Founder Habits You Need To Drop To Be A Great CEO

there is a point that you get to a year maybe two years in where from a rational standpoint you probably should quit but for whatever reason um those successful ones don't and so that is the number one

filtering criteria the best advice I can have is be clear in your own head about what you're trying to learn and then you know be open to where it comes from and that's what I think people that up a lot they don't get really crystal clear on why they're trying to build a

startup or what they need to do to be successful there is going to be a reinvention of analytics uh in the next few years and you know we we want to be the ones to go lead Welcome back to another episode of the

light cone. Today we're really excited

light cone. Today we're really excited to be joined by Spencer Skates, CEO and co-founder of Amplitude. So Amplitude

went through YC in winter 2012.

Amplitude is one of the world's leading analytics platforms and they're used by some of the biggest companies in the world like Curser, Door Dash, and Walmart. Thanks for joining us, Spencer.

Walmart. Thanks for joining us, Spencer.

>> Absolutely. Good to see you here, Harge.

So, I was really excited to have you here because both of us made people on the internet angry recently, specifically on X or Twitter. Um, I made them angry because I said that a lot of

the reason incumbent tech companies can't build AI products is that the engineers are kind of grumpy and don't believe in AI and its capabilities. So,

they don't want to build the product.

People got mad at you for that.

>> Yeah, people got really mad. Turns out

that like there are actually a lot of grumpy engineers that don't believe in AI. So I was curious to hear for you as

AI. So I was curious to hear for you as like a a company that started well before the AI wave and is now um trying to move in is moving into AI and building more AI products. How has that change been for you and what have been

some of the challenges you faced? It is

hard um as a larger company to reorient and rebuild your company to use AI well.

Uh and this is I think to your point the huge advantage that a lot of earlier companies that can build from the ground up in this way. I mean, I I'll just tell you the the Amplitude story. So, we we

were frankly skeptics on AI for a while, too. So, started to become relevant in

too. So, started to become relevant in 2022. Uh 2023,

2022. Uh 2023, um there's discussion, but we we didn't really do that much. And it wasn't until, uh late in 2024 that we're like, okay, we need to get serious because I

think this is has the potential to reshape analytics and what we're doing.

Um I I think you know just to defend the skeptics for a second I think I I remember being in a board meeting once you had like you know all these like board investor finance people and you had all these sales people like hey guys

shouldn't you look at this AI thing like isn't that getting hot shouldn't you guys do it and it's like >> what's your AI strategy?

>> Yeah exactly exactly yeah actually that literally was a question like from one of our execs to me is like we got to get our AI strategy. What's our AI strategy Spencer? And I'm like, this is the wrong

Spencer? And I'm like, this is the wrong way to think about what it is we're doing. It's like, if you guys think it

doing. It's like, if you guys think it is, you guys think you can figure it out, go do it. And I remember one of my co-founders, Jeffrey, um, actually was the most frustrated because I think he saw a lot of grifting happening in AI

being like, oh, it's going to replace all these jobs and like, you know, it's going to do all these things and we're not going to, you know, it's going to create this world of abundance and it's it's just going to totally reshape how we're building products and shipping

them and how our customers are using them. But the uh the reality was if if

them. But the uh the reality was if if you use any of these models at this point, it's like it was not it was not clear at all. I I think if you look at the capabilities of any of these models,

it's like they're very very jagged. So

there's some things they're exceptional about. Uh and there's some things that

about. Uh and there's some things that they're just absolutely terrible about.

I think the frustrating part is to be told by someone who has no clue about, you know, what what stuff falls in what buckets like, "Oh yeah, you should do more of this AI thing." Um it was very very it was that that that was that was

frustrating. And so I think there was uh

frustrating. And so I think there was uh there's frankly skepticism on my part.

There's there's skepticism on the part of of my co-founders um and and some of the broader team with an amplitude about what was actually going to be possible with it. Um

with it. Um >> but something changed.

>> Yes. Well, I think you you saw the transformative effect that AI had on software engineering. Like no question

software engineering. Like no question if you were using I mean started by cursor but then you know all these other amazing tools cla you know tons and tons of others it was

it was very clear that you would be a lot more productive using these things.

Um, and so that was kind of the first of us saying, "Okay, there's something there there and let's go after this."

Um, so we really uh started on this path in earnest in around October of uh 2024.

And kind of two things happened then.

One, I hired a new engineering leader, this guy Wade Chambers, who's a Silicon Valley legend. The other is uh we

Valley legend. The other is uh we acquired this company, Command AI, also a YC company. Uh in both their cases, they were kind of the change agents that Amplitude needed. So Wade uh had been

Amplitude needed. So Wade uh had been working on AI uh to in his previous company and had known a bunch of uh people who were on the bleeding edge of leveraging the capabilities of models.

