YouSaid · the spoken record

Greg Peters

lines on the record: 86
first: 2024-06-24
most recent: 2024-06-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, I'm sitting in front of the frame. There's three of them in this house. Like, don't get me wrong. We buy the TVs, but I keep, I think about them as a cultural object quite often. I figured I got one shot to ask you that question.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. There's a whole bunch of design considerations that goes into the things that we use and how we interact with them in our daily lives. And some of those design considerations are about functional, right? Like how does it show up when I'm actually using it? But a lot of the design considerations or aesthetic considerations are like, it's an object in my home and I care how it looks, even when it's just static and sitting there. In some cases, we obviously choose these things based on no functional goal and, you know, just having something that looks amazing and beautiful, right?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“TV is a highly competitive ecosystem, right? So I would say there's tons of manufacturers out there. There's not really a concentration of power. And so I'd say that's a well-functioning market that allows everyone to bring their value to it. On mobile, I would say we're seeing marginal benefits as a result of some of the more recent changes. So we've got slightly better user experiences for our members on those platforms. So we can be a little bit more communicative about how they can sign up for Netflix, which is, you know, that's great. Generally, I would say consumers figure this stuff out too, as well. So it's been amazing, you know, how many people can actually just, oh, oh, this doesn't work. So I go to Netflix.com and, you know, and all, you know, sort of figures out from there.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know what our competitors get, so I can't give you a definitive answer to that question, but I would expect that relative to some other folks who provide different value, I think we probably bring more to the platform and that probably shows up in some way or shape or form.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and we do those integrations all the time. So there's actually, I would have described it as, you know, much more balanced in terms of when we do it and when we don't. And essentially, we're investing significantly in creating a better user experience for discovering Netflix content within our application. And so we want to make sure that we have a level competitive field, if you will, on the device for users who want that differentiated experience, who see that value to be able to get to Netflix in a very easy, efficient way and be able to have that. And so mostly we're, you know, the terms that we have are around is that a balanced place to do this or not? And if it is so, then we participate in things like an aggregated service discovery and where it's not, then we typically don't.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never say never, right? I mean, we've done a bunch of things that we probably were too strongly oppositional physician for. So, you know, we want to remain intellectually open and humble about that. We're being bundled with our competitors by our bundling partners right now, right? So you can go out and buy a mobile service that includes us and somebody else. So again, we don't think it changes what we do, which is we've got to really provide an incredible entertainment experience for our members. And if we do that well, then they're going to see value and whether”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've been doing that for quite some time. I think some of the bundling behavior that you see today is not entirely clear to me that it's actually going to work, right? That it's pro-consumer. I think to some degree a little bit we're getting like is just let's throw a bunch of stuff together and sort of see what sticks. So we'll see how that plays out. But I do think that quite frankly, a bundling of services is a logical thing and it's pro-consumer, so I don't see that going away.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think so, but let's just step back. I think bundling generally it's better for consumers where they have an easy opportunity to buy a package of goods that make sense together. And then they see more value in the assemblage of those than they would, you know, purchase discreetly. And to be clear, we've done this with a variety of partners for a long time, six, seven, eight years where whether it's a pay TV operator, an ISP, mobile operator, in some countries we do with utilities, right? So you can literally, you know, when you buy your energy, your power, you get Netflix with that as an option. So we've done that because it's just an efficient way for consumers to be able to decide to add Netflix. It allows us to access then as sort of an audience, which maybe is less tech forward or we show up in a way which is natural. Think about like, hey, I'm watching TV on a set top box. I can see that I can get Netflix as part of that. It's a good for consumer models.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, look, I think creators have been using tools that, in my mind, serve some of the same purposes that the AI that we're seeing, the capabilities that we're seeing today serve, right? And if you think about pixel manipulation or VFX or great examples previous, right? So having a creator be able to have a more efficient way of understanding how the script that they've got might show up and be able to manipulate that and then inform a shooting schedule is a great example of, I think, how they can use these technologies. So, you know, I think our creators are going to want to use those tools. And whether or not, you know, recognize also that a lot of the creators that we use, they're independent production companies. They decide what tools they want to use. We don't tell them that.