Facebook won, right? Then why are so many joining Ello?

3 million people flocked to Ello within 2 months. How many sites do you know that grew that fast?

Paul Budnitz says that’s because social media sites stopped being fun. Maybe it’s because they started caring more about advertisers than users.

So Paul decided to create a site that puts users first and won’t accept ads. This is the story how he turned his vision into Ello, a social network that balances commerce with art, and care for people with the realities of the way the world works today.

Paul Budnitz

Paul Budnitz

Ello

Paul Budnitz is an artist at heart. He founded Kidrobot, the premiere creator of art toys and runs Budnitz Bicycles, the premier maker of titanium luxury city bicycles. He is currently working on a new ad-free social network tool, Ello.

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Full Interview Transcript

Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters! My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart, the place where I interview entrepreneurs about how they build their businesses. Well, a few weeks ago, I heard about a super-fast growing social networking site, called Ello. I thought social networking sites were done! You know, Facebook locked the whole space up and owned it. But this artist in Vermont created something different. Led by a manifesto that said users should not be products whose privacy is sold to marketers, Ello got millions of people, including me, to flock to the site and ask for an invitation. I didn’t get my invitation accepted until this week; we’ll talk about that.

I invited the founder, Paul Budnitz, to talk about how he built up Ello. I’m also hoping to talk about his other projects, including Budnitz Bicycles, which makes light, fast, and elegant bikes, and Kid Robot, creator of limited edition art toys. Paul, welcome!

Paul: Thank you.

Andrew: Paul, usually at this point I would do a quick commercial for my advertiser, and then go into the first question. Before the interview started, out of respect to your manifesto and your point of view, I said, “Do you feel comfortable with me including it, or do you think I should leave it out?” And you said…

Paul: I said, “One less ad is always better,” so I’m grateful you decided not to have an ad on this one.

Andrew: Why? What’s your point of view on that?

Paul: Well, you know, we’re not really against ads per se, but in the end I think it’s gotten to the point where every possible square inch where someone can stick an ad in, they do, especially on the internet. The internet has really turned into one big billboard. Besides that being annoying, and often times insulting our intelligence, when you support a website with advertising – and I’m not going to comment on your website, because it seems like you do great stuff – but, especially with social networking, and some of the stuff we’re doing, doing that actually effects the structure of the site, and how you think about it when you’re building it.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Paul: It changes in subtle ways, and then often not-so-subtle ways, the experience for the user.

Andrew: How did Ello change? It’s a young company; we’re talking about months old.

Paul: Yeah.

Andrew: How did saying, “No advertising,” change the way you built it within the last few weeks?

Paul: I think that’s an awesome question. When we founded Ello, we decided it would be ad-free, and one of the things we discovered almost right away was that on an ad-based social network, let’s say, the advertiser is really the customer. They’re the ones who are paying the bills, and because of that, they’re the ones to which almost every feature – almost everything that’s built for that network – is geared. So, if a new feature comes up, it may look at first like it’s something interesting for you to do, but if you look underneath the surface, it’s probably gathering more data, or creating cliques, or creating a way to serve more ads. In the end, an advertisement is often in opposition to the experience of what the user wants. The user isn’t really the customer; the user is the product that’s being bought and sold.

Andrew: Do you have an example of a decision that you made now that you wouldn’t have if you were thinking a year, two, or even five years down the road there would be advertising on my platform?

Paul: Oh yeah, totally!

Andrew: What’s one example?

Paul: Here’s one. Everyone who’s probably ever used Facebook, for example, knows the “Like” button. It seems like the “Like” button is there for me to express that I like things, right?

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Paul: But what it’s really there for is for the advertising people to end up data-mining to run their company, to find out what it is that you really like. So let’s say you’re on Facebook, and they know your real name – which is another decision we’ve made on Ello: we don’t require people to use real names; we just require people to follow our rules, and our rules on conduct anon [??]. But, if they know your real name, and they know what you post (because they read your posts), they know who your friends are, they know what you like, after a while you become a really valuable commodity – something that’s really valuable to advertisers to buy and sell.

When we were creating Ello, we actually don’t have a “Like” button. We have a similar feature coming later, but because we’re not thinking about it as a way to collect data, to trim more users, or to show ads, our is actually used in a way that we think is actually a lot more useful, and a lot more fun. As we went through Ello, all the features that we created were really made to make the network more interesting for the people who use it, and not geared toward advertisers. And in the end, I think the fundamental tension between advertising, data collection, and all that stuff, which is what’s good for the advertiser, and makes money for the network if you’re an ad-based network, and what the user wants, they’re actually often in opposition.

Andrew: How many members do you have now and how many people on the waiting list?

Paul: That’s a good question. We have a lot of members, and we have a lot, lot, lot of people on the waiting list. We’re not releasing numbers, partially because we ultimate a decision. And this is also really based on structure of who we are. We rather have quality of quantity. So rather than release numbers and get into that big game we just decided not to do it.

