Systematize Success #21 - Facebook, Twitch & Silk Road - The Life Stories of 3 Incredible Tech Founders
Facebook, Twitch & Silk Road - The Life Stories of 3 Incredible Tech Founders
Hello Friends,
And happy Monday!
In a minute, we’ll jump to the stories of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Justin Kan (Twitch), and Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road).
Their life stories are very different, and a bit of storytelling theory seems perfectly appropriate as an intro.
Introduction
For as long as mankind existed, there have been stories such as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Kurt Vonnegut was the first to theorize that they could be categorise by the happiness curve of the main protagonist:
He also explains the main few in this very entertaining short video 5min:
More recently (2016), a fascinating academic paper was released to confirm Vonnegut’s theory with data: The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes
They show an example that should help everyone understand:
And they conclude that the most complex happiness curves produce the most popular outliers (which I highlighted in red for you):
Our founders’ stories are no exceptions…
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Mark’s story is told to us by Dan Rose, one of Facebook’s early employees, and the founder of Coatue, one of the most successful VC globally.
He explains how Mark’s story of building Facebook into one of the largest, most influential, and most controversial tech company it is today was not one of those happy paths.
Whether one likes him or not, it clearly depicts Mark’s brilliance.
He had to ruthlessly fight his way to execute his vision despite many serious hurdles that most would have simply accepted as irresistible.
Instead, as Walter White would say, he was the irresistible (4min):
In my experience the best founders develop a fighter mentality. Mark Zuckerberg was a fighter, and without that mentality Facebook would never have achieved its full potential. Here’s what I saw over 13 years working for Zuck:
One of Mark’s first big fights was with his own board + exec team. They tried to convince him to sell the company to Yahoo for $1B in '06. At the time FB had 5M users (all college) and was 2 yrs old. At the age of 22, Mark stood to gain $300M personally. How could he say no?
Everyone told Mark to sell. Friends said he'd be crazy to pass up $1B. His management team wanted an exit. His board put pressure on him. But Mark knew something they didn’t – FB was on the cusp of launching new products that would completely change the trajectory of the company.
I joined FB in mid-2006, right after Mark made the decision not to sell (I’m glad he did!). He had the courage to go against everyone around him, and he was promptly vindicated the following year when we raised our Series C from Microsoft at $15B.
Within a couple of years after the Yahoo near miss, Mark replaced his entire management team and reconstituted the board. He needed people around him who believed in his vision, people he could trust to fight alongside him. I was one of them.
Mark hired a professional CFO around that time, someone with gray hair who had taken companies public. This guy struggled from the beginning with the fact that his boss was barely older than his children. When he tried to launch a coup 6 mos after joining, Mark fired him.
Early on, the music industry threatened to sue us into oblivion if we didn’t give them what they wanted - money, equity, subservience. Facebook didn’t actually have any music on it, but YouTube had grown on their backs and now the labels wanted a pound of flesh from everyone.
I wanted to cut a deal. Mark wanted to fight. When I organized a meeting behind his back to discuss my strategy, he sent me a pointed email: if I ever did that again, I’d be fired. He was open to discussing my views but there would be no discussion without him in the room.
In 2010, Mark started sweating profusely on stage at a large tech conference with hundreds of execs in the audience. He looked nervous and unsure of himself for the first 30 minutes of the interview before finding his feet and recovering by the end. I was in the audience that day.
Many attendees approached me afterwards to say how much they admired Mark for his gritty recovery. I texted him that night to pass along the encouragement. He responded by saying his performance was unacceptable, he had let us all down and he wouldn’t let it happen again.
The Social Network came out in 2010. Mark had been warned it would portray him in a negative light, and he was appropriately concerned about its impact on team morale, FB's brand and his personal reputation. His advisors told him to ignore it, keep his head down, stay focused.
In one of the greatest jiu jitsu moves of all time, Mark rented out the Shoreline cinema complex and bussed in the entire company to see the premier of the movie. His first (and probably only) viewing of The Social Network was in a giant cinema with the rest of his employees.
Adding to the surrealness of this scene, Mark’s admin asked me to sit next to him - she thought my positivity would be a calming influence. When the character portraying him was being seduced by a girl, he leaned over and whispered “now this is awkward.” We both laughed out loud!
