
April 7, 2019
Eugene Wei: Compress to Impress – North Star Podcast
Key Takeaways
- Whenever you see a huge wave of change (like the internet in its early days) you want to be at the forefront of the wave – “Ride the wave”
- Eugene’s two personal rules:
- Follow your interests
- Keep renewing your “novice permit” – every few years go into a field where you are a complete novice
- “If you want to grow as a person, you have to push yourself out of equilibrium”
- Be a first principles thinker
- Keep asking, “Why?” to get to the fundamental truth, and then work your way up to understand the problem from a new perspective
- Kids today are much more visually literate and prefer to communicate with images over text
Intro
- Eugene Wei (@eugenewei) worked at Amazon early in its life, was previously the head of product at Hulu and Flipboard, and head of video atOculus
Books Mentioned
- Born to Rebel by Frank Sulloway
- The oldest child in a family usually mimics their parents, while younger children tend to rebel and go against the status quo
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- Eugene calls this one of the greatest novels ever written
Who is Eugene Wei?
- Eugene was an introverted kid who read a lot of books and watched tons of movies
- He attended Stanford and double majored in industrial engineering and English – because of this, he took a wide range of classes and grew both his left and right brain
- As far as the generalist vs specific knowledge argument, Eugene says it’s better to be a generalist when it comes to building products
- “A lot of the richest insight comes from crossovers between the two fields”
- As far as the generalist vs specific knowledge argument, Eugene says it’s better to be a generalist when it comes to building products
- Eugene got into law school but deferred attending for two years – “I just knew in my heart I didn’t want to go to law school”
- During the early days of the internet, Eugene spent a ton of time using it (especially on the new shopping site of the day – Amazon)
- Eugene’s advice – Whenever you see a huge wave of change (i.e. the internet) you want to be at the forefront of the wave – “Ride the wave”
- You can always be another business or law student, but the times when you can help build another Amazon or Hulu are rare
- Eugene’s advice – Whenever you see a huge wave of change (i.e. the internet) you want to be at the forefront of the wave – “Ride the wave”
Life Advice
- One of Eugene’s personal rules – “Follow my interests”
- Another rule – keep renewing your “novice permit” – every few years go into a field where you are a complete novice
- After 7 years at Amazon, Eugene went into filmmaking and moved from California to New York
- “To start over and be a student again forces you into a different frame of mind”
- It also puts you in a state of being humble and getting comfortable with failure – failure is how you learn
- “To start over and be a student again forces you into a different frame of mind”
- After 7 years at Amazon, Eugene went into filmmaking and moved from California to New York
- “If you want to grow as a person, you have to push yourself out of equilibrium”
- Eugene went from a comfy job at Amazon to working as a film assistant in New York and then on to film school to become a director
- After a year of film school, an old colleague asked Eugene if he wanted to help build a video service which eventually became Hulu
- Eugene went from a comfy job at Amazon to working as a film assistant in New York and then on to film school to become a director
The Film Industry & Silicon Valley
- There are a lot of similarities between launching a film and launching a product
- Both are much more complex than meets the eye – people in Hollywood think building apps is easy while people in Silicon Valley think making movies is easy
- Eugene sees tech eating up Hollywood in the future because tech companies are much richer than film companies – “For tech companies, cash is not really a constraint”
- Both industries compete for the same resource – people’s attention
- Nowadays, more and more tech companies are writing checks to movie/film companies in order to create content for more eyeballs and attention – “You are going to see tech companies continue to finance content”
- The film industry used to have a moat where everyone was an employee of the film company – now everyone (directors, actors, writers, etc.) are all free agents and can move around and find the best deal for themselves
- Today, there isn’t much differentiation among film companies – all of them do the same thing (fund movies) – capital is a commodity
- The one film company with some differentiation is Disney – they’re attempting to build a moat is by creating and acquiring well-known franchises (Star Wars, Marvel, etc.)
- With a franchise, people are already familiar with the film and have a connection to – this leads to lower marketing costs
- The one film company with some differentiation is Disney – they’re attempting to build a moat is by creating and acquiring well-known franchises (Star Wars, Marvel, etc.)
- Today, there isn’t much differentiation among film companies – all of them do the same thing (fund movies) – capital is a commodity
Lessons from Amazon
- It’s important to get the raw data on what’s working and what isn’t inside a company – employees should know of any problems before journalists do
- It’s important to discuss/analyze stories of failure – those stories likely have more important lessons which need to be shared with employees
- Jeff Bezos was a huge fan of raw data, so he banned PowerPoint to force people to write things out instead of compressing information into a quick slideshow – additionally, “Writing forces you to clarify your thinking”
- Bezos, like Steve Jobs, was an excellent communicator to employees and customers
- Bezos strongly believes in being a first principles thinker (as does Elon Musk)
- Keep asking, “Why?” to get to the fundamental truth, and then work your way up to understand the problem from a new perspective
Communication Differences
- Kids today are much more visually literate and prefer to communicate with images over text
- Kids add emojis, gifs, and stickers to pictures and are able to communicate a thousand words with just one photo
- Most people tend to be better visual learners – watch the master, then copy it
- Both Amazon and Google have a shadow program where employees follow around an executive to see how they work in order to learn from them
- A lot of successful individuals say they visualize the move they want to make and their desired outcome – this is especially true for athletes
- Both Amazon and Google have a shadow program where employees follow around an executive to see how they work in order to learn from them
- Eugene references a study which talked about how when countries first get access to TV, it actually benefits them – it leads to more equality for women and minorities, less government corruption, and more social norms
- Why? – Most TV shows have happy endings where the good guys win and share messages to viewers about social norms
These notes were edited by RoRoPa Editing Services