Andrew: I guess you changed your point of view on that because I had research that showed just at one point a few weeks ago you hit a million users and I think that’s within eight weeks of launching the site. And was it three million on the waiting list. Can you confirm that my research is right at least a point?

Paul: Those were pretty old numbers. So those come up at a much later date. And actually were some things we talked about fairly early on. The only thing I can confirm is that we’re way, way beyond that.

Andrew: Way, way beyond that. So this thing is working so here the thing Paul. When I first heard about this network and went on the site and I saw how clean it was. I said, this is a guy who’s a hippy, who’s an artist who created it. And you are an artist.

Paul: Sometime maybe.

Andrew: I’m sorry. But you’re not a hippy you’re saying right?

Paul: No.

Andrew: No and then I started researching you and I saw you created Kidrobot, you created other companies including, where was that other one, Mini Disco which I’ll talk about in a moment. And in researching for this conversation I found out that you created as a kid here Coded Safety Analysis Software for Nuclear Power Plants by the time you reached high school. Is that right?

Paul: Yeah, that’s right.

Andrew: How did you get to do that as a kid essentially?

Paul: Well, my father’s a Nuclear Physicist, and he was working reactive safety at the time and he needed someone to help him figure out, basically the way nuclear reactor… I don’t whether or not this is interesting. But it’s kind of the thing that always was to me. The way nuclear reactor, they figure whether reactors are going to melt. It’s the same way they actually work with airplanes. Make sure they won’t melt.

Every part that goes into a reactor has a light, has fill, and has a statutes, on how they think it will fail. And so basically you can take every piece and you can [inaudible] redundancy and everything that make that thing up. You can go fall tree, which is a tree says that this failed, and that will fail, this fails, and that will fail, and you’ve worked with the odds of that every happening which on most reactors should be really impossible which we found out Fukushima is actually not true. I think it shows the failures of human intellect to figure those kinds of things out.

Andrew: So are you the kind of kid that just spent a lot of time coding? A lot of time developing?

Paul: Well you know, this was back in the array of the Apple 2 Plus. And that’s [inaudible] for tram, I think fourth which is the language I worked in a lot. So I did a lot of that kind of stuff. I did a lot of other stuff too. So I was just always interested in a lot of different things. Not just one thing.

I think if I had actually been good at one thing I would have stuck with it. Unfortunately I wasn’t great at anything. I was just kind of good at a lot of stuff. So I followed what I was interested in and that changed quite a lot over time.

Andrew: I see that, I was the kind of person who thought the opposite. I had to find one thing and be as good as a possible can in it. And otherwise I’m just another person, I don’t accelerate.

Paul: I thought that too man, and it took me… I thought that too. And I had these friends that were amazing talented. They’re musicians or artist or do this and whatever. And it turned out that lack of specialty, which I like to think of as superficiality, which is like the ability to know a little bit about a lot of different things. It actually turned into kind of a super power for me.

So it turned into for me it was like I learned that I can learn at least what I needed to know about a lot of stuff fairly quickly. It turned out to do that but it didn’t have the time and interest to go to depth. And so I generally tend to work with great people. People who are really, really talented.

Andrew: How did you get to learn so much about so many things? The ability to suck in a lot of information and really understand it, especially in diverse fields. You are creating software for nuclear power plants and at the same time or soon afterwards you started to study photography and became a film maker right. And those are pretty different fields. How do…

Paul: They were extremely [inaudible] for living for a while.

Andrew: Sorry. So how do you do that, do you have a method of absorbing information? I have talked to some entrepreneurs who say, yes. What I do is I ask the people who are especially good at whatever it is I want to learn, what’s the most important thing for me to learn. And I focus on that and I ignore everything else. Do you have a method like that?

Paul: Yeah, my method I’m not afraid to look stupid.

Andrew: Okay.

Paul: So it’s like some article came up recently when they were interviewing me and it says, Paul Budnitz says he’s stupid. It was like this [inaudible], and then someone sent me this whole long discussion about how stupid I actually was. I don’t if I find that flattering or not, but I think it’s the willingness to just look dumb and somehow to realize that it’s OK. That you have to start at the bottom most of the time and then start learning from scratch, and a lot of times it’s what you don’t know is just like another strength, you know? If I knew better, I would have never done most of the things I’ve done. When I was starting Ello as an example, [inaudible] it’s bicycles. When I look at a business plan, it’s bicycles, right? We’re going to sell bicycles that cost between about $3000 and $8000. We’re going to sell them direct online.

It sounds like a really crazy business. They’re titanium and they’re incredibly beautiful, but they’re pretty hard to try first, right, because you buy them online. Turned out that was actually a really good idea because the bicycle industry’s a disaster and we could offer a better bike, probably what I think, the best city bike in the world. So the same thing happened with Ello. Ello, as you kind of stated at the beginning of this interview, Facebook has already won, why bother, right? Fortunately, I was stupid enough to just do it anyway.

