Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week. On the podcast, I have Matt Wallert and
Speaker 1: he is uh former director at Microsoft Ventures. Has done
Speaker 1: a number of startups, but his background is really in
Speaker 1: behavioral psychology, which makes for an interesting and eclectic mix.
Speaker 1: Regular listeners know of my interest in behavioral psychology, so
Speaker 1: this is right in my sweet spot. We actually did
Speaker 1: not get to talk about how we met. I go
Speaker 1: to lots of conferences as a speaker, and so I'm
Speaker 1: always terribly reluctant to go as an attendee. It's sort
Speaker 1: of once you've seen behind the curtain, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: now I know how the magic is done. It ruins
Speaker 1: the you know, it ruins the special effects. Once you
Speaker 1: know how the you mean, he's really not sawing a
Speaker 1: woman in half, it ruins the show for you what.
Speaker 1: On occasion, I'll go to um some specific conference where
Speaker 1: there's a few people I want to see your specific
Speaker 1: individual And it was in the t I A. Kreft
Speaker 1: Building conference facility, which is on like third and fifty one.
Speaker 1: It's on the thirtieth floor. It's a really interesting facility,
Speaker 1: having a conference center not in the basement, but in
Speaker 1: the sky, surrounded by buildings, and I was there to
Speaker 1: see somebody else, and Matt, Matt was right before, right
Speaker 1: after the person I had come to see, and he
Speaker 1: just takes the stage and you know, choose up the
Speaker 1: scenery destroys the place. And it was really a fascinating concept,
Speaker 1: a fascinating speech about here's what behavioral psychology is, and
Speaker 1: why aren't we applying this in the real world. We
Speaker 1: know this works, We know we can affect people's behavior
Speaker 1: and have them either make better decisions or end up
Speaker 1: doing things that brings them more satisfaction, more happiness. At
Speaker 1: a corporate level, if you're selling widgets, you don't want
Speaker 1: people just to buy your widgets. You want them to
Speaker 1: buy your widgets and have a higher level of satisfaction
Speaker 1: and become a repeat customer. And behavior and psychology can
Speaker 1: really lead companies to finding that right mix that really
Speaker 1: generates not just sales, but sales with happy customers, and
Speaker 1: happy customers become repeat buyers. And I thought it was
Speaker 1: so obvious and so ridiculously. Wait, we're not doing this,
Speaker 1: And you stop and think about it, and suddenly it's wow,
Speaker 1: we're not doing this. You're you. You look at all
Speaker 1: the things in the news recently about some horribly embarrassing
Speaker 1: corporate behavior, and it's pretty clear that most of these
Speaker 1: companies could desperately use a chief behavioral officer and they
Speaker 1: don't have one. And so I thought his conversation was
Speaker 1: so interesting. I said, hey, let's get him into the
Speaker 1: studio and have a conversation. I think that was like
Speaker 1: eight months ago. It took us a long time to
Speaker 1: find a date that worked. He's a busy guy. But
Speaker 1: I think you will find this to be a fascinating conversation.
Speaker 1: If you're all interested in startups, ventures, or behavioral psychology,
Speaker 1: you're going to really enjoy this conversation. So, with no
Speaker 1: further ado, my interview with Matt Wallert. My special guest
Speaker 1: today is Matt Wallert. He is a behavioral psychologist and entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: He has built a number and sold a number of startups.
Speaker 1: He went to Microsoft to work on products that he
Speaker 1: could build at larger scale, eventually becoming a director at
Speaker 1: Microsoft Ventures. Matt Wallert, Welcome to Bloomberg Verry. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Man. So let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: your background, which is very eclectic. You studied both science
Speaker 1: and psychology. You you work in the tech field, but
Speaker 1: you're also a behaviorist, which came first. I was definitely
Speaker 1: so Ion's kid and not a psychology kid. I'm from
Speaker 1: very rural Oregon and had, if anything, I was anti psychology. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm a true like mill and Nowhere kid where well,
Speaker 1: And your impression of psychologist is like, these are people
Speaker 1: who tell you what to do right, like or tell
Speaker 1: you what you think right? You have this impression from television.
Speaker 1: I don't think there was a psychologist in sixty miles
Speaker 1: of where I was. Right, It's not like New York
Speaker 1: where you grew up. Everybody's got a therapist, everybody knows
Speaker 1: what this is like. It was a totally unknown quantity.
Speaker 1: And so I actually it was really anti psych um.
Speaker 1: And then when I went to Swarthmore, I took uh
Speaker 1: intro Psychic and it was taught by a wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 1: professor who's a great research professor, rible teacher, like you
Speaker 1: couldn't even get up and leave the room kind of
Speaker 1: teacher because you would throw them off. But then I
Speaker 1: took another side class with arguably the best teaching professor.
Speaker 1: It's worthmore and I had this amazing experience where they
Speaker 1: reviewed a study and I sort of said to him,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't I don't really agree with their
Speaker 1: interpretation of the results. Not that I disagree with the date,
Speaker 1: I just don't think they're interpreting right. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: this is the most the important thing any teacher could do.
Speaker 1: He said, Look, the rest of the field agrees with
Speaker 1: this interpretation, but this is science, and so there's an
Speaker 1: orderly way for you to argue. You do an experiment
Speaker 1: that proves your side right, you provide countervailing and like
Speaker 1: you can like a scientific method that allows you to
Speaker 1: challenge the prevailing belief. And I was cooked at that moment.
Speaker 1: That was the moment where I went from you know,
Speaker 1: so turned off by well we just debate things and
Speaker 1: whoever is a better order or kind of wins, to like, no,
Speaker 1: we can go and you know you don't disagree with somebody,
Speaker 1: you think they're interpreting it wrong. Great, go run a study.
Speaker 1: So you get your undergraduate degree it's uh Swarthmore UM
Speaker 1: in psychology and education, and then you apply to the
Speaker 1: PhD program at Cornell for psychology, Yeah, social psychology, So
Speaker 1: I um, it's actually funny. I was sort of getting
Speaker 1: recruited by Stanford, Cornell, and the University of Colorado, and
Speaker 1: a chose University of Colorado, and then my advisor calls
Speaker 1: me says, hey, I'm moving to Cornell. So either you
Speaker 1: can come to Colorado but I won't be here, or
Speaker 1: you can go with me to Cornell. So I went
Speaker 1: to Cornell. And you're a startup guy, why not Stanford?
Speaker 1: You would think that's a natural fit. But I'm not
Speaker 1: a startup guy, right, I'm a first generation college kid.
Speaker 1: I've never The way I got into startups was was
Speaker 1: ab Carnanni's fault, right, like I'm I was in in
Speaker 1: the PC program at Cornell, and he uh sort of
Speaker 1: uh called me up and he said, look, we're running
Speaker 1: the startup. We think you could give us some advice.
Speaker 1: And I said, literally, I don't know anything about startups.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about tech. I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about finance. And his personal finance was min dot Com.
Speaker 1: So with his competitor called Thrive, we sold the landing
Speaker 1: tree and I said, I don't know anything about any this.
Speaker 1: He said, don't worry, We'll figure out how to get
Speaker 1: the value out of you and then a year later
Speaker 1: I was there head a product. His name what was
Speaker 1: his name? So that's Av Carnanni. He was the CEO
Speaker 1: of Thrive and and he was the founder. He was
Speaker 1: the he was the co founder with with Orage Knaps.
Speaker 1: He was the tech guy. And he brought you in
Speaker 1: in what role? Uh as so as the lead scientists
Speaker 1: and sort of had a product. They had they had
Speaker 1: built some thing. It wasn't They had this inkling that
Speaker 1: it might not really be the right thing, and so
Speaker 1: I sort of came in and said, yep, not sort
Speaker 1: of behavior from able science perspective, this is probably not
Speaker 1: You're a little bit like Mitt. You're probably not going
Speaker 1: to move the needle. How do we go and build
Speaker 1: something that cam? And then we built it? So let's
Speaker 1: back up a few steps. You're in the PhD program
Speaker 1: at Cornell. This is before Twitter, before Facebook, before social media.
Speaker 1: I'm not that old. Facebook existed sort of not broadly,
Speaker 1: not the way it did today. And by the way,
Speaker 1: when I say it's before all these things, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about the nineteen twenties. This is a decade ago.
Speaker 1: And how do they find you? I had bugglish on
Speaker 1: papers they actually called Dick Taylor. That's what I love
Speaker 1: about academics, right, like they listen there for now sailor
Speaker 1: is is Charlie at Chicago, but he was at one
Speaker 1: point in time, he was in California. He was at
Speaker 1: Chicago at the time. He still because it doesn't that long.
Speaker 1: He was a previous guest. I find his work fascinating
Speaker 1: and he's an endlessly entertaining guy. He is, and and look, Dick,
Speaker 1: I mean, has in some really amazing work. And what
Speaker 1: I love about academics is like, you know, they just
Speaker 1: put their phone number and you know, and so they
Speaker 1: called him up and he answered the phone, and he
Speaker 1: gave him like an hour's worth of advice and then
Speaker 1: they yeah, for free. And then because this is before
Speaker 1: the days of startup mania, right, this is before everybody's
Speaker 1: going to be an advisor of something, right, they just
Speaker 1: he was just sort of like sure, And that's I
Speaker 1: actually think. You know, one of the things I talked
Speaker 1: about often is, you know, if you need advice, go
Speaker 1: find a grad Students like that, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: charge very much, like they don't know, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't know the true value of their information, and they're
Speaker 1: so passionate and happy to talk to you about it.
Speaker 1: So they called it Taylor. They got to the end
Speaker 1: of the hour and they were sort of like, would
Speaker 1: be advisor, and he was like, no, you gotta be
Speaker 1: kidding me. Man, like I'm too busy, but go find
Speaker 1: a grad student. And so I was the grad student.
