194 - How Crypto Saves The Internet | Li Jin & Eugene Wei
Many of our listeners are familiar with Li Jin, an investor and co-founder of Variant Fund and is one of our favorite thinkers on crypto and the creator economy. Li is also joined by Eugene Wei. He’s a web2 product visionary. Listeners may be familiar with some of his incredible blog posts such as, “Status as a Service”, “Invisible Asymptotes”, “Why Information Grows” and more.
In today’s episode, these two gigabrains, one from web2 social, one from web3 crypto, talk about the future of status as a service, psychological ownership, and the future ties between social and crypto.
------ ✨ DEBRIEF | Ryan & David unpacking the episode: https://www.bankless.com/debrief-li-jin-eugene-wei
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------ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro 8:00 Web2 Social History 18:55 Is Web2 Ending? 24:50 Network Effect Theory 27:45 3 Paths to Break Free 32:17 The Internet’s Good, Bad, & Ugly 41:48 The Algorithm’s Constraints 46:25 Web2 to Web3 Learning Lessons 54:40 Love vs. Fame 1:00:24 Web3’s Potential 1:07:00 Crypto's Social vs. Financial Problem 1:19:30 Ethereum’s Social Network 1:25:14 Increasing Psychological Ownership 1:31:25 Price vs. Psychological Ownership 1:35:00 Eugene’s Advice to Crypto Builders 1:42:00 Li’s Take on Crypto’s Potential Closing & Disclaimers
----- RESOURCES
Li Jin https://twitter.com/ljin18 https://li.substack.com/p/the-ownership-economy-2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6AJlmB2h8k https://li.substack.com/p/building-psychological-attachment https://li.substack.com/p/love-vs-fame-a-framework-for-social
Eugene Wei https://twitter.com/eugenewei https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2018/5/21/invisible-asymptotes
----- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
The Declining Half-Life Of Social Media — With Eugene Wei
Eugene Wei is a tech analyst and product veteran, with time spent inside Meta, Amazon, and Hulu. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a discussion of social media's longevity, considering how the decay of mainstay platforms changes the incentives to participate. Tune in for a in-depth discussion of social media's longterm trajectory, examining the TikTok algorithm, Threads, Twitter under Musk, and the puzzling persistence of Facebook. In the second half, listen to an engaging lightening round, where Wei comments on the state of his former employers and his longtime friendship with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
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(IHP) Eugene Wei On How Amazon Won
No joke, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Eugene Wei was an early employee at Hulu, so we get some details on that company for the first time, and he also worked at Flipboard and Oculus, so we get some important context especially on the future of VR and the like. But the most fascinating stories you'll hear will be about Amazon, where Eugene was the first analyst in the strategic planning department. As you'll hear, Eugene had a unique perspective on Amazon's early strategy and business structure, almost a historically unique perspective... he could see month to month, how Amazon was built, what Amazon was trying to do, and why. This is such an amazing perspective on such an important company.
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Tiktok's Algorithm and Creativity Network Effects
What does the success of TikTok's algorithmically-driven product tell us about the future of creators and the creator economy, product design, and innovation within video?
In this cross-over archive episode from our tech news podcast, 16 Minutes on the News, we go deep into the what, why, and how of TikTok's algorithm, which lies at the heart of the product and drives its "creativity network effects." The conversation features Eugene Wei (former head of product at Hulu, Flipboard, and video at Oculus), in conversation with host Sonal Choksi. This episode originally aired in September 2020, when there was talk of U.S. ownership/partnership for the American version of TikTok, which is from Chinese company ByteDance.
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20VC: Eugene Wei on "Status as a Service", Why Networks Grow and Stop Growing, The Worst Design Choices Social Media Incumbents Have Made & The Next 10 Years of Media and the Metaverse
Eugene Wei is one of my favorite thinkers, writers, and strategists in tech today. Having spent the majority of his professional career at consumer internet companies, Eugene started his career with a 7-year stint at Amazon with a focus on product. He then joined Hulu leading the product, design, editorial, and marketing teams. Post Hulu, Eugene co-founded Erly, later acquired by Airtime, and then joined Flipboard as Head of Product. Finally, Eugene's last position was with Oculus as Head of Video. You have to check out Eugene's blog and can find his writing here.
In Today's Episode with Eugene Wei You Will Learn:
1.) How Eugene made his way into the world of tech and startups with his first position at Amazon? What did Eugene do differently that made him stand out to the recruiters at Amazon?
2.) Decision-Making: Why does the process and medium by which decisions are made matter so much? How has Euegene's decision-making process changed over time? Where do many people go wrong in constructing and optimising their decision-making process? What are Eugene's biggest takeaways and lessons from Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs on messaging?
3.) The World of Social: What does Eugene believe is the graph design problem for so many social apps today? What does Eugene believe are the best and the worst design choices social media incumbents have made? How does Eugene encourage the next generation of consumer social founders to think through design decisions?
4.) Status as a Service: What does the concept of "Status as a Service" mean to Eugene? What is the biggest misunderstanding people have with the concept? What has fundamentally changed this concept in the last 2-3 years? How does the rise of crypto and NFT's impact the notion of "status as a service"? How does Eugene believe this will look in 10 years?
5.) The World of Media: How does Eugene think through the attention economy today? Why is media and content harder than ever today? Why does Eugene believe media has now become zero-sum? What does Eugene believe will be the future business model for media?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Euegene Wei
Eugene's Favourite Book: The Sound and the Fury, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
(Bonus) TikTok's Secret Sauce With Eugene Wei and A16Z's 16 Minutes Podcast
Eugene Wei and Sonal Chokshi explain plainly how and why TikTok is an evolutionary (and algorithmic) step beyond the social graph.