And that’s another thing, you just feel like, I forget what the quote was that your dad said, that whatever gene you’re supposed to have that’s supposed to keep you from taking big risks or stupid risks you don’t have so you just jump in.

Paul: Yeah, when we were children there was a tendency to play, just do things out of love and out of fun. I think as adults somehow we start to take things seriously and think that if we don’t succeed, if we don’t do things right, there’s going to be some really bad thing that’s going to happen. But actually in reality, if you just keep playing the rest of our lives, the consequences for screwing up are never as bad as you really think if we’re not completely stupid about it. Of course, you can be really stupid about it and jump out of a plane without a parachute, but most of the things that involve design and business that’s not really the case.

Andrew: I want to spend a lot of time in this conversation talking about Ello, but just as a way of getting to know you, I have to ask you about MiniDisco. That’s a site where you sold mini disc players, mini discs back in the late nineties and early two thousands, right?

Paul: Yeah, we were shooting our own films and became sort of obsessed with music, and this was from before iPods and before a lot of digital recording was easily available. So we became obsessed with hatchling mini disc players so we could use them to record sound for the independent movies we were making. And in the process, to support the films, I started selling mini disc players online. This was like in ’97 when the internet was pretty new and mini discs, and it just turned into this business that just made money and allowed me to lose money making the films I wanted to make.

Andrew: How did it make money? I’m looking at it by the way. Of all the sites that I’ve looked at that you’ve created…

Paul: It’s still there? I probably haven’t looked in ten years. Is it still there? I sold it after a while.

Andrew: You did. I have screenshots of it from back in the day. You say Sony color mini discs, and the word color, each letter has a different color to highlight that it’s color. Lumina and Sparkle M.D.’s in stock. Exclamation points all over the site. It’s so different from your design aesthetic now, but the product too is different. How did you get it to sell so much when this wasn’t your focus?

Paul: Well, it was something I cared about. I like earning a living, you know. We were really into the films we were making and that was the way we paid for them so it turned into a fairly profitable company actually. And then I eventually sold it off when I started Kidrobot, but that company was really a vehicle for making art.

Andrew: I see. What did you do to make it take off? Is there one thing you remember that you said, “I did that especially well and because of that we were able to sell mini discs?”

Paul: Yeah, in ’97 there weren’t a lot of websites, you know? There was a lot less competition and I think I had the insight that we would put big red buttons on things, that everything had a big red button that said buy or awesome or something so that worked.

Andrew: And there weren’t a lot of sites where you could actually buy things online, a lot of fax it or send us a check and we’ll ship it out.

Paul: That was all it was, yeah, and when we started out it was if you like this, fill out this form and send it in with a check and we’ll send you some mini discs. And then after a while we figured out how to do it. I mean this was like right at the beginning, right?

Andrew: What year did you sell it?

Paul: 2001, how old were we? I probably ran it for four years on the side, made a bunch of money and sold it. And so what I was talking about, I actually saw the first iPod and I said, “Wow, time to get out of this business.” [laughs] So we sold it.

Andrew: Oh, that’s smart. You hit 10,000,000 in sales as I understand it. Did you become a millionaire from that business?

Paul: I don’t want to talk about the money I make.

Andrew: Okay.

Paul: Thanks for asking, though, yeah. I will tell you one thing. We give away a lot of money that I do make. So part of the personal goal here is just with, it’s . . . and you know what? Well, I’ll just tell you this. The personal goal is, I really like the Bill Gates plan, you know. When I was growing up, Bill Gates kind of looked like this kind of evil megalomaniac kind of billionaire guy. And he turned into, like, a saint, you know.

Andrew: Yeah.

Paul: So not only is he giving away all his money, he’s convincing a lot of people to do it too. And the best way to do that is quietly. But I think one of the things entrepreneurs need to think about . . . you know, there’s this thing about winning, but I mean, who’s winning, you know? And I think there’s a responsibility that in this country, at least where there’s so much inequality, that if you make money, you’re good at making money, you find a way to use that money for good things. And when we’re dead, we’re dead. We might as well get rid of it before then so . . .

Andrew: You know what? The reason that stuck out for me is because, again, when I read your manifesto, I think like a lot of people, I said, these are really good ideals but people with ideals like this can’t make things work. And it’s only after I read more about you that I realized, this isn’t a guy with nothing but ideals. He’s very practical. He knows how to balance commerce with art, and caring for people with the realities of the way the world works today. And I feel like this portion of your life, and tell me if I’m wrong, shows that.

Paul: Actually, most of my life has shown that. But I think that there’s a net, like, in capitalism, and, you know, you see it in some of the reactions to LL [SP] from the tech press, which was, I think, from the traditional tech press in the beginning. I think it sort of, seems like it shifted, which is kind of nice. But there again, it’s like, it was sort of like on both sides of the, sort of arguing both sides of the thing, which was saying, like, well, LL will never be able to make money unless it sells ads, so therefore, LL will have to eventually sell out and sell ads.

