Open Your World For Commentary

Ben: Hey everybody! Ben here. Have a podcast ready for you. This is an interview with Tom Lehman of Genius. He is a Co-Founder and CEO of Genius whose mission is to annotate the world. You might know them by their old name of Rap Genius but now they’re just Genius. And a quick note before this interview starts. This is my first interview on the road. I was without the assistance of the lovely Thom and so the sound quality on this one is not what you’re used to. I do apologize for that but I think the interview is a good quality. So I think it’s worth the slight extra ear strain to make it through. And also, I am going to have Tom give me some tips so the next one is not quite so echoeie. I hope you enjoy. Ben Orenstein: Um, so this is like the most the most atypical office I’ve been in for a start up. Tom Lehman: It is a little bit weird. We’re actually sitting now, believe it or not, in what used to my living room in my home. Ben: Right. TL: It actually looks much nicer now than when I lived here, but, but yeah I moved in here and that kind of set in motion a chain reaction that caused our whole company to move here and it started off as a one three bedroom apartment... Ben: Yeah. TL: And it was leased and after Y Combinator showed up and said "Oh we need an apartment, or an office rather and just…" And there’s a free apartment in my building. Let’s do it. Ben: So, we’re like in an apartment building. Like a, I feel like... TL: This is an apartment building… Ben: Sort of luxury – ish apartment building. TL: It’s nice. It’s on the water. Ben: Yeah. I am looking out on the... TL: It has nice views. Ben: What’s this the Hudson? TL: It’s actually the East River. Ben: Ohhh. TL: The Hudson is actually not a river. It’s a tidal estuary... Ben: That’s right. Edwin was telling me this. TL: He was?! Ben: He was. TL: It’s deeper than the body of water flows into, or something. Ben: Ohhh. TL: This is addressed on an episode of the West Wing I just saw. So that’s the only reason I know the answer to that. Ben: Gotcha. TL: Anyway, the East River is a river, to my knowledge, is out there and you know, people jet ski on it and you know, we’ve talked about doing that - maybe by the time this podcast comes out. Ben: Totally. TL: Yeah, we’ve jet skied a couple of times. I’m just saying for the podcast readers. Cause like this coming out in the future. Ben: Oh sure. There you go. You’re jumping... You’re photo projecting? TL: Exactly. Exactly. Ben: That’s good. By the time you hear this you will have become like a pro jet skier? TL: Very very... But we are getting a real office or you know, we’re building it out now. We leased it. We’re building it. It is in Gowanus, uh it’s on a... It’s in Brooklyn. It is in Brooklyn. Yeah, South Brooklyn. Ben: So I guess you like, you didn’t want to continue with the apartment thing. It’s, it’s interesting as like a visitor coming in, I was like, "Oh wow, I was in somebody’s apartment basically but there’re people here working." Which is kind of cool, you have like a kitchen and like it feels comfortable and not kind of sterile like you often get with offices… TL: There are definitely some positives to it. When there is only one or two, I think it’s great. One thing that makes it great is you get like non-open plan working. Which I think is better. Obviously, this is the debate that people have and I’m pretty convinced that you don’t want to have your main work environment be in a room with like ten people or whatever. You want... Ben: I totally can agree with that. TL: Zero, one or two other people probably and that what this encourages. You know it’s also nice to be able to shower. It’s nice to be able to have a private little bathroom stall. We’re taking that over to the new office. So anyone out there listening, if you are tired of timidly going to the bathroom in a room full of people and you want your own stall all the time, come work at Genius. Uh... Ben: Or thoughtbot! TL: You have your own stalls? Ben: We got that too. TL: Shit. Ben: Yeah. TL: Umm, yeah but this was great for a period. It’s fun now. It’s a gym in the building. That’s cool too. You can shower. You can make food but it’s just too hard to collaborate, because you have to go in and out of different apartments and doors are slamming all over the place and it’s just a pain. So, we’re basically at the point where we are feeling a lot of pain. And, uh, that’s good that we waited until it really became an issue and now we are moving somewhere real. Ben: Uh. That’s cool. So, how many people then are going to be in the new office? TL: So, we’re twenty-five now. Um, the new office… It’s a pretty big space. We took a pretty big space because you know they were just building this new building and it was really cool and so the idea is it should hold about a hundred – a hundred fifty people as we expand. In the meantime, we probably sublet it to, you know, another cool company, I hope. You know, yeah, it would probably be like thirty or thirty-five people by the time we move in, then we will be able to grow out there to a couple of hundred. Ben: Nice. So, you’re going to keep the idea of like small pods of people then, like private-ish offices? TL: Yeah. I think private-ish offices and places to collaborate is basically good. Ben: So... How’s life these days? TL: Life’s good! Life’s crazy but good. You know, um to quote the West Wing, I got a job that I like. My family’s healthy. That’s what Jet Bartlet says when he’s asked whether he's feeling stressed or whatever. Ben: Yeah. TL: Yeah so... Life is good. I got a job that I like. My family’s healthy. My friends are healthy. There is some stress but it’s also a lot of fun. Ben: Yeah. I talk to a number of people that are founders of companies, CEOs of companies and they... It seems like a very common sentiment when they’re like, "It’s almost impossible for me to separate my own like emotional state from like the fortunes of the company." I’ve heard people like, I think it was Dan Martell? I think it was Dan Martell. It’s just like I’ve given up on it . I’ve just been like stop trying to be like, "I can separate those two things", and realize I have to just give my all to this thing because it affects my mood so strongly. Do you feel that for yourself? TL: In some sense, I think my personal emotional states are even way, sort of more hair trigger than the company itself. In other words, the sort of like phase of the company doesn’t probably osculate that crazily like between a couple of days or intraday but based on like just what all the kind of stuff that I am observing, you know my internal state tends to like osculate, you know. Because like, it's constantly a process of getting people sort of aligned towards the same goal. The right goal. And excited about that. And then if you zoom back over the course of the week or month, you know, work gets done and we proceed slowly and it looks like you’re proceeding sort of gradually or you know, sort of consistently towards a goal but then on a day to day basis, it’s just constant realignment. Constant sort of getting on the same page, especially in terms of building software projects. Like you got constantly be doing that and so you can leave a planning meeting thinking everyone is on the same page and then find out like you’re not. And uh, you got to constantly be like thinking about that stuff and trying to fix that stuff so... But yeah, I think, you know, on a higher level definitely my... I live in this building. Sometimes I don’t even leave this building. Ben: Right. TL: Uh, sometimes I walk through the courtyard to get to my office. Sometimes just to the other elevator bank but yeah. That’s pretty apt metaphor I think. I think I’m pretty intertwined with the company at this point. It’s pretty hard to imagine it any other way. Ben: Yeah. Do you feel a lot of pressure to put on a happy face for people or a confident "this is the direction" face? TL: I feel... Well, it’s, you know, I feel pressure not just through the company, but just in general. You want to... You don’t want to expose everyone in the world to your raw feelings all the time and that’s... Ben: Yeah. TL: You know because emotions are pretty...You want to, like, feel something. Sort of put in context of what else you’re feeling. What else is going on and express that to someone so that they can actually do something useful based on what you think. And so, it’s tempting, especially when shit gets crazy or stuff goes wrong, it’s easy to just, you know, expose your unfiltered emotions to other people. You know, and sometimes that’s helpful... One of the, we have a corporate cone here... And that is how someone put it recently. We have a document caused the “Isms”. I don’t know if you have seen this. Ben: Eh em. TL: This is like our corporate philosophy. Ben: Real nice. TL: Which is, you know, like a lame thing for like corporate values but, you know, I think it’s actually kind of important to get on the same page about what we believe and think about for this exact reason which is that one of these values is "feel it to my face." Which is basically, however you’re feeling about me you should just tell me. You should not worry about it upsetting me or it causing problems. Because the honesty is way more valuable. So get it out there and pick up the pieces later. And I think that’s very true for everyone in the company. From me in particular and Ilan, since we’re founders of the company and what we say has a lot of weight I think, there’s a little more pressure for us to put what we feel in context because, a, we don’t have problem being honest. Because we’ve been saying what we feel since the beginning cause... Ben: Right. TL: Before it was even a company. So we tend to be more honest and also our words have a lot of force in terms of people feel. So you got to put stuff in context and sort of not expose people to the raw you know feelings that you’re feeling at any given moment. Ben: Yeah. TL: But, I think for most people though you should just worry less about saying the wrong thing or exposing you know some emotion that’s actually more extreme than you think because most people err too much on the side of not being honest and being sort of like well I just... Ah I don’t want to bring it, I just don’t do that. So I do a slightly different thing myself. Uh, but I think that most people err on the side of filtering themselves just too much. So I would say... Ben: Hmm. TL: Just let it out. You know. Ben: Yeah. I’m a huge believer in the power of just like honesty. There’s like so much power in the truth where people can get like a sense about what the truth is but not. I thinks it’s hard to get upset with someone for telling the truth. TL: Well it’s like you know a friend... You have food on your face, your friend tells you that. It’s not like, even though that’s like that’s awkward. But your friend is down to stomach that awkwardness to push forward. Ben: Totally. TL: Your non friend says well I don’t wanna get involved in this awkward situation so I’m more nervous about my own feelings, I’m not going to bring it up. And so, you know I think life, friendship, romance, and especially work relationships sort kind of a combination of everything. Ben: Right. TL: You know, you need to be in constant process of telling people they have food on their face and hearing that you have food on your face. Ben: Yeah. TL: And wiping it off with your sleeve. Ben: Totally. I think people are hungry for that too. Like, I love that kind of feedback. Like, when someone tells me something that I didn’t know about myself, that’s some of the best information I can get. Like especially if it’s like critical. It’s like you know you're, it was like I really didn’t like the way you handled this or I though the way this happened was like really not executed well. Like that’s actually great to know. I love that. TL: I think that that’s important and I think converse is important too where it’s like if I’m not saying something, you don’t have to worry that when I’m holding back, it means I don’t want to say anything. So like you know where you stand and you don’t have to wonder about the meaning of my silence or whatever. And that is an important quality of the honesty thing as well, I think. Ben: Totally. Can you tell me more things that are in this “Isms” document? It sounds interesting. TL: Sure! Sure, sure. So, there are seventeen “Isms”. And the name “Isms” comes as sort of a trait, sort of homage to Dan Gilbert who kind of really planted the seed in our head to do this specific idea. He led our series B and, you know, one of the we really bonded with him over is just the importance of corporate culture. It sounds lame, but it’s actually really important. It’s just like, what are you actually about. You know, not what your product vision is. Not how you’re going to make money. Not like, what are you trying to accomplish by the end of this two months. Like, what are you about that’s like truly fundamental. Who are you? What’s the stuff that wouldn’t change even if you had to pivot or heaver? Ben: Yeah. TL: Yeah, so I think it’s kind of important to write that stuff down. So one of those things is "feel it to my face" which is to be honest. There are bunch of other important ones. One that I think is generally important is "running to the spike. "Running to the spike" basically means whenever you’re trying to make it to the choice, between two things or about what to do, just do the thing you want to do the least. And you know it sounds kind of like a weird thing, but like your body, your brain... Everyone... Every, every part of your psyche's just going to push you to do the easier thing. And sometimes it’s obvious, you’re sort of like laying on the couch and you’re considering whether to watch you know yet another episode of the West Wing on Netflix or go to the gym or see a friend or whatever, and it’s like, you should probably go exercise. If you’re debating, going with the exercise, you probably don’t want to. Probably go exercise. Ben: Yeah. TL: But a lot of times, it’s less obvious, especially in the context of work. And so you’re sitting down at your computer and there’s that hard thing that you can do. Whether it’s like really figuring out this feature or solving this technical problem or most often putting the bow on something. Like, this is almost done, it’s almost done! I just gotta get it out and I can’t. And you don’t do that because you go check your email. Or you work on something smaller and more fun. It’s like, no. Do the thing you don’t want to do. That's the important thing. Another really important notion, I think it applies specifically to software development is this “Ism”: "worse is better". And "worse is better" is not something I invented or whatever. It’s been around for a while. Actually, originally it referred to something like slightly different, but when I mean it, the way I use it , the way I mean it is the worse the thing is that you are putting out there into the world, the better. So whatever the bad thing is -- it's actually good. So what I mean by that is when you’re trying to release a feature and you want to do a really good thing, because you’re a detailed oriented perfectionist like a lot of people who are into building stuff, you should resist that temptation and release something that’s intentionally bad. This is like a sort of well-known idea in software development. You know, if you’re not embarrassed by your first version, you should be embarrassed or something. Ben: You didn’t ship soon enough. TL: That was the one. Yeah. Ben: Oh yeah. TL: You release and iterate and so you, it’s just something that’s important I think to hammer home. "Worse is better" is kind of a stark way of saying it, but it’s really important to hammer home this idea I think cause it’s not just about software development. It’s about writing a first