part two of culture and team and we have
Ben Silberman the founder of Pinterest
and John and Patrick Collison the
founders of stripe um 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 going to 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
going to dig into what happens at the
founding of these companies and and
building out the early team and then how
that changes and evolves uh as these
guys have scaled their companies up to
you know 100 plus I don't even know how
many people you have now but quite a lot
the very large organizations and how you
adapt these principles of culture um but
to start off I just want to uh ask a
very open in a question which is what
are the core pieces of culture that you
found to be most important in building
out your companies start sure what are
the what are the most important parts
yeah it's on oh it's on um
yeah I mean I think I think for us like
we think about it on a few Dimensions
like one is like who do we hire and what
do those people value um two is what do
we do every day like why do we do it um
three is what do we choose to
communicate uh and then I think the
fourth is what we choose to celebrate
and I guess the converse of that is like
what you choose to punish but uh in
general I think running a company based
on what you celebrate is more more
exciting than what you punish but I
think those four things um kind of make
up the bulk of it for us
we've placed a a large emphasis on as
stripe has grown and probably more than
other companies is uh transparency
internally uh and I think it's something
that's been really valuable for stripe
uh and also a little bit
misunderstood uh all the things people
talk about like you know hiring really
great people or giving them a huge
amount of Leverage uh transparency for
us plays into that we think that you
know if you are aligned at a a high
level about what stripe is doing if
everyone really believes in the mission
and then if everyone has uh really good
access to information and kind of has a
good picture of the current state of
stripe uh then that gets you a a huge
amount of the of of the way there in
terms of working productively together
uh and it it kind of forgives a lot of
the other things that tend to break as
you as you grow a startup and so we've
as we've grown you know we we started
off two people we're now over 170 people
we've put a lot of thought into the the
tooling that goes around uh transparency
because you know at 170 people there is
so much information being produced that
you can't just consume it all as a fire
hose uh and so how we you know use slack
how we use email things like that we can
go into it more later uh but I think
that's one of the core things that's
helped us work well um I think culture
to some degree is basically kind of the
the resolution to a bandwidth problem uh
in the sense that uh you know maybe when
you start out working on something
you're sort of coding all the time but
you can't code all of the things that
you think the product might need or the
company might need or whatever and so
you decid to work with with more coders
right um and uh and so you know the
organization gets larger and maybe in
some idealized world I don't think this
is actually true but kind of ideally you
could be involved in every single
decision in every single sort of moment
of the company and everything that
happens but obviously you can't or maybe
you can at two people but you certainly
can't at even like five or 10 kind of
that that point comes very quickly then
by the time you're 50 it's completely
hopeless and so culture is kind of how
you uh kind of what the the the strands
are that you sort of want to have the
invariance that you want to kind of
maintain uh as you can get specifically
involved instead of fewer and fewer
decisions over time um and uh I think
when you think about it that way you
know maybe it's kind of importance
becomes sort of self evident right
because again like the fraction of
things you can be involved in directly
is like diminishing I mean almost
exponentially sort of assuming your your
your your headcount growth is sort of on
a curve that looks like you know one of
the the great companies um and uh yeah
that that's that's super important and
and kind of it manifests itself in a a
you know a bunch of you know different
ways like for example uh in hiring uh I
think a large part of the reason why the
maybe the first 10 people you hire what
kind of go to sh decisions are so
important is because you're not just
hiring those first 10 people you're
actually kind of hiring a 100 people
because you should think of kind of each
one of those people as bringing along
sort of another 10 people with them uh
and sort of figuring out exactly what
sort of what 90 people uh you would like
those first 10 people to bring along is
is obviously uh you know it's it's going
to be quite consequential for for your
uh for your company um but really
briefly I think it's it's largely about
sort of uh
abstraction so one thing a lot of
speakers in this class have touched on
is how uh hiring those first 10
employees if you don't get that right
the company basically uh will never
recover but no one's talked about how to
do that so so what what have the three
of you looked for um 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 uh sure
so I guess this answer is different for
every every company and
I I'll say for for us it was very
inductive so I literally looked for
people that I wanted to work with and
that I thought were talented um 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 big big
misconception um that someone said once
is that people think culture is like
architecture when it's a lot more like
gardening uh 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 um we
hired people that were like ourselves um
and I often looked at like three or four
different things that I I I really
valued in people you I looked for people
that worked hard and seemed high
integrity and low ego um I look for
people that were creative and that
usually meant they were really curious
they had all these different interests
um some of our first employees uh are
probably some of the quirkiest people
I've ever met um they were engineers but
they also had all these crazy Hobbies