But actually the whole business plan [??] successful is because it doesn’t have ads. Like, they’re not exclusive things often like a plan, having a business plan that resonates to the people, that offers them something great, and it also offers to change the world. That’s not incompatible in any way with actually making money. And that can be really attractive. I mean, there are plenty of businesses like Patagonia, and Ben and Jerry’s, and you name it, that are gigantic global brands that do that. I don’t see any reason why that can’t be true on the Internet. And I actually think that the cynicism behind that is pretty disappointing. And it’s pretty short-sided, you know.

Andrew: What’s the reason why you started it? I read that it was just wanted to invite a group of friends to have a conversation online. But it feels like a simplistic explanation. Can you help me understand what it was that made you say, “I need to add this to the world?”

Paul: Well, you know, to me, what had happened was social, most social networks that I was using, weren’t really fun anymore, and advertising was creeping in. And the more ads showed up . . . I remember that, I remember, like, you know, for some reason, Facebook had decided that I was a middle-aged woman of color. So I was seeing all these ads for things that didn’t really apply to me. And [??] the same thing. So I realized that there was, like, some [??] data out. My middle name is Alexander and so often my name is misspelled Paula [??]. So I kind of figured that there had been, like, some gender mix ups. And so, you know, suddenly all over the Internet, I was, you know, my virtual identity was me. And it was so incongruous.

And I felt over time, just so violated by how these networks were working what they were doing. And I just really missed . . . actually, I liked Facebook from the very beginning, obviously. I thought it was [??]. I was talking to my friends. I was posting great stuff. I liked Tumbler [SP]. I had a Tumbler . . . I actually have, still have a site up that I haven’t touched for a long time, but it’s based on Tumbler, you know. And it was great before the [??] came in. And there were time, I just realized that there was, it was time for an alternative and that we really wanted to make it for ourselves.

So like most of the thing that I do, I find something that I love that isn’t what I would like it to be, whether it’s bicycles or my business or something at work. We build it for ourselves. We used it for about a year with [??]. And after about a year, there was several thousand people that wanted to get on. It wasn’t built to scale. It was built to break. So that’s when we put up the manifesto, raised a really tiny bit of money, and built it.

Andrew: When you were just using it as a hundred people, what did you learn about user experience that allowed you to create? I know you eventually started from scratch when it was time to build something that would scale. What did you learn in that first year that informed what you were going to build afterwards?

Paul: When we [inaudible] we did was awesome, and maybe we just got lucky and nailed it. But we learned that the internet’s changed, and that we could use large size images. We’d create space for longer format posts, but also that we and the people we were working with wanted a format that was more public and didn’t require me to follow you for you to follow me. We kind of liked the Twitter following model, but we wanted longer form content.

So we got to start from scratch, and we tried to forget everything we knew, but in the process we also discovered, I have to say, that without advertising as a motivator, that we were really free to do whatever we wanted to do and just make a great network. So we did, and people were digging it so much, we said, “God, well we should just make something, let’s get this out and see what would happen.” And I had a really great time visiting VCs in the very beginning, just kind of going around. And I’ve got enough of a reputation you’d think I could raise money for things easily, but actually it seems like every project I do sounds more insane to the people I visit, so we’d go around to VCs, and it was just over and over.

And you know I’m pretty picky with who I work with actually, but it was over and over the same thing really polite ways of saying, “What a stupid idea.” Which then I knew was a great idea because I knew that there wasn’t anybody else who could get money either, if I couldn’t get it. So we just built that little [inaudible] in the school and found some people who were dumb enough to invest in us, and they were some of our best friends. So, once again you know, you always start at the bottom. It turns out that’s a good way to start.

Andrew: I’ve seen some posts that you’ve put up about new features, and they start off with something like, “I built,” I forget what it is, something like, “added emoji to the site.” Is it really you still coding the site?

Paul: Oh no, not me.

Andrew: Okay.

Paul: I’m not qualified.

Andrew: Then in the first version it wasn’t you building either.

Paul: No. There’s seven of us that founded Ello.

Andrew: This is still the first version then.

Paul: For developers, the remote set.

Andrew: Okay.

Paul: They’re a programming collective in Denver, and they’re close friends.

Andrew: And they … [??]

Paul: And they’re all artists and designers themselves, so it’s a pretty interesting group of people.

Andrew: I see.

Paul: Yeah. so, the site was designed by Berger Fohr. Todd Berger and Lucian Fohr are, I think, the greatest digital designers anywhere. So they actually did the design. I did a lot of the thinking about how things should work and by meeting people along the way, but I think it was really collaborative in the end. Everybody put something in, you know.

Andrew: And they’re cofounders? Did they also have equity in the business at the time when you brought them on?

Paul: Oh yeah, we’re very egalitarian about everything.

Andrew: I see. Okay, and so for a while there it was just bootstrapped and then you raised the money?

