
quirkiness has actually been

a little bit of a calling
card.

And we find that really
creative, quirky people that

are excited about many
disciplines, and are

extraordinary at one tend to
build really great products.

They tend to be great at
collaborating.

Then the last thing is, we
really look for

people that wanted to,

they just wanted to build
something great, and

they weren't arrogant about
it, but they just felt like,

it'd be really cool to take
a risk and

build something bigger than
themselves.

And that, in the beginning,
is very,

very easy to select for if
you're in our situation.

We had this horrible office,
like, nobody got paid.

So there was no external
reason, other than being

excited about building
something to join.

In fact, there was every
reason not to.

And that's something,
looking back,

I really, really value,

because we always knew
people were joining for

the purest reasons, and in
fact,

were willing to forgo other
great job opportunities,

market salary, a clean
office,

good equipment just for the
chance to work.

So, to this day I think a
lot of those traits have

been seeded and

are embedded in the folks
that we look at now.

>> Yeah the first ten hires
are really

hard because you're making
these first ten

hires at a point where no
one's heard of this company,

no one really wants to work
for it.

You're just these,

like two weird people
working on this weird idea.

>> And like their friends
are telling them not

to join.

For our second employee, I
think

he'd accepted the offer or
he was just about to, and

his best friends took him
out the night before, and it

was like a full on assault
for, why you should not join

this company, why this is
ruining your life basically.

And so anyway the guy
subsequently

continued to join.

And actually one of

those friends also now works
at Stripe.

But this is what you're up
against.

>> Yeah.

And I mean it's also hard
because no batch of

ten people will have as
great an influence on

the company as those first
ten people.

I think everyone's
impression of recruiting is,

you open LinkedIn.

It's sort of like ordering
off the dollar menu.

It's, I want that one, that
one, and that one.

And, and now you have some
hires.

Whereas at least for us, it
was very much over a very

long time period, talking
people we knew or

friends of friends into
joining.

We didn't have huge
networks, Pat and

I were both in college at
the time.

So there were no people that

we'd really worked with to
draw on, and so

a lot of those early Stripes
were people we had heard of,

friends of friends, and the
other interesting thing they

all had in common is that
they were all

early in their career, or
undervalued in some way.

Cuz when you think about it,

if someone is a known
spectacular quantity,

then they're probably
working in a job and

very happy with that.

And so we have to try and
find people who were,

in the case of our designer
that we hired, he was 18 and

in high school and in Sweden
at the time.

In the case of our,

our CTO, he was in college
at the time.

You know, a lot of these
people,

they were early on in their
careers and

the only way we could, you
can relax when constrained.

You can relax the fact that
they're talented or

relax that it's apparent
that they're talented,

and we, not consciously, but
we relaxed the latter.

>> Yeah, I think finding
kind of people who are, or

just think like a value
investor.

You're looking for the human
capital that's

significantly devalued by
the market, you know?

You probably shouldn't look
to

hire your brilliant friends
at Facebook and Google or

whatever, because they're
already discovered.

You know, if they're wanting
to join that's great,

but they're probably harder
to convince.

John and I spent a little a
while yesterday

afternoon sort of trying to
figure out in retrospect,

what kind of traits our
first ten or

so people had in common that
we thought were significant.

And you know, in general
sort of in speaking about

culture, I sort of want to
caveat everything we say

with, I that sort of advice
is very limited experience,

widely over extrapolated.

And I think there's a lot of
truth to that.

But for our particular first
ten people, the things we

sort of figured out that
seemed to be important were

they were also very genuine
and straight.

I think that actually
matters quite a lot in that

sort of they're people that
sort of that others want to

work with, that they're
people that others trust.

They sort of have an
intellectual honesty in

how they approach problems
and, and so forth.

They were people who

really liked getting things
finished.

There's a lot of people who

are really excited about
tons of things.

Only a subset of those are
actually excited about like

completing things.

You know, there's a lot of
talk about, for

example hiring people off
their GitHub resumes,

whatever, actually think
that doesn't quite ring,

kind of correct to me.

In the sense that place is a
large premium on sort of

lots of different things.

I think it's actually a
priori,

sort of much more
interesting to work with

someone who has spent two
years really investing in

going deep in a particular
area.

And then the third trait
they all seem to have in

common is they just sort of
cared a great deal.

Like, it was offensive to
them when something was

just a little bit off.

And kind of again,

in hindsight, there are all
these like crazy things we

used to do that I mean, do
in fact seem crazy like we

probably shouldn't have done
them,

but everyone was always like
well, was borderline insane

in sort of how much they
cared about tiny details.

Like we used to, like every
single API request that

ever generated an error went
to all of our inboxes and

phoned all of us.

Because it seems terrible to
ever have an error that

didn't go and

get a resolution from the
user standpoint.

Or we used to like copy
everyone else on

every outgoing email.

And we'd like point out
slight grammar or

spelling mistakes to each
other, because it's terrible

to ever send an email with a
spelling mistake.

