20VC: Former Tinder CPO Brian Norgard on His Biggest Product Takeaways from Launching the Top Grossing App in the World, The Top 10 Reasons Why Products Fail Today & How The Best Founders Assess Risk and Use It

Brian Norgard is the Former Chief Product Officer at the top-grossing mobile app in the world, Tinder. In less than 3 years, Tinder created over $11Bn in market value and with Brian's creation of Tinder Gold, Superlike and Boost, the platform has seen over 200m downloads and created millions of matches. Prior to Tinder, Brian founded Tappy, a mobile messaging application backed by Kleiner Perkins and acquired by Tinder. Before that, Brian built one of the fastest-growing Facebook applications in history (Chill) which reached over 30MM people. Fun fact about Brian also, at 25, Brian was the youngest GM/VP in the history of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp after the acquisition of his first company Newroo where he served as the GM of MySpace News. If that was not enough, Brian is also a prolific angel investor with investments in Tesla, SpaceX, AngelList and Coinmine. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Brian made his way into the world of startups and came to be the youngest VP at News Corp at the tender age of 25? How did that lead to his becoming CRO then CPO @ Tinder? 2.) What is the No 1 reason that products fail today? What can founders and designers do to retain the simplicity of product over time? How does complexity change the product experience? Why does Brian believe that product experience is an art? Bring in science, to what extent does Brian believe testing and iteration is key to success in product? How does one know how long is enough time to test for vs too short and not enough data? 3.) When thinking about distribution, what does Brian look for in the way that people describe a product to their friend? How does Brian think that the most successful products bake distribution into the core user behaviour? How does Brian think about community building around product? Who has done this best in Brian's mind? 4.) How should the very best founders and product people think about product risk? How can they know when to use risk to their advantage vs be mindful of excessive risk? On the features themselves, how important is it for a product to be 10x cheaper/faster etc? Why does Brian believe that is largely VC jargon? 5.) What were Brian's biggest takeaways from launching Tinder Gold and seeing Tinder become the Top Grossing App in the world? How does that sort of event also impact the team? How does Brian think about whether one should celebrate those moments or push forward to the next goal? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Brian’s Fave Book: The Old Man and The Sea As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brian on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Smart executives and business owners know that harnessing the power of AI, embracing the cloud, and prioritizing cybersecurity are the cornerstones of growth. Every day, Wrike helps thousands of companies worldwide do this by revolutionizing how they approach work. Our secure, automated,cloud-based work management tool helps businesses future proof their cultures and evolve fast. How? Wrike ‘s award-winning, collaborative, all-company platform keeps everything in one easily-accessible space. Time to embrace next-gen work management at the executive level and encourage lean thinking from the top down. With Wrike, crushing your objectives and mitigating risks at scale is a cinch. Give Wrike a try for free.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  This is the 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs on Instagram. But diving straight into the show today, and I'm so excited for this one. If you go to my Twitter, you'll see that I follow barely anyone. However, this is one must follow for me. Every tweet I learn something and I've been a huge fanboy of his for a long, long time. And so with that, I'm very excited to welcome to the show for the first time, Brian Norgard, former Chief Product Officer at the top grossing mobile app in the world, Tinder. In less than three years, Tinder created over 11 billion dollars in market value. And with Brian's creation of Tinder Gold, Super Like and Boost, the platform has seen over 200 million downloads and created millions of matches. Sadly, I'm not one of them. Pride to Tinder, Brian founded Tappy, a mobile messaging application backed by Kleiner Perkins and acquired by Tinder.

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  Before that, Brian built one of the fastest growing Facebook applications in history, Chill, which reached over 30 million people. And if that wasn't enough, Brian also is a prolific angel investor and has an incredible portfolio, including the likes of Tesla, SpaceX, Angel List and Coin Mine, just to name a few. I'd also have to say a huge thank you to the wonderful Mr. Jeff Morris Jr. for providing some fantastic questions suggestions today. I so appreciate that, Jeff. But before we dive into our episode today, look at the world's tech leaders and high growth startup CEOs. And do you ever wonder how in the world do they have that kind of inexhaustible energy to do what they do? The answer will surprise you. The latest trend with top tech leaders is sleep optimization. The first step, the Pod by 8 Sleep, the ultimate sleep machine.

• 1:25Harry Stebbings?