Paul: It was bootstrapped. We raised a little bit of money, enough to build it, released it in August, with 90 people. I kind of went crazy three or four weeks after that. And we didn’t break with public benefit corporations, so we’re not a normal corporation, and we brought in what I think are the best investors in the world. The guys from FreshTracks Capital here in Vermont, the guys from Foundry, and Bolder and also Bolt In Ventures. They’re in Bolder as well, and they’re all just people that actually signed on to the public benefit corporation and read our manifesto, and they’re behind everything we’re doing. I cannot express how great it is to have people.

You know, you can’t build a business without capital, and there’s different kinds of money, and the best kind of people who believe in what you’re doing and who are patient, and also bring things against you, have great wisdom themselves, and all those people do that. You know, it’s a wonderful thing.

Andrew: I wonder about how the features came about. There’s some really subtle features that you don’t pick up on until you interact with the site. For example, the text box where people type in allows people to bold, but doesn’t have buttons that are visible that say, “Click me to bold, click me for italic, et cetera.” It’s only when you need it by, for example, highlighting the text that the buttons become available. The buttons become available and the option becomes available. Where did you figure out how to do that? How to create that kind of user experience?

Paul: I would have to blame Tyler Newton, the designer. But also in collaboration with our programmers. We made the decision pretty early on that Ello would be different. We actually started Ello with three pictures. We had a picture of Detrick Rums, we had less than better with Ello. We could do this because we didn’t have any ads. We’re not churning users. We’re not forcing people to click a lot. Less is better. We had to make it as minimalistic as possible. The content would stand out but also with the philosophy that things are just so complicated now days, why don’t we make something just simple that’s fun to use?

So, Detrick Rums, we had Captain Kirk, which was just basically sort of a nod to quirkiness and also the fact that there are no nested minis on the Star Trek communicator and we wanted the communication to be as easy. When Captain Kirk would open up his communicator he wouldn’t press a bunch of buttons and drag this over here to start talking, right? We actually designed Ello in such a way that you just start using it and you figure it out as you go. You discover it. The third picture was Curt Kobain because who the fuck says you can’t? That really, that ethic is behind Ello right now.

Andrew: You work out of the bike shop, right?

Paul: Yeah. I fixed someone’s bicycle a few minutes ago. It’s, I know it’s a bicycle shop. It’s more of a studio.

Andrew: I see. The developers don’t work out of there.

Paul: They’re in Denver.

Andrew: They’re in Denver. So how do you keep the culture consistent when you’re not all in the same room and when you’re not there to say this is what we stand for every day?

Paul: We have a lot of really high quality video chat meetings. We use pretty high quality video and we talk every day. We have meetings every day.

Andrew: What’s the format? Is it a script set meeting everyday where you come on and you have a set format for the conversation?

Paul: Yeah. For every single day at 9:00 Denver time, everybody in the entire company is on for about 10 minutes saying what they’re talking about and twice a week we have hour long meetings that involve the decision makers.

Andrew: Okay.

Paul: Then we have other meetings set up for different things that we’re doing. It’s pretty basic structure. I think one of the things that there is a healthy mixture here between what sounds like me talking to you and sounding very casual about what we’re doing and we sound like we’re these odd balls doing these odd things but we actually know what the fuck we’re doing. We are professionals we just happen to believe in things. They are some of the best programmers in the countries.

Our designers are world renown for what they do, in a way it’s kind of a super group. I myself am mostly an instinctual person. I think I am smart enough to understand most analytical work that comes my way but my value and my tendency is to take a look at all of that stuff, study it and then just do whatever the hell I want because my guts tend to be pretty good?

Andrew: What is your structure? I actually saw in preparation for this interview a video from a year ago that the guys over at 37 Signals base camp did an interview.

Paul: It’s like a banjo?

Andrew: I don’t remember that. It showed you cycling from your point of view but more than that what stood out for me was the way you organized a team of people who are all over the world using basic camp and how structured and rigorous you are about keeping things organized. What do you do today to keep things organized and to make sure that there is a system in place?

Paul: We have this amazing technology, you may have heard of it, it’s called paper?

Andrew: Really?

Paul: Yeah. This piece, this book here is a Franklin Covey Planner which was invented in the 80s before people were using computers. A lot of people blame, you know the boom in the 80’s, a lot of people think that was caused partially because all of the management consultants were forced to use this system which was created by a Professor at Brigham Young University and was based on the way Benjamin Franklin worked and thought about his life. So whether you use paper or computer to organize yourself, the key thing is not to make lists on what you’re doing it’s how you organize and prioritize them and the criteria used for organization.

And for me it was a big difference between importance and urgency. That was a big thing that came out of what Steven Toby talked about so I think losing just some forever.

Andrew: And stick with their format? With this Franklin Covey format?

Paul: I do. I’ve done it on computer, I got really high tech for a while. It sounds really geeky to be doing this on paper nowadays, but I’ve gone back to paper just because….I think one of the things we miss when we work exclusively digitally, and I work a lot digitally when I design and whatever is that actually our bodies have a tactile memory that we don’t take advantage of. When we write something down, let’s say a phone number in this book and you need that phone number later your body remembers that you wrote that down.

