Elon Musk and Twitter + Curating Online Communities — with Nadav Shoval

Nadav Shoval, the co-founder and CEO of OpenWeb, joins Scott to discuss how the company uses AI to help publishers build healthy online communities, specifically in their comments sections. Nadav also shares his thoughts on the differences between being a startup in Tel Aviv vs. NYC, company culture, and the importance of a cofounder. Follow Nadav on Twitter, @NadavShoval. Scott opens with his thoughts on Elon Musk joining Twitter’s board of directors — the upside and the downsides. Algebra of Happiness: taking risks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  Episode 152. Queen Elizabeth II took the British throne in 1952. I love the Queen and all of the ceremony. Do you know in Britain, when you turn 100, you get a letter from the Queen? And when you turn 16, you get a text from Prince Andrew? Go, go, go!

• 1:45Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 152nd episode of the Prop G Pod. I'm in a good mood, and especially good mood. The one, I haven't had breakfast and I've had a lot of coffee. Daddy's caffeinated. And also, my producers, Caroline and Claire, both really laughed at the joke, which makes me happy as I'm desperate for their affirmation. Anyways, in today's episode, we speak with Nadav Shoval, the CEO and co-founder of Open Web. Open Web is a company working to make online discourse less coarse by partnering with brands and publishers to build trusted, direct relationships with their audiences. I'm an investor in Open Web. It's a unicorn. I like these guys a lot. They're former Israeli intelligence officials and one of my, or kind of my key investment strategy through

• 2:29Scott Galloway?

  2021 was I wanted an immunity investment strategy. And that is, I wanted to invest in companies that I thought were pushing back on the tyranny that is big tech. I invested in a subscription search company called Neva. I've invested in a healthcare company called 98.6 that pushes back, I think, on the traditional medical industrial complex. My company, Section 4, I am trying to disrupt, if you will, the, what I feel are the onerous, euceral prices of graduate schools. And Open Web is attempting to sort of clean up the toxicity that is the web, specifically the comments section where it gets just really, really fucking ugly really fast. I find that the most hateful, weird shit is in my replies on Twitter or

• 3:12Scott Galloway?

  anywhere else. Anyways, we'll talk to Nadav later in the show. Well, okay, what's happening? What's happening? The big news? Well, let's be honest, I was gonna talk about Amazon workers at Staten Island fulfillment. Snoozarama. There'll be a bunch of stories about how unions are making a comeback. Well, get this, they're not, folks. They're not. If you look at the 40 or 60 countries in the West, or even not in the West, that have unions, they've essentially had the shit kicked out of them for the last 50 years. Their membership is way down. I think their membership is down by number of members, that's a bit redundant, in every country except one. It's a construct that doesn't work. And it ends up hurting workers because we're under the illusion, like recycling, that it's actually helping

• 3:55Scott Galloway?

  or making a difference. They're a perfect enemy. They're divided. They're corrupt. They don't have good talent. When's the last time you heard of a really talented young person saying, "Yeah, I turned down Google and I'm going to work for the union." I mean, not as a union member, but I'm actually going to work for the union. They're disjointed, no coordination. I just think they've had their asses kicked up and down Main Street for the last 40 or 50 years. So there'll be some very well-publicized wins, you know? A Starbucks store unionizes, well, yay for them. Or Staten Island, which by the way, has the greatest percentage of union workers as a percentage of the population of any metro or any geography in the United States. What a shocker that they didn't want Amazon there. By the way, Amazon was always going there because Jeff Bezos

• 4:38Scott Galloway?

  ran this ruse of a campaign called HQ2, which was nothing but a head fake and an abuse to the Commonwealth. Because I predicted correctly that HQ2 is either going to be in Washington DC or New York. Why? Because a man with a midlife crisis worth $160 billion is not going to spend any time in Phoenix or Columbus, Ohio. Sorry, just saying it's true. I don't think he's going to spend seven days there, much less seven weeks a year there. Instead, he wants to lean into his midlife crisis on steroids, whether it's space, or hot girlfriends, or St. Bart's. The list goes on. I've been there, I'm still there, just not doing it as well. By the way, I love that picture of him by the pool with his girlfriend with a shirt that looks like he was poured into it. And the human growth hormone.

• 5:22Scott Galloway?

  I've done most or all of that, and I just want to say, Jeff, it's awesome. Keep on going, my brother. Keep rocking in a free world. If free world means a fear of death, a refusal to acknowledge you are getting older, and an abuse of drugs, divorce, my brother spending money on stupid shit, space, right on. I think that would really send the right signal to younger men. Anyways, we were going to talk about that. I'm not going to. What are we going to talk about? What's the news? What has everyone been DMing me on, saying, "Why haven't you spoken about this?" Elon Musk at Twitter. Well, yippee, yippee. It's nice to know he's finally getting some press. Jesus Christ.