draft of something. Putting something out there in the writing context in the sort of company organization context. Like how do you organize the company? It’s just, do something bad. Get it out there. Fix it in public and that’s gonna help you overcome your anxieties, cause if you try to do something perfect, you’ll never do something. And, you know, sort of the nuanced thing is that even if you allow yourself infinite time to plan these things and anything complicated whether it’s social software or interpersonal interactions. Like too complicated a plan in advance. Ben: Yeah. TL: So, you think you can plan out the system but actually you got to release something sort of primitive and then build the system while the ship is at sea, so to speak. Just cause you’re not going to know. You’re the dumbest you will ever be right now. So postpone all the decisions until you know you absolutely have to make them. Ben: Yeah. How do you balance that when you have, so you guys have a pretty huge audience at this point and putting something out there that was like, you know you don’t want to upset people, right? You don’t want something that’s going to like tarnish their impression of you. Do you like worry about that? Do you still seem to monitor that pretty tightly? TL: Yeah, well it’s a, it’s a –- there’s a schizophrenia to it because of course you worry about it. So this literally just happened: We made what was fairly a minor change to the usability to the site. So on our website, there’s this thing we call the activity stream which is kind of like just your notifications, maybe you think of it. So someone uploads your annotation or leaves a comment under you annotation or follows you, you get a notification and you know… It’s same as Facebook. Ben: Yep. TL: We and uh, we had these notifications and we wanted to build an enhancement to notifications so there basically would be like an internal scroll on notifications that would be like on the side bar. Ben: Um hm. TL: So instead of this drop down that you know… There’s like this drop down from the top of the page and like you scroll a page and the drop down disappears –- the drop down should be on the side and internally scroll so you can read all your notifications while not disrupting your sort of scroll offset in the document. Ben: Yeah. TL: The point is, we don’t just want to cut something minor inside baseball thing and this a feature that people who are very obsessed with the site are interested in, but anyone who is a casual reader is not even interested in. We put this out there and it generates a HUGE firestorm of people being mega mega upset and really being mean about it. And uh, you know, we all are naturally emotionally affected by this cause, you know, someone telling your thing sucks and between this and that it took like three or four days to like get this out there. It was a minor thing. But yet, and still it hit pretty good. This is an emotionally offense. You got set back so you’re like, ok. This is the point, ok. If we had like taken forever we would have avoided this problem but it would have been two weeks from now and uh the fact that people… You know it’s a cliché. That fact that people reacted so strongly to this feature means they really like the feature. They care a lot about it. They’re not being super nice but that’s cause it’s the internet or whatever. So you gotta look at it as a positive thing. So this is literally happening today and so you know the risk is that you look at this and think "Woah, like, this was emotionally disturbing. So the next time, I’m not going to release something until I am hundred percent certain that no one is going to say anything mean about it." Ben: Right. TL: And that is the constant push and pull. You got to resist that. No. Like people are going to tell you stuff sucks and they are going to be right and that is the way of the world. And that is why you need to be constantly be saying "worse is better" otherwise you’ll... You know you’re give in. Ben: So was the negative feedback because, just because it was different? Or because it was different but it wasn’t like, it wasn’t polished at this point? TL: It just wasn’t polished enough. Like we, uh, didn’t sort of think about it being like you know the windows thing and it just... It just didn’t work perfectly in that. Ben: Yeah. TL: We thought, you know, we thought basically we did some stuff and we'll fire and see what happens basically. Ben: Right. TL: Like that was... We could have tried to make it perfect in windows or we could have seen what people thought about it. And it’s easier to see what people think about it. And that’s what we did. We could have spent a long time. We could have fixed this by like polishing it for another week. Definitely. But that’s not the best use of time even if it’s the light that leads to emotionally traumatic. Ben: Right. You had to polish the wrong things. TL: Exactly. Exactly. Ben: You now know what the pain points are. TL: Exactly. Ben: That thing you said about the internet is so true, that like people are meaner on the internet. Or like because of the internet or something. It’s like, there’s something about that anonymity and on both sides almost, where you’re like "How could you get be so dumb to do this thing? I’m so angry with you." Like, I find this happen to myself where I have to intentionally tone back when I like message corporate Twitter accounts because like something is messed up and I’m like pissed off where I have to like really, really like tone it back and take deep breathes and be calm. And even then when I read it like the next day, I’m like wow, I’m still kind of dick. TL: Yeah. Ben: I was still, like, meaner than I needed to be. TL: Yeah written communication… Honestly, I think written communication in general is tough. You want to say something critical of someone or something, just very careful about doing it in writing. You probably want to do it by voice instead. And that kind of goes for a lot stuff, honestly. Like email is a... That’s another “Ism”, which is "being busy does not equal being productive." And there used to be one that says that email is not being... Not equal to being productive. And it’s just getting involved in email discussions, is so tempting but just so and not productive in particular. In the context of being critical of someone, so disruptive I think. So, say that to say use your voice. Ben: Totally. I feel like there was a change in the YCombinator application where now you need to have a recorded video as well. You cannot just submit the text. TL: That’s, that’s been around for a very long time actually. We did that. Yeah. Ben: Yeah, but that makes sense why you would add that in there. Like there's just so much more density in terms of information. TL: Well I think the video actually, I mean I think there’s a bunch of nuance things going on with that like how an application gets to. Like another of the “Isms” is "pitch like you mean it". Basically like advice on sort of like the most – highest order bid of advice on giving a presentation. And the most important thing to know, highest order of bid to know is if you are giving a presentation is just act like you have – don’t even – you don’t even have to have conviction. Forget that. That’s great but the icing on the cake, just act like you have conviction. Act like you’re passionate about the thing you’re selling. And so for an YCombinator video, it’s like if I were watching an YCombinator video, and the people didn’t act passionate. I be like well, this is YOUR thing. YOU are doing this. This is literally your thing. It is not like your company is making you pitch their thing, Ben: Totally. TL: This is YOUR thing. You’re not excited for it, like who else is going to be excited for it? And so it seems like obvious advice but very surprisingly few people are capable of, of acting excited representing their own thing. Which is sad... Ben: Again, I give advice all the