Speaker 1: They sort of came up. So how do they approach
Speaker 1: you about this? I mean, so we just got on
Speaker 1: a call and they said, he sort of, here's what
Speaker 1: we're building. This is after the dot com collapse, but
Speaker 1: you're sort of in the recovery before the financial before
Speaker 1: the before the financial collapse, which was which was key
Speaker 1: for us, right because here we are in this sort
Speaker 1: of personal finance space and we can acquire by lending
Speaker 1: to read just as the sort of financial collapses. What
Speaker 1: was that publicly announced? What the dollar amount was? No,
Speaker 1: it was it was a like so breaks and was
Speaker 1: what was the Yeah? Good try Like once again you're
Speaker 1: talking to the science guy, right, Like I paid no
Speaker 1: attention to the cap table. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I actually so when they sent me, I remember walking
Speaker 1: through the West Village and nobody should ever do this,
Speaker 1: by the way, like you should know what you're signing
Speaker 1: before you sign it. But I had to talk to
Speaker 1: a V. Carnani about, like, what's a basis point You've
Speaker 1: written me this offica letter with these it's fantastic, but
Speaker 1: like one of these things we'll give you at least
Speaker 1: five of them. We're walking through the West Village and
Speaker 1: he's like explaining, like I knew nothing. He was a
Speaker 1: hundred basis points fantastic lot, you know. So I actually
Speaker 1: remember running around when I got my offer letter from them,
Speaker 1: running around being so happy about the salary because again,
Speaker 1: first generation college kid, like even startup money seemed like
Speaker 1: a lot of money to me. And so then they
Speaker 1: came to me then there was this equity part, and
Speaker 1: I literally was like, I have no idea what this
Speaker 1: means actually, And years later, um I went on to
Speaker 1: build a feminist tool called salary or equity dot com,
Speaker 1: because women are less likely to accept start up offers
Speaker 1: because they want salary, not because they want salary, or
Speaker 1: they don't know what equity means, or it seems riskier
Speaker 1: than it is, and so we actually built a little
Speaker 1: calculator where you put in your offer letter and it
Speaker 1: basically says like that's kind of about so let's let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about behavioral science and how it
Speaker 1: fits into these various UM startup roles that you've had.
Speaker 1: What is the job of chief behavioral officer? So this
Speaker 1: is something I've actually written about and proposed sort of lately,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying really to resolve this um you know,
Speaker 1: this fundamental gap. If you go to any sort of
Speaker 1: C level exec, they'll say, oh, I love behavioral science.
Speaker 1: You know, I love Dana RELI, I love you know,
Speaker 1: thinking fast and slow, I love nudging, I love all
Speaker 1: this stuff. And then I say, okay, well where's your team?
Speaker 1: And they're like, what team? Right is? So's implementing these
Speaker 1: ideas in your actual business? That's right? Whose job is this?
Speaker 1: And and because we know if it's not somebody's job,
Speaker 1: it doesn't get done right and so and there are
Speaker 1: a smattering people who have not taken that title but
Speaker 1: are doing interesting things. So Steve went on morning side, Um,
Speaker 1: you know there are people who are doing sort of this.
Speaker 1: So what I sort of said was I actually don't
Speaker 1: think this is business is fault. I think this is
Speaker 1: psychology's fault. Right. This is something actually we were just
Speaker 1: talking about a minute ago. You know, in the break.
Speaker 1: I think we haven't done a good job of explaining
Speaker 1: how do you go put it into an organization, in
Speaker 1: part because we stayed in academia, right, we didn't come
Speaker 1: out into business. And so I think a chep April
Speaker 1: officer really has three jobs. One of them is the
Speaker 1: application of behavioral science internally, right, So take it for meaning,
Speaker 1: how do we get our employees to do what we
Speaker 1: think is in their own best interests and invest in
Speaker 1: the country of people say they're disengaged at their jobs.
Speaker 1: Who's addressing that? Right? Like hr, yeah, good luck? Right?
Speaker 1: Like women massive attrition. We know that like companies that
Speaker 1: have senior women much much better return profile. They do
Speaker 1: better on Wall Street, but women to treat a lot.
Speaker 1: HRS had fifty years to solve this problem and has
Speaker 1: done nothing. Like maybe we should let behavioral science take
Speaker 1: a crack, Like how do we go change those behavioral things?
Speaker 1: So internal stuff, motivation, retention, recruitment, all, you know, work
Speaker 1: life balance, all of these pieces external stuff. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: actually revamping product and depends what your product is. One
Speaker 1: of the example who runs their behavioral science lab is
Speaker 1: you know, people spend you know, let's call it ninety
Speaker 1: minutes a session in a Walmart, they're in line for
Speaker 1: five minutes, but if you survey them afterwards, that five
Speaker 1: minutes loom super large. There six forever recent the effect.
Speaker 1: It's the last thing they experienced, one that has the
Speaker 1: biggest impact. That's right. You actually wrote about the checkout
Speaker 1: experience in hotels. Why you giving me water when I exit?
Speaker 1: Give it when I arrive, give it to me when
Speaker 1: I leave, And I'm left with, oh, isn't that nice?
Speaker 1: As you as you head out? That's right. It's a
Speaker 1: peak end theory, right, I want those endpoints to really matter.
Speaker 1: And instead, you know, I actually was on the road
Speaker 1: this week. It feels like you're like a thief. You're
Speaker 1: like stealing out of your hotel. You don't even go
Speaker 1: to the desk anymore because you right out. You're just like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like dying and dash exactly. You're like
Speaker 1: a bag and run out. I feel like I'm doing
Speaker 1: something wrong when I like sneak out of my hotel
Speaker 1: to go to the airport. Um, so those sorts of things,
Speaker 1: so external stuff, and then now let me interrupt, do
Speaker 1: you say that this isn't all that well developed externally?
Speaker 1: But when I read about the science behind supermarkets and
Speaker 1: what's eye level and and what is how the whole
Speaker 1: circumference of the store, of the fresh foods and the
Speaker 1: interior of the store all the package goods and what's here,
Speaker 1: and how they make you go to the far opposite
Speaker 1: corner of the store to get milk, which is the
Speaker 1: number one item people come in. And the it just
Speaker 1: works out. The longer you're in the supermarket, the more
Speaker 1: stuff you're gonna buy. So if you're there for one
Speaker 1: item and you have to go as far as humanly
Speaker 1: possible from the entrance, you're gonna end up doing more
Speaker 1: than just buy milk. Yes, And there have been like
Speaker 1: that has become a whole science, right, There have been
Speaker 1: isolated pockets of sort of applied behavioral science, you know,
Speaker 1: in health, for example, they're starting to do some really
Speaker 1: good health decision making work. There are these pockets where
Speaker 1: we've sort of seen stuff. And I think the problem
Speaker 1: is too often companies are like, well, that's great for them,
Speaker 1: and they don't see how it applies to their product, Right,
Speaker 1: it's great for those people over there. Right at this point,
Speaker 1: even I think you know, we talked earlier about you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about behavior economics and people sort of paying
Speaker 1: attention on the stock market. Like, I think, actually finance
Speaker 1: has done a better job. But the problem with finance
Speaker 1: doing a good job is like CpG has gone and said, well,
Speaker 1: that's great for finance, but it's a finance thing, right,
Speaker 1: Behavioral economics totally applies in finance, But what could they
Speaker 1: possibly be doing for us. It's basically figuring out how
Speaker 1: to have lead people to the right decision and then
Speaker 1: giving them all the tools and pathways to get there.
Speaker 1: That's it doesn't matter what the field is. It's it's
Speaker 1: not about the widget, you know, the I think the
Speaker 1: the Hitchcock movie used to call it the McGuinty or
Speaker 1: the mcguffin. Whatever they were chasing was irrelevant. It was
Speaker 1: the chase that mattered. So if the mcguffin was a
Speaker 1: multese falcon or something completely different, it didn't matter. It
Speaker 1: was the chase that h well, and and I think
Speaker 1: that's actually a really good sort of summation of why
Speaker 1: behavioral science matters. Right, It's a process be hero scientists
Speaker 1: are trained interventionists. Right. Let's take the Walmart line example.
Speaker 1: If you ask engineers, you say to the engineers while
Speaker 1: the lines are too long, they're like, well, let's rejigger
Speaker 1: the POS system so people move through faster. Right, And
Speaker 1: if you ask like the store ops people, they'll tell you, well,
Speaker 1: let's put in more checkout counter so they're shorter, and
Speaker 1: those kind of things work. But the raw truth is
Speaker 1: people are in line for five minutes. It's not that
Speaker 1: they're in line for too long. It feels too long.
Speaker 1: So why don't you behavior some with ways to either
Speaker 1: entertain them or keep them otherwise, engage distracted involved so
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like it's a long process. Exactly, Like
Speaker 1: let's do what we did in the New York subway system.
Speaker 1: So New York Subway, you know, we put in these
Speaker 1: signs that tell people when the subways are coming. People
Speaker 1: to think the subways are running way faster. That absolutely.
Speaker 1: I just took a subway here, and the first thing
Speaker 1: you notice, the express is one minute, the local is
Speaker 1: three minutes. But I don't want to walk up that
Speaker 1: giant set of stairs, so I'll take the extra three minutes.
Speaker 1: And you can make a decision, right, and and it's
Speaker 1: three minutes and not like you know, let's say you
Speaker 1: were running late to this thing. You know, you're looking
Speaker 1: at your watch going is it now? Is it now?
Speaker 1: Is it now? Should I run up stairshow over the Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the edge of the subway? When is that train
Speaker 1: coming and you're looking at a screen, O, it's two
Speaker 1: minutes away? That's right. And the nice thing about that
Speaker 1: is it removes ambiguity, and two minutes just doesn't sound
Speaker 1: very long, right, so it contextualizes it really isn't that long.
Speaker 1: So imagine doing that in line. What if we don't
Speaker 1: change the pos and add new lines, we just say, hey,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be out of here in two minutes. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: You you call scientists train interventionists. Are these interventionists working
Speaker 1: companies or are they still in academic? I think they're
Speaker 1: largely still in academia. And I think that's because we
Speaker 1: haven't gone to two companies and helped explain why this happens. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you go to Walmart example, Right, if you
Speaker 1: go to the engineers, they'll have an engineering solution. If
Speaker 1: you go to the marketers, they'll have a marketing solution.
Speaker 1: There's nobody who's solution agnostic and his problem focused, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what science really is, right, when you think
Speaker 1: about any scientists, when you're running a bunch of experience ements, right,
Speaker 1: you're essentially running an intervention seeing if it works, running
Speaker 1: an intervention seeing if it works. It's not the experiment
Speaker 1: that matters. It's the outcome that you care about. So
Speaker 1: you know, in the pivot, the fixed point is the outcome,
Speaker 1: and then you pivot around experiments that help you test
Speaker 1: around that outcome. And so scientists almost accidentally become really
Speaker 1: good product people because what they're doing is, you know,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm trying to test. I know what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to test. I know what I'm trying to test,
Speaker 1: and I'll just test until I sort of I'm able
Speaker 1: to get my hands around the edges. I don't have
Speaker 1: a predefined sort of you know, this is the way
Speaker 1: that I operate against that. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about startups and culture, and I have to begin by
Speaker 1: asking you. I love the show Silicon Valley. It just
Speaker 1: started the new season. Do you watch it? I don't don't.