So anyway those were the
three traits come

from that area.

A genuine, caring a great
deal.

And, so what was my second
one?

>> The other one.

>> Yeah so.

Sorry yes completing things
like list of three items.

>> Yeah, I'm only gonna say
I just don't think

there's any wrong place to
find people, so when I

look back at our first few
folks that we hired.

They came from all over the
place.

Like I put up ads on
Craigslist.

I went to random tech talks.

You know, we met people at,

we used to throw weekly
barbeques at the office.

It was like bring your own
food and drinks.

And then we would just talk
to folks.

I think every time I ever
went and

got coffee in Palo Alto.

Like one of you guys was
recruiting at

Coopa because their office
was like

strategically situated next
to the best coffee shop.

But I think that the really
good people generally,

they're generally doing
something else, and

so you have to go seek them
out,

rather than expecting that
they're gonna seek you out.

Triple so, when no one's
ever heard of or

is using the product that
you're working on.

>> Yeah it's probably really
important to

have a great elevator pitch.

Not even for investors, but

just because everyone you
run into right now is maybe

six months, a year down the
road, a potential recruit.

And so, the right time to
have gotten them

excited about your company,
the right time for

them to have started
following us,

and be thinking about it if
they think about what

they're going to do next, is
as soon as you can start.

It's gonna take a very long
time to recruit people so to

being able to consistently
get people excited about

what you're doing will pay
back dividends later.

>> Maybe this is a little
tangential but John and

I were also chatting
yesterday afternoon sort of

like a bunch of our friends
have sort of

started companies right out
of school.

We were sort of thinking
about,

what seems to go wrong in
those companies.

And I think something,

that may be the most common
failure mode.

Since we said of doing
something kind of

overly niche, or overly sort
of specific and banded.

I think maybe it comes from
sort of like there's a major

shift in time horizon.

As you go from classes to
building a start-up.

Right?
A class kind of plays out in

a quarter or a semester or
whatever.

Whereas a start-up is like a
five or ten year thing.

And I think this is really
problematic because it's

actually quite hard to hire
people for

niche things, in that if you
tell somebody,

look we're going to build a
rocket that goes to Mars.

Like I mean that sounds
almost impossible, but

also sounds fucking awesome.

Right?
And so it's actually pretty

easy to convince people to
work on it.

Of course, if it's well, you
know,

we're going to build this, I
don't wanna single out any

particular idea, because
probably sound like I'm

picking some actual start up
that's doing it.

But you know, if you pick
something pretty narrow,

something that maybe kind of
inductively comes out of

the kinds of problems you
solve as part of a class

project, that's actually a
much harder effort.

>> One specific question
that has come up a lot is,

how as a relatively
inexperienced founder do

you identify who the really
great people are?

So, you know, you meet
people at these barbecues or

for your friends or
whatever, and

maybe you've worked with
them a little bit.

But what specifically did,

did you guys do in your
processes to identify like,

you know, what this person's
going to be really great?

Or when did you really get
it wrong?

But what have you learned
about how to

identify raw talent if you
can't just say, well they

worked at Google or
Facebook, they must be good?

>> Well, I mean, you'll
never

like 100% know obviously
until you work with folks.

Which is why the flip side
of it is, you know,

if someone you hired just
wasn't a good fit,

you owe it to the company
and

to them, to tell them how
they can improve, and

if they're not working out
to fire them.

But I think that the
generally,

the question of talent falls
into two big buckets.

Like, one is you have some
sense of

what makes them good at
their job, and

there are some areas where
you have taste in that area,

and there's some where you
don't.

And the ones where you

don't are actually much more
difficult.

So what we would do is, is
we would do a few things.

Like first,

before talking to anyone we
try to get a sense for like

what is really world class
in that discipline mean.

And this becomes very
important later,

when you're hiring things
like Head of Finance and

you don't anything about
finance.

Except what was contained in
like a library book you

got about like an
introduction to finance,

or head of marketing.

So, I always made it a habit
of, like, talking to

people that I knew de facto
were world class and

then asking them,

specifically, what are the
key traits or

characteristics that you
look for?

What are the questions that
you ask, and

how do you find them?

And if you're looking for

the next person that's as
good as you, like,

where are, where is that
person working right now,

and, like, what's, what's
her phone number?

I think that, like, learning
what good and bad is during

the interview process, is
extremely expensive.

It's an expensive use of
your time, and

it's an expensive use of
everyone else's time,

so precalibration of that
really matters.

And then, once you have
someone in, sort of,

the interview process,

you'll build the process
over time,

to both screen quality.

And so at Pinterest, you
know, we have

an evolving set of standard
questions that we're

always rotating through, and
we're always measuring,

are these good indicators or
bad indicators of quality?

But the other thing that the
questions are meant to do,

is they're supposed to give
a sense for,

is this the right place for

that person to come and
work?