like one guy had made his own board game
uh with this elaborate set of rules
another guy was really into magic tricks
uh and he had coded not only like this
magic trick on the iPhone but he had
shot the production video in the preview
um and I think that that that quirkiness
has actually been a little bit of a
calling card and we find that really
creative Corky people that are excited
about many disciplines and are
extraordinary at one um tend to build
really great products they tend to be
great at collaborating um and the last
thing is you know we really look for
people that wanted to they just wanted
to build something great and and they
weren't 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 um and that at
the beginning is very very easy to
select for um if you were in our
situation we had this horrible office
like nobody got paid and so there was no
external reason other than being excited
about building something uh to join in
fact there was every reason not to um
and that's something looking back I
really really value because we always
knew people were joining for the purest
reasons and in fact we're willing to
forgo other great job opportunities
Market salary uh a clean office uh you
know good equipment just for the chance
to work so so um to this day I think a
lot of those traits have been seated and
are embedded in the folks that we look
at
now um yeah the first 10 hires are
really hard uh because you know you're
you're making these first 10 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 like
like their friends are telling them not
to join uh for our second employee uh uh
he was like I think maybe he accepted
the offer or he was just about to and
his best friends like took him out the
night before it was like a full-on
assault for uh you know why you should
not join this company why this is like
ruining your life basically um and uh
and so anyway the guy subsequently or
continued to join and actually one of
those friends also now works at stripe
uh but uh but uh this is what you're up
against yeah um and I mean it's also
hard because no batch of 10 people will
have as great an influence on the uh on
the company those first 10 people um and
I think everyone's impression of
recruiting is you know you you open
LinkedIn it's sort of like ordering off
the dollar menu you just like I want
that one and that one and that one uh
and now you have some hires whereas uh
at least for us uh it was very much over
uh a very long time period uh talking
people we knew uh or friends of friends
into joining uh we we didn't have you
know huge networks uh Patrick and I were
both in college at the time so there
were no people that we'd you know we'
really worked with to draw on uh and so
a lot of those early Stripes were people
we had heard of friends of friends uh
and the other interesting thing they all
had in common is that they were all sort
of um early in their career or
undervalued in some way because when you
think about it if someone is a a known
spectacular quantity then you know
they're probably working in a job and
very happy with that and so we had to to
try and find people who were uh you know
in the case of our uh design that we
hired he was 18 and in high school and
in Sweden at the time uh in the case of
our our CTO he was uh in uh he was in
college at the time you know a lot of
these people they were they were early
on in their careers uh and the only way
we could you know you you you can you
can relax one constraint you can um you
know relax the fact that they're
talented or relax you know that it's
apparent that they're talented uh and we
you know not consciously but we we relax
the ladder yeah I I I think s of finding
kind of the people who uh uh are kind I
guess you to kind of think like a value
investor right you're you're looking for
the for the the human capital that's uh
that's significant undervalued by the
market you know you probably shouldn't
look to hire uh your your brilliant
friends at Facebook and Google or
whatever because they're already
discovered you know if if they're W to
join that's great but uh they're
probably uh harder to convince um uh
John I spent a little a while yesterday
afternoon sort of trying to figure out
in retrospect um what kind of traits uh
our first 10 or so people had in common
that we thought were significant um you
know in general sort of speaking about
culture uh you know I sort of want to
cave out everything we say with you know
I I Paul bu I think said that sort of
advice is you know very limited
experience wildly uh overe extrapolated
um and uh I think there's a lot of Truth
to that but uh for for our particular
first 10 people the things we sort of uh
figured out that seem to be important
were uh there also genuine and straight
um I think that actually matters quite a
lot in that sort of there are people
that uh that others want to work with um
they're people that others trust they
sort of have an intellectual honesty in
how they approach problems and so forth
um they were people who really liked
getting things finished uh 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 uh you know there's a
lot of talk about for example uh hiring
people you know off their GitHub resumes
whatever I actually think that doesn't
quite ring kind of correct to me in the
sense that that places a large premium
on sort of lots of different things I I
think it's actually a priori sort of
much more interesting to to you know
work with someone who has spent two
years sort of really investing in going
deep in a particular area um and then uh
the third trait that 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 all these like crazy things we
used to do that um uh I mean do in fact
seem crazy like we probably shouldn't
have done them but everyone was always
like well was borderline insane instead
of how much they cared about tiny
details like we used to
um uh like every single API requests
that ever generated an error went to all
of our inboxes and phoned all of us uh
because it seemed terrible to like ever
have an error that that you know uh
didn't go and sort of get a resolution
from the user standpoint um or we to
like copy everyone else on every
outgoing email and we'd like point out