Speaker 1: Was how accurate is it? Here's why there's a reason
Speaker 1: I don't watch it. I've seen episodes. There's you know, I
Speaker 1: I don't watch it. And it actually was challenging for
Speaker 1: me to watch the first season of Girls for the
Speaker 1: same reason, which is it's it's clearly farcical, but if
Speaker 1: you're in if you're in that part of the world,
Speaker 1: it's just a little too close to home for me. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't like uncomfortable comedy. Right, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you're not a Larry David fat, Yeah, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't do well with uncomfortable comedy. And and it is
Speaker 1: a little uncomfortable with me. And it's why, you know,
Speaker 1: I help a lot of startups, but I try to
Speaker 1: make you know, I try to spend as much time
Speaker 1: outside of that world as I can, because I think
Speaker 1: that's where, you know, if you want to be a
Speaker 1: good product person, you've got to be exposed to the problems.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the problems of Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: is has so insulated itself from problem sets. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just solving its own problems at this point. You know,
Speaker 1: there's two things that I have to share with you. First,
Speaker 1: I'm not the target demographic for Girls. Watch the first show,
Speaker 1: and basically, you know, sorry tapping tapping out really early
Speaker 1: on that one. But the fascinating thing about Mike Judge,
Speaker 1: who is behind Silicon Valley. He started out doing the
Speaker 1: broadest idiocracy, the broadest dumbest comedy, and then narrowed it down,
Speaker 1: narrowed it down. I think he did Office Office Space,
Speaker 1: which was a little ridiculous, but not quite as ridiculous.
Speaker 1: This is the one that you know, it's clearly parody,
Speaker 1: but it seems to venture into cinema verity quite often,
Speaker 1: and it it to someone who's not out there, it
Speaker 1: really rings true. Yeah, I mean and it is, and
Speaker 1: it's hilarious, and it was really funny and really well acted,
Speaker 1: and I think, uh, they've done it. Yeah, they've done it.
Speaker 1: I think casting really was what made that show right there.
Speaker 1: They're believable characters that are able to carry it off
Speaker 1: as opposed to like, um uh, what's the other skiky
Speaker 1: science show that's more slapstick Big Bang? Right? That is
Speaker 1: clear sort of laugh track comedy, right, you know, the
Speaker 1: characters are so over the top, so unbelief. Well you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to feel like you know those people, um
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley. I really do know of those people.
Speaker 1: So so let's let me ask the same question differently,
Speaker 1: how does start up culture get unfairly mischaracterized in general,
Speaker 1: not just HBO, but in general. What do we misunderstand
Speaker 1: about startup culture educate the listening public if you can. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting and hard question. I think it's not
Speaker 1: uh And I want to sort of caveat this carefully, right, So,
Speaker 1: I think it it. People really do think of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: They think of young white males doing these things, and
Speaker 1: in reality, there are you know, we know lots of
Speaker 1: people of color. That's right, Old, older entrepreneurs with families
Speaker 1: are more likely to have sort of better exits, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we actually know there's a bunch of other variable there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really interesting start ups in the middle
Speaker 1: of the kind entree, you know. There there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things. Now, there's not as many people of
Speaker 1: color as we'd want. There's not as many women as
Speaker 1: we'd want. That's a serious issue that we're I spent
Speaker 1: a huge amount of my time working on. And that's
Speaker 1: but it's a little bit of a see it be
Speaker 1: it problem, right, if we see it be it problems, yeah,
Speaker 1: CB A problem is like, well, if I never see
Speaker 1: a female scientist as a little girl, how do I
Speaker 1: ever have the opportunity to think, oh, I might be
Speaker 1: so it's a cycle that that has to be broke,
Speaker 1: that's right. And so we need to be fiercely critical
Speaker 1: of the homogeney of startups while at the same time
Speaker 1: recognizing all of the people that are outside of that
Speaker 1: homogeny that you know, and we need to hold those
Speaker 1: ups so that we get more of them. Right. That
Speaker 1: that's really uh, that's really interesting. UM. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a bit about the gender bias sets out in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: There's been a couple of high profile lawsuits. We've seen
Speaker 1: the turmoil at uber because of it. Um even a
Speaker 1: big venture capital firm like Climate Perkins had had a litigation.
Speaker 1: Is there a gender bias issue? And I mean there's no,
Speaker 1: there's no. To me, that's a that's like saying, is
Speaker 1: they're global warming? Right of economists will tell you that
Speaker 1: there is a gender wage gap, right like you know,
Speaker 1: to me, denying the science, it's amazing to me the
Speaker 1: people that deny the science of it, that they think
Speaker 1: that's a problem of opinion. I did this research actually
Speaker 1: with with pay Scale, where they said, hey, do you
Speaker 1: want to put anything in our service? Said ya, I
Speaker 1: wanna ask two questions, Um, do you think men women
Speaker 1: have equal opportunities in the workplace in general? And do
Speaker 1: you think men and women have equal opportunities? Um in
Speaker 1: your workplace? And if you look at men, only one
Speaker 1: in five men see sexism both near them and in
Speaker 1: the world. Right, So only one in five men something
Speaker 1: that we know is scientifically true, like actually are able
Speaker 1: to see that. Another one in five see it in
Speaker 1: the world but not near them, And three or five
Speaker 1: men just don't think it exists out there or in here,
Speaker 1: three and five. My special guest today is Matt Wallert.
Speaker 1: He is an entrepreneur behavioral psychologist, and previously he was
Speaker 1: a director at Microsoft Ventures, where he did a variety
Speaker 1: of work, including some behavioral psychology at Bing. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: So that was actually prior to joining Ventures. I joined
Speaker 1: Ventures when I came back to New York. Um, I
Speaker 1: have a lovely eighteen month old and my wife said,
Speaker 1: you know, we were out in Seattle, said I want
Speaker 1: to co back to New York. My family is. I
Speaker 1: said to Microsoft, hey, I'm gonna go back, and they
Speaker 1: said Ventures. I said okay, and uh, And so I
Speaker 1: spent a good time there. But previous to that had
Speaker 1: done a bunch of products. What did you do with
Speaker 1: BING and and how does behavioral psychology apply to being?
Speaker 1: My favorite thing about BING has been the three dimensional
Speaker 1: Bird's eye View. Was the first mapping software that had that.
Speaker 1: And when you're looking for a house, you're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I could see the park, I could see
Speaker 1: the house, I could see the water, I could It's
Speaker 1: amazing the level of detail that you could zoom in
Speaker 1: on with that product. I was fascinated by that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean mapping in general has always been fascinating to me, since,
Speaker 1: you know, coming from a rural place, I didn't have
Speaker 1: expose you know, I think you didn't get to go
Speaker 1: as many places as you do when you're on these
Speaker 1: coast teas. You travel around and things, and uh so
Speaker 1: it was a fun, really fun way to you know.
Speaker 1: I looked at a lot of maps as a kid
Speaker 1: as a way of like sort of visualizing the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. Um so, so I really when I
Speaker 1: first came to Microsoft, they sort of said, look, you know,
Speaker 1: our our product process of very engineering driven, um which
Speaker 1: sometimes means that we make things that people aren't actually
Speaker 1: interested in using. So we want to sort of reverse that.
Speaker 1: How do you think about what people want to use.
Speaker 1: And so the first thing I actually ever worked on
Speaker 1: at Microsoft was putting cling On into the Bing translator.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and it was It was actually a really
Speaker 1: hard project because Klingon is actually a uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's a created language, and the linguist that created at
Speaker 1: Mark okrand Um, you know, basically want to break all
Speaker 1: the earthly rules. So like all Trio terrestrial languages, real
Speaker 1: languages have a way of saying hello, the Clingon way
Speaker 1: of saying hello is just what do you want? Right?
Speaker 1: And so when you try and do that in a translator,
Speaker 1: what what do you want from me? It's not that
Speaker 1: far off. Yeah, And so it was very it was
Speaker 1: very funny, I mean, hard to make a translator. But
Speaker 1: the point was how do we make something that takes
Speaker 1: a an audience that normally wouldn't engage with our translation
Speaker 1: and sort of start to look at it in a
Speaker 1: different way. And so that was the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that I did at Microsoft. So, you know, I created
Speaker 1: our what's now known as our Being in the Classroom program,
Speaker 1: and so they what is being in the class well?
Speaker 1: So so so they started with a key data insight,
Speaker 1: which was we're not seeing as much church traffick from
Speaker 1: schools as we would think we do. And so they
Speaker 1: had these plans. The marketing department decided, well, kids aren't
Speaker 1: currying us enough, and so we're gonna have these plans
Speaker 1: go run a campaign around like encouraging curiosity and kids.
Speaker 1: And I said, look, I had a dasy degree, Like,
Speaker 1: let's just go look at some stuff. And you know,
Speaker 1: kids are plenty curious. You go out to a classroom,
Speaker 1: you could see kids are curious. Like, that's transparently not
Speaker 1: the problem. So when you go out and look, right,
Speaker 1: one of the tenants of behavior science, go look at
Speaker 1: how people are behaving. You know, it was really teacher driven,
Speaker 1: and it was actually less about they wanted to search.
Speaker 1: It was what we call inhibiting pressures. So it was
Speaker 1: concerns about advertising, right, you know, schools are advertising free zones,
Speaker 1: search engines or not. Privacy. I don't really know what
Speaker 1: Google is doing with my data, but I have concerns
Speaker 1: about it, right, have concerns about them taking my kids data.
Speaker 1: And then um, even classroom searches. I mean, of all
Speaker 1: the things, well, that's the problem, right, It's all identifiable, right,
Speaker 1: And if they were using particularly if you're using Google
Speaker 1: in the classroom, So signing into Gmail and those sorts
Speaker 1: of things then you're searching are getting identified that profile, right,
Speaker 1: So it's all getting sucked into some profile and I
Speaker 1: don't know what they're doing with it. And then the
Speaker 1: third concern was adult content. So what we did was
Speaker 1: roll out a version of being being in the classroom
Speaker 1: that's free for schools to sign up for. And then
Speaker 1: when you search from schools, it's ad free. Um, not tracked, yeah,
Speaker 1: not tracked, and and safe search is locked on and
Speaker 1: so um. And then Google eventually did the same thing,
Speaker 1: sort of following on to us UM and so but
Speaker 1: again you saw massive behavioral change increases in school searches.
Speaker 1: That's a giant number. But that's the thing, Like, it's
Speaker 1: so often people think that the problem is what we
Speaker 1: call a promoting pressure like curiosity. People don't They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: why aren't people searching? Well, they don't want to, right,
Speaker 1: and so we're gonna encourage them to want to. So
Speaker 1: that's not the problem. Why are you working for United Airlines? Don't?
Speaker 1: Don't they need a chief behavioral psychologist, especially for their
Speaker 1: own people's decision making? Is this is The goal of
Speaker 1: my CBO sort of crusade that I'm on is I
Speaker 1: do think airlines. I've actually done work with Southwest like,
Speaker 1: which is a totally different experience. And it's funny. Actually
Speaker 1: I got kicked off the United flight. Oh for what? Um?
Speaker 1: So I this was? Actually this was that was a
Speaker 1: puddle jumper. I heard you mentioned this. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: got I got kicked off of a puddle jumper years ago.
Speaker 1: Um because the stewardess was abusing the guy in front
Speaker 1: of me, and I said, excuse me, what's your name?
