Alexis Gay On Redefining Success And Benedict Evans Discusses Tech Regulation

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00:00:05 Alexis: The thing that really pushed me over the edge was redefining success. Because a lot of people, when I said I'm gonna leave and do this, they were like, oh, you're gonna try to make it. You're gonna try to make it as a comedian or is whatever. And I was like, not really, cause I don't believe in that. What happens when you make it? What do you, what do you get up and do the next day?

Logan: Totally.

Alexis: Like, I will never be satisfied by that, but I wanted to know what it would feel. The thing that I compare it to is going on a hike. No one is like, Hey, was that a successful hike? You're like, how was it? Was it hard? What did you see? How was the weather? And so once I changed my perspective from I need to leave and crush it.

Logan: Yeah. Get to the top versus the journey that you enjoy along the way.

Alexis: Yeah. I just wanted to know what this would feel like. That was a year and a half ago. I love it. I still love it. I wanna keep doing it. But if a year from now, you and I are having dinner because I'm like Logan, I'm ready to go back to tech, fire up. Who wants me?

Logan: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Alexis: Like that would be a great outcome. How cool would that be? I go back. I've learned so much.

Logan: Well, and, and it's yeah, it's a two-way door, right? Jeff Bezos often talks about like decisions that can be undone versus the ones that can't be undone. And like, this is, you can enjoy the journey along the way and then go back. Like there will be even more people that want to hire you than before. Right? Because now you have. This experience and you have a breath of resume and you could go do the community job at Patreon that you once did or incorporate all these things that you've learned along the way.

00:01:36 Benedict: Well, we haven't mentioned is, is freedom of speech, which is also kind of a fascinating one where this is particular thing that sort of drives me crazy is, is Americans who are under the impression that freedom of speech is invented in the American constitution and defined by it. And the only way the only answer to any question is, well, this is what the constitution says as though. As though there's no other kinds of speech and no other ways it can be constrained and no other countries who might have their right opinions about this. Yeah, no. And in a world, in which like 95% of people on the internet are not in America.

00:01:56 Logan: The literal interpretation of the constitution is something that I I'm sure this is blasphemous to say to 50% of America, but the literal interpretation of that as the standard by which international private companies should govern is just like a pretty. It's, it is a very myopic American worldview about like how things are, are done in general, but it, it, it is a fascinating, um, tension to see it playing out on the world stage with all of this stuff. And I, I assume the end state of all, this is going to be more regulation for crypto, more regulation for, uh, Elon more regulat. For, uh, you know, retail investors protecting themselves against, uh, some of these things, but it's interesting to see people try to push for like margin trading for retail investors. Right. And it's like, gosh, I feel like we've seen this movie and it didn't end particularly well for the people involved. And so. Yeah. I, I just think this populous sentiment, uh, is when it ultimately turns as the public market has, I don't think it ends well for the people that have lots of money today and have done well surviving in the existing construct.

Benedict: Right? This is the kind of the thing he's the, you know, the, the thing he does is with it's like he's daring them device. He's daring them to do something. Cuz if they do something that would actually be against ultimately also be against their remit. I don't know. I mean, there's, there's a generalized Elon securities law, like what happens next? And there's a horse thing and so on. Um, I think there's a more specific Twitter thing, which is, you know, there's a break clause and he'd have to pay a billion dollars or whatever it is, or get sued for more versus, um, you know, he could get it for 20 billion, less for the sake of argument. So, you know, that's how real estate developers work. You know, that's how, you know, you go, you re trade it. And I, in a sense, I don't have a huge amount of sympathy. You know, Twitter's board like they're adults and they'd run this seat for 10 years. And then person I have Lee sympathy for, at all is, is Jack who seems to have no awareness at all, that he was actually the CEO of that kind.

Logan: I think he's forgotten. Like, it's, it's funny how he's, he's both been Prague's biggest advocate and Elon's biggest advocate at the same time. And he's both the CEO that resided over the banning of Trump. But also thinks he should be back on the platform because you know, that was a business decision or something. He, he does have a unique ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth on the, yeah.

Benedict: It's like the joke you know, when he finds out who was chief executive Twitter, he's gonna be really surprised.

Logan: He, the next time he walks past mirror, he is gonna be very shocked to find out what's what's there

00:04:27 Alexis: In 2017 while I was working at Twilio. I had moved from New York to San Francisco, New York, which has different career paths and different types of people.

Logan: Yes.

Alexis: And different things. And I moved to San Francisco, which has one thing, and it is tech.

Logan: Yep.

Alexis: And I worked at a tech company and all my friends worked in tech person. I was dating, worked in tech, everything I did all the time was tech.