And this to the point you
guys made about being very

transparent about what's
gonna be easy or hard.

Really great people wanna do
things that are hard,

they wanna solve tough
problems.

And so, there was a certain
brilliance in

Google setting out these
interview questions that

were thought to be really
difficult.

Because then people who like
solving really

difficult problems, they
come out and seek those.

I think it's really
important,

even as companies get
bigger,

that you don't whitewash the
risks.

I heard that PayPal, you'd
go in and

after interviewing with like
Peter Thiel and

Max Levchin, then they would
say by the way like Visa and

MasterCard wanna kill us,
and

we might be doing something
that's illegal.

But if you succeed, you'll
redefine payments.

Or when they were recruiting
for iPhone,

they didn't even tell people
what they were doing.

They were like you won't see
your families for

three years, but when you're
done,

your kid's kids will
remember what you built.

And I think that's a really
good thing in recruiting as

well that you're very
transparent about why you

think it's an amazing
opportunity, but

you lay out in gory detail
why it's gonna be hard.

And then the right people
select in, or

they select out of that
opportunity.

>> Evidence suggest it's
worth a lot of

people to see their kids,
though.

I feel like one thing you
have to do as you try to

identify talent is have the
confidence to interview for,

in a way that works for you.

I think you know, if you're,
say you're not,

the world's best engineer
and

you're trying to interview
engineering candidates.

I think it's tempting to try
to

color code what everyone
else does.

And you know, get them to
call it on white board.

And do other engineering,
interviewee things.

You know in the case of
Stripe,

hiring our first engineer.

We flew the guy out, and we
spent a weekend coding with

him, and you know looked
over his shoulder and

kind of, it was the only way
we could really tell and

get ourselves confident
that, that person was good.

And I think you can actually
extend that to other roles,

where again you're not an
expert, and

that you know I'm no
business development guru.

But when we interview people
for

business development roles,

we'll ask them to do a
project, you know?

Where they talk about how
they would

improve an existing
partnership that Stripe has.

Or which new partnerships
they would go out and do.

And again, you know,

even though it's not my
domain area, I am actually

confident enough that I can
judge those pretty well.

And I think people often
have this imposter syndrome

when it comes to
interviewing for roles.

Yeah.
I think a pretty specific,

just kind of just tactical
thing, and to do for

again the first 10 people,
is to work with them as much

as you can before committing
to hiring them.

I mean, once you

reach a certain scale it's
kind of impractical,

because it's a huge time
commitment on their side.

And ultimately I mean it
just would be unskilled,

would be expensive from your
side.

But it's really worth it

to get the first ten people
right.

And so, for

a majority, maybe in all of
the first ten people,

we worked with them in some
capacity.

Usually for a week in
advance, and

it's pretty hard to fake it
for a week.

It tends to be pretty clear,
quite quickly.

And another thing I thought
of you know, to the question

of sort of how do you know
like who is great or

who is good enough or
whatever.

And people always talk about
this notion of

the ten x person, that
whatever that skill set is.

I don't really know what ten
x means,

I think maybe the slightly
more kind of helpful or like

intuitive version of that
is, is this person probably,

the best out of all of their
friends at what they do.

And so you know, it's a
little bit sensitive to you

know, how well they chose
friends, how many they have.

But for me at least, I find
that kind of

a more helpful way to think
about it, like

is this the best engineer
this engineer knows.

And the other thing I

think that's actually
probably just worth

mentioning in all of those
kind of first ten people, or

even more generally on the
culture and hiring topic.

I think everyone sort of
doesn't realize until they

go through it themselves how
it important it is,

in large part because the,
like in life and the media

and everything, people focus
way too much on founders.

And they're like, here we
are.

And so kind of,

we're re-enforcing the sort
of structural narrative that

like, stripe is about John
and Patrick.

And Pinterest is about Ben
and so forth.

Whereas, I mean, obviously,

sort of the vast majority of
what our companies do

like 99.9% is being down by
people who are not us.

Right?

And I think, I mean, that's
kind of,

it's obvious when you say
it, but it's at a very much,

not just the macro narrative
and

you know, companies are
abstract.

So you kind of need to
associate them with people.

But I think it's worth
bearing in mind that like

for, you know, Apple, you
know everything was

you know, Steve Jobs was a
like tiny, tiny detail at

the end, right, or Google
was that way, and so forth.

>> So don't screw it up, is
that what you're saying?

>> Something like that.

>> I think, you know, one
other thing I'll mention is

that I think referencing
people is really important,

and referencing people is
just what it sounds like.

You're basically asking
people who have real,

material working experience,
for their honest opinion.

And we do that really
aggressively, and

what we're trying to

figure out is what's this
person like to work with?

We're not trying to validate
like whether they

told the truth on their
resume,

cuz we assume that they're
telling the truth.

So, very standard questions
that I'll ask somebody who's

in an interview, I might
say, hey,

we both know Jonathan in
common.