you know slight grammar or spelling
mistakes to each other because it' be
terrible to every send an email with a
spelling mistake um so uh anyway those
were the the three traits we come up
with anyway a genuine um uh uh caring a
great deal and
um uh Sor was my second one the other
one yes um completing sorry sorry yes
completing things like list of three
items
yeah Ian the only say I I just don't
think there's any wrong place to find
people um so when I look back at our 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 um you know we met people at bar
we used to throw weekly barbecues at the
office it was like bring your own 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
palato like one of you guys was uh
recruiting at Koopa because their office
was is like strategically situated next
to the best coffee shop um but I think
that the really good people generally um
they're generally doing something else
and so you have to go seek them out
rather than expecting that they're going
to seek you out uh triple so uh when no
one's ever heard of or is using uh the
product that you're working
on yeah
and it's probably really important to
have a uh great elevator pitch not even
for investors but just because everyone
you uh run into to right now is you know
maybe 6 months a year down the road a
potential recruit uh and so the the
right time to have gotten them excited
about your company the right time for
them to have started following it and
you know be thinking about it as they
think about what they're going to do
next um is you know as soon as you can
start uh it's going to take a very long
time to recruit people so being able to
consistently get people excited about
what they're what you're doing uh will
pay back dividends
later maybe this is um uh a little bit
tangential but John I were also chatting
about yesterday afternoon sort of uh
like a bunch of our friends have sort of
started companies right out of school
we're sort of thinking about uh you know
what what seems to go wrong in those
companies uh and I think something that
um that maybe the most common uh failure
mode seems to be sort of doing something
kind of overly Niche or overly sort of
specific and bounded I think maybe it
comes from sort of uh like there's a
major shift in time Horizon as you go
from classes to building a startup right
a class kind of plays out on a quarter
or a semester or whatever um whereas a
startup is like a a five or 10 year
thing um and I think this is really
problematic because uh it's actually
quite hard to hire people for Niche
things uh in that if if you tell
somebody look we're going to build a
rocket that goes to Mars like I mean
that sounds almost impossible but it
also sounds awesome right uh and
so it's actually pretty easy to can be
able to work in it whereas if it's well
you know we're going to build this I
don't want to single out any particular
idea because probably sound like I'm
picking some actual startup 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'd solve as part of a class
project that's actually much harder to
hire
for one specific question that has come
up a lot um 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 what have
you learned about how to identify Raw
Talent if you can't just say well they
work 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 hire just wasn't a
good fit you owe it to the company and
to them uh to tell them how they can
improve and if they're not working out
to fire them but I think that the
generally that question of talent falls
into two big buckets like one is you
have some sense of what makes them good
at their job uh and there are some areas
where you have taste in that area um and
there's somewh you don't and the ones
where you don't are actually much more
difficult um 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 what is really world
class in that discipline mean and this
becomes very very important later when
you're hiring things like head of
finance and you don't know anything
about Finance except what was contained
in like a library book you got about
like an introduction to finance or head
of marketing um so uh 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 and how do you find
them and 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 um 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 pre-calibration of that really
matters um and then once you have
someone in sort of the interview process
uh you'll build the process over time uh
to both um screen quality and so um 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 um and this is to the
point you guys made about being very
transparent about what's going to be
easy or hard really great people want to
do things that are hard they want to
they want to solve tough problems and so
um
there was a there was a certain
Brilliance in in Google setting out
these interview questions that were
thought to be really difficult because
then people who like solving really
difficult problems uh they come out and
seek those um I think it's really
important even as companies get bigger
that you don't whitewash the risks um I
heard that uh PayPal you would go in and
after interviewing with like Peter teal
and Max leevin then they would say and
by the way like Von Master Card want to
kill us and we might be doing something
it's illegal uh but if you succeed
you'll redefine payments um or when they
were recruiting for the iPhone they
didn't even tell people what they were
doing they're like you won't see your
families for uh three years um but when
you're done when you're done your kids's
kids will remember what you built um and
I think that's a really good thing in
recruiting as well that you're very very
transparent about why you think it's an
amazing opportunity but you lay out in
gory detail um why it's going to be hard
and then the right people select in or
they select out um of that
opportunity um evidence suggest is worth
people to see their kids though
um I feel like one thing you have to do
uh as you try to identify Talent is have
the uh the confidence to to interview
for it in a way that works for you uh I
think uh you know if you're uh say
you're not the you know the world's best
engineer and you you're you're trying to
interview engineering candidates uh I