  The Pod is the first and only high tech bed designed to help you achieve peak mind and body performance. The Pod dynamically adjusts the temperature on each side of the bed so you're comfortable all night. Plus, if you're a total data nerd like me, well, the Pod tracks your biometrics while you sleep with no need for wearable technology, because the better you sleep, the better you do everything. Get the Pod, the most advanced sleep system on the market at 8sleep.com/20vc. Try the Pod for 100 nights. And if you don't love it as much as I do, they'll refund your purchase and arrange a free pickup. Once again, that's 8sleep.com/20vc. And if sleep is that cool personal foundation, what about the professional foundation? Well, that's why First Republic is so good. First Republic's resources, network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customize a solid foundation.

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  For their business across all stages. Why First Republic Bank? Well, you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events. You get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees. And you get to access exclusive events and networking opportunities. But don't trust me on this. Their clients include the likes of Instacart, Carter and Wish, just to name a few. And you can check them out by heading over to firstrepublic.com/innovators. And last, but by no means least, smart executives and business owners know that harnessing the power of AI, embracing the cloud and prioritizing cybersecurity are the cornerstones of growth. Well, everyday Rike helps thousands of companies worldwide do this by revolutionizing how they approach work.

• 2:50Harry Stebbings?

  Rike's secure automated cloud-based work management tool helps businesses future-proof their cultures and evolve fast. How? Well, Rike's award-winning collaborative all-company platform keeps everything in one easily accessible space. Time to embrace next-gen work management at the executive level and encourage lean thinking from the top down. With Rike, crushing your objectives and mitigating risks at scale is much, much easier. Give Rike a try for free at rike.com. That's W R I K E dot com. But that's quite enough of me. So without further ado, I'm so excited to welcome Brian Norgard.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:30Harry Stebbings?

  Brian, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. What can I say? I've been such a fanboy of your tweets for such a long time, but thank you so much for joining me today.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for having me.

• 3:40Harry Stebbings?

  Not a tool, but I want to start with a little bit about you. So tell me, Brian, how did you make your way into the world of startups? How did Tinder really come about? And then how did it get to where you are today? I'd love to hear that in a swift three to four minutes.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  So, you know, my path into startups was directly out of college. And when most of my friends went to investment banks and law school and all these places where you have to wear suits and act professional, I had found a brilliant technologist that I partnered up with. His name was Dan Gold. And we decided that we wanted to dedicate our lives to building product and to really trying to think about how to use technology in an impactful way. This was the early days of Web 2.0. The technology community at large was not fully formed. So many of the things that we did were essentially trial and error. And that led us to start a company that we sold to Fox Interactive Media in two thousand and six. So it was an exit for me, which was great. I was twenty five years old. And, you know, after that, I basically dedicated the rest of my life to building product.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  I was lucky enough to meet Sean Rad, who was the founder of Tinder while he was still in college. And I always admired his entrepreneurial skill and also his focus on user experience. And so we'd started a company together. And after that, he had shown me a couple of early ideas around Tinder. And I was really, really interested in the power of the idea. But at that point, it wasn't launched. And soon thereafter, I got word from Sean how well it was doing. And so kept talking and kind of in a strange course of events, he ended up buying my company. And so the rest is history.

• 5:10Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, and what a few years it has been. As we said, I've absolutely loved following on. I do have to ask, is one of your Tinder colleagues, Jeff Morris Jr. was on the show. And he said, I apply an investor's mindset to every product decision I make. So combining the two worlds that you really excel in, both products and angel investing. I'd love to hear, how have you found the transferability of skill and mindset, maybe across both products and angel investing today?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  It's a good question. I don't necessarily bring my investor hat when I'm building product. For me, product is a very personal experience. It's something that is more art than science. And when I sit down to think about a product, the center of it is the user. And at the center of the experience is the promise to the customer. I think a lot about how to deliver that promise in the simplest way possible. And so when I'm looking at company, I obviously biased towards beautiful and useful products and really amazing founders. But it's not the same mindset for me. The product experience is almost like art. And when I think about the customer, or when I think about the promise to the customer, and I think about all the tools that we have to deliver that, it's almost like a Zen-like experience.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  And of course, there are moments where it's incredibly frustrating and you have to walk away and you have to take a long, long break. But when you come back to it, you see it differently. But for me, my first love and potential Actually, I think my only true love is product.