I'm gonna talk to him, you
know,

in a couple weeks, cause
we're both social friends.

Like if I asked him, what
you're the best at, or

what you would be most proud
of, or

what you were kind of
working to improve.

What would he or she say?

Because it sort of tests the
level of self awareness, and

creates a bit of social
accountability.

And then I'll try to ask
something that makes the

question which is typically
very soft feel a little bit

more quantitative, and then
calibrate that over time.

So you know,

in evaluating this person or
this dimension, do you think

this is the top 1% of people
you've ever worked with?

The top 5% and the top 10%?

And it forces a scarcity
that gives a materially

different reference, then if
you just say hey,

like what's the best thing
about John?

He told me you know, he's
good at these things.

Can you validate?

And you're like yeah,

sure, Cuz they don't gain
anything.

So I think that's just a
tool that people should

take seriously.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, and

referencing isn't obviously
easy to begin with, but

it does actually prove
really useful over time.

And you just have to, people
I think especially for

named references, people
really want to be nice.

So you have to do things
like create an artificial

scarcity by saying you know,
where would you rank this

person amongst the people
you worked within this role?

Or, you know,

you just splitz out on the
enchant of how to reference,

but usually I aim to spend,
you know,

15 minutes on the phone with
that person.

Not just let them say, yeah
this person is awesome, and

then hang up.

>> That's also a tremendous
source of new recruits.

>> Yeah.

>> Those references are also
a tremendous source of

new recruits.

What have each of you
learned about,

once you hire these first
people and they joined?

What have you done to make
them effective quickly?

To get them sort of, you
know,

to the right cultural place,
you know?

Cuz sort of hiring is
usually very difficult, but

then not as difficult as
making them

happy and effective.

So what do you do

with these early employees
to accomplish that?

>> Well, ways that it's
changed when we've gone from

really small to bigger.

When we first started,

we were generally hiring
because we needed

that person, like, a long
time ago.

And so their whole
on-boarding was like,

here's your computer,

we already set up your
environment,

don't worry about it,

this is the problem that we
have to solve together.

And then because of the
nature of the start ups,

we were all in this, like,
tiny, two bedroom apartment.

All of the other things,

like building personal
relationships,

spending time together,
getting to know one another,

it just all happened.

Kind of automatically like,

you didn't have to do
anything.

The one thing that I would
add to that is, though,

we would always try to
remind people of like,

where we wanted to go some
day.

Cuz it's really easy when
you first join to drop

somebody into a problem, and
then they think the whole

world is like this little
problem in front of them.

We'd always say,

you know, hey, some day we
wanna do for

Discovery what Google did
for search.

This is our plan for trying
to get that done.

Now as the company, grows I
think that process has to

get a little bit more
formalized.

And so we spend a lot of
time thinking, and honestly

trying to constantly refine
what is that person's

experience look like from
the day they came in,

to their very first
interview,

through 30 days after they
joined.

Like do they have somebody
whose name they know?

Do they know who their
manager is?

Have they sat down with
people on their team?

Do they know what the
general architecture of

the company is, and what the
top priorities are?

And we have a program and
it's a week long, and

then there are some function
specific programs that

go in deeper.

And that's something that's
always been refined.

And the alpha metrics that
we look on that,

it's when we ask people like
what did you think

afterwards and then 30 days
afterwards.

And then we also ask their
peers and their manager,

like hey, is this person
kind of up to speed?

Do you feel like we've done

a good job making them
productive?

And if we haven't, that's a
key A, that, that team

shouldn't be hiring anymore
people, because they're not

doing a good job bringing in
new people.

And B, that we need to
retool that.

And so I think those things
are important.

I just wouldn't discount
just how important it is to

get to know the person as a
person.

Like what are their
aspirations?

What's their working style?

How do they like to be
recognized?

Do they really prefer being
in total silence?

Are they a morning person or
night person?

Like knowing those things I
think, it just

demonstrates that you care
about them individually as

well as collectively, like
what you goals are.

>> I think there are two
things that are important at

any stage through the
implementation of a change.

The first is to get them up
and

running, doing real work
quickly.

Because that's only when you
can find the problems,

that's how progress is
measured,

is how much real work
they're doing.

And so, you know, when we
have engineers start,

we'll try to get them
committing on the first day.

When we have people you
know,

people in business roles
start,

we will have them in real
meetings on the first day,

on what they're meant to be
working on.

But I think sometimes
there's a tendency to

be tentative, and help ease
people in.

We're much more of the push
people off the cliff school.

And then I think the second,
is to try and

start quickly giving people
feedback, and

especially feedback on how
to adapt to the culture.

Because when you think about
it, like, you know,

if you have built a strong
culture as, you know,

all the companies up here
are trying to,

then it's going to take some
adapting for the person.

It's not going to be
necessarily easy, you know?

One thing we have at Stripe,

is just the culture was a
lot more written.

And so, you know?