time to people who are doing conference talks. Which is like if you are not excited about this talk, you will get no one to be honest excited. You have to be that major leader. If you’re going to stand in front of a group somehow, like you got to be at least in the top ninety percentile of excitement about this thing. TL: Plus with the YCombinator videos you get to do the outtakes. Someday, you know when all this is over, whatever that means, air quotes, when all this is over we will release the Genius YCombinator outtakes thing. It’s kind of – it’s got great gems in there. It’s like a lot, it’s like we are building the, the biggest – the best lyrics site on the internet. Shit I said on the internet again. I should have said on the internet or that kind of stuff. Kind of like small verbal oral ticks that’s not interesting but it was a fun video to make honestly. Back then, we were very focused on just the lyrics thing. Ben: Right. TL: I still think the lyrics thing is very big. But of course now we are focused on a totally different thing in some sense which is the sort of annotation platform to the whole internet thing. Ben: Right. TL: Which is a sort of much more ambitious undertaking but an, also very real way as a sort of just a clear outgrowth of the lyrics thing? You know, did this lyrics thing as a sort of small market with a limited set of problems to solve. Get people very sort of into the idea of annotations and a custom annotations. Also using the platform. We made some expansions beyond that. Now we are on now some sort of precipice of the big time expansion which is taking the annotations that you know and love from the Genius.com destination website and putting them on the New York Times. On paulgrahm.com. On what’s your website? Ben: Codeulate. Oh, thoughtbot's or mine? TL: Yours. Not, not thoughtbot's. Ben: Mine. TL: thoughtbot's too. thoughbot's too. Ben: Yes. Mine is called Codeulate. TL: There you go and Codeulate. Ben: This is inventible right? This is literally like on my site? TL: Um, so right now we have a product where you can embed a text that is hosted on Genius.com on your site. Ben: Right. TL: So if you wanted to sort of master your blog post on our site and embed it on your site, it would look pretty cool. It’ll will match the style of your site and injects it right into the page it’s like an IFrame or something. And so it’s like pretty consistent style and so forth. It’s a cool thing. You can do it but it’s annoying cause you have to go to the main home base Genius.com to edit the text or to add annotations, but in the future, you’ll have this page on your site; the text on your site and out a little job description and not when you highlight you can annotate and your annotations will show up. And the annotations of the people you follow and like will show up. And the annotation of the people you don’t follow, don’t like will be collapsed. But if people who do follow, either they will be hidden or visible. But if someone famous comes in and annotates, maybe that will be visible by default to everyone and you have to have sort of some mechanism of distinguishing the annotation to be visible everyone to the annotations visible only to the people that follow the annotator. But, yeah, the basic idea, one clear application is like for news or whatever. And you kind of sort of look at example this on Business Insider where we have this article that talked about our Series B fundraising. And we sort of used to sort of demo to what you might imagine the future. As someone writes and article about a start up. Start raising money and so you get to have annotations by the author talking about how you have footnotes that did not make it. That’s kind of like of interesting. But the more interesting thing is annotations by the subjects of the piece. Annotations by other people who are quoted in the piece. Like was I just misquoted? Did you get me right? Annotations from people related to the people in the article who are, you know, who can offer more back story, you know to like clarify more stuff. So it’s just, you get all these different voices coming together producing kind of a new document and you know you can imagine this on one of your own blog posts really. I think... Ben: Yep. TL: Whenever I’m doing like uh, coding sort of related blog post and there is some examples in the Genius engineering team – Like to be able to annotate codes is like a really great sort of use case for it. You know, like, get like per line comments. Get like how comments are designed to like be resolved or fixed. So like annotations that really explain what’s going on or, so you might write your own blog post and put your own annotations in. You know, clarifying what’s on the code and maybe the person who you know who wrote the code can elaborate and come in and mention it. So the idea is that now when people are reading text they should be thinking about, ok there’s the text and there’s this other layer going that follows me everywhere I go. You know, I sort of think of it as now I guess in some sense of the hyperlink. So, pre hyperlink it was like you were reading a document. And not post hyperlink, now you have to be thinking ok any time I’m reading a document, I might click a color or underlined word and go to something else. And that, when it first came out, I’m sure, people were kind of like "Whoa! Like what is this?" But now it’s like totally second nature. It’s totally obvious. Ben: Right. TL: Very weird. Even outside of the web to not have hypertext. Ben: Yeah. TL. We are just very used on that end. You know Amazon Kindle table of contents, you know underlined stuff, you click it and it goes to different places of the same document. But the point is you're jumping around in between and intra-documents by the hyperlink is like a new way of thinking about text and what we’re trying to do is uh, sort of another version of that -- which is now when you think about text, not only do you have to think about hyperlinks, but you have to think about it being this layer of explanation commentary, uh, criticism context that’s on top of that. You know, contributing and anyone who’s relevant either to the text or to you personally can contribute to that and you’ll see their contributions depending on who it is and so forth. Ben: Yep. And there is so much stuff you can add there in terms of context and further information and all that. That part is really exciting to me because when you read an article that’s in your field, you know like a niche that you know all about you like wow, there are missing a whole lot of things like you sort of recognize the wholes and specifications that are made by like a main stream reporter type person. And it’s like I can spot those when it’s about my industry but when it’s like for other things it’s like I don’t know they’re there. It’s like of yeah. This is about Gary Harmerst, but like I have no way of know what has been left out or additional context. TL: There’s a name for a phenomenon. Ben: Is the it the Stephen King something or rather? The Stephen King Clainest? TL: I thought there was a Dunging Crooning thing or something? Ben: Which is where you read an article and you know it's your field... TL: You read an article in your field and you’re like "God these people who wrote this are idiots. They don’t know the first thing about this." You read an article outside your field and you think – "Oh! This is interesting. What an article. It’s probably all correct." Ben: You immediately forget that feeling. TL: And so you should really, if you are rational, you would like update your priors about the whole endeavor based on the data that you from the field you know. It would cause you to be more skeptical but then... Ben: Yeah. TL: On the other hand, when you don’t know a lot and you see something printed – that means it’s PRINTED! It must be right! Ben: It’s in Times New Roman! TL: It’s literally in Times New Roman. It’s on a