• 6:07Scott Galloway?

  I read this and I was, I was like, oh God, I don't know about you. I was just sort of deflated, but maybe, maybe it's because, I don't know. I think he's brilliant, but I don't like the man. Anyway, is that fair? I don't like him? No, I just think he's a raging asshole. But anyways, brilliant, brilliant. But I have a bias against him. I see he's one of the many tech billionaires that has called me names on Twitter. So let's back up. What's going on here? Let's talk about what is good and bad about Elon Musk taking a 9% stake in Twitter. And as of this morning, announcing that he was going on the board. There's some good things here. The first is, this is capitalism at work. It was a savvy investment. So I'll come back to this, but no joke, over the last 30 days, I've had several meetings with several large hedge fund and private equity firms about potentially forming a

• 6:52Scott Galloway?

  group and taking a stake in Twitter because I think Twitter was undervalued. Why? I think that the invasion of Ukraine is going to do for Twitter what the first Gulf War did for CNN. I believe that everybody is turning to Twitter and Twitter commands tremendous influence. There's no other media company that is mentioned as much as Twitter in a positive sense, not, oh, have you heard about what Facebook did lately? Spreading the slap your teacher challenge on TikTok and promoting it as if it had more veracity than it actually did. Can you believe this shit? Anyways, Twitter is the only media brand that is, runs at the bottom as a logo, like Intel Inside across other media brands. It's, it is where journalists, celebrities, leaders, all go for the latest information.

• 7:36Scott Galloway?

  And two, it is where every corporation in America and every megalomaniac in America see above Elon Musk and yours truly goes to communicate their thoughts that they just have to share with the world. So I think this company needs to start commanding the space it occupies. Its business model doesn't make any sense. It should go to subscription. It should clean up all the shit. So boom, it's undervalued. Good for Elon Musk to come in, recognize it was undervalued. A baller move, 9% stake about, I think it cost about $2.3 billion. Just to give you some context, that in relation To Elon Musk's total net worth would be similar to an average American household in America that has average wealth of $123,000 buying a MacBook.

• 8:19Scott Galloway?

  So, wasn't a lot of money for him, but still, it's real money, 9%. And then this morning, they announced that they are going to give him a seat on the board, which he has accepted. So, a savvy move from an investment standpoint. The stock was undervalued. I still think it's probably undervalued, but this was a baller move. There's just no getting around it. Twitter is probably the last media company of this influence that can be acquired. What do we mean by that? Most are dual-class shareholder companies. If you want to buy Comcast, you got to speak to the Roberts family. If you want to buy the New York Times, the Solzburghers, Conde Nast, the New Houses, Fox, obviously, you got to show up and deal with Uncle Satan. So, the majority of these companies aren't acquirable because they have super-voting shares.

• 9:04Scott Galloway?

  And somebody can sit there with their arms crossed at Google or at Facebook and say, "Okay, hey, Mark and Cheryl, you're mendacious, Fox. It's time to sell the company." And he can just say, "No." So, there are very few companies of this influence in the media space that can be acquired, and this is one of them. So Elon Musk goes in and he says, "All right, I own 9% of the company." He runs a poll. His polls are hilarious. His polls are like when I ask my 11-year-old if he wants to go to camp after I've sent in the deposit. And that is, I pretend to give a good goddamn about what he thinks, but the decision has already been made. And similar to when Elon took a poll around whether he should sell some Tesla shares, and he had already filed to sell shares, he again asked the Twitter community if they felt Twitter was living up to the principles of First Amendment.

• 9:48Scott Galloway?

  That is such a loaded question. If you have any background in market research, you're basically putting words in people's mouths. But by the way, all along had been acquiring shares and was going to do this no matter what. Good thing. He's probably or arguably the most accomplished, insightful, genius product person of the last 20 or 30 years. Anyone who can land two rockets concurrently on two barges, there's no getting around it's a genius. We're gonna get to Mars if and when we get to Mars, and I do think it's a when, not an if. We'll get there sooner because of Elon Musk. The electric vehicle market has been totally inspired. The race for electric, he is the firing gun that set off that race. Tesla's an amazing car. Despite

• 10:32Scott Galloway?

  his insults of me, I own a Tesla, a Model X Falcon, which I have been trying to sell as I'm pissed off enough not to give money to a CEO who calls me names. But anyways, it's neither here nor there. So having this genius product on your board, I think, could be helpful to the CEO. And he's obviously passionate about the product. Now, what is the downside here? The premise here makes no fucking sense. That he wants them to re-embrace the First Amendment, and also he's worried about censorship. This is what Elon Musk has done on Twitter. He's violated securities law. He's published memes of Hitler and compared

• 11:12Scott Galloway?