• 6:32Harry Stebbings?

  Talk about seeing things differently. And before we do dive into the true love being product, I do have to ask, you mentioned kind of your early successes there and selling your first company when you were twenty five, twenty six. You then saw the bubble bursting also, two thousand and eight macro problems. How do you think that affected your mindset?

• 6:48Speaker 02

  You know, it didn't really impact my mindset. I'm usually thinking about the customer so aggressively and I'm thinking about the promise to the customer so aggressively that these ups and downs in the market and the market cycles, they don't impact me as much. Clearly, you want to have capital to weather these storms and some of these storms are far more aggressive than others. But in general, the Sanya Soto wave that is the market, it's never really impacted what I build. I still wake up in the morning and I think about the problem and I think about the solution. I think about simplification and design and all these other inputs that roll up into a beautiful product. And, you know, that is my obsession. That's my core focus point and the market situation sort of, it will work itself out.

• 7:26Harry Stebbings?

  I do have to ask you, you said the word aggressive storm there and products go through aggressive storms and they don't always hit. And when we chatted before, you said there were ten main reasons why products maybe don't hit. So I want to take these in kind of three and then ask subsequent questions because I'm too interested not to. So if we start with the first three, what are the first three reasons why products don't hit, Brian?

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Right. There's a lot of reasons products succeed, but let's first dive into why products fail. And the number one reason why products fail is because they're too complicated. And I think one thing that people who design products for a living take for granted is that consumers are very busy people. They have these routines. They wake up at a certain time. They go to work at a certain time. They spend time with their friends on weekends. And being able to wedge a product into their life in a very simplistic fashion is incredibly hard to do. So anytime you present a customer with any complexity, it's going to hurt you and you're going to see attrition. And so one of the reasons why I think most products fail out of the gate is because they are too complicated. Second thing that I like to talk about is how people spread products. Most products are still spread through word of mouth.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  And one of the most important sort of tests that I use is what I call, how does the friend explain it? What I mean by that is what you tell a customer. Your product does is not interesting. That's not relevant. What's relevant is what someone who uses your product tells another person. How do they explain it? Why are they imbued with some passion to go tell a friend like you gotta try Uber? Or you gotta get on Tinder. This is so interesting. Or look at this app called Instagram. It gives you know, these beautiful filters. You have to think about why customers are explaining the product in the real world. And most companies fail at being able to transmute that knowledge to a customer. This is very hard to do. People are busy. They're inundated with all sorts of stimulus.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  And for them to pay attention and then be able to tell your product story is really, really hard. That's the magic. And the third reason most products fail is this is sort of goes into product design theory, which is a lot of times people ship a product and they go, here's our product. They launch it and they wait and see if anyone cares. And the reason why that's really problematic is the best products in the world are all children of what this rapid iteration, this testing, this like sort of zealot like testing framework, where they're trying one thing, they're trying another thing, a new interface, new button, a new login path, a different way of explaining the core value proposition. They're running all these minute tests in the background. And what you see from most people who have built the sort of like quote unquote first product

• 9:57Speaker 02

  is they build it, they ship it, and they tell the story. They forget that the second you put this product in market, the real power comes from iteration.

• 10:05Harry Stebbings?

  So I have a couple of things to unpack there before we move on to the others. If we start on the first, you said about being too complex. I totally agree in terms of kind of feature creep as it's often called. But what's your biggest advice then to founders who are trying to retain that simplicity? And how do you advise them in terms of maintaining that mindset?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  It's something that I call holding the line. Your product and you as a founder, you have to stand for something. And if you don't know what that is, your customer certainly won't know what that is either. And so when you stand for something and you say, this is who we are. This is the product and you put it in the marketplace, you have to hold the line. One of the interesting stories around Tinder was just radical simplicity it brought to online dating. Pre Tinder, you had to fill out all these forms and menus and you had to talk about future goals and whether you like long walks on the beach. And I remember very specifically Sean saying, all there is is a profile photo. That's it. Yes or no? It's a binary decision. That double opt-in and that profile photo created, you know, now an eighteen billion dollar company.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  But when you think about it and you work backwards, it's the most simple ingredient that matter. And I think what happens is people don't hold the line, they don't stand for something. And then what you get is Frankenstein. You've got a product that does this, that does that, it's a Swiss Army knife. And then you get into these traps where people can't explain it, they don't know how to use it. And then all of a sudden, you have a failed product. Utter simplicity and holding that line, being able to stand for something really, really important is the key to getting something right. And it's incredibly hard to do, but when you get it, watch out.