You don’t have to be mean to be a fighter. Some CEOs struggle with this (famously Steve Jobs), but Mark pulled it off gracefully. He didn’t yell at people, never threw furniture or lost his temper. He was just ruthlessly decisive, always willing to make the hard call.
In his first 5 years, Mark went through multiple product leaders, 3 CFOs, and many executives. When someone wasn’t scaling with the company, he would ask them to leave or take a smaller role. His co-founders all quit too, they were tired of fighting. It’s lonely to be CEO.
But it's more lonely to lose, or to regret that you didn't try hard enough to win. Business is the ultimate game, it never ends and you are never done. Going from the garage to the boardroom requires incredible grit, determination, ambition, and yes...fight.
Justin Kan (Twitch)
Our second story is that of Justin.
I loved it because again, it is not one of those ever-going-up type of success-stories.
Instead, it is one of up-down-up.
I’ll simply let you read it The Story of Atrium (6min) or read his own (shorter) Twitter thread instead:
Incidentally, Justin recently hosted the most visionary interview on the future of our society I have listened to since… ever.
I will soon share more in my Macromegas Friday newsletter: subscribe here not to miss it.
Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road)
Last, Ross Ulbricht.
For those who don’t know him, he founded Silk Road, the largest anonymous bitcoin-powered online marketplace.
His platform ended up being for really nasty black-market transactions.
It made Ross a persona non grata to say the least: he was arrested by the FBI in 2013 and ended with two example-setting life sentences without parole plus 40 years.
He claims he created Silk Road for the greater good and was wrongly convicted.
I don’t know enough about the case to take a stance, but his words, spoken over the phone from prison, do sound true.
They are also deeply moving (10min):
Hello, this is Ross Ulbricht.
I'm calling you today from prison. From a maximum security federal penitentiary. We don't have much time together today and I don't know if I'll get another chance to talk to you like this. I'll say as much as I can but when it's time to go I'll have to hang up and go back to my cell.
I have lost my freedom. That's what I want to talk to you about today.
I want you to understand what it means to lose your freedom.
But first let's talk about bitcoin. I was there during bitcoin's early days. Back then bitcoin made me feel like anything was possible. Bitcoin was open to everyone, right. That's what I loved so much about it, like it levelled the playing field.
When the idea of bitcoin really clicked for me, I got so excited I thought with bitcoin I can try to do something that actually makes a difference. And by the way, before I was put in prison, we didn't have all these different cryptocurrencies and tokens and everything. I missed all that. So to me it's all one thing, the forks, the new blockchains, all of it. So when I say bitcoin, I'm not making those distinctions. To me, it may sound kind of corny, but, to me we're all one big family.
So I was excited back then but I was also very impatient. I saw what bitcoin could do for freedom and equality but I didn't take the time to really understand it. I didn't fully appreciate the principles it's based on. Things like immutability and consensus and of course decentralisation. I had so many big dreams for bitcoin and what's so beautiful is, slowly those dreams are coming true. That's because of you, you are making those dreams a reality. You are doing what I didn't have the patience for. These last eight years now in prison, over and over I've been so impressed with how far we've come. But back then I was impatient. I rushed ahead with my first idea, which was Silk Road.
Silk Road was a website I made when I was 26 years old, more than a decade ago now. It used tor and bitcoin to protect people's privacy. I called it an anonymous market. At the time I thought, if bitcoin makes payments anonymous and private then, what are we waiting for? Why are we sitting around talking about it, let's put it into action. That's impulsive. That's a 26 year old who thinks he has to save the world before someone beats him to it. I had no idea if Silk Road would work, but now we all know it caught on. It was used to sell drugs and now I'm in prison. I was given two life sentences without parole plus 40 years.
I'm a non-violent first-time offender but if nothing changes I'll spend the next few decades in this cage. Then sometime later this century I'll grow old and die. I'll finally leave prison but I'll be in a body bag.
I got a letter the other day. It was from someone I hadn't met before. He was thanking me, he was grateful I had put Silk Road online all those years ago. He believed that bitcoin wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't for Silk Road. I'm not sure. For better or worse, Silk Road is part of bitcoin's history now, but I worry that by putting Silk Road online I made things harder for us. There's no way to know how things would have turned out differently but I just want to say to the extent that I made things harder for us, I'm sorry. The extent that my actions led to drug abuse and addiction, I'm sorry. I was trying to do something good, I was trying to help us move toward a freer and more equitable world. But we all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions right, and now here I am. I'm in hell.