Eugene's original essay, TikTok and the Sorting Hat
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Eugene Wei – Tech, Media, and Culture - [Invest Like the Best, EP.118]
My guest this week, Eugene Wei, has one of the most interesting backgrounds of anyone I’ve had on the podcast. He worked at Amazon early in its life, was the head of product at Hulu and Flipboard, and head of video and Oculus.
Our conversation is about the intersection of technology, media, culture. We discuss Eugene’s concept of invisible asymptotes: why growth slows down (for both companies and people) and how some can burst through. I’d list more of the topics, but we covered so much that you should just listen.
Finally, I’ll say that after spending a day with Eugene (including a wildly interesting dinner with Eugene, past podcast guest Sam Hinkie, and future podcast guest Kevin Kwok) that he is the type of uniquely interesting and kind person I am always searching for and one that I wish I could bet on somehow. If you know more people like this, reach out and suggest them for this podcast. Now, enjoy our conversation.
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
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Show Notes
1:38 - (First Question) – Idea of cuisine and empire
1:52 – Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History
4:20 – Key takeaways from the Defiant Ones Documentary
8;25 – Being convinced to buy a sports coat
11:10 – The concept of invisible asymptote
17:43 – How the medium shapes the messaging and the impact of cameras everywhere on society
17:48– Invisible asymptotes
17:56 – Selfies as a second language
22:57 – Proof of work in building a social network
32:51 – Magnification of inequalities in digital networks
34:01 – The Lessons of History
36:47 – His thoughts on the media industry’s impact on society as a whole
39:42 – His time at Hulu
44:48 – Places where video could replace text
47:30 – The need for media for any business looking to grow
49:35 – Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
53:08 – Personal asymptotes
57:19 - Habit building and goal setting
1:00:29 – Travel recommendations
1:03:24 – Movie recommendations
1:08:16 – Product recommendations and what makes them indispensable
1:10:44 – Creation: Life and How to Make It
1:13:23 – Thoughts on the art of conversation
1:14:59 – The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive
1:18:30 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Eugene
Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub
Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag
The future of media, commerce, and what the west can learn from China
Today I'm at Kleiner Perkins in San Francisco's South Park neighborhood to talk to Eugene Wei and Eric Feng.
Eugene Wei has worked at Oculus, Flipboard, Amazon and Hulu. He actually left Amazon in the mid-2000s to attend film school before jumping back into tech. He’s also a prolific writer on his blog, Remains of the Day.
Eric Feng is co-founder of Packagd and General Partner at Kleiner Perkins. He has previously worked at Microsoft, Flipboard and Hulu, where he and Eugene worked together.
Fun fact: Eugene actually married Eric! (Eugene was the officiant at his wedding).
In this episode we talk about:
The uniqueness of video as a medium of communication and the future of how video will be created and consumed. Eric and Eugene worked together at Hulu and they talk about the background to the recent trend of tech moving in on Hollywood's turf.
Creating tighter feedback loops when you're trying to learn something new or change your behavior. Eugene tells the story of adding after-market sensors to his golf clubs that give him all kinds of information on the speed and length of his swing. He calls it a swing coach on your phone and talks about how the trend of sensors and immediate feedback could be used to improve peoples' overall health, not just their short game.
As some of the most plugged-in individuals in tech these days, they also discuss some of the trends they've been seeing in the tech industry and make some predictions about what they expect to see in the future. They discuss changes in how young people communicate these days, how the Chinese tech industry is different from the West's and why they expect to see the shift to e-commerce from advertising continue.
We also discuss some of their favorite products including sensors you can stick on your golf clubs to give you pro-level stats, a tech-enabled meat smoker, and a way to solve the perennial 'baby with a stuffy nose' problem.
We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, GE Ventures, Rally Rd, and AngelList for their support. 😸
Quotes from This Episode
“Post-Google and post-Facebook there was this huge shift to ad-supported monetization for everything. The entire world had moved to ads and that was the only way that you could build a company… but that pendulum has swung really far back over, because of this new paradigm shift of people being comfortable with e-commerce and now mobile facilitating that more. Commerce is now a much more interesting monetization model for startups than advertising.” — Eric
“VR/AR, if you lump it in with self-driving cars, cryptocurrency, generalized artificial intelligence, all of these things are going to take longer than people expect, and that’s fine. They’re going to require a lot of big hardware advances, finding the right use cases, all of that is just going to be slower. But they’re all going to change the world in huge ways.” — Eugene
“Take for example the shirt I’m wearing. It got made in some textile factory, the distribution was through a retail store, I paid in cash in-person and then I put it on. But in the era of technology two of those things have really fundamentally changed — the way it’s distributed and the way I purchase it. Now I buy it online and it’s sent to my home. But the way it’s created and the way it’s used are still the same, I’m still wearing it one sleeve at a time.” — Eric
“The history of Hollywood is one where the studios went from really being vertically integrated to just being financiers and marketers. The thing about SV vs Hollywood is that SV tech companies have a lot more cash than all the studios put together. They’re a lot more profitable because of all their other businesses.” — Eugene
Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode
Blast — Sensors for sport.
Hulu — Live and on-demand TV.
Mindie (RIP) – 7-second music videos
Nosefrida — Stuffy nose solution for babies.
Reflect — AI-powered face swap.
Sandbox VR — In-person, social VR experiences.
Tik Tok — Creative music video clip maker.
Traeger — Tech-enabled smokers.