  Hitler to Justin Trudeau. He has made profane comments about our elected representatives. He's exaggerated. He's committed market manipulation and said he was taking his company private at $420 a share and that funding was secured, when in fact it was not. So what exactly is the aggrieved Mr. Musk looking to do on Twitter? Does he want to kill a puppy live on Twitter Spaces? What is he looking to do here that Twitter has not allowed him to do? The only thing I can think of is he wants Trump Act on the platform. And here's the thing. This whole First Amendment bullshit is bullshit. It has nothing to do with the First Amendment. The First Amendment says that the government shall pass no law that

• 11:54Scott Galloway?

  inhibits free speech. Makes sense. We want dissenters. The dissenter's voice is important. Twitter is not the town square. He said it's de facto become the town square. And if that's true, we need to break it up. But Twitter would have no problem arguing, well, let me think about this. Two thirds of all social media goes to one company. We're not that company. So they would have no problem swatting that argument away that they've become so powerful that if you want any sort of communication, you have to go on Twitter. That's just what Elon Musk is obsessed with. What would be this expression of return to the First Amendment? The only thing I can think of is to put Trump back on the platforms. Even if you were to suspend your knowledge of the First Amendment and say, okay, it is a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment states that you are not allowed to go into a theater and cry

• 12:34Scott Galloway?

  "fire" or yell "fire" if it puts other people in imminent physical danger. When the president is spreading election misinformation and then going on Twitter and organizing a rally that ends up being violent, where people end up dying or shot or hit with fire extinguishers, then yeah, you have violated, you are no longer subject to the protections of the First Amendment. So even if the First Amendment applied here, which it does not, the president should not be on the platform. So what the fuck exactly does Mr. Musk want Twitter to do here? It just doesn't, I just don't buy the ultimate presence. So maybe having someone on the board with a great product insight, it's a baller move from a capitalist standpoint, that's all good.

• 13:17Scott Galloway?

  Also good, as someone who has run several activist campaigns, the easiest way to shut up a critic is to put him or her on your board. I say him, it's always the dude. I can't think of a female activist. Anyways, so putting him on the board crisply, he owns 9% of the company. Your shareholders are your owners, so the board is supposed to be fiduciaries for the owners. So what better fiduciary for owners than someone who is the largest shareholder? So I think it makes sense to put him on the board. Here are the downsides. One, the stock actually went down. It had been skyrocketing. It skyrocketed from about 39 to 50 on the day of the announcement yesterday. And then today, we tape on Tuesdays, it's up another 4%.

• 14:01Scott Galloway?

  And then it started going down a little bit when it was announced he is going on the board. Why is that? Here's the insight. Here's what's different about this. I don't think anyone's reading it, but the market sees. Is that basically Elon Musk has become the ultimate cock block for an acquisition? And that is, he doesn't have control of the company, but he now controls the veto on an acquisition. And that is if Salesforce or PayPal wanted to come in and take it out, or a private equity firm at 60 or 70 bucks a share, they now have to get Elon's blessing. So what are you seeing? The premium, the takeover premium is starting to come out of the stock because now we have a shareholder who quite frankly is probably not shareholder driven here. He has a laptop at risk here.

• 14:45Scott Galloway?

  The money here means nothing to him. This is a vanity play. I don't think the guy can stand to be out of the news for 48 or 72 hours. Now, I, let me, that's not fair. Every 24 hours. So this is a hobby. This is fun. He doesn't care about the money. The problem is the other 91% of shareholders do care about the share price. And I think this thing is now stuck at 50 odd dollars per share. And you might think, well, that's way up from 32 and you'd be right. I have traded in and out of the stock. About three, four years ago, I wrote a letter to the board saying they needed to clean up their act and move to subscription. And I announced that I had purchased approximately, I think, $5 million in stock in Twitter, which is a lot of money for me. I heard crickets. The board just basically, you know, said, talk to the hand. I didn't hear back from them. The stock ran to 44. I sold.

• 15:29Scott Galloway?

  I get contacted. The stock drops back to 32. I advise an activist. I put some more money in. The activist shows up, signs my letter with a billion dollar pen, and boom, we're off to the races again. They secure two board seats and the stock runs to, get this, 80. I sold at 55 and the stock continued to run to 80. And I thought I was an idiot for selling too early. And what do you know? The stock then started waddling back down to 32. Because here's the issue with Twitter. It's amazingly influential. It's a fantastic addictive product. And it sits on top of a shitty business model, specifically advertising, and has been a 10-year experiment that has nullified the hypothesis that Twitter can compete with Facebook or Google. It cannot. It doesn't have the scale, nor does it have the ad tech.