You have people who are
right next to

each other each with
headphones on, and

just like IM'ing away to
each other.

And for you know,

a lot of people coming in
who hadn't worked in

an environment like that,
it's, it's sort of hard.

>> In normal places.

>> Exactly.
Yeah.

And so, everything from kind
of high level how you're

doing at your job, to kind
of minor cultural pointers.

The more feedback you can
give them,

the better they'll do.

And it's unnatural.

Right?
Because it's

unnatural to be constantly
telling people that

they're doing a good or bad
job.

You don't do that,
hopefully,

in your normal life, you're
more restrained.

But when you have employees,

that's kind of what you owe
them for them to do well.

>> So I think this is sort
of a good transition too,

as your companies have
scaled.

What are the biggest changes
you've had to make to your

hiring processes?

And also how you sort of
manage and

run the team, as you've gone
from, you know,

two to 10 to 100 to 1000
employees?

>> There a lot of changes.

I mean, I think one thing
that we try to do on

the team side is, the goal
is to make the teams feel as

autonomous and nimble as
possible within

the constraints of having a
large organization.

And that means over time,
that we're always trying to

make it feel like a start-up
of of many start-ups,

rather than this monolithic
organization with a set of

foreign processes that cut
horizontally through it.

And it's easier said than
done.

I think that, like we're not
all the way there.

But one of our goals is that
each team has, they control

the resources that they need
to get things done,

they know what the most
important thing is, and

how it's measured.

And in that way,

then the management problem
becomes somewhat tractable,

otherwise it feels
completely impossible if

you can't decompose it into
autonomous units.

Like you just look at it,
and you're like, oh my gosh,

communication complexity is
increasing geometrically.

Management complexity,

like it's never gonna work,
and so

you have to sort of create
these abstracted units, or

that's at least what we're
gonna try to do.

And at Pinterest in
particular, the real

challenge of creating those
abstracted units is.

We want to actually have

units that encompass a
super-strong designer,

a super-strong leader in
engineering, often a writer,

often sometimes like a
community manager.

We want them all to be
self-contained.

And so that makes the
problem really hard,

but that's kind of core to
our philosophy of how we

build products.

We try to put people
together that have all of

these different disciplines.

They're curious about lots
of things.

And then we anchor them on a
single project and then we

try to remove barriers to
let them go fast.

When we find new barriers,
we sit down and

we think, how do we speed
that up?

I think hiring is a little
bit different.

And I think the biggest
change and

the biggest asset that you
get as you get more

people is referrals become
like more and more and

more and more the life blood
depending on

the network of all the
people that you bring in.

So one of the really lucky,

and in hindsight, great
decisions that we made, was

actually the 14th or 15th
person that we hired was

a professional recruiter and
she had worked at start-ups.

She had worked at big
companies like Apple.

But she knew where that
pipeline breaks down,

knew the early indicators,
and

taught everyone not just how
to screen for talent, but

how scalably to identify the
people that are gonna be

culturally, really good for
the company.

And I think looking back on
that,

it's something that I
personally really value.

>> You know, there's just a
huge amount of

stuff here, right?

In that I guess,

this is all under kinda the
rubric of managing growth.

And either your company
fails very quickly or all of

your problems become in some
way about managing growth.

One thing that I think tends
to take people by surprise,

and certainly took me by
surprise,

is kind of how quickly just
like the time

horizon has changed.

In that, in your first month
you're largely thinking

about things maybe one month
ahead, right?

In that, maybe that's kind
of

what your development road
map is oriented around,

even in terms of who you're
working with.

Maybe it's like,

informal relationships where
they haven't fully committed

to remain full time or
whatever, right?

And then, the more time goes
by,

I think that kind of has a
reciprocal, or

corresponding increase in
the time horizons.

After one year, you're kind
of thinking one year ahead.

After four years, you're
thinking four years ahead.

But that increases very
quickly, right?

And so after you know,

it's after one month, it's
again, super short term.

And then just 11 months
later you should now

actually be thinking and
planning a year ahead, and

thinking about human
structures on

that time horizon.

Thinking about the stuff Ben
talked about, like where you

want to be going long term
and things like that.

I think that also plays into
your hiring and

the kinds of people you
hire, right?

In that in the really early
days you kind of

have to hire people who will
be productive,

essentially immediately.

You don't have the luxury of
hiring people who are really

promising, but they're not
quite gonna be up to

speed for another year or
two.

They have to be able to
contribute immediately.

But after two or three
years, now it starts to get

much more reasonable to make
those investments and

in fact, if you're not
making those investments,

you're probably being much
too short term.

And so I think that's really
important.

And a lot of it also just
comes from

all these problems in some
sense are easy,

like how do you build good
social bonds between people?

I mean, we all do it every
day, right?

It's kind of, how do you
make it systematic and

effective at scale?

It's always a very severely
imperfect approximation of

what you would ideally do if
you were small, and

what hacks can you pull to
make it work as well as

you possibly can at a larger
scale.