Speaker 1: And she knew in that moment he's gonna report me,
Speaker 1: and she said, I want you guys off my plane.
Speaker 1: And it turns out a stewardess can kick whoever they
Speaker 1: want off the gate agent kid for any reason. Gate
Speaker 1: agent can't do anything about it. Uh, and so so
Speaker 1: they kicked me off. And it's funny because did you
Speaker 1: get her name? I? Did you know? I? I? She
Speaker 1: say her name and then she can be off the plane.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. United was not. They basically think if
Speaker 1: you get kicked off a plane, it's your own fault, right,
Speaker 1: But they and and interestingly they've not been very apologized.
Speaker 1: You know, they're sort of like this guy deserve what
Speaker 1: he got, you know. Uh, they're this whole thing has
Speaker 1: been so bungled, you know from a from dot Galilee
Speaker 1: at n y U has just reamed United for there
Speaker 1: are three rules of this. You not only violated each
Speaker 1: of the rules. And I'm doing this from memory, admit
Speaker 1: your error, offered to accept responsibility, offered to repair it
Speaker 1: each step along the way. You just made it worse.
Speaker 1: It's it's astonishing, and it really, I mean, I have
Speaker 1: to say I could drag back up their old their
Speaker 1: old like apology letter to me, but it really was
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing that we're like, it's the
Speaker 1: corporate culture there. Yeah, and it was and and that's
Speaker 1: where culture really matters. And it's funny. Actually a friend
Speaker 1: of mine, dance Storms, great product guy here in the
Speaker 1: city tweeted at me today he said, oh, it looks
Speaker 1: like United was listening, because I had tweeted at Alaska
Speaker 1: and virgin and said, hey, you know, you should put
Speaker 1: into your employee app a way that makes it much
Speaker 1: easier for them to make decisions like giving somebody free
Speaker 1: food or free entertainment or miles on the spot when
Speaker 1: something bad happens, and United today said hey, we're going
Speaker 1: to do that. Oh really, that's that's part of it,
Speaker 1: part of the their announcement. I think this morning, where
Speaker 1: yesterday was, we put it in our app I think
Speaker 1: to use from now this will have blown over. But
Speaker 1: this is this is a giant drag on them for
Speaker 1: god knows how long. And it's the thing that's amazing
Speaker 1: is it's so avoidable. It's such a self inflicted wounds.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing I think, you know, this
Speaker 1: is why I'm on this sort of CBO sort of
Speaker 1: question Chief Behavioral Office, here's g P A officer, because
Speaker 1: I think there are so many things that we see
Speaker 1: as FATA company that that really are actually avoidable. Right.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, we were going back to
Speaker 1: the gender issue, right, like we think, oh, women get
Speaker 1: pregnant and they leave the workplace and they don't want
Speaker 1: to come back. That's not true at all, Right, Like
Speaker 1: there are all these systematic structural things. We don't have
Speaker 1: to accept these things as true. Right, everything is on
Speaker 1: the table for change. So I've tried to bring a
Speaker 1: lot of women onto the show, and they're is a
Speaker 1: chicken and egg issue in that I want to bring
Speaker 1: senior women with experience and and expertise, and there are
Speaker 1: plenty of them, but they're now in such demands that
Speaker 1: either they don't respond or I've had ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the hundred and fifty or so guests are women.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's no a near half. And I
Speaker 1: don't even think it's proportionate to how the industry is structured.
Speaker 1: But you're still starting out with an industry that at
Speaker 1: the senior level, forget fifty fifty. I don't even think
Speaker 1: we're in finance and and some other related fields. It's astonishing.
Speaker 1: And so your example of having a woman a kid,
Speaker 1: see a female scientist, there is this sort of which
Speaker 1: comes from Yeah, there's the problem, and and you know,
Speaker 1: I this is this is why it is so frusting.
Speaker 1: The three and five men don't think sexism exists, like
Speaker 1: I think people don't draw things to their natural conclusion. Right.
Speaker 1: If you're saying is there's no sexism, there's no systematic
Speaker 1: sum in the world. Yet yet we only have sort
Speaker 1: of like ten percent female CEOs. You're telling me that
Speaker 1: there is some genetic, gendered reason that women can't run companies.
Speaker 1: And if that's a statement, making you just I can't
Speaker 1: say things on there like you're just wrong, right, like
Speaker 1: that you The natural conclusion of those two facts is
Speaker 1: that we are genetically born to be a CEO. Something
Speaker 1: about the genetics that makes you a man also makes
Speaker 1: you CEO worthy, Right, that's what you're saying if you're
Speaker 1: saying sexism doesn't exist, and the status quo that we
Speaker 1: have is is less less women. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the startups that you've done that are geared
Speaker 1: towards making the world a better place. Tell us about
Speaker 1: salary or equity? So I, uh have a like the
Speaker 1: product guy in me. Every time I build something, I
Speaker 1: recognize how I screwed it up, and then I have
Speaker 1: to build something to sort of correct my screwing cure.
Speaker 1: That's right, and so, um, you know, salary or equity
Speaker 1: is a really a reaction to that conversation we were
Speaker 1: talking earlier, right where I got my first offer and
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about equity, right, And so there
Speaker 1: are whole underrepresented groups who when we bring them into
Speaker 1: the startup environment because they didn't, you know, grow with
Speaker 1: an engineer parent, they didn't grow up with a Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley parent. They didn't grow up with these things. I
Speaker 1: don't know what equity is, right, And so we've actually
Speaker 1: created a little tool where you come in and you
Speaker 1: sort of put in some of the variabs from your
Speaker 1: offer letter and it will give you a risk adjusted
Speaker 1: sort of. Yeah. It's kind of like twenty year in salary, right,
Speaker 1: so that you can start to compare offers um in
Speaker 1: better ways. You know, we built get Raised, which is
Speaker 1: helping different different startup than startup equity. But yeah, we're
Speaker 1: working in a sort of an adjacent space, right, and
Speaker 1: so this is the you know, uh, we've held women
Speaker 1: are two point three billion dollars in raises um by
Speaker 1: sort of um creating a structure where they can come
Speaker 1: in and tell me what you do, where you work,
Speaker 1: how much you make. We'll tell you if you're underpaid,
Speaker 1: and then you so you're comparing this against a database
Speaker 1: of that that job. That's yeah exactly. We use bureaulabor
Speaker 1: statistics data, we use our own data, we use public
Speaker 1: market data. And then you answer a few more and
Speaker 1: it generates a letter that you can give to your boss,
Speaker 1: basically laying out a like here's market here, open job
Speaker 1: postings in the area. Here's what I've done. Here's what
Speaker 1: I'm going to do, Like, here's how I provide business value.
Speaker 1: And that's been incredibly effective at getting women raises. Um
Speaker 1: and so two or three billion dollars so far. And
Speaker 1: you guys take of that is it's all free. We
Speaker 1: have been speaking with Matt Walert, formally of Microsoft Ventures
Speaker 1: and a variety of other enterprises. Check out my daily
Speaker 1: column at Bloomberg dot com, slash View, or follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at rid Halts. I'm Barry rid Halts. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. Matt. Thank you so much for for doing this.
Speaker 1: Thank thanks for having me. It's been fun. Uh. We
Speaker 1: were talking during the break about the various names you
Speaker 1: have for startups get raised, salary or equity churn less, Thrive.
Speaker 1: Who creates these? You know? Uh so some of them.
Speaker 1: I remember exactly where it came from. Thrive was before
Speaker 1: my time. Um uh, Turnless. I actually was the CMO
Speaker 1: of Thrive. We were I remember having to treat with him.
Speaker 1: Any Drive was what was sold to lending treaty Mint.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. How is that the opposite? Because if you
Speaker 1: go to Mint, you can't find a thrive tab. Is
Speaker 1: it just integrated and and mean I stand alone? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they renamed it money right, and then I think
Speaker 1: shuttered it in one of their sort of is that
Speaker 1: the natural end game for all these acquisitions or are
Speaker 1: they really just aquahiers they want the engineering town. No.
Speaker 1: I think there was real product there. But I think
Speaker 1: you know what happened at a time, you know, when
Speaker 1: when the collapse came along, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: business had to reorient the they built. They built it,
Speaker 1: bought it primarily because we could show that we could
Speaker 1: raise people's credit scores substantially in a fairly short amount
Speaker 1: of times. So you get, yeah, you get credit score
Speaker 1: increases on the twenty to fifty point range in six months.
Speaker 1: And so their idea was, look, you know, a six
Speaker 1: hundred mortgage lead isn't worth nearly as much as a
Speaker 1: six fifty. Let's send our people who are not really
Speaker 1: ready to you. You'll turn them around, get them ready,
Speaker 1: and then bring them back when they're when they're that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: What is churnalists? So journalists? This was so I actually
Speaker 1: it's one of the few names I actually really like.
Speaker 1: Uh And and it was and everybody knows what churn is.
Speaker 1: It's you go to Netflix. They added so many subscribers,
Speaker 1: but they lost so many. And so I was having
Speaker 1: a drink with the CMO of Thrive after the acquisition.
Speaker 1: He had left to Thrive, and he and I were
Speaker 1: just talking, and you know, we were talking about what
Speaker 1: makes a good company good, and you know, I said,
Speaker 1: good companies their churnless, right, like, you know, no one
Speaker 1: ever has to leave because it meets their needs, right.
Speaker 1: And I was like, and that's how you employees that
Speaker 1: could be customers. I was like, you know that because
Speaker 1: I'm a behavior guy, right, and so you know, churn
Speaker 1: is the ultimate sort of like measure of behavior, right,
Speaker 1: because it's literally am I gonna do it? Or not
Speaker 1: do it? And so I sort of was like, oh, really,
Speaker 1: good companies don't have turn and he was like, you
Speaker 1: should call your next company turnless. And I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, And we did and didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with reducing churning company. And so we were while
Speaker 1: we were building, you know, we built sort of behavioral
Speaker 1: interventions for lots of people. We built the AIRPS retirement tools,
Speaker 1: we built um um some various interventions around sort of
Speaker 1: choice in in food and exercise and other things. And
Speaker 1: it was always about behavior, and so the idea really
Speaker 1: was to build interesting, sticky, behavior modifying things for the world.
Speaker 1: That's where get Raised. You know, we built that on
Speaker 1: the side while we were there, Right, it was building
Speaker 1: those sorts of things, and um, salary equity you went
Speaker 1: over that. So get Raised generates a letter which individual
Speaker 1: takes their boss sally equity is really just informational. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the value of the offer you've gotten. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: then the net result of salary equity is basically taking
Speaker 1: the equity portion of your offer, and it gives you
Speaker 1: a sentence that says you should think you sort of
Speaker 1: think of this as like x number of dollars per year, right,
Speaker 1: So it'said. It basically takes into account investing um and
Speaker 1: sort of risk adjusted return and sort of breaks that
Speaker 1: into a yearly salary, so that if you're comparing, for example,
Speaker 1: a startup offer and a Microsoft offer, you can say
Speaker 1: the equity component is worth blank. So here's the question
Speaker 1: I have to ask you. And I found this fascinating
Speaker 1: um in your bio. So you you keep saying I'm
Speaker 1: a behavior guy, I'm a psychologist. I'm behavioral psychology guy.