• 11:33Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking of when you get it there, you said another element, which was the importance of iteration and really rapidly having that high shipment cadence. I do have to ask, how do you know though? How long is the right time to test for? How long is sufficient enough time to get good data versus we haven't got enough to actually validly credit whether this is actually worthy or not?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  We've talked a lot about holding a line and believing in something and standing up for something when you build a product. And when you hold the line and you're really, really standing for something, there's really two ways that you can accept data. One is qualitative, one is quantitative. Qualitative data is much easier to come by because you don't need a huge sample size. And what I mean by that is there are tons of tools available today, the product designers, whether it be these rapid prototyping machines or Framer, even Sketch, just the ability to put something on a screen and tape it to the wall or put it up on a big screen and have everyone look at it and say, yes, I understand this, or no, that doesn't make sense, or yes, that value proposition, or it's totally clear to me, that call to action, you know, that will take me to that next level. But I think one of the things that you've got to do is you've got to combine both.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  You've got to understand the emotion and what you're building and really be able to talk to people in a natural environment and see what's clicking. And then you also have to have the ability to analyze this data. But you know, the data analysis on a quantitative level is much more helpful at these big products that have scale. Because obviously when you have millions of people using something, there's a lot of permutations and you can, you know, there's some fantastic tools that tell you what the North Star can look like.

• 13:00Harry Stebbings?

  Kind of what the North Star could look like. I sometimes see founders with a North Star that they want to fundamentally create a new user experience. I saw a tweet of you the other day that said, one of the biggest dangers is actually forcing a new user experience that doesn't already exist, or a new user behavior, sorry, that doesn't already exist. My question was, is that not just market creation? Is that not what the best have done in Snapchats, ephemeral messaging, and how we engage with filters maybe? How do you think about kind of market creation versus forcing existing behaviors?

• 13:27Speaker 02

  So I fundamentally do not believe in quote unquote new behaviors. Humans have been around for 200,000 years. We're wired a certain way. We have an incentive system that has developed over many, many thousands of years in our brains. And I fundamentally dismiss the idea there are new behaviors. I think you can unlock certain behaviors and technology has this beautiful, beautiful wedge into this infinite world. And so at times it feels like there are quote unquote new behaviors created. For example, I was in a debate on Twitter about Uber and someone said, well, Uber is a new behavior. Lyft is a new behavior. And I still dismiss that notion for many years would call a taxi or hail a taxi. It just still happens now. We have this beautiful portal, this interface where you can tap a button and then the taxi comes.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  One of the things that I've made a ton of mistakes, you know, in my career is trying to sort of create these new behaviors. And it's just too much work and it's too hard. It's much better to find existing behaviors and extend them and amplify them.

• 14:26Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no, I mean, I do agree with you. And I was, when you were talking about it, I was trying to wrap my brain thinking of an entirely new behavior. You said that though about kind of just being too hard. And, you know, having built the community in the show, I know how hard community building is. And I want to start on the next three. What are the next three reasons as to why products maybe don't hit the mark?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Another reason why products fail to hit the mark is out of fear. I think a lot of founders are consumed by fear because they're worried about what people will say and what people will think of the company and what people will say about the product on Twitter. And it takes a tremendous amount of courage to launch something that is different, that is new, that is inspiring. If you think about Snapchat for a second, you think about the idea of ephemeral. It took a lot of courage to launch that feature. So many people said, why would I ever need that? The idea, even the construct of something that exploded or went away made no sense to people. But at some level, there was this part of the product that made tons of sense to a certain cohort, which was young kids.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  And, you know, I, I look at a product decision like that and I say, wow, that took risk. That took courage. And so one of the things that I think founders have to focus on is they have to be both empathetic, but also have this ability, this innate ability to understand risk and be able to calculate when to use it and when not to.

• 15:45Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, how do you learn that? And is, is there a kind of methodology in terms of your mindset as to how you can embrace, think about and analyze risk when it comes to product itself?