They had been building a product where they were trying to they're they're doing a bunch of different things, but they were trying to uh smartly trigger guides uh to end users to based on if

they were confused. Uh and they, you know, created this this chat bot that uh uh very much like an intercom Finn that would uh yeah interact with users and

you know, help them answer questions and and stuff like that. And um they had been you know on on leveraging a bunch of model capabilities. That was kind of the the first point that we started to

to get serious about it. And then since then, it has been a very I'd like to think we're kind of coming up. I mean, we just launched uh a

coming up. I mean, we just launched uh a whole bunch of AI products in the last few weeks. Uh we did AI feedback, we did

few weeks. Uh we did AI feedback, we did AI visibility, we did uh our MCP server, and then we're going to go much much bigger uh in December, January, and February. um where we are going to be

February. um where we are going to be coming out with uh what we call the cursor for analytics which I'm incredibly excited about and I think will dramatically change how people uh use and leverage analytics but it it's

it's taken um to transform you know amplitude as an organization I like to think we're still small we're about 800 people product engineering and design uh that organization is about 200 people so

you know it's like you can know most people um in it and and change pretty quickly it's still ch taken us a full year uh to get the team uh kind of fully on board and ramped and like believing

and and seeing and building.

>> Chat GBT launches, AI starts taking off.

Um and it sounds like your investors and board members and maybe people who aren't in the day-to-day are sort of like, hey, what are you doing with this AI thing? What about

AI thing? What about >> they read about it in Techrunch or something? Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

something? Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

>> What about internally? Like what was the vibe internally at Amplitude on the team? Like was there anyone internally

team? Like was there anyone internally asking hey like should we be building AI products or doing something with AI?

There were a few uh people that were kind of testing out ideas but I I think we were so focused on our regular motion like we were coming out with a lot of

other products outside of analytics. We

were doing you know we launched experimentation we were building session replay internally we're building this thing uh activation which targets your users based on their behavior. And so

there there was a lot to do that was just kind of right in front of us. Um that was clear like okay hey we

us. Um that was clear like okay hey we can be much more competitive with uh you know and and there's this revenue that's just sitting here if we go build these things. You know, there were a few folks

things. You know, there were a few folks that were messing around with it and there there were some people that had used cursor and other things, but the the organization as a whole did not have

it's not like it was conscious and aware of this change, this this this massive change that was about to happen. I give

a lot of credit to Wade and I give a lot of credit to the command team of being the tip of the spear in terms of showing people what is possible um and then getting the organization to to embrace

by uh early 2025.

I was convinced and I was like all right we have to be very aggressive on this.

Um so the first order is to train the organization of what the capabilities of AI are specifically engineering.

>> What was like the light bulb moment for you when did you flick into this needs to be my priority?

>> It's hard to say that there was there was one moment um we've always had this vision at Amplitude of a self-improving product where you have a product that dynamically responds to your user

feedback. So, it knows what features you

feedback. So, it knows what features you like. It knows when you're getting

like. It knows when you're getting frustrated and stuck. Um, it knows how to change things based on your input as a user. Um, and I had always thought

a user. Um, and I had always thought this vision was like, you know, 10 years out if if if you know, if if even that close. And one of the things that was

close. And one of the things that was becoming clear, it was actually a lot closer uh that that moment was actually probably a lot closer than we had realized uh because of what we saw

happening on uh the coding side with AI.

I said, "Okay, look, we, you know, whether or not a self-improving product is going to be possible, it's clear at least a step towards it. We're going to have to go do it." So, and the way to do this is we're going to have to train the

the organization on this. I started

working with, uh, James, uh, the founder CEO of Command, as well as Wade, um, our engineering leader, to figure out how do we train the organization on AI? and we we came up with an AI week and unfortunately for a

bunch of reasons we weren't able to actually do that until June but that was a that was a key uh pivot point what we did was we got a bunch of the existing

leaders in the organization so you know our VPs of product our engineering managers to use this technology and to see what was possible about it and then

during that AI week what we do is we train the team we had our like our one of our product leaders you know uh vibe mode like a dark mode for amplitude in front of the entire organization which was actually very scary but actually it

it happened you know they ran into a bug but they happen to sort it out. Um it

was actually kind of a cool moment because the entire uh engineering product and design organization saw what was it's like wow okay you know all of the leaders within amplitude are saying this is the thing and they're showing how they're doing it and you know I

better get with this as well and then the rest of the week you know so we did training for about two days um and then the rest of week was just you know like a hackathon work on stuff you're already doing except you know do it faster and

better uh by you know getting set up with cursor as well as a bunch of these other pieces of tooling. So step one is B was actually not like here's what we need to build at amplitude with AI. Step

one is just get the existing team using the tools and and bought in and believing in them. This is the core difference between building product and SAS and building product with AI. In SAS

SAS I mean it's the best business model and the best product delivery system of all time. You go to your customers, you

all time. You go to your customers, you ask them what they want and what they're going to pay for. You prioritize that list and you start building it. you get

them to those customers and then you just do the whole thing over and over again. That's the delivery loop that

again. That's the delivery loop that Amplitude has mastered over the last decade. And you know, that's that's our

decade. And you know, that's that's our core competitive advantage, you know, as as an analytics company is we're better at that than uh anyone else. The key is you can go to your customers, they can tell you what they want. Um with the

capabilities of AI because they're so jagged, you it's a technology first understanding of what is possible. And

so if you go to your customers and tell them and ask them what they want, like they're not even going to be able to describe what's possible.

>> Give me a faster horse.

