John Collison: evaluation

Transcript context

…In so many profound ways. I think everything about leadership is about people. I love our people. But I didn't start learning how to lead people, I started building products. I think the transition from trying to make stuff that people really love to trying to lead in a way that can inspire people… It's really hard to do what we're doing: competing against the largest companies in the world in the messaging space, building hardware; again, competing with the largest companies in the world, working on foundational models. When I look at our video models and everything, we're doing that. We're trying to do some of the hardest things in the world. That requires inspiring people to take on enormous challenges, recruiting some of the best folks in the world to work together with us, and then building a culture where those people can do the absolute best work of their lives. That's different in many ways than just trying to build a product that people love. But it's the same in that it requires a lot of empathy and understanding people and understanding that people are very different. Understanding how to bring out the best in each of them. That's one of the challenges I love most about the job today. In the context of building hardware, one thing I hear from people who do it is that it's harder in the US because of the supplychain dynamics. In particular, if you're making stuff in Shenzhen, there's a company just down the road that can give you the V1 overnight. Then you say, "Oh, we want to change this component," and they'll swap out the production line of the components, again, overnight. Have you found that supply chain speed dynamic in the US a factor where in particular, as we talk about re-onshoring so much manufacturing, the limiting factor with US production is often how fast you can iterate essentially? I think people are always stunned to hear we build some of the most important components for Specs in the US and in the UK. We've really thought about building some of the most IP-sensitive components, some of the most sophisticated components in the US and the UK, where we can sit them directly next to R&D and engineering so that we can have those really, really fast cycle times and iterations.…

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