• 15:55Speaker 02

  This is the art of product, the ability to understand how to pivot off a certain feature, how to pivot off a certain emotion, when something is working, when something is not working. And some of this is like anything else, the more repetition, the more you've seen, the better you get at understanding how to address risk. But the other thing that I would say is that when you're holding the line, when you really are passionate about something, you believe in something bigger than just a feature. Some of these questions work themselves out. You don't have to have these sit downs where you, you look at the entire constitution of the feature and say, what is this and do we believe this or do we not believe this? When you stand for something bigger, some of these decisions start to fall into place. So I will say this, it's very, very rare for people to have this amazing ability to always address risk.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  But when you see it, you gotta wrap your arms around these people and you've gotta give them as much line as possible because these are the people that are gonna take your company to a special place.

• 16:48Harry Stebbings?

  For sure. No, I agree with you there. It's interesting, we had Henry Ward from Carter on the show and he said that one of the fundamental ways to de-risk, especially kind of customer acquisition and traction in the early days, is to bake in customer acquisition into the product itself. So for Carter, it would obviously be inviting angels and VCs to your cap table. And, you know, the network obviously inherently expands from there. How do you think about baking kind of customer acquisition and distribution into a product off that? And how people do it well?

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, frankly, I think it's the only way to build a product is to make it endemic to the experience. And baking it in. Is sort of fundamental for a product to grow in a in a proper fashion. And we've all seen what can happen when you grow a pack or you add things in that are sort of unnatural. And then push the customers to do things that perhaps they didn't want to do. But baking it in is if you're able to achieve that, what you can do is really unlock an incredible, incredible distribution channel.

• 17:40Harry Stebbings?

  Hit me, what's the next one then, the failure of the next three?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Another reason products fail is a failure to launch into a community. And right now, when you think about the beauty of the internet is all of these million micro communities out there. And there's essentially an early adopter for anything, for everything. And when I think about launching into a community, I think about a product that means something, that stands for something. And then goes and puts it in the hands of the people who appreciate it most. You should worship your early adopters, they're everything. They will take you to the highest of highs, they will show you the way, they will help explain the product to friends. And they will do your work for you, but you have to go find those people. And I think one thing is that that is a different skill set than just building a product itself.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  There's a lot of marketing, there's a lot of PR, there's a lot of storytelling. And then there's a lot of effort that you have to go through that will find those customers and drop that product in their hands.

• 18:35Harry Stebbings?

  No, I I do totally agree. Can I ask, how do you think about kind of cultivating and moving me up the S curve from early adopters to the kind of early minority slash majority as you progress up? And how do you think that can be baked into products to really allow for the smooth transition from, you know, your early adopter to the early majority?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  You would always hope the transition is smooth as you start to scale. But in reality, you always are going to alienate some of your earliest customers. And it's a really painful process. It's something that every company that has achieved scale will tell you they've gone through. And it's something that, you know, I look at a product and I can see it sort of slowly moving up that curve. And you look at, for example, Bitcoin today, this incredibly small, amazingly passionate community. And now Bitcoin is sort of like this thing that millions of people are interested in. So it's not just the early adopter zealots. And so some of those folks are going to feel alienated and they're going to talk about the good old days. But this is sort of the nature of the beast and being able to do it in such. A fashion that doesn't destroy the company. It's really, really hard to do and it's also emotionally taxing because when you build a product,

• 19:36Speaker 02

  you launch it into a community and people love it. And then as it scales, people start to say, oh, it's no longer cool. Oh, you know, I remember that product. It was so special. When? These are really hard things to deal with as a developer of something. But you have to weather the storm. You have to keep going. You have to believe that the product will over time improve. And sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And we've seen, you know, the evolution of some of these products like Twitter and Instagram have just changed so much. And there are still these people that say, oh, I remember when it was just like this and I loved it so much. And I love the what was one forty, not two eighty, because now two eighty does this to the ecosystem. But you know what? You can't make everyone happy. One of the things you learn about developing products is if your aim is to make all of your users happy, you will fail.

• 20:19Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no, I could listen. I couldn't agree more with you in terms of the inability to make everyone happy. Another element that you said to me, which was really interesting for me was you said it doesn't save time or money, being a big point of failure for a lot of products. Can I ask, often we're told that it has to be a ten X improvement on an existing being time or money. How do you think about whether it really needs to be ten X? And that painkiller versus vitamin analogy when it comes to products?