• 16:14Scott Galloway?

  For the same type of incredible targeting that Google and Facebook are capable of. So as a result, we have an incredibly influential company that sits on top of a shitty business model, and the market recognizes that and does not give it the valuation it could command. What does it need to do and what would I have done and was planning on doing, quite frankly? I would have gone the opposite way. I would have said that in order for this thing to thrive, they need to clean up the bullshit. If you want to know what Twitter looks like with a Musk influence, just look at all of the comments when he made the announcement. It's basically a cocktail of crypto scams and far-right complaints that feel very Dale or Koller-ish. So is that where Twitter needs to go? Twitter needs to go the opposite way.

• 16:56Scott Galloway?

  Twitter needs to restore more confidence in its user base that this is a somewhat civil, productive place, that you're not going to get attacked by bots. Do we want Twitter to look more like Elon Musk Twitter feed? Here's what Elon Musk does that is the worst thing about what he does. He punches down. He punches down. He has 70 million followers. He has this evangelical Taliban-like following. And when he calls me an insufferable numbskull, I start getting hundreds of random tweets and emails from people who've decided they hate me because their Lord and Savior has said I'm an insufferable numbskull. That's okay. I can deal with it. What is not cool, what is not cool, is that my 11-year-old son comes home the next day,

• 17:39Scott Galloway?

  comes over to me, pulls off his backpack, and says, "Dad," in a very concerned voice, "what's a numbskull?" So Elon Musk has gotten to the fifth grade at Gulfstream School because of his 70 million followers. Everybody hears this, and I have to explain to my son not to be worried, that when someone calls you a numbskull, it's not a big deal, and we're fine. But this is the thing, and this is where this individual lacks grace. He punches down. And when you have 70 million followers, you should demonstrate a little bit more civility. So is this what we want from Twitter? A block against acquisitions and a less graceful place that is full of crypto fraud

• 18:18Scott Galloway?

  and an individual whose inner child has not grown an outer man? Stay with us. We'll be right back for our conversation with Nadab Cheval.

• 18:33Scott Galloway?

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• 19:18Scott Galloway?

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• 20:53Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Nadav Shival, the co-founder and CEO of Open Web.

• 21:00Scott Galloway?

  Nadav, where does this podcast find you?

• 21:03Speaker 02

  I'm right now in New York City.

• 21:05Scott Galloway?

  New York City, good for you. So, let's bust right into it. Give us the headline news or the voiceover on Open Web. What is Open Web?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Open Web is on a mission to improve online conversations and to create a healthy alternative to social media. We build communities for all large publishers and content creators around the internet.

• 21:26Scott Galloway?

  So, how do you do that? Double-click on that, what does that mean? Tell us, who hires you and what do you do for them? And why is that, why is that good for the overall health of the web?

• 21:35Speaker 02

  So, what we came up with is that, you know, most of us spend so much time online around, talking with our friends, colleagues, and everything that we love. But, social media became pretty toxic. And in the same time, you have all these like, brands and publishers, that people are talking about their content on the world gardens. And we started to feel that it's becoming pretty toxic. So, we are a platform for publishers and brands to bring back, if you want, the discussions to their websites, to their apps. But, we really try to focus on the quality of conversation.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  So, we build different algorithms, AI and machine learning, to incentivize people to be more on-topic, while also reducing the toxicity and hate speech, racism and stuff like that. And I like to say, we are kind of, quote-unquote, doing the dirty job of the internet.

• 22:37Scott Galloway?

  And so, how does it, the algorithm picks up when it says, "Make $100 from home", or it sees racial slurs? The algorithm, does it get rid of that content? Or it deprioritizes it, moves it towards the bottom? How does the algorithm separate, quote-unquote, "good" comments from "bad" comments?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  It's a good question. We did two things, you know, the idea is that we try to prioritize the good things and to reduce the bad things, if you want like the carrot and the stick. So on the quote unquote stick side, we built algorithms not to detect spam. So if you're writing, hey, like do that and that and get like few dollars, the algorithm will detect that. But much more important than that, you know, it's about, it's not just about the freedom of speech. It's about the freedom of reach. We want to make sure we prioritize something that drive value. We want to create deep, healthy debates and conversations. So the algorithm tried to find users with high reputation and relevant content and prioritize

• 23:37Speaker 02

  that and not just a casual offenders or stuff like that. But the idea for publishers, what they realize is that they lost most of the relationship with their audience. They almost like exported all the community to Twitter and Facebook and Reddit. And what they do by leveraging open web, they increase significantly the lifetime value of their users and the ARPU. Cause people are spending more time on their app, they're reading other people's comments, building a profile and reputation, replying to each other, liking each other. So for publishers, the bottom line, we increase significantly the usage of their products and

• 24:22Speaker 02

  by that supporting the publishing industry.

