April 7, 2019

Eugene Wei: Compress to Impress – North Star Podcast

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

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

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

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”
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

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
“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

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

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

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
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