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a lot of these T J argon that's thrown around, painkiller versus vitamin, ten X, a hundred X. I really don't know what any of that stuff means. And I really don't think normal customers care either. They don't wake up in the morning and saying, wow, you know, this is a painkiller. I need this product. What people want is things that improve their lives. And how you improve someone's life is you save them time, you delight them, you do something that they didn't think was possible, you show them a path that they didn't already know. These are the things that make great products. And so right now, I think we're trapped in this cycle where we're trying to define everything. Like this product's NPS score is this, so this product must be successful. Sure, like there are a ton of ways of thinking about why things are successful and why things fail.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  But at the core, at the root, it's about holding that line, solving a problem for a customer, delivering against that promise, delivering. So few companies actually deliver. You know, you mentioned Carta before. Brilliant product, it made cap tables easy and transparent and manageable now. That was a very hard thing to do. It was in Excel, it was an email, your lawyers had certain documents. Now it's in one place and that's brilliant. It so it solves tons and tons of problems for founders like me. And so when I get get to that core, they held the line, they delivered the product and they continue to maintain whatever it is that promise the customer is, we will manage your cap table. That is a great product.

• 22:06Harry Stebbings?

  No, I listen, I couldn't agree more and especially on cost of that. I I'm really interested because the the element that you said earlier was also about potentially as you scale the product and losing some of that early adopter support because of the features that you include with scale. Another one of the comments you said was they don't take feature risk being as a main reason why products fail. How do you think about feature risk and what's a calculated risk and make what's an irrational?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  So feature risk is a very, very interesting part of product development. And feature risk is also heavily correlated to the DNA of the product culture. So certain product cultures are willing to take risks, others are not. And it also depends on the scale of the company. The larger companies, more bureaucracy, more people trying to protect themselves, less risk. Smaller companies, everyone's shooting for the moon, more risk. And so I think one of the things that we always think about is creating a culture, a product culture that will embrace these risks and will push people to try new things. And when we think about why we don't take certain risks, most of these things, most of it comes down to fear. People are afraid that they're going to mess up, afraid they're going to be laughed at, afraid that a colleague is not going to think it's a good move.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Afraid in general, just because fear is a very powerful motion. And when you can remove fear and when you can create a culture that puts sort of risk taking at the center, but calculated risk taking. You don't want to do things that would obviously jeopardize the business at large. But that to me is a really, really important piece of a great product culture and one that isn't talked about a lot.

• 23:31Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask you a question? In terms of that fear element, we've discussed it quite a few times. How do you think about your relationship to fear, how it's changed over time, especially with product? And how that scaled for you personally?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  There's a lot of discussion about building for yourself and building for yourself sounds incredibly selfish, but it's Not building for yourself means that you know what the best interest of that user is because it's you. And so one of the things that I've worked on throughout my career is really trying to remove all of that stuff on the edges. And get to the essence of why I'm building something and what's in it for me. Because generally speaking, if I can satisfy that condition, if I know why I'm building it, I know what's in it for me. I know what it does to my life or what it does for the reason, the rationale for using the product. It's probably going to work good for other people. And so you hear this all the time from great, you know, these great founder stories of, well, why did you build this?

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Well, I built it for myself. And the reason why that's so successful is because you know that user best. That doesn't necessarily mean that you can take that methodology and use it across the board in every single feature ever developed. But it means it's a starting place. I think it's a really powerful place to start.

• 24:43Harry Stebbings?

  Can I, sorry, and this again, another personal one. In terms of your personal journey with product, were there any moments where you had real inflection points? Where, be it the sale of your company, be it Tinder hitting ten million user, where you fundamentally changed your maybe attitude, risk profile, confidence with products and really evolved levels? Was there certain kind of inflection points?