>> Yeah. Give give me a faster horse, you know, or or it'll be asking for something that's not quite possible or possible in the wrong way or like, hey, you know, I want something that ships insights to me and, you know, does it in this particular way and you'll get all

sorts of different visions of it. Um,

and what's much more important is you you have to be familiar with the capabilities of the models and then how those can map back into what your product does. The thing that I just find

product does. The thing that I just find really surprising about this is usually the way it works with new technologies is like the engineers are the early adopters and they are usually like

bugging their like company. I really

want to use like this tool. I don't like and it's like the companies are resisting saying it's not like tested yet. It's not safe. But like it seems to

yet. It's not safe. But like it seems to be a more common pattern with AI that it's like going the other way. It's tops

down.

>> Yeah. Like why do you think that's happening?

>> Um I I mean it's going to sound extraordinarily reductive, but I I think I think Sam Alman is the best salesperson of of this generation by no bar none. like I think he has done an

bar none. like I think he has done an exceptional job stating a very ambitious vision getting a lot of people rally behind it at OpenAI um showing what's

possible and convincing you know the entire world of the impact that this technology is going to have and so you have these you know exe investors already bought in executives are bought

in you know world leaders are bought in like you know as a society we you know the the the people in power have said hey this technology matters and the reality is the capabilities are still trying to catch up and it's not clear if

they'll catch up to those aspirations.

Um and so you have to your point Har the opposite disconnect happening where you know yeah you have a lot of desire for this thing to happen but you know it's not clear if the capabilities are are there yet and so this is why you know

you had a lot of frustration you know in amplitude as a case study you have a lot of frustration from engineers being like man I see just tremendous what they feel is grifting in AI where it's a lot of

talkers not many doers you know it's it's not till the last year that you know okay hey we think the capabilities are here for it to transform the uh the business that that we're in in

analytics.

>> One thing that comes to mind is this mode of running the company more like founder mode is even more present and there's a story of the transformation with case techs where just founder le to

do that transformation. Sounds like this is what's going on with amplitude 2 is coming from from you.

>> Absolutely. So I've had to learn over the last 10 years how to be go from being a founder to being a large company executive. there is no way to understand

executive. there is no way to understand what is possible than being using the technology and being on the front lines of it. And so, you know, that's why it's

of it. And so, you know, that's why it's like, yeah, you train the entire organization and it's a much more bottoms up thing on what is possible.

And so, out of that AI week came basically all the AI stuff that we're working on now. So, uh, our MCP server, which we didn't even plan for, like that was actually one of our engineers, uh,

Brian Giori, who was incredibly excited.

you had uh one of our engineers, this this guy named Leo Jen who built AI visibility and he just wanted to he was actually going to leave Amplitude to start a company and we're like look just come here stay here learn how to do this

while getting paid and we'll we'll we'll teach and coach you and then you know we'll fund when you whenever you do go something and I didn't even want him to do AI visibility but he was like oh I think that there's a huge opportunity

here uh to like build something for free and give it away and you know now that's now like you know there it's been this explosion like we have that la product launch doubled uh new signups to

Amplitude which is wild you know like every week it's like we're getting twice as many uh signups to our free plan as we did uh from before our AI visibility launch um all the way to what we're

going to be launching in January which is we're going to launch um a what we're going to call Ask AI which is a global chat interface very much like cursor where you will be able to chat uh with

uh yeah chat with AI and ask it to pull pull certain charts for you or do analysis or figure out why something has happened to you for uh within uh uh within you know your data uh and pull

that back out to you to our agents to like so many different things have come out of this uh from but it's it's all been very bottoms up and then it's about you know for me and for Wade um to to

sculpt okay how do we set these up in the organization for success >> so not many uh large companies like yourself have been able to do this transformation a lot of them are stuck and it's been probably very

painful to overcome. What are things that you had to give up to get to where you are right now?

>> I mean, we've done two reorganizations in uh the the engineering product and design organization since the since the start of this year. Um, and so, you

know, there were leaders and executives and and different people who were very much kind of in the SAS modality, but were not on the bleeding edge of AI that just unfortunately were not quite the right fit for what we were trying to

build in the future. And so, ended up having to move folks out of the business. I mean, doing that level of

business. I mean, doing that level of reorganization, you know, twice in a year is very disruptive. We've also

acquired uh other companies. So, uh, we brought in uh the Craftful team and Jana who's been phenomenal. We brought in uh uh Eric uh and Frank uh from Anari. Uh

we brought in also a YC company. We

brought out Enzo and Fuio from June also I think YC YC company. Yeah. So so we we brought in all these great YC founders.

Um uh and then kind of melded them with a lot of uh longtime ampliters. Um and

that combination has been very very special. What are like the the specific

special. What are like the the specific differences? So for people who are

differences? So for people who are really successful I I think especially engineers like who are successful in sort of preAI SAS world kind of grew up in that environment and then you compare like what are sort of the things that

they're I know lacking is the right word but what are the things that they can't see or they're not as naturally adept at as people who came up in sort of postAI world and are like AI native engineers

and believe in it deeply.

>> To say the more uh uncomfortable thing like is it an age gap? is an age gap.

It's not an age thing per se. It's a

mentality thing. Like in the SAS world, you can take you can do that loop I talked about earlier. Talk to customers, ask them what they want, prioritize that

list, build it, deliver it, do it again.