page. So yeah, so that’s the idea, is you take everyone who is passionate about one particular area. Let them go nuts. Then what merges for everyone else is that then now you’re reading something you’re not familiar with and then you get to see people’s saying this is totally wrong. Ben: Well, yeah. So was this sort of born out of like blog comments basically? Like that was like the stone age version of this? So oppose to someone tries to like to bomb. Like no, this thing was wrong or nice - post let me add this detail. And now you taken those and added them right where they need to be like right in the context? TL: Yeah I definitely think that comments, you know, are great way to tell someone their wrong or that they suck. It definitely, that is true and so in sense I think it is just sort of an improving that and putting them in line and you know once their inline, you have to make other improvements to because when they are the bottom of the page, you kind of forget about them and say ok a thousand comments New York Times thing. Like "Ah, whatever." But when there’re inline, you can’t just put a thousand things inline. Ben: Totally. TL: And so because of that you have to – You know the New York Times even know that Times editors picks or readers picks for the comments now – there’s some sort of self-enforcing thing where the thing here where the thing 5.99 out of 7.50 is probably not going to get a lot of eyeballs get voted on to become a reader picks out something. So the point being when they're inline, you have to make something sort of tricky auto rhythmic and human driven moves depending on what shows up and what doesn’t. You know, I think... Ben: Is that your secret sauce? Is that what you guys have to kill to be really good? TL: Well, it’s interesting. I think there is sort of two things going on. So what we are about is annotating the world. That’s the idea. So annotation on the world. But what does that actually mean when you when you think about the notion of annotation? And uh, I think it actually means there two things, sort of going on at the same time. One is this sort of explaining the world and two is like opening the worlds to like commentary. So for example, we started out just explaining the world. In fact we started out just explaining rap. Ben: Right. TL: You know – this line in a song that you think is just some random line is actually a very sort of subtle reference to this other thing. And you would never know that but here it is. And that is really cool to be able to see this whole hidden world of depth. Like that was what first made me super excited about hip hop and super excited about this project was you know I’m listening to rap – I like the beat. The lyrics I kind of hear. Fine. But no. There’s a twist. There’s a secret world of mega hidden depths to, to hip hop lyrics. So let’s dive into that. So that is what I really got attracted to. But then, as you move forward there was kind of this idea of what about the artist themselves? Ben: Hm hmm. TL: So then you need this idea of commentary. Because you want the artist – like think about it this way – so you’re writing an annotation trying to explain what Drake meant in “Lines”. You might look for an interview where Drake commented on “Lines” and say, “In an interview, Drake addresses 'Lines' by saying blah...” And so what we – we saw this. And saw the need for this, we thought ok – why don’t we build a product that allows Drake or whoever – instead of having to say something in an interview in which we then quote; that allows something for Drake to just type something in on the site. And this was the idea of verified annotations. And so basically you have these two things going on. You have this sort of editorial hierarchy that works not so super differently from like Wikipedia in some sense. It's an editorial hierarchy of people who are trying to break stuff down and explain stuff. So whether it’s explaining the references in a Hip Hop song or explaining the references in in, you know T.S. Elliot’s “The Waste Land”, you know. April is the cruelest month, is actually in reference to Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”. April for such something – I don’t know. But the point being if you have that going on you have this sort of scholarly explanation unpacking sort of find the references. And you have this commentary thing going on. The commentary thing is sort of most interactive case of the author of the piece sort of saying – here’s the deal with this. This is actually a back story. There’s a back story here and you don’t know it. And I’m going to tell you cause I am the only one in the world who knows. Ben: Hm hmm. TL: You know one of my favorite annotations is like Nas talks about how he came up with this idea for a verse based on a news report he was seeing in the studio. It’s like there’s no way you would ever know that. No matter how big a Nas fan you were. And so that’s kind of magic of getting the author involved – But it’s not just getting the author involved; it’s about getting other relevant people involved. Because like Nas has probably got something to say about a Jay Z song. Uh and likewise, T.S. Elliot if he were alive today he would probably have something to say about Chaucer. Ben: Right. TL: And so you want to do that and as you push that forward – you very get into very quickly this problem of who can break commentary where and who it will show up to. Ben: Yeah. TL: You know. And so, obviously Nas on a Nas track, that should show up to everyone. Game over. But Nas on, you know, the Declaration of Independence? You know, probably show up to everyone. Nas is like pretty sort of culturally rounded. But what about like you. Would be one example or what about someone you know who is you know, like less famous like musician. What about like Dej Loaf or something. Like I love her but uh, maybe, maybe she should only show up to people who follow her. So that’s, that’s what you have to sort of like figure out once you start to really open the world up for commentary for who can write what where. And who’s it supposed to show it for. Ben: Right. Is the answer yes then to my question of like is that the hard part? Like you – what, what’s the hardest part? What stuff do you have to solve or have to do well for like to this annotate idea the world to work? TL: Yeah. I think the hard is giving people an easy way to contribute. You know highlight and there’s a text box and write something in it or I see annotation and there’s a button that say’s reply and I can write something in it. And so giving people an easy way an easy way to contribute and – when I mean easy, I mean like really easy. Like you’re like on any page on the internet and it works. You know, you can do it from your phone on any page on the internet. You can do it from the app. You can do it from the web. Like it just, it really just feels good and then the software does the right thing. And so maybe does the right thing means no one sees it but people who follow you. Maybe the right thing is everyone sees it but it’s below this other one – which is even more important or something like that. Ben: Right. TL: You know or maybe, uh, maybe it gets totally delete cause it’s like... Ben: Right. TL: Partly offensive or very much misleading or something. And so they can easily contribute and then yet still make sense of consumption experience and not be a total sprawlly mess is kind of the tricky part. And of course another tricky part is just doing this in a way that is appealing to publishers. The end goal is to have this – to have publishers adopt this and embed it on their sites. And so you got to think about what’s a cool thing form an annotator’s perspective? What’s a cool thing from annotator consuming perspective? What do publishers want? The publisher maybe wants more control is good for reader and annotator -- I am not sure that is necessarily true, works here and like how you resolved that tension and figure something out.  