Like a rapidly growing
company,

say growing headcount here,
two or

three x a year, it is a very
unnatural thing.

And so it's, what's the
least bad way of sort of

managing that period of
growth?

Human organizations aren't
designed for

it and I think it's worth
being quite systematic about

thinking about ways to do
that.

But realizing that you
probably can't do

much better than adequation.

You know, for Stripe, it's
things like we

have three meals every day
at sort of

long tables where everyone
can sit together, right?

And if you think of net, how
much more total human

interaction happens as a
result of having these kind

of randomly mixed meals,
it's vast, right?

And it's kind of a whole
list of things like that.

But, I think that's kind of
the general framework.

>> One thing I'm really
curious about you guys value

transparency.

How have you scaled it over
time?

I know we think about
figuring it out all

the time, just curious.

>> So you know, start-ups, I
can't remember who it was,

defined it as a, start-up is
an organization that's not

yet stuck with all of these
principle agent problems.

That at most large
companies,

what is locally optimal for
you is very frequently not

what is globally optimal for
the company.

And so there are, as a
consequence of that,

probably a lot of ways in
which a start-up can

work differently to a big
company.

At a big company, a lot of
the things that are good for

you, well, you couldn't do
them in

a completely transparent
environment, right?

Because people would think
less of you or

you're doing things you're
not supposed to.

But because everyone is kind
of sailing in the, or

rowing in the same direction
at a start-up, you can

actually just make all of
the information transparent.

And so, I guess I mentioned
earlier, Stripe used to BCC

every other person at Stripe
on basically every single

outgoing email unless you
opted out of it, because we

thought that would be much
more efficient.

You wouldn't need to have as
many meetings,

if you just kind of keep
abreast of what's happening.

And over time we've sort of
built an increasingly

intricate framework of
mailing lists and

we now have a program for
generating Gmail filters.

And for like a pretty rocky
patch where 50 people or

so, to Ben's point of like,
asking people how they're

getting on after the first
couple of days.

They're reported terribly
because like they couldn't

even find all the emails
that people were sending to

them and they were missing
things and everything.

>> Gmail broke at one stage.

>> Oh, right, at one point
Gmail broke because we

were just like sending too
much email.

It is hard to scale, because
I mean,

you might contact somebody
outside of the company with

like some great idea, and
maybe the person

sitting across the way from
you thinks that's like

the stupidest idea they've
ever heard, right?

And you're kind of subject
to the scrutiny of

the entire organization, to
some degree,

with all of your
communication.

Like kind of the challenging
side of it.

Then the good side is people
are much more informed about

what's happening.

I guess I don't feel that I
can give much

stronger endorsement of it
than it has worked so far.

>> That's a pretty good
endorsement.

>> Yeah, I'm actually really
curious how or whether it'll

work when we're 5,000 people
or something like that.

If we're ever at that scale.

>> I think the two things
that have

helped us scale it are one,
changing the tools and

two, developing the culture
around it.

And so on the tools front,
you know,

used to be the case, or the
infrastructure, it

used to be the case that you
could keep abreast by what's

happening in the company by
reading all the email.

Now we have weekly all-hands
sometimes on the deck,

and we actually have to put
all this work into

developing a deck to, to
communicate to people what's

going on in the company,
since there's so much more.

And the second is on the
cultural side, so much

information being available
internally, you have to

develop cultural norms
around how it's treated.

Obvious things like the fact
that a lot of

it's confidential to Stripe.

But even less obvious things
like when emailing someone

or talking in Slack or

IRESE, when that is viewed
by now 170 people,

it's pretty easy to get
stage fright.

And it's, it's pretty easy
for what you thought was

a reasonable proposal, you
get this drive-by criticism.

And you're now less likely
to share in the future.

And so, we've had to create
norms around when it's

reasonable to jump into
discussions and

how that interaction works.

Because people are on the
stage so much more.

>> I'm pretty sure it's not
good,

but, not to put her on the
spot but

Emily interned at Stripe
this summer.

I'm curious, like,

as an intern, what you
thought of it?

>> I think, overall, it's
great.

I think, like, my first
week,

I spent most of the time
reading Hackpad and

getting caught up on what
the company was doing.

It can often be quite
distracting,

from your own work, as there
are oftentimes other parts

of the company you're really
interested in.

>> Hackpad, by the way, is
like Google Docs, but

with a news feed and

that way you can just like
see all the documents.

>> Yeah, and you're
encouraged to make

everything public,
everything you work on.

But overall, it gets you
spun up really quickly.

And we also have things
called spin ups where

every single leader of a
team at the company,

whether it's sys or it's
product gives like a 30

minute talk on what their
team is currently doing and

how you can contribute, if
you're interested.

>> Do you think email
transparency was net good?

>> Yes I remember having a
hard time understanding what

I should and should not
subscribe too.

And the first week having
2,000 emails in my inbox and

then by the end there are
three of four teams you

actually want that
information coming in from.