Like you you you kind of I don't know, it feels very cliche to say, but you you want to take kind of the state-of-the-art in whatever field you're building for and then start to say, okay, if I were to redo this in an

AI native way, why? On the flip side, I think what a lot of these AI native teams are really missing is they haven't learned the product and the problem and why things are solved the way they're solved. And so like they try to create

solved. And so like they try to create these new interfaces from scratch without drawing on the previous, you know, expertise that's happened over the last decade on whatever problem that they're solving. And so, you know, if

they're solving. And so, you know, if you try to build an analytics interface from the ground up where you're just uh say, you know, starting with questions and you're not seeing your data, it's actually that's actually has its own set

of challenges. And so I I think um you

of challenges. And so I I think um you know what I'll say with the Amplitude team is like there's some incredible engineers there. I think the ones that

engineers there. I think the ones that have adapted the best have always been very in tune with okay the code is not an end in itself. It just uh like shipping it. That's just a side effect

shipping it. That's just a side effect of solving whatever problem for the customer and then hey now I need to get up to speed with this new technology and if I can marry those two things then I'm going to create something amazing. I

guess one of the weird things I've noticed in my own behavior is um we have an internal agent infra at YC and it has access to all our you know databases and everything like that and then Jared recently told me I'm like sort of a

super user for it and then what I realize is uh I don't basically it actually fails most of the time still but I just like try and ask it in a

different way. I tried, you know, if it

different way. I tried, you know, if it failed with Gemini 3, then I'll try it with, you know, Claude, I'll try it with GP 5.1, like I'll change the reasoning levels like, and then eventually I

figure it out and it's like, and it works. So whereas like in B2B SAS andor

works. So whereas like in B2B SAS andor building, you know, sort of standard web 2.0 software, it's like, man, if it broke even once, like this thing is a piece of crap and I'll never use it

again. And it's like a weird Yeah. You

again. And it's like a weird Yeah. You

have to like rewire your brain to be it's like working with a child right now.

>> Th This is why I think a lot of the hype in that AI killing SAS is way overblown because particularly for a lot of business

workflows like very high guarantees on performance are fundamental to it. You

know, if you put a record into your CRM, that stuff better be there. you know,

you don't want it, oh well, it put this in with 80% probability. It's like you want it to be there. And SAS does a great job of that. It actually took a set of existing workflows that were handled on prem or by paper and just

moved them to the cloud. And so it wasn't really like it wasn't any workflow transformation. And this is

workflow transformation. And this is where I think um Andre Karpathy's point is totally right where a lot of these businesses are trying to overshoot the mark and just say, "Okay, well, hey, we'll just have this agent handle this

workflow end to end." actually the editing and redoing it like you like you talk about Gary is actually incredibly important. And so how do you create a

important. And so how do you create a product that allows you to do that really well I think is the key challenge that a lot of uh AI B2B companies are figuring out. Speaking of things that

figuring out. Speaking of things that you had to give up in order to do this what happened to the existing Amplitude roadmap like you had all these other things that you were working on before the company got AI forever. Did you

throw out the whole road map only like half of it? How are you thinking about like allocating resources between these new AI bets and the like existing stuff that makes the money? It's not like there's there's totally separate

products. Like the goal of for example

products. Like the goal of for example uh our uh what we're calling Ask AI which is the chat interface in in Amplitude is to make it easier to use

the existing product. Um and so you know as we've looked at next year there are four big priorities we have. One is

rebuild Amplitude to be AI native. Uh

the second is make it much easier to use. The third is make sure our other

use. The third is make sure our other products outside of analytics have parity with the competition. And then

the fourth is uh serve marketers really well so that we can take on a bunch of the legacy martekch guys. There's still

like basics that we're doing or or foundational things we're doing on our session replay product on our experimentation products on our guides and surveys product. Um like you know for example one big thing that we're

going to be coming out with in session replay in the next few months is zoning which is this way where you can look at a web page and then see the analytics overlaid on top of it which is super cool functionality. And so that we're

cool functionality. And so that we're still doing. Uh in the same way, I think

still doing. Uh in the same way, I think what getting the team to embrace uh AI from the uh uh from the ground up has happened has allowed us to do is one, you know, they're a lot faster and more

productive, so they're shipping a lot more, which is absolutely amazing. Uh

and then two, uh they are looking at these problems with this lens. Um and so the the the big change we did organizationally is uh we had a lot of these these AI projects as kind of side

projects for a bunch of people and we said okay let's have a dedicated team that kind of goes after them but the existing team is still going to do uh you know work on making the amplitude product great and that work is is is

just as important because I I I think the timeline for change in the business world is the cycles are just much much much longer >> and how do you allocate people between the teams working on the new AI stuff

and the more traditional SAS stuff. Did

they self- select into different groups?

Is like is there like a like a like a challenging cultural divide there that you have to navigate?