Ben: Interesting. I'd like to ask you a weird question. Feel free to not even answer. TL: Naw. Sure. I’ll answer. Ben: If you were to give – if you were to write a set of instructions to a competitor to somehow kill Genius... TL: Hm hmm. Ben: What would you say there? TL: To kill Genius. Well, I think if you are trying to build an annotation platform, there’s a chicken in the egg problem you have to deal with. Because if you’re going out there saying "I am an annotation platform, you are a publisher." Great. Let’s mate or whatever. Like that is a tough sell because the publisher is probably going to be interested in who else has used this is even good. And what makes you think this is even good.   Ben: Hm hmm. TL: And so I think kind of the question is how you overcome that sort of thing not only as a sales technique – how do you battle test the platform. How do you get some eyeballs on it? How do you get some users without getting anyone to buy in? You know and that was the thing we sort of inadvertently did sort of in retrospect by building and being our own publisher. You know there is no good lyric site anyway and we’re going to the best lyrics site as a sort of way of boot strapping and becoming the chicken and the egg problem with our annotation platform. Ben: Like bait. TL: Well it’s like yeah. I mean in a sense we’re trying to build a platform to get it out to every publisher but you want to just build a sort of unified experience first. Sort of best possible sort of turnkey experience for the user for where it is just it’s like the publisher, the sort of site, the sort of platform is totally integrated and it is totally easy and you got a lot of eyeballs users on the annotation thing. And then you can make it better and refine it and so forth and so that was the sort of trick we used was by being our own publisher of lyrics. And my advice to any other annotation platform would be to try to do something like that. To try to get a lot of users in some sneaky way. Not sneaky in like a bad way in a to the send... Ben: Yeah. TL: Such then when you want to go pitch a bigger publisher and spread out, you have a sort of good proof concept and a good product and something that actually works. You know I think we happen to be pretty fortunate in what we picked. Music is just one those basic elements in that like excites people and that is very important and also it’s a good way of getting interesting people involved. You know musicians, rappers, etc. Like they’re great people to follow rappers on Twitter where ever is. It’s also great to have them on the Genius platform. And so I think that combines and then now when you actually have a product that you know something like the New York Times can use, you have something that you know already looks pretty enticing. It’s not just like this sort of ghost town. You know. Ben: Yeah. So that’s like how to get started. So let’s say I had pull on that roughly. Let’s say I had probed before – it’s like where – do you have a weakness? It’s like how? It’s like where could I like exploit you? Let’s say that I had my own platform up like that. Where do I come after you guys and cut your legs out from under you? I mean I guess if you are under this model right now where you primarily venture back sort of looking to explode, there’s like a question of you sort of need to keep raising money and being funded by this until you figure out how to turn the money thing on at some point. So like one way is just like do the opposite and maybe outlast you if it doesn’t work out or something. Like what’s... Like this is a weird questions. TL: Umm. No, I mean I think it’s a good question to think about. I mean, you know, I mean obviously we are trying to anticipate this stuff. So you know for example I say – if we hadn’t been thinking about this already I would say hire very, very smart engineers pay them a lot and maybe coach our engineers by paying them more. That’s one trick. We thought of that. So we pay more than anyone else. You know and so I would definitely push that strategy more in any case. Just like any engineers especially in this climate are sort of under paid and under-appreciated and so if you are trying to shake stuff up, a good strategy is to come in and say ok were just going to pay more money than anyone else. And that’s sort of what we’re trying to do. And get money without even having to take a job from us. You just pass an interview and you get a thousand dollars cash. And so I think making it a great place for everyone. Obviously, you're building a big technical platform and engineers particularly work. Stealing our engineers would be a good strategy but I hope we can dissipate that. You know I think the venture back thing is definitely, you can take a different approach for that. I mean, I think that uh, there are a lot of parts of this sort of world that I think are conducing the go big or go home thing. Ben: Hm hmm. TL: Like if you are trying to be THE annotation platform you kind of want to be something that would work pretty at a much better scale. So you want to be able to hit that scale and likewise in lyrics sort of the way lyric licensing works and so forth, you kind of want to eat the whole apple you know. The ALL of lyrics, because that’s how you can sort of you know justify this sort of time and so forth. You have to put into licensing these things. You know? Ben: Yeah. TL: If you are a small medium size Lyrics site you still have to worry about that so you might as well be the biggest Lyrics site. Umm, I think to venture back the axe strategy is the right way to go. Umm, it definitely was our first thought. You know we actually originally incorporated as a LLC you know because of tax related reasons I don’t know if it was better because we were definitely sure that we were not taking any venture capital. Which is kind of law in retrospect. But yeah that was a huge pain to switch over to a C Corp. Yeah, I would say if you could hire better people faster than we can, would be a good strategy. Basically that is probably the biggest sort of, it sucks that’s the biggest dice roll for us. It’s like can we find enough talented people, you know it’s very hard. Ben: Isn’t that crazy? Like that’s true for everybody. You know it’s amazing like how there’s this huge sucking demand for like really qualified people that can build stuff out of software and out of this and like it’s just like everyone is desperate for this. Like you think this would like this balance would equalize like faster or ever. By so far it doesn’t look like it does. TL: Yeah well it’s weird. It’s very weird and it’s even weirder in the light that everyone is also under paid. You know so it’s like everyone is desperate for talent and they are not willing to pay anyone money. Ben: That’s the weird thing. Because that solves this problem. Right. TL: Yeah. Ben: Like supply and demand is already like… It’s not even just happens. Like prices change. TL: But the problem is you can just go out there and say, here is what the starting salary is for an engineer at this company for some reason according social morals. I don’t know maybe we should. Ben: You should. TL: I have heard from like engineers that have been here thought it was a cool company. I was in to the team and not them but when I got that offer I was still surprised and I would have still treated it differently if I know, if I knew what you were really talking about here but we’re very picky and we are looking for people who would be down to be leaders. Air quotes. Which is kind of a cliché. Which is really true. The company is small now. We have either engineers who work here and that does not even count me but I’m not doing that much coding anymore and it’s like this thing is going to grow and be big and who’s going to be leading the charge when we get big. We’re trying to hire these people now and so if you are really good we want to pay them a lot