Logan: I make a joke by the way, uh, of like New York. Famous people walk into a bar and it's like Derek Jeter. Yeah. Or like Lauren Michaels or whatever. Yeah. Right. Michael Bloomberg. And in, uh, San Francisco, like famous person who works into the bar and it's like Reed Hoffman, or, you know. He seems like a great guy, but yeah. But is so funny. He's not like a celebrity.

Alexis: It's so true. Yeah. A hundred percent. And that sort of like one note vibe was something that started to feel kind of overwhelming. Yeah. Especially because I had come from New York, which had felt so rich culturally.

00:05:21 Benedict: The first point is like, Twitter has always been known as this place where good people would go and they would fail to get anything done and they would leave and they would get something done. So somebody I knew worked there, um, and he had a child, they had his, he and his wife had a baby and he left and he had twins and I said, Kevin, you doubled your product. Uh, which is kind of the, the, like the archetype of the Twitter experience. And you hear all these like amazing stories of what a shambles, it was sort of 15 years ago and 10 years ago. And you hear those still, but I also said, hear those stories like now of what a mess it is now you could argue, like, is the contrast with Instagram. So there's, so we wind back, right? There's always been this kind of problem. And it's actually really hard to define what it. What the new experience should be. You have to spend months working on it in order to build value and build a followers. You join. You've got an empty screen. You tweet, no one sees it. You're shouting it to the void. Yep. It's a really hard experience relative to something like Instagram. And you could argue it is so easy. It's such a mess, cuz it's so hard or does it just look hard because it's such a mess. Those are probably both.

Logan: TikTok has figured this out in an onboarding funnel way. Yeah. Where, you know, it is an interest graph as well, but they figured out that funnel in a much more meaningful way.

Benedict: But it's easier. It's a much easier kind of content. To look at, it's easier to look at videos and pictures than to scan a bunch of people's tweets and work out whether you would want to follow them. It's just, there is this kind of chicken and egg is, does it look so hard cuz company's never really been any good at working it out or vice versa. And I think the answer was probably a bit of base. Yeah. The long time ago, I actually was an equity analyst, which is that Elon doesn't act like a public company CEO. Yes. Doesn't really care what the rules are. Um, and motion gets away with it.  and you could argue like the whole funding secured thing in the end, the price went up so much afterwards that the shareholders didn't really suffer that, but there's kind of reasons why you're not supposed to just fuck with people. Yeah. And you're not supposed to fuck with the shareholders and you're not supposed to lie. Those rules are kind of there for a reason.  um, and it's kind of not okay to just pick and choose which ones you feel like a ban and, you know, and mess about mess around with it. So I think that's, you know, that's kind of maybe a political opinion.

Logan: No, no. I mean, I, Matt Levine had a really like thing this week about like, you know, calling it what it was he's like Musk is lying about. This stuff, right?

Benedict: Yeah. I mean, it's very kind of Trumpian in a sense in that he's just ignoring what the norms are and daring the regulator to do something about it and kind of dancing all over the edge of the line between, you know, what you're not supposed to do and actual securities for, or whatever you wanna call it. And that's nothing to do with K tester or, or Twitter. It's just, you know, how he, how he's behaved and a bunch of other issues yet. I mean, I had a tweet about it where I said, you know, basically the problem with Ilan is he's a bullshitter who deliver. So if he says all this stuff and he does all this stuff, and there's a self landing rocket ship, and there's a scale first scale kinda company, and it's the second world war.

Logan: It's not MLM or it's not a Ponzi scheme if you actually make good on what you promised. Right.

Benedict: Well, except that half of it is the other half doesn't turn up. Yeah, exactly. You know, we're still waiting for the self-driving girl. The us tends to have a model of regulation by litigation and by crime, did you break Sherman antitrust act? Yes. Or. And this is what we saw in the apple epic lawsuit. Like, did they break this law? Yes or no. Um, whereas, um, the UK and Europe have a model of a regulator that can write laws. So the regulator can say, do we think this market sounded competitive? Do we dislike the market structures is bad for consumers. Yes. And therefore we will just change stuff. So, you know, the EU will, you know, the EU is passing a law at the moment, call the, the. Digital market set, which will basically require everything from this is an argument about how board it is, but they will just require apple to open, open up the app store. And it's not because apple will go to court and lose a court case. They'll just pass some new, they'll just create a new set of regulations and say, no, no, no, they were just gonna change how that market works. Whereas in the us, what you, what you have at the mountains is, and all that, that Ted Cruz and somebody has introduced yesterday. We're going to ban any company from having more than 20 billion of advertising in the us. Like something, I forget, what details are you get these sort of press release laws that are really hard to, it's hard to understand how much potential you should pay to it because it's most than never. Whereas in Europe, there's a, this giant law that takes five years. And then rather like GDPR, it just lands and they're like, oh shit, it's real.