>> No, you know, I think by doing the AI we can make it clear. We had this whole uh metaphor we talked about burning the boats like we're all in on this. Um and

there were some people that got even more into it and they very naturally self- selected uh into a bunch of uh a bunch of this work like we and it's it's crazy. It's like it's not just hey

crazy. It's like it's not just hey engineers, it's like designers too. Our

very best designer at Amplitude, uh this guy named Will Newton, we actually had him spread among way too many projects and he was like, "No, I got to focus in like let's like say no to some of these for for a little bit so I can go really

deep on this chat interface um at uh you know and and make sure that when we launch this thing in early next year, it's it's going to be awesome." Um, so yeah, people will naturally kind of self- select in um or out and um you

know it's it's a 200 person or so, so you get a you get a whole spectrum of this.

>> Can we talk about the thing that you said that made people angry on the internet?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Which one?

>> I think Yeah.

I think it was it was the AI visibility tweet, right? I think like generally I

tweet, right? I think like generally I think you were making the point that um the a lot of these startups are sort of like features not companies. Um, and

obviously like at YCU, we're going to take the other side of it and we'd argue that >> you guys have a have a visibility company. It feels like every batch,

company. It feels like every batch, right?

>> Yeah, it's it's a it's become a a popular idea. That is true.

popular idea. That is true.

>> We find founders, not ideas.

>> I love it.

>> Um, but I AI visibility aside, I guess you've gone through the whole journey like you you're in the batch, you started a company, now you're running a public company, you know. I mean, I think we would argue the side of just I the start the advantage that startups

have in general is just like they they don't have an existing customer base.

They don't have revenue. they can like their customers are going to be more forgiving if the thing doesn't work yet and these have seem like advantages for like new startups attacking incumbent companies with like an AI product. Um

but from your perspective what are what are like what are the advantages that like incumbent companies have over the how do you think about it? I think the real business has to be downstream of AI visibility. Uh it's a valuable there's

visibility. Uh it's a valuable there's value in it like you know just like there's value in in the SEO world but it's so easy to do you know we we did it

you know as as I mentioned in in in a it's probably more like a few months and a few weeks but we we did it very quickly um and gave it away for free and it's been this incredible lead

generation for us um and so the commoditization is going to happen real real fast I mean you talk about like you know people talk about uh hey SAS going away because of AI I think that's a

great example of it. Um, and so in contrast, if you look at I think businesses that have done very well here. So like there is a business I

here. So like there is a business I think that is very viable here, which is what Aerops is doing where they're yes, they have some visibility aspects, uh, but they have uh, a whole content

generation business to help you create blog posts and other material um, on that, you know, and and that's the that's their real business. And so I think all of these visibility businesses

like you can you can get it for free from us, you can get it, you know, you're going to be able to get it free from a lot of other places and you're going to have to construct a real business kind of downstream. And to

maybe to give the flip side of it, like um you know, I I think innovation in the space is great. You know, it's already moved a lot in the last few months. One

of the advantages we have is because we have an existing revenue base of hundreds of millions, we can give away this for free, you know, and just uh and that's that's great because, you know, now a lot more people can get visibility

without having to, you know, go through all the hoops of of paying a company and get like, you know, tons of uh tons and tons of value out of it. You have like you you were Spencer the founder like right out of college starting company,

now you're like public company CEO, let's say. And so you have all this

let's say. And so you have all this knowledge from seeing like what things look like at scale. Um let's say you went out and started another company again and you were looking at like markets to go into and you were thinking

about like where are where are markets where you would imagine like oh like this incumbent is actually really good and like we should just stay away and AI is not going to give us an advantage and and which are ones where you'd be like

oh yeah like actually no that's totally vulnerable and like they're not going to like we could really compete with them.

I I mean honestly I I joke about this but anything Google's trying to do I think that Google is the worst B2B company of all time and there's an incredible

opportunity to compete with them. So you

know I'd look at email I'd look at a lot of the workspace stuff. I think what the notion guys for example are doing as a competitor to Google Docs is is very exciting. Institutionally Google's

exciting. Institutionally Google's Google's way too slow and way too conservative um that to be able to do this. And so it's only when other

this. And so it's only when other companies start to innovate that they get their stuff together. You know, same on this coding thing, you know, they they've proven it can work from a technology standpoint, but bringing it to market, selling it to customers, uh making it work from a product

standpoint, I think is very ripe for disruption, honestly. So, we've seen it

disruption, honestly. So, we've seen it in coding, we're starting to see in support. We're seeing, you know, we

support. We're seeing, you know, we think there's a massive opportunity in analytics that that we're uniquely positioned for. Um I think it, you know,

positioned for. Um I think it, you know, there's going to be a cursor moment in analytics in the next two years. No

question in my mind where people are going to use analytics with AI and you're going to be like, why did we ever do it the old way? And I can't even imagine going back. I think there's a lot of very generalized agent builders

and I think picking a particular problem and a particular buyer um is going to be a much more successful way of building a business. You know, yeah, there's a

business. You know, yeah, there's a general, you know, there's probably multiple generalized agent builders every YC batch now, too. Um and so um having a a strong point of view for a

particular buyer that cares about some things like one of the ones um I saw recently was like I I think you know there's all these studies being like hey enterprise is failing to adopt AI and if

you look at you kind of dig into the why behind it um there's all these security and compliance concerns and so okay I think there's a huge opportunity to solve those uh to get much faster

adoption of these products there has to be a Uber for tech support. When I was in high school, I ran my own IT support business just helping people around the neighborhood fix their computers cuz

it's like set my Wi-Fi network up, set my printer, you know, whatever. And the

fact there's still not a scaled solution, it just blows my mind for this. like you have a lot of people that

this. like you have a lot of people that you know are older that are not native to technology that uh have a bunch of money and want this stuff to be set up and you have this young generation that

desperately needs money that has a ton of expertise on technology and so a business that matches those that's kind of supply and demand I mean we also spend a lot of time um helping people

figure out the idea actually and and like it's really hard it's extraordinarily hard >> I don't think everyone realizes how Amplitude started it out. Could you

maybe talk about your journey to actually finding the Amplitude idea and maybe reflections on it a decade later?