of money and treat them really well and so I think it is perplexing that engineers are in such high demand and are still so under paid and part of that is our weirdo culture where you can’t you know talk about money. Ben: Isn’t that… Like that could be it. I guess that could be one of the things. But it feels like the demand for engineers has kind of like I don’t know doubled in the last couple of years. Engineering salaries have not doubled. TL: Yeah. Ben: Not even close. There is probably something in that and I wonder if it’s just the lack of talking about it. I don’t know a component about talking about it that stuff cause I think it helps. TL: I agree too. Ben: Yeah. TL: I totally agree. Ben: So what would you pay an engineer? TL: Oh my God. Um. Ben: A really good one. TL: Umm. Ben: Can you say this? Because you have existing people who and nobody gets to go away but what I am getting... TL: No I don’t think that is why I am a... Ben: So am I allowed to ask? TL: I don’t think I’m… I think everyone who is currently at the company is being paid now tip top of market. I just... I don’t know, I got to think about it. I think it’s like kind of maybe… it’s just a tricky tricky subject. I want to be like careful about like what I like put out there. Ben: Isn’t it weird? TL: It’s more out there. It’s more than whatever you’re making. If you call me I’ll tell you. Ben: Isn’t it weird that you kind of don’t want to say. TL: 305.281.0228. Call me. Ben: See you just said your phone number. TL: Yeah. Ben: But you’re willing to share your personal phone number than you are what your starting salary is at your company. TL: But maybe I am willing share what the starting salary is at the company. I just never thought of it before this. Ben: Yeah. I’m not trying to trying to get you to disclose it, it’s just kind of... TL: It is I agree with you it’s very bizarre. Ben: Yeah. TL: And I’ve thought about this before. I don’t have the right answer. I think that because… It’s funny, I think that there’s um great guy, great author, this dude Patrick McKenzie. Have you heard of him? Ben: Yep. TL: And he wrote this bunch of great essays but one essay about how you get a raise. How to negotiate. And um, don’t call yourself a software developer or something. You know, it’s got a bunch of great stuff in there but he talks about the sort of cultural norm strat. It talks about money and Americans. It’s almost as if there was a capitalist conspiracy designed to affect you know the social morass of America and the Western world and probably the whole world such that the workers – the people making salaries are brainwashed to against their interest feel embarrassed about talking about the thing that if that all talked about it, it would help them against management. Ben: Right. TL: And what I’m trying to say is like I am in management and I want to talk about it because it’s better here and that’s the whole point and we want to attract people, based on that. Not to say that money is the most important thing of the world. It’s not everything. It’s not even the most important thing but it is something. Ben: Yeah. TL: And uh, it's other – pursuing money. It’s also money is the symbolic thing which is like look you are valued – you are appreciated. It’s kind of like- I’m not trying to say we pay more money so you will be able to but more stuff. Although that’s true. But it’s also like we pay more money which is a metaphor for we expect a lot and we appreciate you a lot and right now you are being under paid and under-appreciated. It’s kind of also a symbolic thing I don’t know – maybe, maybe we can you know follow up on this. Ben: But can you maybe can you unpack for a second what’s the net giving you pots. What’s the downside that is just talking numbers? TL: Well, I think it would be seen as weird and I think that is a bad answer you know I think obviously. You know I am talking out of context where I am reaching out to someone. Like you know I’m, I’m trolling it up late at night and I see someone who’s got a good profile it’s obviously not just about you good health. How many stars you have and big ups to Roush, our iOS developer here - most stars not even work here like six hundred plus but like maybe you find that you want to hit someone up. You find that you hit them up and one thing you mentioned in that email is uh you get a raise on whatever you’re making now. And then why don’t I just say if you got a job we would offer you X, because you know I have pretty good idea of that. And I think the main reason is that I don’t want come off as, as a weirdo and, and I think I you know I always pay some attention to this because my nature impulse you know is to be a little informal. A little jokey. You know I think Genius obviously when were called Rap Genius had sort of a reputation… Yeah, you wear sunglasses on stage, just don’t do that… Just one piece of advice. You can do that if you think it’s a joke, it’s just no one is going to like the joke. Just don’t do that. Ben: Remember your “Isms”. TL: Just don’t. Ben: Number eighteen. TL: Yeah so why don’t me, yeah you know I’m… I didn’t think wearing sunglasses on stage made a big deal either but and that at Tech Crunch disrupts an interview. You know it’s like uh, Genius is Godwin’s Law. It shows up at one of the discussions at our company. Uh I don’t think I said anything that crazy in that interview by the way, just the look which again was a joke and I’m sorry but the point being that I worry that people would get the thing and they think that this is weird and awkward. Part of that’s cultural and part of that… Like here’s an example… Ok so, we came up with this idea in relation to this which is I mentioned earlier, it’s called the Genius Genius Grant. It’s like a play a card for a Genius Grant. So the idea is that you come in, you pass the interview – you get a job offer if you be an engineer or in technical you get a thousand dollars cash. Ok. And the idea behind this was like look – A. You passed the interview and you passed our bar. If you want to work here I want to be your friend. I want to show you off. So here’s a thousand dollars. It’s also an incentive to get people to interview. Don’t matter how big an incentive, maybe like a really good person that really doesn’t care about a thousand dollars and they just don’t want to feel like they are doing something for a thousand dollars and so maybe it’s bad. Ben: Yeah TL: But it’s something we tried. And um, in the Post I made a .gif of me taking a thousand dollars and throwing it up in the air in slow motion using the sort of now inferior iOS 7 seven slow motion a hundred and twenty SPF it’s m-240.. But point being I made this thing of throwing money. Ben: Yeah. TL: And this idea is sort of cool looking – it’s a cool looking .GIF. I am being playful AND the idea I am trying to get across is if you’re a good developer, I want to show you love. I want to shower you with cash EVEN if you don’t want to come work here. So it’s kind of a nice sentiment I thought. Ben: Yeah. TL: Yeah but then flash forward whatever amount of time and that .gif gets posted out of context in some Valley Wag article about Silicon Valley or excess and I look like an idiot. And whatever. What I was thinking at the time, I was trying to do this the most fundamentally positive thing. It’s not like I’m trying to say look at how much money I have, I’m trying to say I’m trying to shower money on great developers even if they don’t want to work here. Trying to do it in a funny quirkky unusually interesting way and now I feel basically like that was a dumb move. Cause I’m not like that and that .gif is out there and now I look like an idiot. So. Ben: This is so interesting. So it’s an image problem. TL: So no more images of throwing money. The point is I just don’t want to like you don’t want to approach things in a perspective like of fear and if you are worried about offending people that’s probably the wrong thing