think it's tempting to try to Cargo C to
what everyone else does and you know get
them to code on a whiteboard and do
other engineering interview things you
know you know in the case of stripe
hiring our first engineer we we flew the
guy out and we uh 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 uh that that person was good
and I think you can actually extend that
to to other roles where again you're not
an expert in that you know I'm no
business development Guru but when we
interview people for business
development rules we'll ask them to do a
project you know where they H 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 I am actually confident
enough that I can I can judge those
pretty well and I think people often
have this impostor syndrome when it
comes to to interviewing for roles yeah
I think a pretty specific kind of just
tactical thing um to to do for again the
first 10 people is to work with them as
much as you can uh 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 also I mean it's just
would be unscalable expensive from your
side um but it it's really worth it to
get the first 10 people right and so for
a majority maybe even all of the first
10 people uh we we worked with them in
some capacity usually for a week in
advance and it's pretty hard to to fake
it for for a week um uh it tend to be
pretty clear qu quite quite quickly um
another thing I thought of uh you know
to the question of sort of how how do
you know like who's great or who's good
enough whatever and people always talk
about sort of this notion of the 10x
person sort of whatever the skill set is
I don't really know what 10x means I
think maybe the the slightly more kind
of helpful or like intuitive version of
that is is this person probably uh the
best out of all of their friends at what
they do um uh and so you know it's a
little bit sensitive to how well they
choose friends how many they have but uh
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 um and uh and the other thing I
think that's actually prob just worth
mentioning in all those kind of first 10
people are even generally on the culture
and hiring topic um I think everyone uh
sort of doesn't realize until they go
through themselves how important it is
and large part because uh the like in
life and the media and everything people
focus way too much on Founders and that
like here we are and so kind of we're
reinforcing the sort of structural
narrative that like stripe is about John
and Patrick and Pinterest is about Ben
and so forth uh whereas I mean obviously
sort of the vast majority of what our
companies do like 99.9% is being done by
people who are not us right and I think
I mean obviously that's kind of
it's obvious when you say it um but it's
s of very much not just the the macro
narrative and you know companies are
abstract you kind of need to associate
them with specific people but I think
it's worth bearing in mind that like for
you know Apple you know everything was
was you know Steve Jobs was like a tiny
tiny detail at the end right or Google
with Lowry and so forth so don't screw
it up is what you're saying something
like that I think you know the only
other thing I'll mention is that I think
referencing people is really important
um and uh referencing people is just
what it sounds like you're basically
asking people who have real material
working experience um for their honest
opinion and uh we we do that really
aggressively and what we're trying to
figure out is what's this person like to
work with um uh we're not trying to
validate like whether they told the
truth on their resume because we assume
that they're telling the truth so very
standard questions that that I'll ask
somebody um is in an interview I might I
might I might say Hey you know we both
know um Jonathan in common I'm going to
talk to him uh you know in a couple
weeks because we're both social friends
like if I asked him um what 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 what would
he or she say um because it sort of
tests a level of self-awareness and
creates a bit of social accountability
uh 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 uh you know in
evaluating this person of 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 uh reference uh than if you
just say hey like what's the best thing
about John uh he told me you know he's
good at these things can you validate
they're like yeah sure because they they
don't get anything so I think that's uh
just a tool that people should should
take seriously yeah yeah and referencing
isn't obviously easy to begin with uh
but it it does actually prove really
useful over time uh 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 SC scity by saying you know
where would you rank this person amongst
the people you've worked with in this
role uh or you know there's list out on
the internet of how to reference but uh
you should aim to spend you know 15
minutes on the on the phone with that
person not just let them say yeah this
person is this person is awesome and
then hang up that's also tremendous
source of new recruits yeah H that was
references are also a tremendous source
of new recruits um what what have each
of you learned about once you hire these
first people and they join what what
have you done to to make them effective
quickly to get them sort of you know to
the right cultural Place uh you know cuz
sort of hiring is usually very difficult
but they not as difficult as making them
happy and effective so what what do you
do with these early employees to
accomplish
that um well the answer that's changed
when we've gone from really small to
bigger uh when we first started we were
generally hiring because we needed that
person like a long time ago and so their
whole onboarding 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 um and then because of the
because of the nature of the startup so
we were all in this like tiny
two-bedroom apartment um all of the
other things like building personal
relationship spending time together
getting to know it just all happened
kind of automatically like you didn't
have to do anything um uh 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 someday cuz
it's really easy when you first join to