I want you to understand what it means to lose your freedom.
Let me start by telling you about the hole. It goes by many names: the shoe, segregation, the box. But for me it's the hole. The hole is the prison within the prison. I once spent four months straight in the hole. Not easy for me to talk about but I will. The hole can make you or break you and there was a time when it broke me. It started with my mind racing out of control. I felt like the walls were crushing in on me like I just had to get out of that cell. This lasted days. Then I started beating the walls and kicking the heavy metal door. Something, something deep inside me cried out for freedom. I couldn't accept where I was or what had happened to me. But eventually I realised I had to get a grip. The stress was destroying me.
It may sound strange but what saved me was gratitude. But what could I be grateful for in that little cell? Well, I had to start small. I had air, right? Maybe it was stale and foul but I had air. I had water that didn't make me sick. Food came through the slot in the door every day.
I knew I wasn't forgotten. My family, I knew someday it would be over and my family would still be there. I forgave all the people involved in putting me in prison. I had to. The anger I felt wasn't hurting them but it was hurting me. So for the sake of my sanity I had to let it go.
I had a dream when I was in the hole and in the dream I was free. I was in a park and I felt this huge relief. I wasn't in prison anymore and then I got worried. Am I out on bail or something? Or are they gonna put me back in? Are they after me right now? And I started trying to get away and the anxiety, it just woke me up. And there I was again. In the hole. And it was like everything that had happened to me over all these years, it all came slamming down on me at once like life without parole, maximum security. I've been in the hole for months and there's no end in sight.
I want you to understand what it means to lose your freedom.
My mother, this was after I was sentenced, my mother was invited to give a speaking tour in Europe. She was raising awareness about what had happened to me and was looking for help. At a talk in Poland she started to feel a bit sick and had to fly home early. So the next morning I called my sister from the prison and the first thing she said was: "Has anyone told you about mom yet?". I said: "What about her?" and, she said to me in this voice, she said: "Oh Ross, Ross, Ross." and I knew my mom had been feeling sick and in that moment I just knew my sister was gonna tell me our mom was dead. But she said: "Mom's in the hospital." and I was like: "Oh thank God she's not dead." but I was like: "Wait, the hospital? That's not good either.".
Technically our mother had died. Her heart stopped at the breakfast table that morning. My uncle kept it going with CPR and she was rushed to the hospital. She was unconscious in the ICU when I called. It was a long time before I was able to talk to her. I didn't know if she would live. We didn't know if there would be brain damage. No one would say it but I knew it was my fault. She had been redlining for two years since the day I was arrested. Pushing, pushing, pushing, every moment of every day for my freedom. Stress-induced cardiomyopathy. I call it broken heart syndrome. I broke my mother's heart and it nearly killed her.
The pain I've caused my family. I didn't think of them, not as much as I should have when I was taking those risks when I was risking my freedom. My mom made a full recovery, thank God. Eight years later she still pushes for me every day but the whole ordeal, my imprisonment, has been devastating for her. And not just her: my fiance, my father, my sister, everyone. They're all hurting.
I want you to understand what it means to lose your freedom.
There's more to losing your freedom, It's more than being locked in a cage and the devastation that brings to your family. Locking someone in a cage until they die, it's such a horrific thing to do to a person. To lock someone in a cage until they die, the public, you, you have to be convinced that person is evil. That they are somehow less than human.
After I was arrested another prisoner came up to me, a young man. He had a magazine and he said, he said: "Ross, they wrote an article about you.". So I flipped the article and I'll never forget what I saw. It was an illustration of me and what was so strange was the face had my features and proportions but the skin had a putrid color. The eyes were bloodshot. I was, I was hunched over like some kind of ghoul. I pushed the magazine away, I just couldn't handle it. I couldn't face what I was seeing. It felt like, I could feel physical pain in my chest like claws were tearing through me. The young man, he said: "At least read what they're saying about you." and, and I said: "Why? Why listen to someone badmouth you and lie about you, if you can't say anything back?". It got quiet.
Later that day he told me they had done the same thing to him. Not on national news but in his local paper. "They do it to all of us." After I said I didn't want to read it he tore out the article and shredded it, right into the trash and he said: "I don't want to read it either.". That meant so much to me, "I don't want to read it either.". See, he gave me hope that you wouldn't look at me like I'm some sort of monster.