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Probably the largest inflection point for myself was, was the launch of Tinder Gold. And Tinder Gold today has been this enormous success since, number one, the highest grossing app in the App Store. All of these amazing things that we're not worthy of, that are true. But I think what was so impactful to me as a product developer, product designer, you know, product leader was, before we shipped in their goal, I was legitimately scared. I was very, very fearful of what could happen. And why I was fearful was because I didn't know what the future looked like. I didn't know what the power of the future would be on the ecosystem, the ecosystem impact, and what it would mean to all these other different sort of downstream factors.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  And I have to say that it was a really tenuous time when we were coming up to wrapping up and pushing it out to the world. And there were multiple weeks where I just looked at myself and I said, I wonder if this is going to work. And if it doesn't work, I guess this. This is it. This is this is the monetization feature we've all been betting on and this is the best I got. And it was amazing to see it work and then to watch the confidence in my team, the confidence in the company and how people immediately took this as a way to think about the future, a template to move forward. And I think what's so important about building a product and also building product teams is when you have success, you can all rally around it and it really serves as sort of a fulcrum for sort of the business, you know, moving forward.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  I never really understood that until we shipped that feature, but feeling that momentum and watching it zoom up the charts was just almost a surreal out of body experience. And it just gave me a ton of confidence and it gave a ton of other people an incredible template to move forward. And it's we're incredibly grateful to have experienced that sort of momentum.

• 26:49Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, you mentioned the momentum there and last question before we move into the quick fire. I I do have to ask, I always think when you have such kind of needle moving events, be it kind of the success of Tindergold, be it one of the angel investments IPOing for, you know, multi billion. Do you appreciate those good times or is there always, ah, but we can keep Tindergold at number one for three months and then six months and we can do more and more. Do you ever appreciate the moment, so to speak? That's the biggest challenge I have.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  What I dislike about capitalism personally the most is this idea of the hedonic treadmill. You just keep running, you keep running, you keep running it. If you're able to run at a 12 pace, you should be at 14. And so I have always espoused this idea of stopping and smelling the roses. And it seems cliche, but when you do have one of those enormous successes, or if it's a startup, it could be a small success, you have to shine a light on it. You have to enjoy it a little bit. You have to share it because there are so many hard times. And I feel very fortunate to have had many, many great times and I try my best to kind of stop, ponder and think about what were the inputs that got me there? Who were the people?

• 27:56Speaker 02

  What were the key decisions and how can I take that template and share it with other people so they can replicate it? But I'm an absolute firm believer in enjoying those moments because guess what? In 60 years, we're just stardust anyway.

• 28:10Harry Stebbings?

  No, listen, I do agree with you in terms of stopping and spelling the roses. It's something I could improve on, but totally with you there. Now, Brian, I would love, though, to dive into a quick fire round. And then I want to do a round two with you on why products themselves do hit and taking the learnings from the incredible kind of spirit. About a deal.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 28:25Harry Stebbings?

  Perfect. Okay, so as you know, sixty seconds per statement. It's a tense round. Are you ready?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:31Harry Stebbings?

  So your favourite book and why? What must I read on my next trip out to the West Coast?

• 28:35Speaker 02

  I have to go with Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway.

• 28:38Harry Stebbings?

  Why?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Just purity. It's beautiful and you can feel him coming through the pages.

• 28:43Harry Stebbings?

  Love it. Tell me, what advice do you hear often given that you maybe disagree with most?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  I think all prescriptive advice is wrong. Advice is something that you have to learn how to absorb. And it's completely contextual, completely contextual. I could give you a piece of advice that's the absolute opposite of someone else. And so really, one of the most important things you can do in your career is learn how to decode advice, understand who's giving it, understand the reason why they're giving it, understand the perspective in which they deliver this information to you and then your ability to sort of pull it in and rip it apart and take the pieces that are relevant to you. Very hard to do, very, very important.

• 29:22Harry Stebbings?

  If you had to make a career decision, Brian, who would you call for advice?

• 29:25Speaker 02

  I think I would call the infinitely brilliant Naval. Naval's been an incredible force of nature for myself and for the entire startup ecosystem. And he has a way of taking very complicated things and simplifying them down and helping think through the exact reason why a decision should be made or shouldn't be made, or the investment decision or startup decision. And I also, I love about Naval is this almost childlike purity that he has around innovation. His eyes get big and he gets this big smile and just loves the underdog and he loves the entrepreneur and he loves this idea of doing something cool and different and new. He's an incredibly inspiring person to me and someone that I think will go down in history as so much more than just a startup guy.

• 30:07Harry Stebbings?