So before Amplitude, um we started this company called Sonet Light, which was a voice recognition. It was like early

voice recognition. It was like early version of Siri and it had this really amazing demo actually where you could it listened in the background for your voice and this was before any of the hey

Siri, hey Alexa stuff. Um and so it like listened in the background on Android phone and as far as we could tell we were the first to come out with the technology. We didn't know anything

technology. We didn't know anything about what made for a successful product or business or company and we were just kind of taking our shot on that. Um we

were just two kids at a at a college um that were like okay what's a problem that seems barely at the edge of possible. Let's let's you know that's

possible. Let's let's you know that's probably an interesting place for us to to go to um you know and we ended up choosing choosing voice recognition not because we were passionate about the space. So we we did YC with that. We did

space. So we we did YC with that. We did

uh went through the whole batch did demo day did this amazing demo on stage. We

got tons of press written about us. Uh

but the product and the tech, it was just not good enough. It wasn't a good enough uh uh product. And so we ended up right after demo day deciding to shut

that down. Um and then we had always uh

that down. Um and then we had always uh built our own analytics in house uh you know because like it's what you do as an engineer. You're always like I want to

engineer. You're always like I want to build this instead of paying amplitude money because it was very clear to us the this was the right way to build product. It was you would look at what

product. It was you would look at what people did in your product. you would

understand them deeply and you could build and iterate on a better product.

Um, and so we ended up when we showed what we had done in the analytics side to a lot of other companies, they're like, "Hey, we want this." And so that uh right after uh uh YC Winter 2012 demo day, uh we ended up uh pivoting to to

Amplitude. And that was I think that was

Amplitude. And that was I think that was June of of 2012.

>> Analytics was a pretty crowded space at that point.

>> Extraordinarily crowded.

>> Like what like did that factor into your thinking about >> getting into it at all? a little bit, you know, and so you have to ask yourself, it's like, okay, why do you think you're different? We knew this was a particularly good problem for compared

to voice recognition, you know, and a lot of this AI stuff, frankly, that was those were probabilistic problems. So, you could not get a right answer. And we

were a bunch of algorithms engineers coming out of MIT. Um and so this problem of how do you analytics seems amazing because it's like okay you build this really scaled distributed system

and you can get a right answer and it's just about doing it better and faster that sounds great and amazing uh in comparison to voice recognition. I think

in retrospect you know we got lucky that we were particularly suited for for that problem. And then the other part of the

problem. And then the other part of the other point of view I think I had was that I'd see all these great engineers and these great founders who uh built these amazing pieces of technology but

just did not really understand how to how to get it in the hands of customers and sell it and all that. So I'm like okay I'm going to go full I'm going to go all in on learning how to do that. I

don't even think I do that particularly well. Uh but just because we were

well. Uh but just because we were willing to do that and kind of build the next thing and build the next thing and build the next thing. You know you compound that 10 years later and and and now you're the leader in the space. Do

you have like a method for learning these things? Like one of the things I

these things? Like one of the things I remember was um once you went to Amplitude, then it was you know B2B sales and then you got really good at it but you didn't know anything about >> I'm not good at B2B sales to be clear. I

still feel an imposttor to this day >> but being able to do it at all like from an engineering background I mean and being willing to learn how to do it and realizing like oh this is actually my go

to market and I have to do it this way.

>> Yeah. analytics. I I think in particular there are some products that you can adopt without selling in that like people just you know they have single player mode. You know cursor's a great

player mode. You know cursor's a great example, Slack's a great example, but there's some where you need to convince multiple people at the same time that you're going to go do it and that requires a sales motion. The number one

misconception I had was like this would be something you learn out of a book or on a website or you know you kind of read about but one you have to do it and it's like two you just want to get someone who's good at coaching you. So,

we worked with this guy Mitch Mirando who coached uh you know was a a sales exec who had gone on to coach a bunch of other companies. Um and I just happened

other companies. Um and I just happened to randomly meet him through through uh uh the sensor tower guys actually. Um

and I was like okay this is the expert I need you know teach me everything you know about sales. Um he's like whoa whoa slow down. And then he would just come

slow down. And then he would just come in uh once a week and just beat me up and just being like hey you don't really you know what's the customer pain? and

I'm like, "Oh, they want some dashboards or charts. Like, Spencer, it's not a

or charts. Like, Spencer, it's not a business pain. Like, what's the pain?"

business pain. Like, what's the pain?"