• 24:25Scott Galloway?

  And how does it, is there some sort of scale and networking effect? If you're running the comment section, how does that help inform the algorithm for other? I imagine there's some sort of network play here that as you have more clients, it benefits other clients. Can you explain, are there network effects to using your software?

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. And when it comes to machine learning algorithms, it's all about scale. So the more conversations we're exposed to, the more trained are the algorithms, and the lower is the false positive. What we assume that is happening on many of the social networks, by design, maybe they had a very good intent, but in the end of the day, they started to promote extreme. So the way that we prioritize the conversations again is based on what you say, and less about your social footprint. And what it means, we take a lot of pride in the fact that we know how to identify healthy, thoughtful conversations. So the more conversations go through in the system through different publications,

• 25:27Speaker 02

  the more accurate are the algorithms, the better the results for each one of our partners.

• 25:33Scott Galloway?

  And is the idea that if the comment section is less toxic, that the publisher will be able to monetize it and get higher CPMs? What's the bump in revenue for the client?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  So I think this is the million-dollar question. How do they make money out of that? Why community is so important? And I have a very simple explanation. Unrelated to how publishers are making money, whether it's by ad-driven business or subscription. What we found out is that there are two ways to get people to spend more on the website, on their app. And all of them are related to providing value. So first and foremost, it's about the quality of the content, right? And the second one is about community. And what we see is that by publisher getting people to engage and spend more time, they also drive much higher registration rates,

• 26:30Speaker 02

  which eventually will allow them to better monetize. So yes, to get a better CPMs by them creating unique segments. But what we feel is the most important thing. There's a level of trust. We feel that most users do not trust social networks over time. And we see it as a trend. It's coming from regulators and it's coming from end users. And we feel there's an opportunity for publishers to do it differently, to be transparent on how they collect data and what they're doing with it. And eventually empower the publishers in the publishing industry to create a better and more sustainable business model by leveraging the community engagement to drive their engagement and eventually hire CPMs as well.

• 27:14Scott Galloway?

  So let's talk about the founding of the company. What was the original? Give us your background, your backstory, Nadav, and how you came up with the idea.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure thing. So communities is basically the story of my life, to be honest. As a kid, I was diagnosed with a disease called Kawasaki. I was the first case in Israel. And I'm healthy, I'm feeling good now. But the only thing it damages is my fine moral skills. And because of that, I couldn't really write down with a pencil or a pen like most kids. And my parents brought me a computer in a really young age, around the age of like six or seven. And back then in the 90s, having a laptop wasn't really mainstream. It was pretty funny. So I started to engage with online communities

• 28:06Speaker 02

  because I was just like super bored. I didn't really get into school. So I got into like IRC and online chats and stuff like that. And through my childhood, I decided to build websites and chat and messaging apps. And I was really, really enjoying it. I just felt that like it was an amazing thing to connect with people back then for free because calling people internationally was very expensive. Became such a big part of who I am. So I didn't finish high school. And after the military service in Israel, it's mandatory. I decided that I want to do something with my life and I felt I want to do something that potentially can make some level of an impact.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  And I decided to start Open Web, but to be honest with you, it was kind of like almost my comfort zone.

• 28:57Scott Galloway?

  Uh huh.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Because I didn't know how to do anything else.

• 29:01Scott Galloway?

  What were you doing in the army?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was in Israeli command unit.

• 29:07Scott Galloway?

  And what did you do? What was your job? What did you do in the command unit?

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Mostly intelligence. I see myself as a liberal. And it actually gave me an amazing perspective. I think that doing whatever we did or being exposed to all these like negative things really give you a strong perspective on, you know, on society and on people. And I think it was a big part of my motivation to not just create like a great business, but create the business that got a real mission and an impact.

• 29:42Scott Galloway?

  And were you in the service for two or three years?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Uh, three years.

• 29:46Scott Galloway?

  Three years. And then so you come out of the service and you have a co-founder. How did you and Roy meet?

• 29:52Speaker 02

  So Roy and I met when we were both like seven years old. And we grew up together. And well, I'm like, would be considered on the spectrum of ADHD, pretty extreme. And Roy would be, would be like the most thoughtful, calm, and just brilliant student at school. So we grew up together. Roy was always very passionate about building things online and like HTML websites, stuff like that. And once the company started to grow, I just like called him and I was, hey, I really need your help.