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting because we do that right now. So we have a team of people essentially which create a variety of assets that represent the titles so that we can find the biggest audience for that title. Now we do that with a strong sense of authenticity, meaning that that has to be reflective of the title. And so we've been constantly using tools with the human in the loop that understands like, is this an authentic representation of that title? Now, if it's authentic, So in other words, it doesn't misport the title, not only would that capture some creator IR, I'm sure, it's not good for members either, though, right? You don't want to tell them that's a story about something and have it be something else. Clickbait, for example, is something that we completely reject in that regard. But if it is authentic, then it serves a purpose which creators love, which is it finds a bigger audience for that story. And if you talk to creators, generally what they want to do is be able to tell their story in a compelling way and find it in the largest audience possible.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Apt comparison in some regards because I do think that there are some interesting things associated with it. So it's not just smoke and mirrors. But I would also say, you know, we have to understand what our role is in that ecosystem. And, you know, we're not going to build frontier models. That's not what our job is, really. Our job is to think about, okay, there's a bunch of interesting technologies that are being developed. How do we give these to creators in ways that allow them to tell their stories in a more compelling fashion? And just as entertainment has evolved with the evolution of new technology, you can go back to like cave painting, you know, to where we are today. You mentioned 4K, you know, Atmos, whatever. Creators will figure out a way to leverage the newest tools to tell their stories in a more compelling way. And so our job is to enable that at the end of the day.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We think one of our competitors is to bring two worlds together. So it's amazing, entertainment, the creativity required to go produce that, as well as then the technology component. We have a long history of using machine learning, artificial intelligence like in our recommender systems. We've been doing that for 20 some years. And again, we think that our job is to be proactive about understanding where there's technical innovation, how do we use that both to serve creators, allow them to tell their stories in more compelling ways, and also then to serve our members oftentimes better user experiences. I would also say, though, that we've generally been careful about not getting caught up in the hype cycle that often informs silicon valley. Like I'm so excited that we didn't spend any energy on NFTs, which is like if we go back three or four years ago, everybody told me, my God, Netflix has to have an NFT strategy, right? And, you know, we didn't really need to have an NFT strategy. Now, I would say generative AI, I don't, that's not.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like a small minority, yeah. I feel like I have to ask you a question on AI before we end here. We've talked a lot about personalization, about modifying the UI, making it more responsive. There's a huge talent war for AI. That's a huge amount of cost, right? Just to get, I'm assuming NVIDIA GPUs. Like that's what everybody wants, right? Like they're very expensive. NVIDIA seems to be the only company that's actually making money with this stuff yet. The talent is expensive. What's your approach to this? Is it, we'll wait for the models to come and be good for us. We have to make our own foundation model. How are you thinking about it?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My theory is that most people don't value the features. And so there's a tiny subset of people that will pay, but most people don't care. Whereas if everyone cared, it would just become the default and everyone would price it.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's, you know, back to what I said, which is that we're trying to essentially find a range of prices that have appropriate features connected to them so that people that value those features more have an opportunity to get them.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's definitely not the goal. What I would say is our job is to add more value into the entertainment service that we are offering. We've seen consistently again and again. Our members want more entertainment, right? They want a higher diversity of shows. They want more quality shows. So that's our job. And then if we do that well, again, we'll go back and ask occasionally members to pay a little bit more to keep that flywheel running. And then back to the ads component of this, it's really just how we then offer a wide range. And our goal will be to have even wider range over time, quite frankly, set of prices with the right features so that basically we can attract more members around the world and they can enjoy the incredible stories that we've got available.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're very early in this process. So at this point, we're building, yeah, we're trying to build an ad server. So, you know, we can see on the horizon tons of work to go do. We have an amazing roadmap in front of us. And again, back to sort of the culture memo, like, you know, we're very much comfortable starting from a position of we're at zero and we will learn to be better at this. And that's definitely the process that we're at in terms of building ads is iterating towards that model.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can decrease the ad load and say, look, these slots are more valuable because there's fewer of them. We're going to charge higher prices. Has that played out yet? Have you seen evidence that that is true?