drop someone 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 someday we want
to do for uh we want to do for Discovery
what Google did for search and this is
our plan for trying to get that done um
now as the company grows I think that uh
that process has to get a little bit
more formalized um and so we spend a lot
of time thinking and honestly trying to
constantly refine what does that
person's experience look like from the
day they came in uh to their very first
interview through 30 days after they
join 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 uh do they know
what the general architecture of the
company is and what the top priorities
are uh and we have a program and it's um
a week long and then there sort function
specific programs that go in deeper um
and that's something that's always been
refined and the output metrics that we
look on that is one we ask people like
what did you think afterwards and then
30 days afterwards and then we also
asked 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 if we
haven't um that's a key a that that team
shouldn't be hiring any more people
because they're not doing a good job
bringing in new people um and be that we
need to retool that um 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 uh how do they like
to be recognized um do they really
prefer being in total silence uh do they
are they a morning person or night
person like knowing those things I think
uh it just demonstrates that you care
about them individually as well well as
collectively like what your what your
goals
are uh I think there's two things that
are important at any stage though the
implementation will 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 the
only way they'll that's how progress is
measured is how much real work they're
doing and so you know when we have uh
Engineers start we'll try to get them
committing on the first day when we have
you know people in business R start we
will have them in real meetings on the
first day uh on on what they're meant to
be working on but I think sometimes
there's a tendency to to be tentative
and help ease people in we're much more
of the um push people off the cliff um
School uh 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 uh as you know
all the companies up here you know are
trying to then it's going to it's going
to take some adapting for the person and
it's not going to be necessarily easy
you know when thing we had at stripe was
just the culture was was a lot more
written uh and so you know you would
have people who were right next to each
other each with headphones on and just
like I aming away to each other uh 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 uh and so uh
everything from kind of high level how
you're doing at your job to to to kind
of minor cultural pointers the the the
more feedback you can give them uh the
better they'll do and it's unnatural
right because it's unnatural to uh be
constantly telling people that they're
doing good or bad job you don't do that
you know hopefully in your you know in
your in your normal life you're more
restrained uh but when you have
employees that's kind of why do you owe
them for them to do well so I think this
is sort of a good transition to as your
companies have scaled um what what are
the biggest changes you've had to make
to your hiring processes and also how
you sort of manage and run the teams as
you've gone from you know two to 10 to
100 to a th000 employees
there there are a lot of changes uh 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 um and that
means over time that we're always trying
to make it feel like a startup of many
startups rather than this monolithic
organization with a set of foreign
processes that cut horizontally through
it and that's easier said than done I
think that like we're not all the way
there but um one of our goals is that
each team has they control the resour
that they need to to get things done
they know what the most important thing
is and how it's measured um and 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 like communication complexity is
increasing geometrically management
complexity like it's never going to work
and so you have to sort of create these
abstracted units or that's at least what
we're going to try to do um and at
Pinterest in particular the real
challenge of creating those abstracted
units is um we want to actually have
units that Encompass uh a super strong
designer a super strong um leader in
engineering um often a writer um often
uh um sometimes like a community manager
we want them all to be self-contained um
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
these different disciplines they're
curious about lots of things then we
anchor them on a single project then we
try to remove barriers to let them go
fast when we find new barriers we sit
down we think how do we speed that up I
think hiring um is a little bit
different and I think the biggest uh 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 lifeblood depending on
sort of the network of all the people
that you bring in so one of the really
lucky and in hindsight gr decisions that
we made was our actual 14th or 15th
person that we hired was a professional
recruiter um and she had worked at
startups um she had worked at big
companies like apple but she sort of
knew where um that pipeline uh breaks
down kind of knew the early indicators
and taught everyone um not just how to
sort of screen for talent but how
scalably to identify the people that are
going to be like culturally like really
good for the company and I I think
looking back on that um is something
that I I personally really
value um you know there's just like a
huge amount of stuff here right in that
sort of uh I guess this is all under
kind of the rubric of of managing growth
and you
know like either your company sort of
fails very quickly or sort of all of
your problems become in some way about
managing growth um one thing that I
think tends to take people by surprise
and certainly took me by surprise is
kind of how quickly um just like the
time Horizons change uh in that sort of
in your first month uh you're you're
largely thinking about things on on
maybe one month ahead right uh in that
maybe that's kind of what your