>> All right, audience
questions.

Yes.

>> So this question for
Patrick and John.

Is it your experience that
your early hires begin to

grow and

evolve into leadership roles
as the company scales?

And a question for

Ben, how is the difference,
what difference is today?

How is a difference in your
initial bid run of

the product and the audience
would be?

>> All right, we'll go first
on.

The people, actually all
three of you are welcome to

answer this, have the people
that you

hired early been able to
grow into leadership roles?

>> In the Stripes case, yes,
in that quite a number of

the first ten people are in
leadership roles now.

I think that's one thing
that organizations, again

it's an unnatural skill that
they have to get good at,

is realizing that people
don't necessarily come out

of the womb being good at
managing or being good at

leadership and being able to
develop that in people, and

being able to help people
progress as

they spend a number of years
at the company.

It's a lot of work at a time
when everyone is running

around with their hair on
fire, but it's also damaging

if the company can't develop
that skill.

>> Yeah, I think for

us the answer is some yes
and some no.

I think one of the big
benefits of

working at a start-up is
that you can be

handed a challenge that no
one else would be

crazy enough to give you the
opportunity to take on.

And that could managing
people.

It could be taking on a
project.

But the implicit contract
with that is that if

your going to ask somebody
to take a really big risk on

that, it shouldn't be like
one-way through the door and

if you don't succeed,

otherwise it creates fright
to give it a shot.

So we have some folks that
are managing large teams

that started as individual
programmers, where they were

engineering and they said
hey, I would love to try.

I'd love to try leading a
project and

then leading a group and

then taking responsibility
for

management, taking a group.

And we've had other folks
that tried it and

they were like, I'm really
glad I tried it because I

never wanna do that again.

We try to make sure that,
for those people, like you

can have just as much impact
at a company through your

individual contributions as
an engineer or designer.

You don't have to manage.

But it's really hard to

predict until you give
people a shot.

And so my strong preference
is that you give as many

people a shot as possible,
in the few areas where you

really feel like there's too
much learning curve relative

to the business objective
you're trying to achieve.

That's when you look for
somebody who might be able

to walk in and really
execute well in that job.

Are you going to answer the
other question?

>> Oh, so the question was

how has the vision changed
since we initially started?

>> Yes,
>> Sure,

well I think on the vision,
when we first started,

I think we started hiring
very inductively.

We were like, oh, we're

gonna build this really cool
tool.

People are gonna enjoy it.

I love collecting things.

Maybe other people like
collecting things.

And what we didn't expect,

that kind of revealed itself
early on,

was that looking at other
people's collections turns

out to be this really
amazing way to discover

things that you didn't know
you were looking for.

It becomes kind of a
solution to a problem that

a lot of other technologies
don't have.

And so, over the last couple
years especially,

we've poured enormous kind
of technical and design

resources into building out
recommendations products,

search products, feed
products.

Leveraging the unique data
that we have which

are these pins that were all
hand-picked by someone and

hand-categorized.

And then on the audience
side, the first big

surprise was truthfully when
we first started,

we didn't really know if
anyone would use it.

And we were just happy that
anybody that wasn't related

to us and

obligated by familial
relationship would use it.

And so one of the biggest
surprises has been how many

people and how diverse those
groups of people have been.

I think that's been one of

the things that's really
exciting.

And, the funny thing is,

that is often like the
company goes farther along,

your aspirations therefore
get bigger.

So there's this gap that
always exists,

I tell my team, between
where we are and

where I think we should be,
and

even though objectively,
we're much farther along,

I feel like the gap has
widened even farther.

But I think that's a really
common trait among

people who found companies.

>> Yes?

>> You said that like,

while selling a vision of
the company you had to

describe and

go into detail that how hard
it is going to be.

And like they won't see
their families for

three years but then they
will also get a thing that

their grandchildren can be
proud of.

But how do you really know?

Both of you know that the
second part is

not guaranteed but the first
part,

if they're not gonna see
their family for

the next year, it's gonna be
a different show.

So like, how can you be
authentic by selling that

vision of the company or is
it about giving high returns

for the high risk they are
taking when the number of

equity that already
>> Great question.

So the question is,

most start-ups are not the
iPhone.

You can't guarantee that
people's grandchildren

are gonna remember this
because most start-ups fail.

How do you convince people
to sort of

make sacrifices to join a
start-up?

>> I think, part of the way
in which it resonates with

people is because it's not
guaranteed, right?

If it were guaranteed then
it'd be boring.

And so it's that there is
the prospect of affecting

this outcome, but nothing
more than that potential.

To the not seeing their
families or

kids, start-ups often do
involve longer hours in

the beginning, but I think,
well.

I, I think that that
particular story is

probably somewhat
overstated.

I guess, it was, I think

Scott Forestall was trying
to recruit these people.

But I mean, even though
startups,

especially in the earlier
days,

tend to involve somewhat
longer working hours.

