Deb Liu: evaluation

Transcript context

…So first, I didn't build the ads platform. I actually built the first direct response ad product company ever had. But we'll talk about how that led to why direct response is a vast majority of the ads revenue for the company. But one thing that it was really interesting is that I really saw my opportunity in Facebook to be somebody that zigged when other people zagged. There were amazing people who did a lot of the really core products working on feed, photos, videos. I came in actually on the payments team and we worked on payments and eventually built games, which was the first billion dollar business. It was very successful. We worked with the likes of all the game companies that were on the Canvas games platform. And it was just an incredible opportunity to start from scratch and built something really cool. We built Facebook credits, which eventually became the Facebook payment system. And then from there on I built the first direct response ads product. And again, leveraging the skills that we had, we had a lot of relationships with game companies because of my time and payments. And so we just said, "Hey look, what ad product do you want?" And they said, "Actually, your biggest challenge is the shift to mobile. Build us a mobile acquisition engine." And we said, "That's doable." At the time the company was very brand oriented. Most of the ads... Actually almost all the ads on the platform were brand and we were not even on the ads team. So we actually worked on this team called the platform team. We said, "Okay, we'll build an ads product for the Facebook feed, the new mobile Facebook feed." And suddenly it became a billion dollar business within about 18 months, which was such an incredible journey. We worked on the mobile advertising platform, so basically the mobile ads network. That was a great experience. And so each time I worked on something, it was just... The thing that you have to remember is the failure rate for something like this is very high. You start something and the amount of iteration... People think, "Oh yeah, it's easy." You start something and it's linear because you have all the resources of this company behind you. But actually everything in the company is like, "Let's do the most important thing." These are seeds and we'll just let them... And so if you do that, you have to know that you don't get a lot of resources, you get a lot of attention. And I appreciated that because I think I work best when people aren't... There is not a lot of scrutiny. I think sometimes large companies, they say, "Well this innovation team," and then they check in on them way too much. They're like, "Week to week progress, where are you going? What's your strategy?" But so much as you know of building something new is the iteration process. It's the failing a lot. We actually tested five or six versions of the ads product before we got it to take off and it took months, and then we were on the verge of death multiple times. tion process. It's the failing a lot. We actually tested five or six versions of the ads product before we got it to take off and it took months, and then we were on the verge of death multiple times. In fact, I actually went back to run the payments team while I was working on that product because the team we had gathered still want to continue working on it, but I needed a second job back on the payments team because they asked me, "We don't think this thing is going to work. You should go run your old team again." And I thought, "Well, I will do both." And so I did both for a while until it really took off. The thing that I think a lot of large companies don't realize is that you can love something to death. And so with every new product, I'd rather do it out of the limelight, do it with the minimal resources and have the freedom to fail because success and failure really is... In startups, failing fast is really important or succeeding fast. It's the long slog that makes it really hard. In a company, you end up getting cut if you're the long slog product. And so being able to just say, "You know what? We're pruning this. We're doing the next thing, the next thing." And then having the time to iterate and grow is really critical. So as a leader trying to do this and create space for this, is there something you've learned about how to allow for, "Don't over scrutinize us, don't look at us too carefully. We don't want to be in the limelight. Don't put too many resources on this yet." Is it just like, "Hey, Mark. Here's what I think." I imagine it's not as easy as that. There's a lot of influence and that kind of work. Is there any tactics that you could share to create this sort of environment?…

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