• 30:31Scott Galloway?

  And when did you guys start the company? How did it get off the ground? It was, did you, were you headquartered in Tel Aviv? And did you do a seed round? Tell us a little bit about the, kind of the guts of the startup.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, we had like so many failures and so many things. Yes, we started in Tel Aviv. We wanted to connect people. It started from a consumer app, a location-based app for clubs and events. It was a pretty brutal failure.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  And then around, so we started in 2012 in Israel. We had like two or three spinoffs. And then around 2015, we started to meet a bunch of publishers. We met, actually, The New York Times was the first publisher we met. Everybody told us the same issue, that online communities is very hard to handle, a lot of toxicity. And this is where we started the current product.

• 31:24Scott Galloway?

  And what's been the hardest part? Has it been finding good engineers? Like, what's the sort of, at the end of the day, what's the differentiation of Open Web? So cleaning up the comment section and helping publishers monetize, it makes a lot of sense. What are the barriers of entry? What have you been able to develop? Is it IP? Is it technology? What is hard about this that you've been able to accomplish?

• 31:44Speaker 02

  I think the hardest thing by far was around creating it through moat and differentiation around online conversations. I think a lot of companies, including Big Tech, tried to do it before. And we all know that the end result. So yes, I think definitely the IP around moderation was the biggest achievement of the company back then. And I think that now we go to the place when also Open Web became one of the most important business models for the publishers as well.

• 32:21Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 32:26Scott Galloway?

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• 33:11Scott Galloway?

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• 33:32Speaker 03

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• 33:42Speaker 04

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• 34:04Scott Galloway?

  So Nadav, you're the co-founder and the CEO. What have you found is the hardest thing about being a CEO?

• 34:10Speaker 02

  I think the biggest and the hardest things is how to truly stay loyal to our mission and say no to opportunities. And I think the second biggest thing is how to grow the talent at the same pace of and the speed of the business. We go through like so many things every day. We have so many large opportunities. How do we make sure we're not becoming evil, like some other companies that I won't mention now? How do we make sure we're really staying loyal to our mission? We're like a large enterprise where we go public. How do we not like squeezing lemons and staying honest? And... Fanatic about customer success as we are right now.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Cause we do love the publisher industry and we love journalism. And we want to make sure we're not only improving on conversation, but we truly support the media industry as well.

• 35:05Scott Galloway?

  But what would you say is the friction in the business right now is you need more clients, more good employees, more capital. What's the friction? If you could solve for one thing, what would it be?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  It's always going to be about the talent. For us, about getting the, you know, the right people from a think a culture perspective. I feel that a lot of companies, when they speak about culture, there's a bunch of buzzwords and I don't think behind of it. For us, it's the way we hire and we like to have people which are very passionate about what we do. So bringing the right people at this stage is absolutely the most important and the most challenging things. Because we grow, right now we're doubling ourselves year after year in the past like five years. So it's, it's pretty hard. So we need people that got the right level of resilience and passion to achieve that.

• 35:53Scott Galloway?

  And how do you try and implement a sense of culture in a remote world? Well, let me back up. What's your view on remote work? How many people actually soak to an office? And how do you try and create and cement a culture when a lot of employees aren't in one place most of the time?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  I feel that a lot of employers are calling physical gathering some type of a culture. Seeing people gathering in a space for me is, is maybe a part of a culture, but that's not the culture. Culture is about who do we hire, who do you promote? Are, how are they empowered and acting when you are not in the room as a leader?

• 36:34Speaker 02

  I think that the future for us is being super flexible and bringing the right people with the right background and the right mindset and values. We spend a lot of time to make sure that we also allow them and give them the safe space to be in person when needed. But.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  I find it pretty old school, thinking that offices is the driver of a culture. We are right now like around two hundred thirty, forty people. I think in the next two months, we're going to be more than three hundred people. And I think that every person will tell in the company, we have a very strong culture. And some of us are working in person, some of us are working remotely. So there's always going to be this, you know, in-person, in-office experience, but come on, like, we were working for two years remotely. And the world has changed. If employers think that they cannot have a strong culture by not having offices, I think they should rethink about what's the definition of a culture. That's my two cents.

• 37:37Scott Galloway?