Oh yeah, I wrote that down somewhere and you can flip back and find it. I think that is often missed when you type in, we all do so much typing. I just find this a great way. I know people are using a lot of new tools like Box, we used Box for a bit, too which allows us to send quick Walkie Talkie voice messages they are synchronous not timed based just to get away from typing. Because I think when you speak, when you write there’s a different kind of memory that’s invoked.

Andrew: I’ve found that when I take notes in books, in paper books compared to digital books I would remember not just the note better but the page and what it looked like and what side of the book the page was on because I hand wrote it.

Paul: Totally. I use paper. I’m a maniac for organization. I’m really a tyrant that way. My companies, that’s one of the reasons why they work so well is that we just treat everyone like results and require everyone to be responsible and accountable for their work. For instance, if someone new comes to the company you know within 10 days in and they don’t last very long.

Andrew: How do people stay accountable for their work? What do you do to make sure everyone is?

Paul: It’s very easy. I don’t micromanage anyone. I walk over and say, we talk about what someone is supposed to work on and if they accept it and they’re going to do it and know when it’s supposed to be done, I expect it to be done and if it’s not, like I said, the kind of people who end up working with me are not the type of person who doesn’t end up finishing what they say they’re going to do. It’s okay if some things are life, you can take responsibility for that and set a new deadline. But there’s a big difference between that and flaking. I have no tolerance for that whatsoever. Life is to short and it’s no fun dealing with people who are.

Andrew: Do you have an example of something you do that makes you say you’re a tyrant about organization?

Paul: Yeah. I hire slowly and I fire quickly.

Andrew: Okay. But a lot of people do that. It feels like there’s more than that. There’s something about the way you structure your communication with people and the accountability that makes you feel like you have much more discipline and organization than other people would.

Paul: I don’t know. Looking over this woman who used to be our intern here and is now running our entire customer service department, what happened with her is I would walk over to her and say, “So we’ve got this problem, do you want to try to solve it?” She’d say, “Yep.” I would say, “Okay. Tell me what you think tomorrow.” Tomorrow she would show up and have an answer. I’d say, that’s great. Here’s another problem, this one is harder. See if you can answer it. She’s like 22. I just kept giving her more and more stuff. She kept taking it and handling it.

And she would be willing to come over to me and say I don’t know how to handle this one and ask for help which is an awesome quality for someone to have. Now she has a bunch of people working for her. She’s super accepted and super excited and it’s really fun. It’s a little bit like that scene in Princess Bride where it’s like not yet, probably kill you tomorrow. It’s like, that’s great but we’ll probably kill you tomorrow. After a while, there’s no chance. She has to work with me.

Andrew: Is there a way of understanding of how you work together that allows someone to say, okay, I’ve got this problem but I also understand what we do to solve problems here? Kind of like the manifesto at Ello?

Paul: No. I think I just hire clever people and the way we solve problems is we ask for help.

Andrew: How do you hire clever people?

Paul: That’s a good question. How do you hire clever people? I have a mistrust for experience which doesn’t say that I don’t hire experienced people but in my experience, beginners are often better because they are willing to ask questions where experts are the ones that say all of the experts and social media said that Ello should never work. Right? They’re still saying it. Ello is ran virally and it still shouldn’t work but it does, so apparently the experts were wrong. The experts say that you can’t sell rights to someone for 8,000 dollars but apparently you can. It’s a good thing I didn’t hire too many experts.

On the other hand, there are people with expertise who their soul and their minds and I love working with people like that. There’s nothing wrong with expertise and skill but I think being an expert at something tends to be a weakness. When we’re beginners we really have open minds. When you walk into a new, you’ve probably experienced this, everyone does, you walk into somewhere where you don’t know anything about what is going on but you’re curious. With that simple curiosity you can learn a lot. That’s how I do all of these things. I walk and I’m just curious. I walk in and ask really dumb questions. I’m not afraid.

In the end I think that open mind means that you can do things that are really innovative and all of the experts are sitting around. I’ve had really brilliant people helping me out. They came, this really brilliant guy who works for online stuff for a bunch of big brands like WalMart and he’s just brilliant with metrics and stats in ways that I will never be. He’s just a genius. If I used his method of running business it would take me a year to make a decision. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn from him. It just means that he doesn’t start businesses. I think there’s a big difference in that.

Andrew: You mentioned virality a moment ago. That is something I want to understand. I don’t see the viral hooks that other social networks have. You don’t ask me to upload my address book. You don’t even let me do it so I can find members who are already in my address book who are on the site.

Paul: No.

Andrew: You don’t say tweet to everyone I’m done with Twitter and now on Ello, or any of those things. What allowed the site to take off, then?