Speaker 1: But all the speeches I've seen you've given, most of
Speaker 1: the writings I've seen you've made, they invariably have a
Speaker 1: focus or at least an element of this, technology, this, startup, this.
Speaker 1: And you said when I left Microsoft, I got far
Speaker 1: more recruiter inbound based on my background in startups and
Speaker 1: ventures than I did in behavioral science, despite being considerably
Speaker 1: better the ladder. So why is that, you know? I
Speaker 1: think it goes back to this. I don't think companies
Speaker 1: are are There's a few companies out there looking for
Speaker 1: behavioral scientists, UM, but most of them I don't think
Speaker 1: I've woken up to the fact that they don't have
Speaker 1: teams and they need to write that this is going
Speaker 1: to be the sort of next way they're going to
Speaker 1: generate value in their business, both internally and externally. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's, you know, a part of
Speaker 1: what's behind that. I think I leaned towards um technology.
Speaker 1: You know, technology when I meet with people, I built
Speaker 1: lots of things in the world that are not technology focused.
Speaker 1: They just you know, often their integrations into other programs, right,
Speaker 1: technology often build standalone things, and so they're easier to
Speaker 1: point to UM, and I know how to build them
Speaker 1: fast and cheap and come from that world, and so
Speaker 1: you know, it's natural that I gravitate there. But I
Speaker 1: don't think it has to be technology. Right, We're talking
Speaker 1: earlier about the subway signs, Right, you know, I think
Speaker 1: putting up a sign in a Walmart line is not
Speaker 1: a you know, there's nothing tech about that. UM, it's
Speaker 1: just a you know, it's just it's a good behavioral intervention. Right,
Speaker 1: It's good behave real interventions. So there was something fascinating
Speaker 1: that I read that I have to ask you. You.
Speaker 1: I know, you do a lot of speaking gigs, but
Speaker 1: you refuse to accept speaking fees. And just in the
Speaker 1: news was Obama being criticized for taking a four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar speaking fee from a Wall Street firm. The
Speaker 1: rest of us, who are either in academia, authors, writing books,
Speaker 1: or just otherwise public figures, it's a lucrative side gig.
Speaker 1: You know, the greatest thing I could do during lunch
Speaker 1: is walk out of my office, walk three blocks, walk
Speaker 1: into a conference room, go blah blah blah for forty
Speaker 1: five minutes, pick up a check for grand and go
Speaker 1: back to lunch. Why have you decided I'm not interested
Speaker 1: in taking speaking fees. I mean, I think what you
Speaker 1: choose to get paid for is really an important way
Speaker 1: of of how your approach life, right like you know,
Speaker 1: we are almost I don't disagree with you. Almost every
Speaker 1: everything that you could do is is potentially monetize herble
Speaker 1: right like almost you know? Okay, I mean listen, I
Speaker 1: speak it at nonprofits all the time. I don't charge them.
Speaker 1: I speak at universities. I've spoken at n y U,
Speaker 1: at m I t at Harvard at Columbia. I never tried,
Speaker 1: even though Harvard is richer than you know, crotious. I
Speaker 1: never charge them a speaking fee because it's an educational thing.
Speaker 1: But if it's a conference where they're selling tickets and
Speaker 1: people are doing it for more than a break, even
Speaker 1: what why wouldn't you? And and by the way, there
Speaker 1: are things that other people get paid for that I've
Speaker 1: elected not to get paid for. Plus it allows me
Speaker 1: to stay objective and neutral and except to reject what
Speaker 1: I want because it's what I want as opposed to
Speaker 1: going and earning a buck and to enjoy it, right,
Speaker 1: and to enjoy it, and I want to enjoy the
Speaker 1: spread of information. I think spreading information is incredibly important
Speaker 1: and I think you know, uh, the places that do
Speaker 1: that do Um, there's some places to sort of say,
Speaker 1: we want to pay you a speaker fee, and that's
Speaker 1: just part of how we work. So I asked them
Speaker 1: to donate to a domestic violence shelter. So actually just
Speaker 1: came back from a passo yesterday where an agency had
Speaker 1: a fee structure and they donated to a domestic violence
Speaker 1: shelter on my behalf. Um, so so there are you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it happens, but generally speaking, like, I think people
Speaker 1: should get paid for doing right unless unless the unless
Speaker 1: sharing knowledge is your job. Right Like if my job
Speaker 1: is a journalist, yeah, I get paid for that. Right.
Speaker 1: If your job is to be a speaker, get paid
Speaker 1: for that. I just don't want my job to be
Speaker 1: being a speaker. I always want my job to be
Speaker 1: building things. So actually saying that changes what you will
Speaker 1: or won't accept, because now it's like, who do I
Speaker 1: want to talk to. I don't care about the salary.
Speaker 1: I don't care about this. It's oh, that's an audience
Speaker 1: I want to address wherever, and you know, and so
Speaker 1: I do you know, speak eternally. A lot of speaking
Speaker 1: engagements send them off to other people that that I
Speaker 1: think would be better or more interesting. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: actually correct something you said earlier, refer to me as
Speaker 1: a cold and so I don't consult either, right, No,
Speaker 1: I only what is I believe in, you know, coming
Speaker 1: to get to change your mind, to how to get
Speaker 1: you to think differently about behavioral science. He's part of
Speaker 1: what's important to me in the world, and I think
Speaker 1: it generates a better world. And I want to do
Speaker 1: it for as many people as I can. What I
Speaker 1: charge money for is coming in actually doing it, right.
Speaker 1: I want to get charged for the doing. I want
Speaker 1: to get paid on the things that I build, the implementation,
Speaker 1: the execution, because that's what matters. Because here's the thing
Speaker 1: about science, right, none of my ideas are original. They
Speaker 1: come from a long lineage of people before me. You're
Speaker 1: standing on the shoulders of giants, and many people will
Speaker 1: stand on my shoulders after me. Right, there's this long
Speaker 1: and and if every one of those people like again,
Speaker 1: I like taking these to their sort of extremes because
Speaker 1: it makes me think of, you know, sort of thing
Speaker 1: differently about them. If all of those people before me
Speaker 1: had refused to share their information unless it was monetized,
Speaker 1: I could never be where I am. There's a fascinating
Speaker 1: priceonmics article that talks about how hand and full of
Speaker 1: people have bought up the publishers of all the scientific
Speaker 1: journals and university UM peer reviewed things and they're charging
Speaker 1: absurd money for subscriptions and it's really crimping the exchange
Speaker 1: of ideas. That's something that should not be a for
Speaker 1: profit entity. Somebody should have had the forethought of buying
Speaker 1: it and putting it in the public sphere public domain, right.
Speaker 1: I think that that, you know, that's the kind of
Speaker 1: like Mike Bloomberg sort of philanthropy kind of thing is
Speaker 1: buying up those rights. And I think sciencests responded appropriately,
Speaker 1: which is to say, we don't. We're gonna care less
Speaker 1: about those journals than we used to. We're gonna start
Speaker 1: doing open science. There's a replicability product right like project like,
Speaker 1: we're starting to do these things that say no science
Speaker 1: should take place in public both because people draw conclusions
Speaker 1: from its stuff and it should be replicable and important,
Speaker 1: and because everyone should have access to those insights. I
Speaker 1: couldn't agree more. Um, you did a ted talk that
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting about motivating people to do
Speaker 1: work worth doing. Yeah, explain. So there's this quote I
Speaker 1: love from Teddy Roosevelt. Far and away, the best prize
Speaker 1: that life has to offer is the chance to work
Speaker 1: hard at work worth doing. Um And I think you know,
Speaker 1: I like money is meaningful, and I don't you know
Speaker 1: for anyone without it, they'll tell you how meaningful it.
Speaker 1: It's a tool that helps you achieve things that are
Speaker 1: useful in life. But there is certain but from a
Speaker 1: motivational perspective, what we see is meaning. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: once you sort of surpass a certain level of money,
Speaker 1: meaning is far more important. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: things I actually bring up in this talk that you know,
Speaker 1: I think illustrates this well is if you ask seniors
Speaker 1: in college you know what's important about your first job,
Speaker 1: that all say salaries, Like, salary is the most important feature.
Speaker 1: If you survey them a mere year into the job market,
Speaker 1: meaning has become the lead experience, meaning what they've learned.
Speaker 1: That's right, those things become the far more important piece. Right.
Speaker 1: People get this very quickly. Um And I actually think
Speaker 1: that's one of the crisises of mental health in the
Speaker 1: United States is just how many people go to work
Speaker 1: and are miserable, disengaged, you know, sort of don't find
Speaker 1: meaning in their work. Um. This idea of meaning management,
Speaker 1: I actually think is really important. How do you go
Speaker 1: and say, you know? And I actually think there are
Speaker 1: interesting tech tools you could build. So imagine something like
Speaker 1: let's pretend you were a coder and you're far far
Speaker 1: removed from the end user. Right, You're working at Microsoft,
Speaker 1: so it's it's not a small startup or something. You're
Speaker 1: far removed from the end user. What if I said
Speaker 1: to you, hey, did you know seven million people touched
Speaker 1: your code today? Right? What a powerful like you know,
Speaker 1: sort of motivating investment. And it's true, right, there's almost
Speaker 1: you know, almost everything that people do in the world,
Speaker 1: Like for me, even the lowliest janitor. Like imagine if
Speaker 1: I could say, after you clean this hall, hey, did
Speaker 1: you know like ten thousand people walked this hall today? Right?
Speaker 1: Like that's an amazing just allowing people to see the
Speaker 1: echoes of what they do. Um, you know, and it
Speaker 1: goes into so many things. I mean, I think one
Speaker 1: of the points I make in this thing about sort
Speaker 1: of college students is we sell college to people as
Speaker 1: as a financial thing. Right, we say the reason to
Speaker 1: go to college is to make more money, that's right,
Speaker 1: And it is to get a job. But what it's
Speaker 1: really about is to get a meaningful job. Right. What
Speaker 1: college allows you to do is to is to have
Speaker 1: the privilege of picking something that is important to you, right. Um,
Speaker 1: and so I think that that I love science fiction. Um,
Speaker 1: not just sort of on a personal entertainment level. But
Speaker 1: you know when I when product people come and tell me, like,
Speaker 1: what do you I I habitually don't read nonfiction. I
Speaker 1: talk to people to learn things, and I read to
Speaker 1: learn about the world that emotionally, and so I read
Speaker 1: almost a totally fiction and I love and I love
Speaker 1: science fiction because science fiction is this clever thought of
Speaker 1: experiment of the world with limits removed, and it starts
Speaker 1: to get you thinking an interesting product direction you mentioned earlier. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, uh idiocracy, right, which I think is a
Speaker 1: particular kind of vision of the world. But I think
Speaker 1: there's also a vision of the world that's very star
Speaker 1: Trek Like think about star Trek. The exist in a
Speaker 1: sort of post need world. We've been able we can
Speaker 1: synthesize matter out of energy, right, and so we've sort
Speaker 1: of surpassed basic human needs. And what do they do?
