Mike Krieger: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, yeah, AI, it was called machine learning back then. Yeah, it was called machine learning still. And so in shutting it down, you know it when you see it in terms of user growth and traction. And I wasn't expecting Instagram growth, but I was expecting or hoping for or looking for something that felt like at its own legs under it and it could continue to compound. I was really positively surprised by how supportive people were when we announced it. There was a bit of like I told you so which sure anything launching you could be like, "This is not going to work." And you're right, most of the time most things don't work. There was actually very little of that. And most people, the universal reception, at least as I received it, was kudos for calling it when you saw it and not protracted doing this for a long time. And I've talked to founders since then that have been like, "Yeah, I probably would've taken this thing on for another six months, but saw what you guys did, realized we were barking up the wrong tree, made the call." And I was like, "If that frees up people to go work on a more interesting things, I feel like that's a good legacy for Artifact to have." But for sure there was an ego bruise of is it true that you're only as good as your last game if I am a huge sports fan, right? So is that true or is there something more over a time? I'm very competitive, but primarily with myself and so I'm always trying to find the next thing that I want to go and do that's hard. And unfortunately that probably means that more often than not I'll feel dissatisfied, but the most recent thing that I did, but hopefully that yields good stuff in the end. Yeah, I think just the trajectory you went on after shows that it's okay to shut down things that you were working on. Okay, so you mentioned ChatGPT. I wanted to chat about this a bit. So there's something really interesting happening. So on the one hand you guys are doing some of the most innovative work in AI. You guys launched MCP, which is just, I don't know, the fastest growing standard of any time in history that everyone's adopting Claude powered and unlocked centrally the fastest growing companies in the world, Cursor, Lovable, and Bolt, and all these guys. I had them on the podcast and they're all like, "When Claude, I think 3.5 came out, Sonnet, was just like that's made this work finally." On the other hand, it feels like ChatGPT is just winning in consumer mind share. When people think AI, especially outside tech, it's just like ChatGPT in their mind. So let me just ask you this, I guess first of all, do you agree with that sentiment and then two, as a challenger brand in the AI space, just how does that inform the way you think about product strategy and mission and things like that?…

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