Paul: I think it’s just awesome. I do think that Ello is in a stage right now, which we hope will last a very long time, maybe forever, where the people on it are very passionate about what’s happening there. I think there’s a sense of freedom with being able to start new. I think that’s start of the DNA of what Ello is. If you think about twitter and tweets talk about that basically for every action of our lives, whether we decide to be on an interview with you or whether you’re going to start a website or you’re going to start a business or quit or job, there is a trigger, a reason. We create these little stories in our head. We create reasons for what we do. There is a reward for a certain kind of actions and that’s why we repeat those actions. We talk a lot about that and I think that maybe some of the rewards for Ello are a bit, I think they are higher rewards. They are rewards that last. They actually build connections moving on.

Andrew: This is a hooked frame work a little bit.

Paul: My twisted naive version of it, probably.

Andrew: I see. Is it based at all on his ideas?

Paul: I don’t know who that is so probably through a string of conversations.

Andrew: What’s the trigger that gets me to want to post on Ello and where’s the reward that makes me feel reinforced that the trigger was right?

Paul: It might not be there for you.

Andrew: What is it for the typical user? I’ll tell you what it is for me.

Paul: Cool.

Andrew: I want to understand broader than me but I’ll tell you what it is for me.

Paul: Okay.

Andrew: When I discover something that I didn’t know existed at first glance it’s like discovering an Easter egg, I guess, for some people. I want to discover the site more and find what other little Easter eggs are in there. So if I’m submitting and I see that mousing over the X makes the X twist to the side and I can only see that after I submit a post, I want to submit another post so I can see what else is there or click on yours to see what else is going on.

Paul: I’ve got to tell Todd that. He’ll love that. I don’t think that would sustain you because after a while you would find all kinds of — like you know if you time a colon, a bunch of emoji’s pop up. So that’s one for you.

Andrew: I didn’t see that. So that’s not enough, okay. And you know what I’ll go it and I’m sure other people will go it, but I see and I’m glad that you’re saying that’s not enough because as an outsider there’s no way I could fully understand it. Can you enlighten me? Share more of what it is that gets people to feel the need to participate or the excitement about it.

Paul: Well, it’s doesn’t take lots of people, right? So there are people that have discovered it. So there’s the core that’s built on our initial core that are creative people, all kinds of creative people.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Paul: Those people are on Ello, and there are other great people on Ello. They discovered that, oh my God, you know, actually there are a lot of very, very well-known artists, designers, writers using Ello right now. And, in fact, many of these is actually very strong because if one person’s there the other person enjoys being there. They get to have conversations.

There are people who go on and discover, oh my God, all of this amazing, cool stuff. I get to interact with those people. So there’s definitely a core that has to do with creativity, but as time goes on that’s where we started. We started a hundred designers and artists and writers on Ello. But as time goes on, there are all kinds of different people. It’s sort of a [??] where people are just on there because they’ve made some sense there.

Just like on the social network, they’ve invited a bunch of different friends. You can invite your friends, and you can choose who to invite, and there are whole communities. And then there are other communities that are growing up around interests. I mean, there’s a whole community of cartoonists on Ello that are doing everything in drawing that bounces back and forth. They’re drawing absolutely everything. They’re not writing almost anything at all.

So there’s only like different communities and sub communities that are going on. As things cascade outward, I think this is turning into a social network, but I think there’s some freedom because people are getting to start new and a lot of that negativity. So I think that this is, there’s no way I can prove this, but I think that the negativity that a lot of us feel on Facebook. You know what I’m talking about. Things get pretty negative pretty fast.

It doesn’t seem to exist on Ello. Now it is rather really new, but I think it’s because there is this general sense that people aren’t being fucked with, you know? But I think that on an ad based network where the real goal is to grab as much data as possible about you and then serve you more ads. And then sell that data to someone else who may or may not maybe serve you ads is in trouble around the internet, all the rest of that stuff whether or not you care about the ads.

And then I can see frankly ads bother me, but they don’t always bother me. It’s all right like everyone else, but the fact is that when that’s going on there’s this subtle and sometimes not so subtle feeling that we’re just being messed with, that something isn’t quite right. But this is really there for us. And then there’s that twist that slightly twists our relationship everyone that goes on when we feel like a license to kind of lash back.

And because, I think, that isn’t happening on Ello, the community just feels very real and vibrant and it doesn’t… Like I can say… A few weeks ago I said, you know, I’m really tempting fate, but so far and it’s one time on Ello I don’t know how many followers. I have a lot of followers, and so far I haven’t had to delete one comment underneath any of my posts because someone had been completely inappropriate.

We thought we’d have a lot of trouble with people posting inappropriate stuff, all the bad stuff that happens on the internet. We got a crew of people ready to take care of it, but it just doesn’t really happen very much. It does happen but not very much. It’s amazing and we’ll see how long that lasts.

Andrew: Did you court specific people because you wanted them there as a way of setting up the kind of environment you want for everyone to come in the future?

Paul: Oh hell, yeah.

Andrew: You did? Who are some of the people you’ve courted?

Paul: You know, people like Damon Way. He’s like an incredible photographer, and he’s also the founder of DC Shoes. His friend is a famous skateboarder.