Speaker 1: Like do they sit on their couch and watch travel,
Speaker 1: travel the universe and explore That's right, Then they do
Speaker 1: amazing science and they build amazing art, and like, I
Speaker 1: actually think that's the real thing. I think if you
Speaker 1: the big change of a post need world, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people scared about what happens as as robots
Speaker 1: displaced jobs. What I think the really amazing part of
Speaker 1: that is that it frees up people to do other things.
Speaker 1: And the real dominant question is not how do we
Speaker 1: replace those jobs with with you know, so there other
Speaker 1: meaningless jobs, it's what do we do with the sheer
Speaker 1: amount of human potential that has now been unlocked? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: how do we incorporate those people into science? How do
Speaker 1: we incorporate them into design? How do we incorporate them
Speaker 1: into other things that computers don't do well? Not just
Speaker 1: to sort of employ them, but because this is our
Speaker 1: shot at the future, right, how do we take the
Speaker 1: ten thousand people that got displaced by you know, sort
Speaker 1: of closing a factory and get them started thinking about
Speaker 1: greening the world. That that's interesting. Something else that came
Speaker 1: up in one of your public speeches. Stayed with me.
Speaker 1: What do Eminem's tell us about human psychology? So people? Uh,
Speaker 1: I love this example, although I will tell you that
Speaker 1: that I'm going to find something different because the Mars
Speaker 1: people are like refused to give me free M and
Speaker 1: m's for life, which I think, after having mentioned it
Speaker 1: so many times, I ought to be able to get
Speaker 1: at least a package. Have you taken a speaking fee?
Speaker 1: I know by my own right. So, so, the really
Speaker 1: powerful thing I think about Eminem's as a as a
Speaker 1: sort of metaphor for behavior change is that it shows
Speaker 1: how people focus on the wrong thing, right, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of people really go think about creating new flavors,
Speaker 1: how delicious they are, etcetera. But the dominant thing that
Speaker 1: keeps me from eating M and m's all the time
Speaker 1: is availability. Right, they're Eminem's right here. I'd be eating
Speaker 1: them right now, right, and so would you, right Like,
Speaker 1: it's that availability factor that is so interesting, And so
Speaker 1: you know, what people forget is mostly motivating reasons already exist. Right,
Speaker 1: let's go back to Let's use another kind of related
Speaker 1: example that the asking for a raised piece. Right, It's
Speaker 1: not like women don't want to get paid fairly. It's
Speaker 1: not like I don't that Eminem's aren't delicious. The reason
Speaker 1: women don't ask is because it's hard, and there are
Speaker 1: systematic pressures that keep them from asking. The reason I
Speaker 1: don't eat eminem is because they're not here. There are
Speaker 1: systematic inhibiting pressures, and I think people don't. They're eminem's upstairs.
Speaker 1: We can pick we can pick them up on the way.
Speaker 1: This could happen and I might take some to go.
Speaker 1: So the question is why do people eat more eminem's
Speaker 1: when they're multi colored than if you would have just
Speaker 1: put one color in a bowl. People actually less eminem's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love those that. We love that diversity of colors.
Speaker 1: You know, even though I don't think blindfold did anyone
Speaker 1: could tell the difference. There is no difference there. They'll
Speaker 1: tell you there's no there's no taste difference. It's actually
Speaker 1: one of the things I always you know, when I
Speaker 1: try and jog people's mind with this, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 1: think about the fact that you have a favorite color
Speaker 1: of eminem. Any kid on earth will tell you what
Speaker 1: his favorite color color is, right, He's gonna She's gonna
Speaker 1: tell you, he's gonna tell you, I save the green
Speaker 1: ones for last because they're the best. Why the hell
Speaker 1: is the best? They don't taste any different than the
Speaker 1: other ones, but they have a favorite color. And I
Speaker 1: think part of beaver science, the part of reason that
Speaker 1: beavirol science is so important in organizations, is because it
Speaker 1: embraces that irrational part of ourselves. The part that says
Speaker 1: it's not about how long in line I am in line,
Speaker 1: It's about how being in line feels right. The part
Speaker 1: that says it's not about the fact that the Eminem's
Speaker 1: don't taste different. I still have a favorite color. I'm
Speaker 1: you have to be familiar with the brown Eminem's and
Speaker 1: the Van Halen Rider. Of course, I love the idea
Speaker 1: that that's a built in verifier of have have these
Speaker 1: persons actually gone through a full rider and done the
Speaker 1: full technology requirements that I want out of this and
Speaker 1: and brown Eminem's are relevant, but it's an instant check
Speaker 1: have they done it or not? Yes, it's a It's
Speaker 1: a great behavioral hack, and I think there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of those interesting kinds of behavioral hacks in the world.
Speaker 1: I actually remember when I was a kid, you know
Speaker 1: how many people actually remember like lessons from sixth grade,
Speaker 1: like not many people. And I remember science class day one.
Speaker 1: Mr Mars I think was his name, was the science teacher,
Speaker 1: and he gave us our first set of experimental directions.
Speaker 1: And the first the first instruction was read these experiments
Speaker 1: these instructions completely before doing anything. And there were about
Speaker 1: ten steps and they was don't do anything at all.
Speaker 1: And I had an exam like that, and I love that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love it is stuck with me forever, right,
Speaker 1: and we'll stick with me forever. And I think that,
Speaker 1: And everybody gets to work my step, and most people
Speaker 1: don't follow the instructions. I think the last step was
Speaker 1: if you've done this step, quietly, fold your paper in half,
Speaker 1: bringing up to the classroom, and then you can leave
Speaker 1: or or something like that. So all these people are
Speaker 1: working away that's right, And two or three people have
Speaker 1: walked out of the class and nobody understands it, right.
Speaker 1: Everybody looks them and thinks they're crazy. And I actually
Speaker 1: think that's I've never thought about it this way, but
Speaker 1: it's a good metaphor for why I think behavioral science
Speaker 1: is so important because it's outcome focused right. It doesn't
Speaker 1: just try and apply whatever the tool is righteologically through
Speaker 1: these steps. It says, what happens if we break the rules,
Speaker 1: What happened if we get outside of these tools? What
Speaker 1: happens if we start with the outcome and then backwards? Huh,
Speaker 1: that's quite interesting. So let me get to some of
Speaker 1: my favorite questions. I'm gonna call you out for some
Speaker 1: bs that you said earlier. I'm gonna challenge you on
Speaker 1: some good challenge me. But let's let's let's plow this
Speaker 1: uh through us. So you told us about your background.
Speaker 1: You're working in in academic studying for your PhD. You
Speaker 1: go to work at a startup before Microsoft. Give us
Speaker 1: a run off of your background quickly? What was your
Speaker 1: your path? So it was was thrived, We got acquired
Speaker 1: by lending Tree, then it was at landing Tree for
Speaker 1: a while, we broke out. We did uh churn lists,
Speaker 1: built a bunch of things sold that. UM came to Microsoft,
Speaker 1: did product at Microsoft, then ventures at Microsoft, and now
Speaker 1: I'm chief Dad. So that's your dad, officer. UM, tell
Speaker 1: us about some of your early mentors. You strike me
Speaker 1: at somebody as somebody who has benefited greatly. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would not. I am a strong believer
Speaker 1: in mentorship. You know. I I think I'm a boy Scout,
Speaker 1: an Eagle Scout, and I think that boy Scouts had
Speaker 1: a profound effect on me, as having a Scout master
Speaker 1: had a profound effect on me. Um. You know I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I would be remissing. You know, Andrew warden Berry Schwartz
Speaker 1: both professors. It's worthmore. Barry obviously very famous for this
Speaker 1: sort of choice reduction stuff and all the Ted talks
Speaker 1: and things. Um. Andrew Ward was the professor that I
Speaker 1: talked about earlier that said there's an orderly way to
Speaker 1: sort of approach disagreement in science, which is doing an
Speaker 1: experiment like that's your chance to disagree is to run
Speaker 1: to prove it, right. Um. And I think that that
Speaker 1: has had a profound impact on the rest of my life. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think my parents were amazing role models. Um.
Speaker 1: In part, so my mom is a nurse and my
Speaker 1: dad works in durable medical quipment basically, um, wheelchairs. Mom
Speaker 1: got her college agree right after I got mine. Um,
Speaker 1: so she she graduated. She was a foreign nurse forever. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and you know Dad didn't go to college. But
Speaker 1: they both are, you know, so smart and inquisitive, and
Speaker 1: and my house was a place where you know, I'll
Speaker 1: give a great example. The Oregans a ballot measure state. Right,
Speaker 1: So every year we get the ballot measures, and my
Speaker 1: parents would, from as far back as I can remember,
Speaker 1: five or six, we would have a family discussion about
Speaker 1: what we all thought about the ballot measures. Really, and
Speaker 1: I was disagree, Like we were free to disagree. We
Speaker 1: were free to like sort of like they gave us
Speaker 1: the pamphlet and we were how many siblings in the house,
Speaker 1: just one brother eighteen months older, So the two of
Speaker 1: you and the parents debating Oregon ballot measures. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: talking about I just wrote a column on on Canada's
Speaker 1: marijuana initiative and trace the history of legal weed in America.
Speaker 1: And everybody thinks it's California, but actually it's Oregon. It's
Speaker 1: like nineteen seventies six decriminalized medical marijuana, long before California
Speaker 1: did it. Yeah, sometime in the seventies, I don't remember
Speaker 1: the exacts. A fascinating sort of state, right in somewhat
Speaker 1: you know, everything east of the mountains is high desert,
Speaker 1: all sorts of kinds of people. It's both strangely sort
Speaker 1: of like a hippie mecca but also very religious. Do
Speaker 1: you interesting you don't watch Silicon val I do watch Portlandia.
Speaker 1: So my joke, My joke is, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: it was a sitcom, but then I've been to Portland
Speaker 1: a few times and I learned it was a documentary.
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean it is. It is sort of
Speaker 1: eerily like home sometimes, and that's good and fascinating and interesting,
Speaker 1: and I like that. Um. And the thing I really
Speaker 1: love about Oregon is you could sign in some ways,
Speaker 1: like Friday Night Lights is also a documentary Oregon absolutely right,
Speaker 1: Like it's about Texas, but you know, in many ways
Speaker 1: it's about Oregon, right, Like I came from a small
Speaker 1: town with the championship football team and they're a whole
Speaker 1: town shout up for games, and Origan is a microcos
Speaker 1: him up all sorts of different things, and and yet
Speaker 1: they've managed to live in relative sort of piece and harmony.
