CEO Diaries: The Brutal Mistake That Almost Crippled Snapchat!
Evan Spiegel, CEO and co-founder of Snapchat, discusses the critical importance of hiring and culture in business. He shares insights on early hiring mistakes, the values of kindness, smarts, and creativity, and the significance of T-shaped leadership and rapid course correction for company growth.
Deep Dive Analysis
9 Topic Outline
The Paramount Importance of Early Hiring
Hiring Mistakes: Over-indexing on Wrong Experience
Snapchat's Core Values: Kind, Smart, and Creative
Distinguishing Between Kindness and Niceness
Leadership Behavior: The T-Shaped Leader
Applying Leadership Principles to All Employees
Advice for Early Founders: Focus on Fixing Mistakes
Challenges of Scaling Company Culture Rapidly
Re-establishing and Clarifying Core Values
2 Key Concepts
T-shaped Leadership
T-shaped leadership describes individuals with deep expertise in a specific area (the vertical bar of the 'T') combined with a broad understanding of the overall business and the ability to connect with diverse people and viewpoints (the horizontal bar). This allows leaders to apply their specialized knowledge across various functional areas to drive impact effectively.
Kindness vs. Niceness
Kindness involves genuinely wanting to help someone, which often means providing direct, constructive feedback even if it's uncomfortable, to foster their growth and success. Niceness, in contrast, is about avoiding awkwardness and making someone feel good without necessarily addressing underlying issues or helping them improve.
8 Questions Answered
Hiring is everything; the initial team members, especially engineers, often bring diverse creative talents that are crucial for a company aspiring to be creative.
Snapchat sometimes over-indexed on the wrong types of experience, such as hiring leaders from much larger companies for a small team, or bringing in people with specific domain expertise who lacked open-mindedness and adaptability to Snapchat's unique approach.
Snapchat's three core values are kind, smart, and creative, with kindness being essential for fostering a creative and supportive culture where people feel safe to share ideas.
Yes, Snapchat applies the concept of T-shaped leadership broadly, believing that everyone is a leader and should strive for both deep expertise and broad understanding to drive impact.
He would advise that 'everything's going to be okay' and to focus more on quickly fixing mistakes and adapting when new information arises, rather than being overly focused on making the 'right' decision initially.
Often, if a founder is asking for advice about a struggling employee, they've already made up their mind; the key is to act on that realization and not be afraid to change direction quickly, even though it's hard.
As Snapchat grew from 20 to 2000 people, it imported diverse cultures from other companies (e.g., Amazon, Google, Meta), leading to a loss of control over its unique culture.
Evan Spiegel took action to fix the culture by getting much clearer about the company's values (kind, smart, creative) and the specific behaviors attached to them, holding a higher bar for adherence to these unique cultural expectations.
9 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Rapid Course Correction
Focus less on making perfect initial decisions and more on quickly changing your mind and fixing mistakes when new information arises, as this rapid feedback loop is crucial for early business growth.
2. Embed Core Values Early
Clearly articulate and embed your company’s core values and expected behaviors into the team’s DNA before significant scaling, to prevent culture dilution as new hires join.
3. Foster Kind, Creative Culture
Cultivate a culture of kindness where individuals feel safe to share “crazy ideas” and make mistakes without fear of ridicule, as this psychological safety is essential for creativity to flourish.
4. Give Direct, Kind Feedback
Differentiate between being “nice” (avoiding discomfort) and “kind” (genuinely helping someone grow) by providing direct, constructive feedback, even if awkward, to enable improvement.
5. Cultivate T-Shaped Leadership
Develop deep expertise in one area combined with a broad understanding of the overall business and the ability to connect across different functions, as this blend drives impact and inspires teams.
6. Build Breadth from Depth
If you possess deep expertise, actively engage with people and departments outside your comfort zone to build broader understanding and curiosity, which is an effective way to become T-shaped.
7. Hire for Adaptability
When hiring, prioritize candidates who are open-minded and curious, willing to adapt their prior experience and perspective to new contexts rather than rigidly applying old solutions.
8. Seek Interdisciplinary Talent
Look for individuals who appreciate and can combine different disciplines (e.g., engineering and design), as the cross-over between these areas often generates significant innovation and “magic.”
9. Act Promptly on Known Issues
If you intuitively know something isn’t working (e.g., a bad hire), trust that gut feeling and act quickly to address the issue rather than procrastinating out of fear.
5 Key Quotes
I think sometimes people are too focused on making the right decision and not as focused on fixing it if they're wrong.
Evan Spiegel
Unless you have that sort of supportive culture, it's very hard to be creative.
Evan Spiegel
If you just want to be nice, you pretend nothing's going on and you just say, oh, you know, nice to meet you or whatever. But if you're really being kind and you want to help that person, you say, you know, you've got something stuck in your teeth.
Evan Spiegel
It sounds like you've already made up your mind.
Evan Spiegel
If you're not into the kind, smart, creative thing, that's okay. There are other companies with different cultures, but, you know, that really matters to us here.
Evan Spiegel