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it is a lever that's at our disposal. I think it's a lever that, quite frankly, you use at your own peril. So I would say my goal is that actually, yeah, we will change the ad load. We'll decrease it over time. If we fulfill on the promise that we just talked about, we should be able to increasingly provide higher relevance, higher value adds. That's great for the member. They have a better experience as a result. And it's great for the advertiser. Quite frankly, advertisers will pay more for that kind of experience because it's more valuable. So I think we should be able to do that.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think, again, it gets to what role we can play. And the demand conversion advertising, that plays a role in the ecosystem. And so 100% that that's there. But I would say there's a lot of brands that before you get to that moment, or maybe that moment can't happen on the phone regardless, right? If you think you're going to go out and buy a car, that's likely that that's not happening there, right? There is a lot that we can do that basically operates above the funnel in ways that brand advertisers believe is more compelling. And obviously, you know, increasingly, we should be able to measure that performance as well, right? Like, how are we doing in terms of brand affinity awareness? How are we thinking about sort of building demand at certain levels? So our goal would be to operate at that part of the funnel and then think about fulfillment as happening in probably a wide range of channels after that fact.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe uniquely suited over a five to ten year period to magnify the impact of both of those worlds, create a premium, highly creative space. You couldn't do these kind of formats on TikTok. That doesn't work that way. But also bring enough targeting, enough brand performance in these different kind of measurements to try and give advertisers a sense that they're actually getting something for their dollar as well. So that's how I think about blending those.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, part of this is knowing what role in the ads ecosystem can we play? Should we play? Sort of what's the strategy you might say in a different way? I think our position is the ability to bring what is amazing about TV advertising. So think about the creative formats, how you're able to position brands next to titles that were, you know, our case, we seek to be culture defining moments, essentially, which is, of course, where advertisers are excited to be. And then also pair that with, you know, what is great about digital advertising. So you think about targeting performance, measurement, the ability to do that and do that sort of at all levels in the funnel. Our job is not to be the most amazing, gigantic scale digital advertiser because Google and Facebook are going to do a better job at that. Our job is not to be just a TV advertiser because, you know, other folks can do that as well. So we're trying to bring these two things together in a way that we're different.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Having an honest conversation with each other about sort of what we're good at, what we're not, we think is an important enabling factor that we want to have around the world or around all those tribes that you mentioned. You mentioned ads as being a super distinct thing, and I don't think of it as that distinct when it comes down to it, because we've always been trying to blend these sort of different base cultures or different expectations and then figure out how do we layer on top of that a way of working and a set of expectations that allow us to be better together.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What are the actual outcomes, the sort of excellence enabling things that we really want to identify here versus the behaviors and the articulations and trying to make those more general so that whether you're too creatives in Amsterdam who might have a very different form of communication when you talk about direct feedback, right?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of thinking about the world. So we've always been balancing different groups of people that think about things differently. And that's why we have these memos like the culture memo, because quite frankly, an evolution of the culture memo was going from the original deck that you talked about, which I would call highly anchored in Silicon Valley. It was libertarian philosophy or ethos, I think, that was you could read in there pretty quickly. And partly what we were trying to do over these multiple iterations is tease apart”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, if you think about engineers versus the creative community in Hollywood versus the creative community in South Korea versus game makers. And even like let's break it down, like kernel engineers who work on our content delivery network versus mobile UI engineers, that's a different tribe, right?