Speaker 1: There's not a ton of acrimony. Um, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a very changing hasn't even though I know most of
Speaker 1: the people who have who are in like Portland's are
Speaker 1: relatively newcomers. Like everybody seems to be an immigrant. And
Speaker 1: what I find fascinating is Portland as a town that
Speaker 1: used to be a mill in mining town, and all
Speaker 1: these old buildings and factories have been wonderfully converted to
Speaker 1: restaurants and theaters and and you could see the rough hewn,
Speaker 1: original exposed timbers. It's it's it's really fascinating. But isn't
Speaker 1: there now starting to be a little chafing about the gentrification?
Speaker 1: I think, Look, I think anytime in the crowds and
Speaker 1: and you guys are starting to get traffic out there,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be some chafing, right, Um, any
Speaker 1: time in a city that grows like I think that's inevitable,
Speaker 1: but grows like a weed. Like they are one of
Speaker 1: the fastest growing cities in the country. I think Austin
Speaker 1: is first, and they might be second, a Seattle's second.
Speaker 1: They're up there, yeah, and and we don't have the
Speaker 1: infrastructure to support it. Um. But I think the thing
Speaker 1: that I love about Oregon, the thing I loved about
Speaker 1: growing up country is the chafing is like you can
Speaker 1: vehemently disagree with people and still come together for like
Speaker 1: dinner on Friday night. You know, it was that it's
Speaker 1: that spirit of of disagreement but still respect. Yeah, neighborly compassion, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And I think that that, particularly at this era in
Speaker 1: American culture, that is so important. How do we disagree
Speaker 1: and still like love each other in an emotive and
Speaker 1: important way. Mayer Stateman at Santa Clara said he comes
Speaker 1: from Hebrew University of Jerusalem said the difference between Americans
Speaker 1: and Europeans and Israelis. In Europe they can disc they
Speaker 1: can have the political disagreement, but then put it aside
Speaker 1: and go to dinner. The same in Israel. In the
Speaker 1: United States, people don't want to talk about the disagreement.
Speaker 1: They'd rather not have the debate and and then go
Speaker 1: to dinner. If they have the debate, it seems hackles
Speaker 1: gets raised and people get offended. But I I derailed
Speaker 1: you from mentors. Were there any other mentors I wanted?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, they were tons of you know, I
Speaker 1: close out on really saying, you know, my parents were
Speaker 1: a key shaper for me. Um. You know, my father
Speaker 1: was fond of saying that my brother and I were
Speaker 1: his chance to change the world. He's sort of like, look,
Speaker 1: I didn't go to college. I don't have this sort
Speaker 1: of background. You guys are it, so you need to
Speaker 1: go be who you can be. And then that was company.
Speaker 1: So it was a strong sense of purpose coupled with
Speaker 1: a and whatever you end up being is okay, my mom,
Speaker 1: my mom. I think only a few years ago finally
Speaker 1: stopped trying to convince me to come a nurse. You
Speaker 1: know here I have I'm an exited startup to done
Speaker 1: this thing. And she's like, you'd be a great nurse.
Speaker 1: Come back to Oregon, be a nurse. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm on that path, right They they part
Speaker 1: of the reason, you know, I don't charge for speaking
Speaker 1: and you know, take some of my income and build
Speaker 1: these pro social side projects and do all these things
Speaker 1: is because I had these parents who sort of said,
Speaker 1: that's the stuff that matters. But that's really interesting. Tell
Speaker 1: us about some academics or others who influenced your approach
Speaker 1: to behavioral psychology. So you know, look, I I the
Speaker 1: nice thing about nice thing, the the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: being a real science and sort of the not modern
Speaker 1: you know, sort of application of behavior economics and some
Speaker 1: parts of judgment decision making. You know, we have the
Speaker 1: condiment Introversey. You know, we have these these iconic figures
Speaker 1: who really have advanced the work. Um, you know Danna Rellie,
Speaker 1: who I'm lucky enough to sort of count as a friend.
Speaker 1: Like Predictably Irrational was one of my favorite books. I
Speaker 1: mean it's just Dan so full of insight and personal um,
Speaker 1: just the trauma with the burn Unite amazing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: means so visceral. When you read it, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this stuff really matters. Yeah, it matters to him and
Speaker 1: and I mean it matters to think about how we
Speaker 1: just these little changes, what it means to someone going
Speaker 1: through the burn Unit process. You could take someone in
Speaker 1: miserable pain and make their life appreciably better with a
Speaker 1: series of rational decisions. That's right shocking you and I.
Speaker 1: You know, I talked earlier about like why do I
Speaker 1: think GP Abril Officer is so important? And I sort
Speaker 1: of said, you know, I think it's about making all
Speaker 1: the rules. Everything is possible, any out we can reach,
Speaker 1: any outcome if we are willing to sort of take
Speaker 1: a step back and say every behavior is motivatable, if
Speaker 1: we are willing to pull all of the levers. And
Speaker 1: I think what I love about Dan um is that.
Speaker 1: You know, he was one of those people that came
Speaker 1: out of the lab and said, no, there's an application
Speaker 1: for this. You know, we talked earlier about Tom Gilovich,
Speaker 1: Um who I think how we know it isn't so yeah,
Speaker 1: great hoth hand. You know, he's just a run in
Speaker 1: a bunch of amazing research. Um, he's sort of presage.
Speaker 1: I think he's sort of way ahead of everybody else.
Speaker 1: And and I think he's sort of pressage that I
Speaker 1: was going to leave academia. I ravividly remember him calling
Speaker 1: me and saying, Hey, we love you at Cornell. We'd
Speaker 1: love to offer you this this interesting fellowship. We'd love
Speaker 1: for you to come. But you know, you keep saying
Speaker 1: applied psychology, and you know we're researchers, and you know,
Speaker 1: if what you care about in the world is applying psychology,
Speaker 1: you might not want to come into a graduate program.
Speaker 1: And I think ultimately he was right. I got frustrated
Speaker 1: with just writing research papers because it wasn't moving the
Speaker 1: needle that I on it. And and I think Tom
Speaker 1: was really right, And I wish I had had known
Speaker 1: better how to listen to him at the time about Hey,
Speaker 1: I really needed to get out of the lab and
Speaker 1: that I was never going to be able to just
Speaker 1: do that, and and and so I think there's all
Speaker 1: these people. You know, that's one phone call from Tom Gillich,
Speaker 1: and he's given me lots of things. You know, by
Speaker 1: the time I was a Cornelli's a great guy. But
Speaker 1: these little moments have big ripple effects. And so a
Speaker 1: lot of what what I think is important in mentorship
Speaker 1: is he's creating those moments, right taking the fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: to talk to somebody that you wouldn't normally talk to
Speaker 1: as an equal in an emotionally compassionate way, not to
Speaker 1: lecture them, but to to really engage with whatever is
Speaker 1: very important to them. You know. I think at the
Speaker 1: temptation of many mentors is well, I have my stick,
Speaker 1: I have what I believe, and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: enforce that on other people. I think so much of
Speaker 1: what's important about mentorship, particularly in in our given the
Speaker 1: challenges that America faces right now, he's about saying, what
Speaker 1: do you want to accomplish? And then how can I
Speaker 1: help you get there. It's not about me judging your goals,
Speaker 1: are saying your goals are the right, goals are the wrong? Goals.
Speaker 1: It's me saying whatever is important to you, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get behind helping you get there. Quite quite interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: I only have you for another ten or fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Let me get to some of my favorite questions. Tell
Speaker 1: us about failure, tell us about a time you failed
Speaker 1: and what you learned from the experience. Well, so you know,
Speaker 1: as I start pointed out to you earlier, everything I
Speaker 1: build as a failure, and that even when it's successful,
Speaker 1: it doesn't I recognize the thing I need to go
Speaker 1: do next. Right, So get raised is really a reaction
Speaker 1: to thrive. So at thrive for example, successful company. But
Speaker 1: when I was looking at the data, so one of
Speaker 1: the components that really changed behavior there is we had
Speaker 1: a very clear, clear behavioral score and it had sub components.
Speaker 1: One of some components, for example, with savings, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want rich people to get a high score and
Speaker 1: poor people to get a low score. So I said, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this is We're gonna remitting it's income.
Speaker 1: So basically like savings. Yeah, percentage of your income that
Speaker 1: you save for ninety days, that's right, and so um,
Speaker 1: when you look at at saving as a percentage of income,
Speaker 1: women are actually significantly better savers than men. But the
Speaker 1: but the moment I took out the the income on
Speaker 1: a raw dollar basis, all of the men were doing
Speaker 1: much better at Thrive. Why because they were getting paid better, right,
Speaker 1: And so here I was, we built this exitable, successful thing,
Speaker 1: and I felt like an idiot because I had only
Speaker 1: looked at what happened post paycheck, and that's really how
Speaker 1: to relative to the dollar amount. And so that's where
Speaker 1: I sort of got to get raised. Idea was we
Speaker 1: only did interventions post paycheck. What if we did something
Speaker 1: that it directly affected your paycheck? And so that's why
Speaker 1: we built get Raised. At the next company, it was that,
Speaker 1: oh I screwed it up last time. Get Raised fantastic tool,
Speaker 1: two point three billion dollars and raises very successful. But
Speaker 1: there's many ways and things which I think I screwed
Speaker 1: it up. One of the important ones is it puts
Speaker 1: the burden on the disadvantaged. Right. It says to women, hey,
Speaker 1: you live in a world that is unfair to you.
Speaker 1: You have to go do something about that, when really
Speaker 1: the onus is on men, right, Like, but you can
Speaker 1: get women to go to a site, fill out a
Speaker 1: couple of forms printed out and give it to their boss.