Andrew: Okay.

Paul: People like Hub Keys [SP]. I guess he’s one of my favorites. He’s a toy artist and toy designer. I worked with Kid Robotic and Jeremy Ville, who’s Jay’s poster friend. [??] People like No Pattern, another great artist. You know, they’re just artists, right?

We decided that Ello would start out like… So I live in Dumbo in New York City, right? In the 90s when that was like where the garbage trucks went, right? And recycling. It was like…

Andrew: I didn’t know that.

Paul: Yeah, it was like this was the dump, the recycling dump for New York City. It was in Dumbo. And dogs were running the street, dangerous place. And someone came in and bought up all the buildings and let all these artists live there nearly for free. I lived in a loft there, nearly for free. And then after five years he kicked all the artists out because all these cafes had opened up, art galleries. All of a sudden everyone wanted to live in Dumbo. It was a great place to live. He kicked them all out, turned everything into condos, amazingly expensive place, and we’re not going to do that. Now there’s a carousel there, and it’s actually a wonderful place to visit. I think it’s the most expensive neighborhood in New York.

We’re not here to change what Ello is. One of the things I recognize about that is often when the artists move in, they help create a place other people want to go. That’s the great thing about creative people and the arts. That’s what it’s about, right? So Ello started out by bringing in a lot of really amazing creative people, and I think that’s what a lot of people who may not feel like they’re that creative themselves and then discover they are actually by interacting with these people. It’s a place where you can interact with really famous and well-known people. They’re there and they’re just talking to everybody. It’s awesome.

Andrew: Paul, what was your process for getting these artists to join the network and be a part of it?

Paul: I called them up and said please.

Andrew: That’s it.

Paul: That’s what I said, “We’re starting this social network, and if you go on now, it’s going to be great and other great people are going to be here.” And they’d go, “Oh, come on, Paul. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” It would be like, “Okay,” and then go on, and then suddenly they’re like, “Oh, yeah, he’s over here to art school.” Ryan Miller’s on from Guster, one of my favorite bands, and he’s posting. Oh, Guster’s here. Cool. And then Goldie went on. Oh, wow, Goldie’s on. It just sort of starts to go, and we’ve got all these music people on. It’s cool.

Andrew: I see. Kind of like having a house party or dinner party. If you invite two people who know each other and admire each other, then they feel really comfortable, and it helps you bring in even more people.

Paul: I think so. And more great people. Ello’s growing invitation to invitation, so it’s really people invite people that love Ello, too. And it took a while to get your invitation to you probably. When Ello blew up, we couldn’t it handle it. The servers couldn’t handle it. I don’t think there’s no way in hell anyone could have handled that. We basically closed down inviting new people for a while and really slowed down everything we could until we could redo the whole back end, which we just finished, and that’s probably why a lot of people are getting invitations now.

Andrew: I see. Actually, I got one because you agreed to do this interview.

Paul: Oh, really? Oh, yeah, there you go.

Andrew: That was a huge help.

Paul: That’s very clever.

Andrew: Yeah, right. That’s the only reason I’m doing it. I’ve got to get in. Though who knows, after this interview, you may not let me in, “This guy asked me too much about whether I was a millionaire earlier.” Why did you do this interview? You’re very aware of your time.

Paul: It’s the juice, man. Everyone got this awesome juice you sent over that’s now getting you in trouble because other people are going to expect it, too.

Andrew: You accepted the interview before we sent the package.

Paul: I have to say I am not into the normal entrepreneur vibe about let’s just build a company and make money for making money. It’s not my thing, but I respect people that work hard and are driven, and I saw a lot of that on your site, and I thought that really awesome. And I thought that it would be useful to have my point of view there, and I definitely have a point of view. And my point of view is that we’re here to do good for the world, and that those of us who are blessed because we can make things, whether they’re businesses, whether they’re websites like yours, these are great places, and we need to think always why are we doing this and then listen to our hearts.

And sometimes we’re just doing it because we need to earn a living, and that’s totally great. That’s a great reason to do something, but we should always keep in the back, even when we’re just doing that, in the back of our minds that there’s something better to do, too. Along the way as well, I just keep looking for the opportunities to do that. I like to encourage all the other entrepreneurs who are either looking at the stuff you put up or speaking to you to consider that even though there’s nothing wrong with making money and it’s great and the process of making and building things is really fun, but keep your heart in it and remember in the end, it’s how we act and what we really do that matters. It’s not just what we think and feel. It’s how we actually show up in the world that matters. There you go.

Andrew: That’s a really good place to leave it. Thank you so much for doing this interview. How many people in the office, by the way?

Paul: Well, there were 12 people over here, but now there’s a new little baby just come in. Someone had a baby and she brought here by, so now there are 13.

Andrew: Well, congratulations. I’ll let you go and spend time with the baby. Thank you all for being a part of it. Paul, thanks for doing this interview.

Paul: Thank you, too. Bye-bye.

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