Zuckerberg's Advice Episode #39 – CEO Voice Memos

Good morning. It is 10:28 a.m. local time on February 21st. I just got back from a much-needed vacation in Costa Rica with a bunch of friends. It was really cool to return to our Peek launch at ARC.

We launched the new feature Peek, which allows you to quickly peek into websites and load them in a modal view on top of Arc without opening a new tab unless necessary. It is amazing if you use sites like Hacker News, Techmeme, Twitter, Reddit, or any website where you have to click on many links.

For example, when you are in Gmail reading an email with a link, Peek lets you view the link without leaving Gmail. It prevents distractions caused by traditional browsers opening new tabs and taking you away from your current task.

Peek provides a light and effortless way to navigate websites without losing focus. The story of Peek resonated with people, and our first tweet about it got a million views, including praise from Toby, the CEO and founder of Shopify, who called it the best browser by far.

Now, it was a really energizing reaction from the public to see. Our members truly resonate with both the concept and the story behind the feature. As the days passed, more and more people poured in. "Oh my God, I was excited, but I didn't think it would be this good."

So, why am I recording a podcast voice memo today? I wanted to share a bit behind the scenes of this feature. It all started with one of the most constructive pieces of feedback I ever received, from Mark Zuckerberg when I worked at Facebook. I know this sounds a bit name-droppy.

Honestly, the advice and constructive feedback changed my career and partially led to a feature like Peek. I share this story not to come off as not humble and egotistical, but to pay it forward and share the advice.

I was working at Facebook when I was probably twenty-three or twenty-four. We had just sold our first company to Facebook. Due to luck and serendipity, I found myself working on a lot of 2021 projects that Zuckerberg took interest in.

These were new applications or features different from what Facebook had done before. It was uncharted territory, with months of work on various projects. Zuckerberg once gave me direct feedback, which I'll paraphrase: "Josh, every time you work on something new, you make everything new."

So, there's an example of an application called Rooms that I was the product lead for at Facebook. It was a social media application or community-based application. Instead of organizing the app into a chat or messaging structure, it had individual forums.

It was almost like apps within apps, with a bunch of novel customization options for how you could make those forums or applications work within the app. This included a novel invite system where you could share a QR code to invite someone to your forum or app.

Not only could you share the QR code, but you could also scan the QR code from your camera roll without having to hold your camera up. It was a great feature.

The point is, in almost every part of the application, we reinvented the wheel. Zuckerberg's point was that in all these individual ways we reinvented the wheel in very interesting ways, like the QR code scanning and invite mechanism later copied by Snapchat.

These individual sources of novelty were interesting and pushed the envelope in fascinating ways. However, when they added up, the cohesive product experience was almost unrecognizable, requiring users to learn something new in every part of it.

Zuckerberg said, "The thing you don't appreciate, Josh, is that pretty much every real transformation in how we use technology, how we use software, even things like the iPhone, involved creators taking something that had existed for a long time and tweaking one thing."

That one tweak, done in a transformative and incisive way, was extremely meaningful. Think about how Evan Williams at Twitter innovated the concept of blogging by reducing it to 140 characters. That was the real innovation.

It was about what if there were 140 characters and a follow model like Tumblr. Many innovations stem from asking "what if" questions, such as ordering a taxi with a button on your phone or renting a hotel that is someone's home. These transformations in how we use technology and interact with software as a society often involve something that has existed for a long time with one or two high-leverage changes.

And so, such feedback to me was: don't reinvent the wheel. Everywhere, take something that has existed for a long, long time and reinvent it in the most important place. That will change everything. That's easier said than done, of course. But I've kept that lesson with me and the teams I've worked with ever since. The key is to be surgical in what matters and reinventing the wheel in this place has its difficulties from afar.

That makes individual changes feel kind of small, you know. So, you take something and you take 90% of it, 95% of it, and then you're like, "Oh, we're just going to change this 5% thing," but it's really hard until you play with it or try it to know.

Is that 5% going to be big enough? Because it doesn't sound like it.

And so, Peek, this feature we just launched, is a great example of that. Where the secret is to have a prototype. We prototyped the Peek feature three or four separate times, many months apart from each other.

Totally different people on the team, totally different implementations and expressions of the concept. We prototyped it three or four times over a year and a half, and three times we said, "No, that doesn't feel right." The fourth time, it doesn't feel right. Then, prototype implementation.

Doesn't feel right? And you kind of get why? Because from afar, it was easy to be critical. "So you're adding another way to open web pages. I don't get it. Why can't you just open a new tab? Opening a new tab seems great. Why? Why at? And even if this is better, like it's a slightly smaller window and that window sits on top of Arc instead of in a new tab, why is that interesting?"

You know, that's a lot of new behavior and novelty for someone to understand in a product that's already complicated. You're going to introduce more novelty to just make it slightly better, you know, quickly peer at a link. I got it. I don't get it, we didn't get it, and we tried it many times.

And then, of course, on this fourth time, Adam Adams' initial prototype needed everyone that contributed, including Alexandra. This expression of peek, something just felt right. It's why we have the value "assume you don't know," which is don't try to over-intellectualize it, don't debate it too much. Don't whiteboard it, just build it and play with it. Be honest if it doesn't feel right, and be honest if it does, and don't think about it too much. Don't talk about it too much. So the first three times we tried Peek, I'm really glad we were honest and said, "That's not right."

And on that fourth time, it hit, and the reason it hit is the reason that Zuckerberg gave that advice to me early in my career, which is yes, it's easy to dismiss Peek as just a slightly incremental, incrementally better way of opening a new tab and peeking at a tab. But then, of course, for anyone that's now played with Peek and practiced, it is taking something people do many, many, many, many times per day, and I've done for a long time, which is opening links, and it makes a subtle change that transforms everything and just makes it feel like a modern if not futuristic experience for navigating information on your computer.

And so I know that sounds grandiose. It sounded grandiose to us when we first tried it for something that is ostensibly so small. But if you go look at Toby from Shopify's tweet about the feature after using it for a few days, or even just do a Twitter search for our Peek, and more importantly, play with it yourself.

I think you'll find that it's an example of a tiny improvement that makes a huge difference. At the browser company, we're constantly looking for what things people need every day. When a human being wakes up, they have a family, a job, hobbies, and responsibilities. They're busy, don't have much time, and have many tasks to complete. We aim to make these tasks faster, more enjoyable, and emotionally impactful.

For example, opening 78 tabs a day, most of which are quickly glanced at and closed, inspired us to create Peeks. We are grateful for everyone who provided feedback on this feature and championed it publicly. Your support energizes us and motivates us to continue improving.

After 33 voice memo episodes, it's a good time to reflect on the purpose of these recordings. I find value in the private, intimate reflection they offer, akin to preparing for a board meeting. I enjoy this process but am open to format experiments or suggestions to enhance the engagement and excitement of these voice memos.

Feel free to reach out with feedback or ideas on how to improve the voice memo format. I am committed to reading and acting on your input. I hope you have a wonderful week.