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Degree, yes, but I actually think that there are mechanisms that you can employ which aren't the tribal knowledge don't rely on the tribal knowledge. So examples are like knowing what your North Star is is a very strong mechanism to support alignment, right? So we do another, in addition to this culture memo, which we publish, we have another memo, another doc that we don't publish, which is our strategy bets. So this is a formalization of ambiguous decisions, meaning the company could do A or could do B. And we're very clear about, okay, you know, it's ambiguous, but we are going to go do A and not B. And this is why. And that is another form of touchstone that allows employees to operate independently to that, you know, sort of loosely coupled kind of model, but with a sense of how does this ladder up into a higher purpose or how does this ladder up into an aligned position? So I think that there's”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People say these things, and it's hard to achieve them, you have people coming in, right? Like Netflix is a very different company. I think about those ideas and what I see is you need a lot of institutional knowledge to stay highly aligned. People need to know what we've done, what we might do, the ideas that we've had, all that nuance we're talking about. When you've got employees coming in, when you've got a ferocious battle for talent and AI, for example, right? People are coming and going. How do you actually maintain that? Because it feels like that relies on some amount of history and some amount of institutional knowledge to keep going. Otherwise, you've just got people reading wikis all day long”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One more question here that I want to put this into practice and come back to ads and culture because. Is the foundation for me. One of the most famous aspects of this memo, some of the most famous vocabulary words are loosely coupled, highly aligned, and disagree and commit. And the second these words were introduced into American business. Everyone just started saying, I used to work at AOL and people would tell me we were loosely coupled and highly. We were super loosely coupled. That was obvious.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every title is a different situation. The user experience changes in these ways. And whether you're a creator, whether you're an engineer, whether you're a game developer, you really want that flexibility to engage with that nuance and make smart decisions based on the specific situation that you're dealing with. And that's what we try and foster and encourage.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And not have this brittleness that sits in, which from an overly processed company. We like good process. There's some components of having people work together as a collective unit requires a little bit of scaffolding and expectations and how do you set that up for success. But a lot of process that gets in is not about that. Big company process is about how do you defend against the employee that expends something wrong or whatever. And a lot of that stuff, when you look at it, like smart people with good judgment, they're just not going to go do that stuff at the end of the day, right? And so we don't think about that as good process and we reject that and we'd really rather lean into let's hire good people. Let's hire people and set the expectation that they're going to have great judgment. And then that gives them the flexibility to deal with the incredible nuance that exists around what we're doing, right? You think about programming, you know, for these over half a billion people, countries in different situations.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because what happens is you get really, really good at one thing. And then actually, when you want to do something new, the brilliance and the optimization that you've built in actually creates a lot of rejection of the new. Or either it's incompetence or lack of capability, or it's even what we see in big companies is like all the systems are refined to say like, we do X, we don't do Y, or we don't do X and Y. So you get a lot of like antibody rejection of Y. And so a lot of what we are doing is trying to figure out how do we be a company that can go through multiple iterations of changing the strategy, adding a Y, adding a Z and have a culture that accommodates that. And so this is really around where we thought about partly what we're trying to do is have amazing judgment have people in place that we have high expectations of, they're unusually responsible compared to their peers, and that gives them ability to be flexible and to evolve.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because you said harder when a challenge. I don't really think of that way. You got to size, which is an important dynamic of it. But maybe just going back to one of the core tenets or principles that we have behind the culture memo. It's this idea that a lot of the way companies are run right now come from the Industrial Revolution Industrial Processes, right? So there's this idea that there's like a manufacturing process and you get hyper focused on how do you be amazing at that process. You think about defect reduction and like, and it's great because if you're doing that one thing, you can do it amazingly well. And like, look, if you're TSMC and you're building ships, that is, you know, your bread and butter and you do that all day long and that's an important part of corporate success. For us, what we”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We can rely on people One of the key values that you've had the whole time that I think connects to is something called people over process where you're just going to trust the people where the expense policy is just act in Netflix's best interests. That works when you're the challenger, right? When you're the startup and maybe you're focused on one thing, it gets harder when you're big, right? And when the company can just do a lot of things, how do you keep that aligned at scale?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The freedom and responsibility component people heard increasingly the freedom part and less the responsibility part. And we always meant that to be a balance, right? Essentially, what we were trying to say is, hey, hey, if everyone's super, super responsible, we don't have to have a lot of rules because we can rely on people's great judgment and people will do great things. But what ended up is people hearing like, oh, I can join Netflix and essentially all the decisions that I make are mine and I don't have to really worry about that sort of overarching responsibility to our collective corporate goals. And so again, we said, okay, this is an opportunity to try and clarify that, rearticulate in a way that grounds into the original concept. And so that's why we've shifted the language this time.