  One from your former colleague, Jeff Morris. What innovations or categories are there left for entrepreneurs to really explore in mobile?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  I chuckled the other day when Benedict Evans tweeted out the only three things left in mobile are machine learning. Crypto and regulation. So it's a little bit of a dark premonition, but no, I listen, there's not a ton of fruit still on the vine. Mobile is fairly saturated, but I will say this, there is always room for new great products. People love new things, they love new toys and that will never change. Now, some of the biggest opportunities in mobile have probably been picked over. But right now, just wait, this whole wave of crypto that's coming is going to change the game yet again.

• 30:48Harry Stebbings?

  Brian, I want to finish today on the next five years for you and the very exciting plans ahead. What's in store?

• 30:54Speaker 02

  So I'm still incredibly passionate about my life's mission, just building these really interesting, fun, useful products. And so that doesn't change. Hopefully I'll still have the skills and the wherewithal to continue to do that and I plan to do that. The other thing that I've been spending a ton of time with is a program called Spearhead, which I'm running now. Spearhead is sort of the brainchild of Naval Ravikant and Jeff Bagman. And the idea is funding entrepreneurs. We think fundamentally venture capital is in the middle of an incredible renaissance. And one of those is the idea that on the ground floor, seed stage, pre-seed, pre-idea, founders will have the ability to fund founders. So each year, twice a year, we select 15 people and we give them up to a million dollars to invest in the best and brightest.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  And so I've been spending a ton of time there. We've made over 80 investments thus far. And it's just been an incredible program, an incredible ride, seeing how these incredible founders are finding these beautiful ideas and these really important large markets. So that's where I've been spending most of my time.

• 31:53Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I couldn't agree with you more in terms of the excitement around Spearhead. I absolutely love what Jeff and Naval are building. But listen, Brian, as you know, I've been the big fanboy for a long time and I cannot wait for round two. So thank you so much for joining me today.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, Harry.

• 32:08Harry Stebbings?

  What an incredible guest to have on the show. And what I loved about that episode is we did plan to have a whole other half of the segment, which is why products succeed. And so there will be a fantastic round two with Brian on that. If you'd like to see more from Brian, you can find him on Twitter at Brian Norgard. Likewise, it'd be great to welcome you behind the scenes here. You can do that on Instagram at H Stabbings 1996 with two Bs. Really would love to see you there. But before we leave you today. Look at the world's tech leaders and high-growth startup CEOs and do you ever wonder how in the world do they have that kind of inexhaustible energy to do what they do? The answer will surprise you. The latest trend with top tech leaders is sleep optimization. The first step, the Pod by Eight Sleep, the ultimate sleep machine. The Pod is the first and only high-tech bed designed to help you achieve peak mind and body performance.

• 32:51Harry Stebbings?

  The Pod dynamically adjusts the temperature on each side of the bed, so you're comfortable all night. Plus, if you're a total data nerd like me, well, the Pod tracks your biometrics while you sleep with no need for wearable technology. Because the better you sleep, the better you do everything. Get the Pod, the most advanced sleep system on the market at eightsleep.com/20vc. Try the Pod for 100 nights and if you don't love it as much as I do, they'll refund your purchase and arrange a free pickup. Once again, that's eightsleep.com/20vc. And if sleep is that core personal foundation, what about the professional foundation? Well, that's where First Republic is so good. First Republic's resources, network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customize a solid foundation for their business across all stages. Why First Republic Bank?

• 33:34Harry Stebbings?

  Well, you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events. You get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees. And you get to access exclusive events and networking opportunities. But don't trust me on this. Their clients include the likes of Instacart, Carter and Wish, just to name a few. And you can check them out by heading over to firstrepublic.com/innovators. And last, but by no means least, smart executives and business owners know that harnessing the power of AI, embracing the cloud and prioritizing cybersecurity are the cornerstones of growth. Well, Everyday Reike helps thousands of companies worldwide do this by revolutionizing how they approach work. Reike's secure, automated, cloud-based work management tool helps businesses future-proof their cultures and evolve fast. How?

• 34:17Harry Stebbings?

  Well, Reike's award-winning collaborative all-company platform keeps everything in one easily accessible space. Time to embrace next-gen work management at the executive level and encourage lean thinking from the top down. With Reike, crushing your objectives and mitigating risks at scale is much, much easier. Give Reike a try for free at reike.com. That's W R I K E dot com. As always, I cannot thank you enough for tuning in and I can't wait to bring you another fantastic set of episodes next week.