Speaker 1: You can't get their boss to go to a site
Speaker 1: and say, here's why you you are sexist in your
Speaker 1: pay practices. This is where I'm gonna challenge you. Okay,
Speaker 1: everything is changeable. I want to live in Some things
Speaker 1: are more changeable than others. Yes, so there is there's
Speaker 1: certainly low hanging fruit that I am VMA agreement. There's
Speaker 1: get raised might have been the low hanging fruit. Here
Speaker 1: might have been the low hanging fruit. But I think
Speaker 1: what behavioral I think the whole point of behaviorl scientists
Speaker 1: to say, used to consider that as a thought question,
Speaker 1: what could I do to get a boss to be
Speaker 1: motivated to pay you fairly? Right? And we're going and
Speaker 1: thinking about those things like, for example, give you a
Speaker 1: short answer to that. You now have a huge move
Speaker 1: towards e s G investing, environmental sustainable governance, and companies
Speaker 1: are now being ranked on what sort of diversification they
Speaker 1: have at their highest levels at their board, if their
Speaker 1: senior management. And it's an objective goal that hey, you're
Speaker 1: not meeting this, what do you what? You're here's a
Speaker 1: plan just as you could get raised. Here's how to
Speaker 1: get diversified or whatever it is, get retained right retentions,
Speaker 1: and I like, let's do economic motivators. Forget the triple
Speaker 1: bottom line, will use your single bottom line. If you
Speaker 1: retain women, you make more money period period like turnover
Speaker 1: reduced high diversity. Like we know this, we can prove
Speaker 1: it empirically. So hey, if I can get you to
Speaker 1: regularly evaluate women's salaries to make sure that they are
Speaker 1: comparative so that they don't leave you, Like, that's a
Speaker 1: good thing, and we can go build The next generation
Speaker 1: of tools that I'm building is actually, you know, I
Speaker 1: sold you every everything I build as a failure, and
Speaker 1: then that pumps the next It's an interesting life perspective.
Speaker 1: So it's not I'm going to change the language on you.
Speaker 1: It's not so much a fail you're as it is
Speaker 1: a provisional step waiting the next hypothesis. It is incomplete.
Speaker 1: Science is perpetually incomplete. What's one of the things I
Speaker 1: love about it? And so the next set of tools
Speaker 1: that I'm building are actually focused on man. So here's
Speaker 1: where I'm gonna call BS on you. You said you
Speaker 1: read almost exclusively fiction, and yet I go to your
Speaker 1: website and there is Dan Arrowley's Predictably Irrational, Thinking Fast
Speaker 1: and Slow by Danny Kahneman, Stumbling on hop Happiness by
Speaker 1: Gilbert paraps of Choice by Barry Shortz. Essentially all of
Speaker 1: the things that you recommend are explicitly nonfiction. Actually, if
Speaker 1: you go to the recommendation page, you will notice that
Speaker 1: there is a section for fiction, and I didn't. If
Speaker 1: you scroll down, I am recommending fiction books as well.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of your favorite fiction books. So, so, I, uh,
Speaker 1: it's funny the things that I are my favorites are
Speaker 1: not necessarily things I read often. Right, I sort of
Speaker 1: said I read all of science fiction and things because
Speaker 1: I think it makes me a better product person. I
Speaker 1: love Blindness jose Saramago. Oh yeah, beautiful sad book. I
Speaker 1: will love a lot of Hemingway. You know what. I
Speaker 1: just read The Old Man in the City on a flight,
Speaker 1: and I was just I come back to, you know,
Speaker 1: to reread. I'm a big rereader of fiction, so I
Speaker 1: tried because I'm what are you reading? Uh So, so
Speaker 1: what I've done over the last couple of years, Actually,
Speaker 1: what I've done over the last couple years actually is
Speaker 1: is I'll pick an author and read everything they've written, um,
Speaker 1: regardless of the quality. That regardless of the quality, because
Speaker 1: there are certain authors that, hey, you should read these
Speaker 1: three books. You don't want to read those three books,
Speaker 1: that's right. But but what's interesting is even bad fiction
Speaker 1: teaches you something, right, Like, so I recently I would
Speaker 1: read through everything Stephen King had written, and there's some
Speaker 1: good stuff and some bad stuff some of his some
Speaker 1: stuff is bad. So the let me give you an example.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna get nasty letters from people on this,
Speaker 1: and I, by the way, I know he's an immensely
Speaker 1: talented guy. Misery is just astonishing. But I remember reading
Speaker 1: The Stand, which is like eight hundred pages, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly it's like he put the papers down for six
Speaker 1: months and then picked it up and just pivoted in
Speaker 1: a totally different direction. And I was like, oh, what
Speaker 1: a terrible thing to do to your readers. We were
Speaker 1: with you for eight hundred pages, and now it's like
Speaker 1: a different ending just slapped on. And I was kind
Speaker 1: of the last Stephen King book I read. And so
Speaker 1: so I think that he certainly has a range of
Speaker 1: books from from what I think i've as probably even terrible, right,
Speaker 1: two very very good classics, amazing literature and and and
Speaker 1: even better movies very often. That's right. And and so
Speaker 1: reading the whole thing actually, like he's been writing for
Speaker 1: so long, you know, he stopped so good and so
Speaker 1: his prose is fantastic, his voice is unique. He's no
Speaker 1: for writing horror, but some of his non horror stuff
Speaker 1: is amazing. Some of the movies stand by me. Other things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's just one of I read that
Speaker 1: book so long ago and it was just you forget
Speaker 1: it's Stephen King's right, I think green Mile. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there's a bunch of things that people forget
Speaker 1: or Stephen King, but because they're because they don't get
Speaker 1: as much attention, they don't sell as much. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: as you know all his horror stuff, that's right. Christine
Speaker 1: was like it was a huge seller, that's right. And
Speaker 1: so and I think he even talks about that sort
Speaker 1: of commerciality and so reading so much of somebody, uh,
Speaker 1: you get to see like you know, when he got
Speaker 1: in a he got hit by a car very severely,
Speaker 1: almost died, um and which is what led to misery,
Speaker 1: and it just ship it was actually I think this
Speaker 1: is far after misery he sort of presaged his own
Speaker 1: life and sort of why am I thinking that? I
Speaker 1: think missuries long before this. This is quite late in
Speaker 1: his career actually, um, and he stops writing for a
Speaker 1: while because it's very painful for him to write. And
Speaker 1: the stuff he produces then is dark. It's not horror,
Speaker 1: is just dark. He's clearly depressed. It is clearly bad
Speaker 1: and scary. And uh, I mean getting that sort of
Speaker 1: that that long history is great, the old. I will
Speaker 1: admit that I broke my rule once, which was I
Speaker 1: started reading everything Cormick McCarthy has ever written, and I
Speaker 1: had to stop in the middle and take a break,
Speaker 1: because I will tell you, reading everything corm McCarthy has
Speaker 1: ever written with no breaks it tough. It makes you
Speaker 1: want to kill yourself. Every book is basically like, oh
Speaker 1: you care. He is like the he is the presage
Speaker 1: to get Game of Thrones. He's like, oh you care
Speaker 1: about this? Great? Let me kill it, like, let me
Speaker 1: like just destroy it. From from from Cormac McCarthy. Uh,
Speaker 1: I think All the White Horses is pretty amazing. I mean,
Speaker 1: the road is obviously amazing. You mentioned you were a
Speaker 1: sci fi buff. You haven't talked really about any sci
Speaker 1: fi and that's what I I sort of said, like,
Speaker 1: none of the sci fi stuff really makes my favorite
Speaker 1: book list. Really, yeah, it's it's so interesting. My favorite
Speaker 1: book list is very typecast. They're all very sad um right,
Speaker 1: like blindness is that they're just tragic and either something
Speaker 1: the tragedy stick with me. I guess really, I could
Speaker 1: give you a list to sci fi that's as good
Speaker 1: as anything else in there. And it's not that I
Speaker 1: got to cook for you that I bet you've never
Speaker 1: even read. It's a little esoteric call it out. So
Speaker 1: that's the other people read it too. I love it
Speaker 1: dying inside. So the premise of the book is he's
Speaker 1: got a fairly robust set of e sp powers and
Speaker 1: as a kid he discovers this and he gets to
Speaker 1: reach out and do all these things with his ability
Speaker 1: to read minds and shells. It's not Shell Silverstein. It's
Speaker 1: something dance. So the name will come to me. And
Speaker 1: as he gets older, as he goes through colleges, the
Speaker 1: ability fades and loses it. And it's a giant metaphor,
Speaker 1: of course. But it's a wonderful book, and you, of
Speaker 1: all people would really appreciate it. I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely gonna recommend that we're running out of time.
Speaker 1: I got to get to my last two questions, my
Speaker 1: favorite questions. First, you work with a lot of young
Speaker 1: tech people, a lot of millennials college do. What sort
Speaker 1: of advice would you give someone who came to you
Speaker 1: and said, hey, I'm starting my career. I'm interested in
Speaker 1: either behavioral, behavioral psychology or technology startups. I mean, the
Speaker 1: device I always give people is you want to think
Speaker 1: into your chunks. I think people are very bad year chunk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I think people are very bad. So so
Speaker 1: the metaphor I always use is orienteering. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with It's like longteering support is a weird country person sport.
Speaker 1: It's a race, but it's a race from nowhere to nowhere.
Speaker 1: So you like, go out in the woods. You dropped
Speaker 1: off at point A, and they're like, here's a map
Speaker 1: in a compass, get to point B. But there's no path, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like there's our course you rise on. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of what we teach people today metaphorically
Speaker 1: is to sort of take out the map and compass
Speaker 1: and then walk to point B right in the most
Speaker 1: efficient possible way. And I think the right answer, and
Speaker 1: the way you actually win at orienteering is to say,
Speaker 1: I know B is over there. I'm gonna run in
Speaker 1: that direction until I'm no longer sure I'm going in
Speaker 1: the right direction, and then I'm gonna stop and take
Speaker 1: on my map and compass, take a point run, take
Speaker 1: a point run, and actually think careers work best this way.
Speaker 1: I know, if you look at my career right, I've
Speaker 1: done all sorts of very different stuff, and yet when
Speaker 1: you look back at it, all sounds like a story
Speaker 1: because it's all been united by common values. I know
Speaker 1: I want to change things for large groups of people.
Speaker 1: I know that it's about empowering people at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the pyramid, not the top. And and so because
Speaker 1: I have those values, that's my point B. And every
Speaker 1: two years I basically look up and say, am I
Speaker 1: still honoring those values? And then I pivot based on
Speaker 1: how do I question our last question? What is it
Speaker 1: that you know about startup venture behavioral psychology today that
Speaker 1: you wish you knew fifteen years or so ago when
Speaker 1: you were coming out of school. I will go back
Speaker 1: to what I've said a couple of times through this program.
Speaker 1: Everything is on the table right the sooner you get
Speaker 1: to the place and you say, there's nothing I can't challenge.
Speaker 1: There's no rules that we can't reconfigure, like start from
Speaker 1: the design from the world as you want it to be,
Speaker 1: and then work backwards. That's quite fascinating. We have been
Speaker 1: speaking with Matt Wallert, formally director at Microsoft Ventures and
Speaker 1: a a co founder or CEO of a number of
Speaker 1: successful startups. If you have enjoyed this conversation, be sure
Speaker 1: and look upward down a few inches on iTunes, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: or Bloomberg dot com and you could see any of
Speaker 1: the other hundred and fifty or so such conversations that
Speaker 1: we've put together over the past three years. I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not remind you that we
Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at
Speaker 1: m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I must thank
Speaker 1: my head of research, Michael bat Nick. Taylor Riggs is
Speaker 1: my booker producer, and Medina Parwana is my ACE recording engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.