  And slowly but surely, it feels as if the company has kind of moved or become, it's kind of gone from Tel Aviv to New York. How would you compare and contrast the startup culture and just the general work environment between a Tel Aviv and a New York?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  I love this question. Well, there's a lot of similarities in the overall startup mentality. There is like a huge difference. I find that in Tel Aviv,

• 38:04Speaker 02

  people take a lot of pride of working in like startups, going, you know, against almost like big tech and stuff like that. Well, big tech have offices all over Israel. I think that top talent will always want to innovate and walk in like smaller teams. And it's almost like if you work at Google, it's like you go for the comfort zone. But if you're really passionate about your work, you will always go to startups. And I think maybe in New York now it's getting like that. But New York was much more about enterprise and, you know, different industries like, obviously like banking and others.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  And the startup type of mindset is.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Is getting there, but it's very different. Tel Aviv is almost like a startups manufacturing. And I think it's just related to the culture. You have a lot of like talent coming in a young age after the army and they're very passionate to solve big problems and they love working together. So you're getting this beautiful culture of people that really want to make an impact and move the needle. So even if big tech is very competitive with the compensation structure, I assume that in Tel Aviv startups will mostly win.

• 39:25Scott Galloway?

  And more generally, how would you compare and contrast America versus Israel? What do you think are sort of the best and worst things about each country respectively?

• 39:34Speaker 02

  It's a tough question. I think that's one of the best and worst things about Israel is that we always walk as a group, we always take care of each other as a group. And people feel very accountable for each other's in general. There is like mindset of like, we are together, we're gonna survive, we're gonna help each other. But I think that the negative spot about it is that some level of entitlement, almost like racism in some aspects of like, we are the best, which I don't really like. And I think it's kind of the, maybe the more negative part about the culture. Well, I think there's a lot of beautiful things about the Israel mentality.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  I don't like the, we are the best kind of mindset. I think in the US and compare, maybe given the scale of the population, there is significantly more diversity, which I like a lot. And so many different cultures, which is really beautiful. I think it's one of the negative things for me here is the, it's a really divided country, which is very unfortunate. I feel that people say otherwise, but in my mindset, people are very judgmental over others and they're always looking to poke holes. Some call it the cancel culture or many others.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  I just find there is so much and there's so many great things that could happen if it's becoming slightly more maybe unite. But at the same time, I know that I don't know because maybe I'm an immigrant and I don't get all the, you know, the different background and the history of some things. But I think that maybe social media always, you know, divide us as well. And I hope that unrelated to to race, background, age, gender, or whatever it's going to be, sexual preference, I really hope that we'll find a way to be slightly more unite and less divided.

• 41:33Scott Galloway?

  Do you think the national service or your experience in the Israeli army helped you or helps people develop more unity? Do you think national service is something the US should consider?

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's less about the actual service, more about when you go to the top of service, everybody are equal. It doesn't matter where you come from, doesn't matter what's your age, what's your gender, who are your parents, what's your income, what are your preferences? It doesn't matter. Everybody are equal.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  And it definitely create this level of unity. So whether it's about volunteering, by the way, in Israel, you don't have to go and actually fight, you know, you can do many other things, including volunteering with elders and disabilities, you can do so many great things for society. I definitely think by doing something for others, it creates this level of a group and association to the group and belongings and unity. So there's a lot of negative things about the service. I think it's pretty horrific, the fact that like young kids being exposed to so many negative things. For the other hand, yeah, it definitely creates this culture of we are together in this.

• 42:51Scott Galloway?

  And any parting words, advice to, we have a lot of young men who listen to the podcast and young women, but what advice would you give to a 25 year old in terms of tech or startups right now?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  I don't have to give advice. I love to talk from it more, experience sharing if it's okay.

• 43:10Scott Galloway?

  Sure.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  I think one of the things that truly helped us to get to where we are right now and overcome so many challenges and quote unquote succeed.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  We're obsessive, both my co-founder and I, the leadership, the entire team. We are truly obsessive about our mission. We really care about it fundamentally. We truly care about what we do and we're not a nonprofit. We're a for-profit, so this is a business. But my experience sharing is that the best way to succeed in a startup ecosystem, if you can't just look for short-term wins. So if you're just expecting to be so motivated, wake up in the morning every day, even though starting a company is so, so hard.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  If you're just motivated by money, you're absolutely, absolutely not will be able in the long term to overcome so many challenges because every person that been through the journey of starting and succeeding, growing a company will tell you the same thing. There are so many unknowns. There's so many things out of your control, even if you try your very best. And if you do something that you truly love and passionate about, you'll be able to go through much harder things together over time. And the second thing is find a co-founder. If you can't convince one person to leave their job and join you full-time, you might not have a good idea.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  So I think finding a partner for the journey is also critical.

• 44:52Scott Galloway?