development uh road map is is oriented
around your even in terms of who you're
working with maybe it's like really
informal relationships where they
haven't sort of fully committed to to
remain full-time or whatever right and
that kind of the the the more time goes
by I think that kind of has a reciprocal
uh or corresponding uh increase in the
time Horizon so after one year you're
kind of thinking one year ahead after
four years you're thinking four years
ahead um and uh and that increases very
quickly right and so after you know say
after one month it's again super short
term and then just uh 11 months later
you should now actually be thinking and
planning you know a year ahead and and
think about kind of human structures on
that time Horizon thinking about you
know stuff Ben talked about like um you
know where you want to be going long
term and and things like that um 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 like
you you you don't have the luxury of
hiring people who are sort of really
promising but you know they're not quite
going to 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 sort of starts to get
you know much more reasonable to to make
those Investments and in fact if you're
not making those Investments you're
probably being much too shortterm uh and
so I think that's uh that's really
important um a lot of it also just comes
from uh sort of like all these problems
in some sense are easy like how do you
build kind of good social bonds between
people I mean we we all do it you know
every day right uh it's kind of how do
you how do you kind of make it
systematic and sort of effective at
scale and it's always kind of a very
like severely imperfect approximation of
what you ideally do if you were small
and just kind of what what hacks can you
pull to sort of make it work as well as
you possibly can at at a larger scale
like a a rapidly growing company say
growing headcount you know two or 3x a
year just like it's a very unnatural
thing uh and so it's sort of you know
what's what's the least bad way of sort
of managing that period of growth human
organizations aren't designed for it um
and I think it's worth being sort of
like quite systematic about sort of
thinking about ways to do that but um
realizing that you probably can't do
much better than uh than sort of
adequate and you know for stripe it's
things like we have three meals every
day at sort of long tables where kind of
everyone can sit together right and if
you think of sort of net how much more
total human interaction happens as a
result of having these kind of randomly
mixed meals I mean it's vast right and
there kind of a 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 um I know
we think about fing out it all the time
I'm just curious um so uh you know
startups in some sense I can't remember
who it was um sort of defined it as like
a startup is kind of an organization
that's not yet stuck with all these kind
of principal agent problems that at most
sort of large companies uh what is
locally optimal for you is very
frequently you know not what is globally
optimal for the company um uh and so uh
you know there there as a consequence of
that probably a lot of ways in which
startup can work differently to a big
company and a big company a lot of the
you know things that are good for you uh
uh well you you you couldn't do them in
a completely transparent environment
right because people would think less of
you or I mean you're not you're doing
things you're not supposed to but
because everyone is kind of sailing in
or rowing in the same direction at a
startup you can actually just make all
the information transparent uh and so um
uh yeah I mean from a very early I guess
I mentioned earlier like stripe used to
uh BCC every other person at stripe on
basically every single outgoing email
unless you opted out of it because we
thought that would be sort of much more
efficient you would wouldn't need to
have as many meetings if you could just
kind of keep a breast of what's
happening and over time we've sort of
built uh an increasingly intricate sort
of framework of mailing lists and we now
have like a program for generating Gmail
filters um and for like a pretty Rocky
patch where 50 people or so uh to to to
Ben's point of like asking people
instead of how they're getting on after
the first couple of days they all
reported terribly because because like
they couldn't even you know find all the
emails people were sending to them and
they were missing things and everything
um Gmail broke at one stage oh right at
one point Gmail broke because you're
just like sending too much email um and
uh I
mean it is hard to scale because it's I
mean you you you might sort of contact
somebody outside of the company um uh
with like some great idea and maybe like
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 that's kind of
the the challenging side of it and then
you the the good side is people are much
more informed about what's happening
um I guess I I don't feel that I can
give a much um stronger uh endorsement
of it than it has worked so far um
pretty
good uh yeah I'm actually really curious
how or whether it'll work when we're you
know 5,000 people or something like that
if wherever 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 uh and
so on the tools front you know it used
to be the case that uh or kind of the
infrastructure it used to be the case
that you could keep a breast by of
What's Happen in the company by reading
all the email now we have you know
weekly All Hands sometimes with a deck
and you know we actually have to go put
all this work into developing a deck to
to communicate to people what's going on
in the company uh since there's so much
more uh and the second is on the
cultural side you know so much
information being available internally
uh you have to develop cultural norms
around how it's treated you know obvious
things like you know the the fact that a
lot of it is confident confidential to
stripe but even less obvious things like
you know when emailing someone or
talking in in in slack or IRC when that
is is viewed by now 170 people it's
actually you know it's pretty easy to
get stage right you know and it's uh
it's pretty easy for you know what you
