Evan Spiegel

I was in the product design program back at school, which actually was part of the mechanical engineering department at the time.

I took some computer science classes, so I knew what I was talking about when it came to computer science.

So we both had mutual respect for each other and our skill sets and our backgrounds and both enjoyed talking together about the types of products we wanted to create.

And that dialogue created a lot of innovation.

And so a lot of how we've thought about growing the company over time is strengthening that dialogue between engineers and designers and creating an environment where folks feel comfortable throwing out really crazy ideas.

But I think

You know, for the design team in particular, the thing that is probably most important is the velocity of design work.

So I typically meet with our designers for a couple hours every week and we just look at work.

I mean, new work every week, you know, hundreds of ideas, I would guess, you know, on a weekly basis that, you know, to me, you know, if I think about, um,

where I learned how to design and build things, I have sort of an interesting combination because, you know, I went to Stanford for the product design program, which is really focused on empathy, right?

In this iterative process of understanding what people want and building prototypes and iterating, but really centered on empathy, right?

Human-centered design.

And then at the same time, I had also been to art school.

So I had studied at Art Center.

I'd studied at Otis here in Los Angeles, both, you know, great art schools.

And so I was used to this like grinding, you know, expectation that you're making new work all the time.

And then just an absolutely brutal critique process, you know, on a regular basis.

And so, you know, for me, as I thought about, you know,

the parts of my education that I really liked, it was this combination of really developing empathy with people and the types of products that they want in their lives, but at the same time having this really high velocity work ethic where you're not just thinking all the time about new products.

You're actually making stuff every week all the time, and then you're talking about it as a team because that critique process is where so much of the learning happens.