And so, after a while, like finally get the message. Um, it's very much like

the message. Um, it's very much like learning a sport or to play an instrument. In a lot of ways, you're not

instrument. In a lot of ways, you're not going to do it reading a book. You want

to just do it and then get a little bit of advice and coaching on the side.

Like, that's the that's the much much better approach.

>> I mean, you said this several times even in this hour that um, you know, you find certain people who are really really great. if you could, you know, give the

great. if you could, you know, give the the 20-year-old version of yourself like the cheat sheet on what you learned about finding those mentors, like are there, you know, is there is it like I

know it when I see it or, you know, there's a track record or it's so hard.

I mean, I've been extraordinarily lucky.

I This is one of the great parts of Silicon Valley is there's such a positive sum, help others, pay it forward mentality. I mean, Mitch was an

forward mentality. I mean, Mitch was an amazing one. um you know is very clear.

amazing one. um you know is very clear.

I mean the best advice I can have is be clear in your own head about what you're trying to learn and then you know be open to where it comes from. So you

first need to be clear on what you're trying to do and that's what I think people that up a lot. They don't

get really crystal clear on why they're trying to build a startup or what they need to do to be successful and then from there you know how you get the how you get the mentorship or advice may come from a lot of different directions.

>> Can I ask like one more kind of meta question? Hearing you speak about your

question? Hearing you speak about your experience at Amplitudes, uh, it's just really inspiring to me because like you go all the way into the details. You

have this cap capability to like hyperfocus and then I guess like how do you direct it? Like how do you know that you're hyperfocusing on the thing that you know really is the number one thing?

Like do you have like a cycle in the back where you're like I just you know spent 10 minutes thinking about blah.

But like is that actually the most important thing or not? like how do you, you know, prevent just like rat holeing on something?

>> It's hard. One of the things I did before starting a company was getting re real clear in my head as to what I

wanted to do with my career and why. And

one of the takeaways I had was uh you know, you want to dedicate yourself to a mission that's greater than yourself. Um

and you be part of contributing something larger to humanity. And what I knew how to do was to, you know, build software and sell it. And so like, okay, what's the best way I can do that? You

know, starting a company. And then from there, it's just, you know, like you kind of the goal, you know, you create a goal tree that that goes down from there. Okay, let's uh let's figure out

there. Okay, let's uh let's figure out what product to build. Let's figure out how to sell that product, you know, and then it it just it kind of falls into place. I I I find that where people get

place. I I I find that where people get screwed up the most on that is they are not clear. And by the way, speaking of

not clear. And by the way, speaking of starting a company, it's extraordinarily emotionally painful. Like I do not

emotionally painful. Like I do not recommend it for the vast majority of people. I mean, there's so many times

people. I mean, there's so many times like every few years I've gotten to a spot where I feel like I want to quit um the business. And you feel that deeply.

the business. And you feel that deeply.

Um and the best counter to that is I kind of go back to the why of why I I kind of came into this business. And so

I think if you get that top node really right, you can always kind of anchor or go back to that. you always know, okay, look, if

to that. you always know, okay, look, if I just continue to see this through somehow, I don't know necessarily how it'll lead back to, hey, I'm going to create a, you know, build technology and

and make the world a, you know, a a better place in my own little way. Um,

so I I just I I that would be my number one advice for, you know, anyone that that's coming out of school or thinking of starting a company is get really clear on that. I think the worst I I see you guys see it all the time, which is like, hey, you know, I'll do it and if

it takes off, I'll I'll double down. if

not, I'll go back to grad school or a job or whatever. And that's like the freaking worst of this because you have to put up with uncertainty for long periods of time. You have to have all these existential questions hanging over your head. It's it's um you're not going

your head. It's it's um you're not going to get through it. Like if you look, one of the big takeaways like I I read uh founders at work. Um and one of the really clear takeaways from any of these

journeys is there is a point that you get to a year, maybe two years in where from a rational standpoint, you probably should quit. um but for whatever reason

should quit. um but for whatever reason um those successful ones don't and so that is the number one filtering criteria. Now not to say you know that

criteria. Now not to say you know that you know there's no guarantees getting that that top node really clear so that you can anchor on it um over very long periods of time is the most important I

found >> intrinsic motivation.

>> Yeah. If you if you're doing it for like recognition from others or or you know hey you know because you gonna get paid a lot or whatever else you'll your your ability to last through is going to be much much worse than someone else's.

>> I mean embedded in that you know I'm taken by earlier you were saying like at every point of amplitude there's sort of a moment where you have to learn how to do something and like grow into that. Uh

and then being a public company CEO is one of those things. walk me through like the you know how you started like the you know the intrinsic motivation and then now it's like it feels like you have a really big responsibility on your

back. It's like you know people look to

back. It's like you know people look to you for leadership and you know you were the leader of a great many people and they have families and lives you know hopes >> and they're betting their careers on on

what we're doing here. It's it's a it's a it's a very deep responsibility. As a

founder your job is always to run to the most difficult problem in the business and lead from the front. And so if there's an incredibly difficult piece of code, uh a difficult product or design

problem, a difficult customer, um you know, a difficult employee problem, whatever, you need to go, the great founders will go head first into it and lead from the front and they will rally

the the rest of the team behind them.