thought was a a reasonable proposal you
know you get this drive by criticism and
you're you're you know now less likely
to share in future and so we've had to
create Norms around you know when it's
reasonable to jump into discussions and
how that interaction works because
people are on stage so much more I'm I'm
pretty sure it's net good but um not to
put her on the spot but uh Emily intern
at striped this summer I'm curious like
as an intern what you thought of it I I
think overall it's great I think like my
first week I spent most of the time just
reading hackpad and getting caught up on
what the company was doing it can often
be quite distracting um from your own
work as there are often times other
parts of the company you're really
interested in hpad by the way is like
Google Docs but with a news feed and you
can just like see all the documents yeah
and you're encouraged to make everything
public everything you work on um but
overall it gets you spun up really
quickly and we also have things called
spin-ups where every single sort of
leader of a team at the company whether
it's like CIS or its product gives like
a 30 minute talk on what their team is
currently doing and sort of how you can
contribute if you're interested did you
think email transparency was net good
yes I remember having a hard time
understanding what I should and should
not subscribe to and um like the first
week having like 2,000 emails in my
inbox and then by the end you know
there's like three or four teams you
actually want um that information coming
in
from All Right audience questions yes so
this question is for fabrick and John um
is it your experience that your early
hours are a to draw a BL into leadership
roles as the company skills and for Ben
um how is what PS what p is today how is
it different than your initial vision of
the product and the audience would be
all right we'll go uh first on have the
people actually all three of you are
weling as this have the people that
you've hired early been able to grow
into leadership
roles um in strip's case yes in that uh
uh quite a number of the the first 10
people are in are in leadership roles
now uh I think that's one thing that
uh organizations again it's sort of an
unnatural skill that they have to get
good at is realizing that you know
people don't necessarily come out of the
womb being good at managing or you know
being good at uh at leadership uh and
being able to to develop that in people
uh and being able to uh you know help
people progress as they spend a number
of years the company um it's it's a lot
of it's a lot of work at a time when
everyone is you know running around at
their hair on fire uh but it it's also
sort of damaging if the company can't
develop that skill
yeah I think for us the answer is some
yes and some no um uh I don't know I
think one of the big benefits of working
at a startup is that you can be handed a
challenge that no one else would be
crazy enough to give you the opportunity
to to take on and that could be managing
people it could be taking on a project
um but the implicit contract with that
is that uh if you ask someone 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 to give it a sh so you know we
have some folks that are managing large
teams that started as um kind of
individual programmers where they were
engineering and they said hey I'd 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 uh and we have other folks that
tried it and then we're like I'm really
glad I tried it because I never want to
do that again uh and we try to make sure
that for those people like you can have
just as much impact at a company um
through your individual contributions as
an engineer or designer you don't have
to manage um but 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 um and
in the few areas where you really feel
like the there's too much kind of
learning curve relative to the business
objective you're trying to achieve
that's when um you look for somebody who
might be able to walk in and really
execute well on that
job you want to answer question oh so
the question was uh how's the vision
changed since we initially started yes
um a
sure
um well I mean I think on on the vision
uh when we first started you know I
think we started it like like hiring
very inductively we were like oh we're
going to build this really cool tool
people are going to enjoy it I love
collecting things maybe other people
like collecting things um and what we
didn't expect that kind of revealed
itself early on was that um 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 um and it becomes kind of a
solution to a problem that a lot of
other technology 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 um leveraging kind of the
unique data that we have which are these
pins that were all handpicked by someone
and hand categorized um and then on the
audience side I mean I think the first
big surprise was you know truthfully
like when we first started we didn't
really know if anyone would use it and
we were just happy that anybody that
wasn't like related to us and obligated
uh by like familiar relationship would
use it and so one of the biggest
surprises was has been how many people
and how diverse those groups of people
have been um and so I think that's been
one of the things that's really exciting
and and the funny thing is that is often
like the company goes farther along your
aspirations therefore like get bigger so
so there's like this Gap that always
exists I tell my team between like where
we are and where I think we should be
and even though objectively we're much
farther along I feel like the Gap is
widened even farther um but I think
that's a really common trait amongst
people who found
companies yes you said that like uh
while selling the vision of the company
you have to describe in G detail that
how hard it is going to be and like you
won't see their families for three years
but then it would also be the thing that
their grandchildren would be proud of
but how do you really know like both of
you know that the second part is like
it's not it's not guaranteed but the
first part that they're not going to see
their family for the next year is going
to be there for short so like how can
you be authentic like selling that