I think it was kind of this
tendency to,

to exaggerate it.

And sort of,

I mean it's like the startup
version of fishing.

Like, every startup thinks
they worked even more insane

hours than, you know,

the next one back in the
early days.

Like, we literally never
sleep or slept rather,

for two years.

So I don't know.

I think that realistically
for most people,

it's not that big a
sacrifice, right?

You're, maybe on average,
being really realistic about

it, you'll work two hours
more on average per day.

It's certainly a sacrifice,
but

it is not forgoing all you
know, pleasure and

enjoyment for the next half
decade.

>> Yeah, I mean, I think
even the iPhone

wasn't the iPhone before it
got done, right?

I mean, no smart person
you're hiring is

under the illusion that you
have a crystal ball into

the future that only you
have, and

that joining is a guaranteed
thing.

And in fact, if you're
telling him that and

they select in, you probably
shouldn't hire them.

Because they,

they didn't pass like a
basic intelligence test

about uncertainty in the
future.

But I, but I think it's fair
to say, like you know,

what's exciting and where
you think you can go, and

where it's going to be hard
and chart your best plan.

And then tell them why their
role in it can be

instrumental, because it is.

You know I really liked what
you said.

You know, if you tell people
like hey we're gonna go

to Mars, it attracts the
best people and

then you're incrementally
closer to getting to Mars.

And they know that going in.

What I would discourage
doing is

just whitewashing all of
that.

And if people kind of are
joining because they want

sort of oh, I want all this
certainty and guarantee of

working at Google, plus like
the perk of working in

a small start up and more
email, and transparency.

Like that's, that's a
really,

really negative sign.

And for

example, when I interview
people they'll often say oh,

I'm really passionate at
what you're doing, and

then I'm like well, what
else are you interviewing?

And then they'll just list
seven companies that have

nothing to do with each
other except they're sort of

at the same stage we're at.

They're like, you know,

I love the problem of
discovery, so

I'm interviewing at Stripe,
Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber.

Now I'm also putting into my
resumé into Google X,

into that part of the
division.

And that's a sign that
they're probably not

being authentic with which
they care about.

>> Yeah.

>> And those folks often,
when things get really hard,

they won't stick it out and
work through it.

Because they were really
signing up for

an experience, not for
achieving a goal.

>> I think the other thing
that motivates people

a great deal, in addition to
the prospect of sort of

them you know, affecting
some outcome is just sort of

the personal development
angle.

And that a start up,

just because it's much, kind
of more lightly staffed.

It's much less forgiving,
right?

In that, like,

even if you're the best
person in the world,

if you're not going to.

Well, whether or not you're
the best or

the worst person in the
world, you're probably not

going to significantly alter
Google's trajectory, right?

Whereas if you sort of,

really wanted to benchmark
yourself, and

see how much a contribution
and an impact you can make.

And I think that prospect is
quite compelling to a lot of

the best people, then a
start up is

a much better place to, to
go test that.

>> All right.

>> Last question, who'd you
want?

Last question.

So this question is for

Ben, but you guys can all
answer it.

But how has your user base
effected your

hiring strategies?

So Pinterest is a site
that's used like 80% by

women, so

how did that effect your
initial hiring decisions?

>> How has your user base
effected your

hiring strategy?

>> Yes, so, You know,

conventional wisdom is like
you only hire people that

religiously use your product
every single day.

And that probably works
really well if

you're making an API,
probably amazing.

For us, we screen for people
that are ambitious and

excited about the vision of
cracking discovery online.

And they have to know
exactly how

our service works and have
to have used it.

But they may not be a
lifelong user.

And that, for us it's this
great opportunity because we

can be like, what is the
barrier that's

preventing you from using
it?

Come join, remove that
barrier,

and help us get closer to
that vision.

I don't know, there's a lot
of,

if you read any sort of
book, there's all this

startup wisdom that sounds
like really reasonable.

But it's only useful if it
works in

your particular
circumstance.

And so for us, we've had to
sort of

broaden the lens a little
bit in looking broadly about

people that are ambitious
about the mission.

That care about the product
and

our approach to building
products,

even if from day one, they
weren't our earliest users.

>> The one thing I'll just
tack on to that is that when

we talked about the fact
that, you know,

it's really hard to hire for
those early employees.

And you know, you have
people who have

other good options.

You're very much at the ugly
duckling stage.

Finding people who are
passionate about your

product can be a great way
to find people.

Because there you kind of
have an unnatural advantage

over other companies.

And so I know, for

sure, in Stripe's case, we
definitely, we hired I think

it was four Stripe users in
the very early days.

And you know, those were
people who,

who we probably couldn't
have gotten otherwise.

I'm sure it was the same in
Pinterest's case,

where you'll get all this
benefit of working at

Pinterest and hey, it's
Pinterest.

And you get to work where
you pin.

Yeah.

>> Thank you guys very much
for coming in today.

>> Thank you.