to worry about unless your company is like pretty big and I think you know we have crossed some kind of threshold where it’s worth worrying about offending people. With stuff like money which is just a tense – sort of emotional you just got to be careful. Maybe nothing bad would happened if I as – hey by the way… if you pass the job interview maybe we will pay you X and here is the signed bonus or whatever. Maybe nothing bad would happen. I have to think about it but with money maybe your .gif ends up on Valley Wag. And you know you look like an idiot. Ben: Hmm. This is fascinating. This is weird. I like this weirdness. TL: This is real shit. Money is a very weird and complicated thing. You got to be down to talk about it. Like that’s something like previous companies and talking to like other people their experiences… Like if you know when you ask your boss for a raise how your boss acts in that moment tells you basically everything you need to know and that relationship with that person. Is that person going to be like real with you? Is that person going to be like sort of talk to you about the real issue? And give you a real answer and if the answer is no tell you what you can do to get a raise. Is that person going to make you feel bad for asking? Is that person is going to say like "OH I see what motivates you now." Like you should feel bad. Sorry about the money. Ben: Well that person is a bad boss. TL: Well that’s what I am saying. People do this kind of stuff Ben: Yeah. TL: Like people act weird about money and not a straight forward way in companies. And my claim way is you should really be straight forward about it as a boss as a manager in cases and I wish that we could be more open as a world. Ben: I have two, two thoughts on this. So like now I’m in a position of deciding someone’s raise recently in the position of my life, and so one of the things I try to do is is be really open about where the money comes from. Like here are the financials. Here’s what we did last quarter. Here’s how much money we have. Here’s how much we can pay. Here’s how much raise I got and like talk about like these sort of things and I think that like again I am like super believer of the truth. So I think laying it out there is like a certain default. It’s like let me explain clearly what we can do and what we can’t do and what’s going on. And I think that’s a sort of a nice angle to take on that. Yeah I can like imagine what you could do otherwise that doesn’t suck. And another thing on that, I gave a talk recently where I said I think people should be more willing to share their salary with their coworkers. I think it helps you. Cause I think it helps you – like information in symmetry is I you have less information you are at disadvantage of negotiation. Right like you have ten employees underneath you and so you know all ten salaries and one of the employees comes up to you only that – they only their salary and they have less information. If they are the lowest paid person, they can use that information to get a higher salary very likely. And so I basically said that people should share their salaries. And as I was researching this, I found that sharing your salaries with your coworkers is actually a protective right. Like the companies cannot prevent you for doing that and that was a fascinating disclosure for me or discovery for me. TL: Yeah. I am a big believer if you are setting someone’s salary you have to do it under the assumption that everyone is going to know everything. Ben: Hm hmm. TL: That’s always my attitude basically is which you are doing something that relies on people not talking - forget salary – any context. You are going to count on some kind of privacy between your company and the world. But that’s even stressful not because people leak things but it’s hard to keep secrets. Someone asked you a direct question. It's hard to keep secrets! We kept our Series B a secret for like five months. That was a stressful thing. Ben: Yeah. TL: So people were like "what’s your board?" They’re like, "Your board is just three people? And um, four people?" No, there actually Van Gil- uh uh. It’s just like hard to keep secrets. So like keeping it between company and the world is hard but so impossible inter-company. It’s very difficult and I don’t think that it’s rarely a good look. You want to have like openness and so you know I think you want to make deceased decisions with the idea that people talk. On the other hand it is complicated because if you tell someone else’s salary what you really want to do is give someone a picture of what is going on. Like this is the persons sort of responsibilities, this is how they’ve done and this is what they have taking on. And here’s their salary. So the salary information a lone out of context you know can be misleading. And because money is emotional it’s like I am trying to make things fair if everyone knows everything but if I print out a list of everyone’s salary and left it on the table like I would feel like – go and not do that basically . and uh and likewise I feel that when companies share all the salaries internally like I think there something good about that but I think it’s also a challenging thing there a lot of context to give behinds the these decisions. Ben: I wonder if there is some sort of platform you can annotate things like... TL: Right. We annotate everyone’s salary here. Ben: Do you annotate your HR system… TL: Yeah, definitely any internal document that we produce we like to put on the site. I set it right into Google docs, it’s easier. But I like to put it on the site. But the “Isms” are up there and there are debates between people and the company. People are like I think this is wrong. That kind of stuff is very important. Like the openness thing. Just you know vacation policy like making it annotatable. Whatever it is make it annotatable. Let people comment. Ben: That’s cool. Well I am really respectful of your time. We’ve done a lot here. This has been awesome. I appreciate you chatting. TL: Yeah this is, is a great thing. Ben: This was fun. TL: I’m feeling… Ben: If you change your mind and you want to talk about starting salary is for a Genius engineer, you let me know. TL: Well, I’m really going to think about that one. Ben: And think about why you don’t want to. Because that to me is almost the more interesting question. TL: Yeah. Ben: Cause there’s something emotional in there, I think. That I am curious about. TL: Yeah why didn’t I want to share the .gif of me throwing money? I DID want to… No I did. Ben: Like how many people are going to make fun of you for not paying too much money or something. TL: It’s not they make fun of... Ben: I mean, like you're irresponsible. You’re like paying too much, you're trying to show off? TL: Criticism would be you are a perfect symbol of... Symbolic excess. Ben: Ahh. I See. TL: That is you. Yeah and that’s what people said about like – it’s like when people watched our TechCrunch thing and said this is like the startup guys YouTube vide. But like we were, but that was the point but like we were being a symbol of a certain negative gross icky side of a side of the world which is often revile for being trivial and icky and douchie and whatever. So it’s like I don’t want to hold back but I just don’t want to a symbol of that and I… Ben: Isn’t that a bitch though? Like your corporate decisions are being affected by… Like this might be a good recruiting tool. Right? Like if we pay this much. BOOM. And then five thousand Ruby developers listen to this podcast and wow its pretty good for us to have people know that and like know that we are serious but you have to also juggle the worlds perception of you. It’s kind of weird. Like I guess perception is a reasonable thing to have but like... it seems hand stringy almost. TL: It’s not only weird – but it’s so different from how it used to be. So like in the early days anything to get anyone to care about