vision of the company or is it like
about like giving High returns for the
high risk that they can giving them a
lot of equ great is that so so the
question is uh most startups are not the
iPhone you can't guarantee that people's
grandchildren are going to remember this
because most startups fail how do you
convince people to sort of make
sacrifices to join a
startup I think um uh part of the way
sort of in which it resonates with
people is because it's not guaranteed
right if it were guaranteed then it
would be boring uh and so it's that sort
of there is the prospect of uh sort of
you know affecting this outcome um but
but nothing sort of nothing more than
that potential um you know to the sort
of not seeing their their uh families or
kids or whatever uh I mean startups
often do involve sort of longer hours in
the beginning but uh you know I think
well um uh I think that that particular
story is probably somewhat overstated uh
I guess it was I think Scott forall was
trying to recruit these people uh but I
mean I even though startups especially
in the earlier days tend to involve
somewhat work longer working hours I
think there's kind of this tendency to
to exaggerate it and sort of I mean it's
it's like the startup version of fishing
like every startup thinks they worked
even more insane hours than you know the
the next one back in the early days like
we we literally never sleeped or slept
rather for uh for two years um uh so uh
I don't know I I think that
realistically for most people it's not
that big a sacrifice right uh you're
maybe on average re being really
realistic about it people work two hours
more on average per day it it's it's
certainly a sacrifice but it is not um
uh for going all you know pleasure and
enjoyment for for the next half decade
yeah I mean I think even the iPhone
wasn't the iPhone before it got done
right so uh I mean no 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 them that and they select in
like they like you probably shouldn't
hire them because they didn't they
didn't pass like a basic intelligence
test about
uncertainty uh in the future um but I
but I think it's fair to say like you
know what's exciting and where you think
it can go and where it's going to be
hard and chart your best plan um and
then tell them like why their role in it
could be instrumental um because it is
um you know I really liked what what you
said uh you know if you tell people like
Hey we're going to go to Mars it
attracts the best people and then you're
incrementally closer to getting to Mars
um and and they know that going in um
what I would discourage doing is just
whitewashing all of that um and if
people kind of are joining because they
want sort of oh I want all the certainty
and guarantee of working at Google Plus
like the perk of working in a small
startup with more email and transparency
like that's a that's a really really
negative sign um and uh for example when
I interview people um they'll often say
oh I'm really passionate about what
you're doing and then I'm like where
else are you interviewing and then then
they'll just list like seven companies
that have nothing to do with each other
uh except they're sort of at the same
stage we at they're like I you know I
love the problem of Discovery so I'm
interviewing at uh stripe Dropbox Airbnb
Uber uh I'm also putting into my resume
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 and those folks often
when things get really hard they won't
stick it out um and work through it um
because they were really signing up for
an experience not for achieving a goal I
think the other um thing that motivates
people a great deal in addition to sort
of the the prospect of sort of um uh you
know affecting some outcome uh is just
sort of the the personal development
angle in that a startup just because
it's much kind of uh more lightly
stuffed uh it's kind of a it's much less
forgiving right in that like even if
you're the best person in the world
you're not going to or 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 um whereas uh if if you
sort of really want to you know
benchmark yourself and sort of see how
much of a contribution and an impact you
can make and I think kind of that
Prospect is quite compelling to a lot of
the best people then a startup is sort
of a much better place to to go test
that all right last question who you
want uh last question um so this is
question for Ben but you guys can all
answer it um but how has your user base
affected your hiring strategy so
Pinterest is a site that's used like 80%
by women um so how did that affect your
initial hiring decisions how has your
user base affected your hiring
strategy yeah so you know conventional
wisdom is like you only hire people that
religiously use your product every
single day um and that probably works
really well if you're making an API it's
probably amazing um uh for us like we
screen for people that are ambitious and
excited about um the vision of tracking
Discovery online uh and they have to
know like exactly how our service works
and have to have used it but they may
not be a lifelong user and that for us
is 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 kind of that Vision um I don't
know there there's a lot of uh if you
read any startup book there's all this
like 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 uh the lens a little bit
and looking broadly about people that
are ambitious about the mission uh 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 t on to
that um is that uh 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 uh you know you're very
much at the ugly duckling stage uh
finding people who are passionate about
your can be a great way to to find
people because there you kind of have an
unnatural advantage over other companies
and so I know for sure in strip's case
we definitely uh you know uh we hired I
think it was four stripe users in the in
the very early days uh and you know
those were people who who we probably
couldn't have gotten otherwise I'm sure
it was the same in Pinterest case where
like you you know you you'll get all
this benefit of working at Pinterest and
hey it's Pinterest uh you get to work
where you pin um yeah thank you guys
very much for coming in today thank you