  Nadav Shoval is the CEO and co-founder of Open Web. Before establishing Open Web, Nadav founded four technology startups, all related to connecting people around shared interests. Open Web's platform is used by more than 1,000 publishers, including Hearst, Yahoo, Penske Media and News Corp. To gain independence from traditional social media through millions of conversations across thousands of communities with more than 100 million monthly users. Nadav joins us from his home in New York City. Nadav, appreciate your time and good luck with Open Web.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 45:34Scott Galloway?

  How's it going, Happiness? So my show dropped last week. Second episode dropped today. And it's a lot of work. CNN Plus has been really rewarding. It's a group of talented people that I really admire and respect. It's exciting for me to have a show on CNN. I've always been a huge fan of CNN. So that's exciting. I think streaming is in for a rough road. I love the CNN Plus product. I think it actually, if you haven't checked it out, has a decent amount of heft. And the thesis is that people will pay $6 a month just to have quality, fact-checked journalism and news and entertainment that's news-related without ads. That's kind of the basic premise, and I buy that.

• 46:17Scott Galloway?

  My history in TV, my kind of film credits, if you will, are I started as a contributor at CNBC and at Bloomberg and really enjoyed it and was good at it. I went on Fox a lot. I like Fox, or specifically, I like Stuart Varney. And I like Neil Cavuto. I think they're both class acts. And I think it's important to go behind enemy lines, if you will. And I wouldn't consider Fox the enemy, but I'm of a different political viewpoint. I consider myself a centrist, and I think Fox has increasingly gone batshit crazy. But I think it's important to engage with the other side. I really enjoyed it. Then I was offered a show on Vice, and I said yes, because, well, you know, you get a TV show, right? And it was the pandemic. It was literally the first few months of the pandemic.

• 47:00Scott Galloway?

  We figured out a way to do it out of the cloud, film it in my garage. Watched the first episode, and the person I was with, who I care a great deal about, started crying, as in, "I'm worried about you." Which was a very low moment for me, because I agreed. I could just tell that this was just such an awful show and that I had fucked up. And it was, it was hard for me to think, "I've got to get through another five episodes of this show." I did that. The show got better. And then what happened? They came and said, "We like this show, and we want to renew it and do another 12 or 20 episodes." And I said, "No." And they were so flummoxed. Which kind of taught me that people don't like to walk away from television. It's a very insecure business. And once you're on TV, people let go of it like an African dictator relinquishes power.

• 47:44Scott Galloway?

  My second show was Bloomberg. Taped four shows. They asked me to do a promotion. I went into my studio. I took off my shirt. I joked about erectile dysfunction in one-night stands, offended somebody in the newsroom. They said, "You have to dial it down." I said, "I'm not going to dial it down." Boom, over before it started. And then CNN approached me and called. And I'm trying to figure out, and it's a long preamble, as to why am I doing a TV show? And when people ask, I say, "Well, I want to be the most influential thought leader in the history of business, and I want to create economic security for the people I work with. And in order to do those things, you have to be multi-channel." And there's some truth to that. But I don't think that's a real reason, because the bottom line is, this is a ton

• 48:26Scott Galloway?

  of work, and it's a pain, and I have to be in New York every week. And it's hard. Doing a TV show is much harder than a podcast. Also, I don't need the money. I don't think I need the credibility, the awareness to continue doing what we do. We do well with books, podcasts, newsletters. We're doing just fine, speaking gigs. So don't really need it, quite frankly. But here's the thing, I'm 57, and most research shows that your regrets aren't a function of the mistakes you've made, but the risks you didn't take. And the opportunity to be on CNN and do a show and see how it works and see if we can make it work is just too much for me to pass up.

• 49:08Scott Galloway?

  I also hope that my kids like it and see it someday. And just as I'm thinking or contemplating moving to London, and it makes no sense, and it's going to be really hard, and it's going to make my life harder in the short run, I don't think I'm going to regret on my deathbed having moved to London, even if we don't love it. And I don't think I'm going to regret having tried to do a TV show, even if it doesn't work. And I'm hopeful it does. I'm really happy with it so far, and so far, the reviews are pretty positive. But here I am. I am living life. I am trying to be on TV and do a good job of it. And I hope my kids are proud of me someday. But here we go. It's time for my close-up.

• 49:46Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week on Monday and Thursday. And one quick note before we sign off. Our newsletter, No Mercy, No Malice, has been nominated for a Webby Award in the category Business News and Technology. If you are inclined, please give us some clout and go vote for us by heading to vote. Webbyawards.com. Again, that's vote dot webby awards dot com. Throw me a bone. Give me a Webby. Daddy wants a Webby.

• 50:24Speaker 05

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