The caricature they created was a violent drug lord. That is not who I am. That is a lie. It's a lie that was carefully crafted to justify keeping me in this cage until I die. It's a lie designed to turn you against me. To turn your heart off.
They lied, it's on the record.
They cheated, that's on the record.
They stole.
Two of them went to prison over this dealing.
They hid evidence, that's on the record.
They destroyed evidence, that's on the record.
They planted evidence, that's on the record.
At one point they were looking into how they could give me the death penalty. They wanted to inject chemicals into my veins that would stop my heart. I had this dream where one of them was pointing a syringe to the soft spot on my neck just under my chin. He kept getting closer and closer and I backed away but my back was against the wall, every muscle in my body was tensed as I strained to get away. I was practically climbing the wall as the tip of the syringe came right next to my skin. I woke up in that exact same position, I was hyperventilating, my heart was pounding, I could still feel the needle coming toward me.
Are you starting to understand what it means to lose your freedom?
It means living in constant fear. Why has it taken me all these years to finally talk to you? I've been afraid. Even now I was strongly warned against talking to you. You'll only anger the authorities even more or you'll ruin what little chance you have left in the courts. Well, it's not my intention to anger anyone and yes, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of retaliation. I'm afraid that because of what I'm saying to you today I'll be thrown in the hole or worse.
But I've learned that listening to your fears can be just as dangerous as ignoring them. Somehow eight years have slipped by. It's been easier to ignore the lies and everything else to just focus on getting through each day and trying to be strong to my family. But today, right now I have a message for those that have been lying about me and those that have been thoughtlessly repeating those lies. Please stop. You are hurting me. Please stop. You know what you're saying isn't true. You're hurting me and you're hurting my family. Please stop.
I want you to understand what it means to lose your freedom.
The irony is that I made Silk Road in the first place because I thought I was furthering the things I cared about. Freedom. Privacy. Equality. But by making Silk Road I wound up in a place where those things don't exist. I am not alone. These prisons are full of people who don't deserve this. We are mothers and fathers, we are sisters and brothers, but we've been made into monsters in your eyes. We've been made less than human.
And then next to all that there's bitcoin. Bitcoin has been transforming our world since that very first block in the blockchain. Bow let me tell you something. We are just getting started. Wherever bitcoin has been embraced, anywhere in the world, freedom and equality follow. Bitcoin is the embodiment of freedom. So now look what we have, on one side we have loss of freedom, we have despair and darkness. And on the other side we have bitcoin. We have freedom, quality, and hope. The two can't sit side by side so the darkness has to be kept out of sight. It has to be ignored and forgotten. But listen, here I am, I'm crying out from that very same darkness. This is a cry for help. My mother can't do this by herself and I'm crying out not just for me but for all of us. We need your help. We need you to care. We need you to look at the stark contrast between the freedom of bitcoin on the one hand and what it means to be locked in a cage until you die. We have a choice, today, right now, do we ignore what's happening. The loss of freedom, the dehumanization, or do we wake up. Listen, bitcoin is strong, bitcoin is powerful, we are powerful and our work is not over. It's time to wake up, it's time to take the next step.
I've spent the last eight years watching bitcoin grow up from here. I've seen incredible innovations. I've seen inspiring courage. We didn't know how things would turn out for bitcoin back in the beginning but over the years I've been continually impressed what you've accomplished. I am proud of you and I have no doubt we can do anything we set our minds to.
We are transforming the global economy. We have brought a taste of freedom and equality to four corners of the world. I know we can transform criminal justice too.
And now, today, I challenge you to set your sights on the hardest problems. I challenge you to shine bitcoin's light into the darkest places. I challenge you to set us free. I've seen several of my friends go home after years, even decades in prison. More than one overcame a life sentence. Each time it happens I weep for joy. Seeing a person regain their freedom, seeing them reunite with their family, there's nothing like it. It's so beautiful it hurts, it feels like a miracle. We need more miracles.
I have to go soon. I don't want to go. I don't want to go back to that cell. I want to be there with you. This call. You've done so much for me today. Talking with you today is the most freedom I've felt in a long long time. Thank you. Thank you for giving me your attention. I will never forget this day. The memory of this day, this can never be taken from us.
I'm gonna go now.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Thanks for reading, and have a story-worthy week ahead,
V