Even if you look at the successful founder CEOs, after about a decade, most of them leave. And in my mind, it's actually for this very reason because being a large company executive is

different. Um, and because you you you

different. Um, and because you you you can't lead by example everywhere all the time. There are places you can, but you

time. There are places you can, but you can't do it universally because it's like, okay, you got to do in sales, you got to do in marketing, you got to do on people, you got to do it on um the product, you got to do it with customers, you got to do with the press.

In fact, it's like the list goes on.

There's just too much. You have to be much more disciplined about your time and say no to most stuff. And then what you realize is you become the person you hate. You'd

always make fun of big company executives for not doing any work for themselves and just like judging other people's work all the time. But there's

a reason for that and you have to embrace that reason and and so it's it's this very hard that is a very hard thing to unlearn. Another thing which still

to unlearn. Another thing which still trips me up to this day and I hate and I try to run Amplitude differently but there's truth to it is like hierarchy.

>> There is a reason for hierarchy.

>> Oh yeah, I've learned that the hard way many times. need to have people who own

many times. need to have people who own certain things and who are responsible for leading certain teams and other people within the business. It's much

easier in my mind, I think, to be a large company executive because you have all these resources, you have all this leverage, you actually work less hard, your product market fit, and you're running, you know, like you're deploying like, you know, we're 350 million in revenue and and you know, we're

deploying close to that in terms of total spend every year. So, you have a lot of

every year. So, you have a lot of resources to do stuff. Now, you're

learning about how do you actually deploy those resources effectively. So,

so, uh, so there's leverage that you have as a large company executive that you don't as a founder, which is awesome. And, you know, but it's a

awesome. And, you know, but it's a different very different tool set and a very different, um, set of skills in order to, uh, build a business successfully. Um, and that's been the

successfully. Um, and that's been the hardest transition by far. I think this will be really interesting next couple years then because like sort of this flies a little bit in the face of the most fililel view of what founder mode

is like the most filile view is like you have to be all the way in the weeds 100% of the time which is like obviously not possible when you have 800 employees >> you can't do it everywhere you have to be clear on where you're doing it >> yeah so there's just like a lot more

nuance to how to do that >> yeah I mean you know it's one of these like you know there's like a million management books about this thing and you know they kind of all try to abstract it into some framework and it's none of them are Right? You go through

it and experience it yourself and get coaching from others who do and that that's how you end up figuring it out.

But that that transition to large company executive. That one's a really

company executive. That one's a really hard one.

>> Well, in the immortal words of uh Bob Marley, uh one good thing about product market fit is when it hits, you feel no pain.

>> Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

>> Oh yeah. Growth solves all problems. >> And then hopefully people watching this will actually get a chance to experience some of the problems that you get to live on a daily basis.

>> Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the things I'm actually very appreciative, Gary, uh that you um and PG and Jessica and others are doing is just helping people tell these later stage stories.

One of the things I think YC's done exceptionally well is like, you know, to the extent you can have a playbook for what is like the early stage stages, you guys have, you know, written and talked

about it and and made everyone out there aware of it so they they know what the path is and what it looks like. It's

still incredibly hard, but you know, now it's like, okay, you at least has some guidance. doesn't exist for a lot of the

guidance. doesn't exist for a lot of the later stage stuff as you grow up. So,

I'm very appreciative that uh that that you guys are building that.

>> There's levels to it, but thank you for sharing your levels.

>> No, of course.

>> Do you feel like we could turn what you did with Amplitude into the playbook for how SAS companies should reinvent themselves in the AI era?

>> You know, I still feel like an imposttor on this thing to this day, but I I'm very happy to contribute. You have to get very judicious with your time. There

are a lot of people who want your time.

um you know and you could spend infinite time within people in the organization with customers with you know partners with you know investors whoever and so you have to think about like like no one owns your time but you as a founder

you're just like nobody cares and so you're just desperate for anyone to give you attention so if they do you're like okay this is great but as you know large company it's like no no like you have to be very very judicious one of the things

I am deliberately trying to do is just be more out there and vocal um so you see it on Twitter you see it you know I'm just trying to be unfil there's still you know there's still an aperture you're constrained to as a public

company CEO, but most are just so conservative they're not putting anything out there. And so, you know, I'm at least trying to kind of share my story, put it out there, put my hot takes on, you know, polit politics,

religion, whatever, you know, uh, products, uh, companies out there. So,

at least at least others, you know, can can learn and and benefit from that, too. And honestly, it's like it's just

too. And honestly, it's like it's just who I am, you know, ultimately. I I want to be able to express who I am. I don't

want to argue with people on the internet. I I I don't want to have to be

internet. I I I don't want to have to be this other persona that that I'm not, you know, or try to represent something I'm not. You know, if I believe and I

I'm not. You know, if I believe and I have conviction in something, I want to be able to say it.

>> Spencer, thank you so much for spending time with us. This is super illuminating and can't wait to see Amplitude AI, the new resurgence coming into every company in the world.

>> There is going to be a reinvention of analytics uh in the next few years. And

you know, we we want to be the ones to go lead it. So, thank you guys.

>> You heard it here first. We'll see you guys next time.