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But rather, we actually explicitly say the opposite, right? You're capturing two things which are pretty distinct. So one, back to being direct and setting clear expectations about who we are as a company so people can make good decisions about do they want to join us or not. We wanted to be very clear around the fact that we're trying to program for over half a billion people around the planet. Those people's tastes are very varied and we have to bring a wide variety of content to be satisfying for those folks. And we are definitely supporting artistic expression and a wide variety of creators to go do that. So we wanted to be very clear about that and take that head on so folks could understand that and decide that, hey, Netflix is a place that I can work for as a result of that or not. And then freedom and responsibility, I would say that's a different thing. And what we found is that through the many years from that original culture memo that you talked about, the culture slides really, right?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What people's working experience is inside Netflix. It's interesting you brought it up because I think you're looking at these two points, which is the original doc and then where we are today. But what happened in the middle was actually that got softened a little too much, I think, right? And so we maybe moved the pendulum a little bit too much in the other direction. And partly what we were doing in this version is actually trying to bring a little bit more of that directness in while also still trying to accurately convey what the working experience in Netflix is.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in that way, right? It's very direct. Direct would be the word that I would use. What we're constantly trying to do is communicate effectively who we seek to be and who we think that we are. And what we found is that in the original articulation, the tone of it incorrectly communicated a sense that it was a harsh place and it was maybe cutthroat or things like that, which is actually, it's really not, right? And so we want to be very, very clear that we do think excellence in having the colleagues around you is super important. And so we have this dream team concept in the latest version, which we're trying to be very clear about. Like we are a sports team model, not a family model, right? And so when you come, we're going to seek the best player in every position, if you will. And to the degree the business evolves or moves. And we think that there's a change that needs to be there. We will make that change. So we want to be very clear and honest about that. But we also want the tone to reflect.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Articulating Just before we started talking, I went back and I read the first one from 2009. I read that deck. I have to say sitting here in 2024, that original deck is, I would describe it as refreshingly harsh. Like it's mean. It is not a nice document. It's very blunt. It opens by saying even Enron says it has integrity. Like we're not going to lie to you. Like here's what we actually value. The new one is a little softer. It's a little more corporate. It's just like a nicer thing. Is that just meeting a younger employee base? Why make it nicer?”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get better to learn, to seek excellence is what we call it, to constantly strive for that. That's the rationale for it. And then why does it get shorter? Probably because we get better at articulating it. What's the Mark Taine quote if I had more time? I would have written you a shorter letter. I think, you know, it's investing in that. And one understanding like what are the things that really matter, right? So seeking signal from noise and just trying to constantly refine that articulation to be the maximum value for the time that somebody spends on it.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You typically have this triumvirant. There's a culture, there's strategy, and there's execution, right? And we can go and look out, and then there's probably 100 business books that will tell you that execution is the most important. Here's how you do graded strategy is the most important. Here's how you're great at, culture is the most important. I would say that there is, we think, first of all, I guess maybe it's important to note that you actually, I think, have to be good at all of three to be really successful companies. So you can't be awful at one. But if I were to think about a hierarchy culture, I would put at the top of the list and the rationale for that is you can have, if you have an amazing culture and maybe your mediocre at strategy or at execution, an amazing culture allows you to get better at strategy and execution. So it's a vehicle to actually improve. So that's why we make a big deal out of it. And if you really think about what we're trying to do with the culture memo and why it's changed so much is we're trying to just constantly do a better job at articulating what are the practices that we think we can employ as a company to just grow and”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this brings us to the culture memo. There's a new version of it, it just came out. The first one was released in 2009. It was a deck. It had over 100 pages. I think Rehastings even wrote a book about this deck. You streamlined it into a doc in 2017. So it went from being like a hundred-page PowerPoint to like a one sheet. And now there's a new one, which is even more streamlined.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of our peers who have sort of like a let's just try something shotgun stuff out there and see what Sticks kind of approach. We take almost like the other end of the extreme, which is we start with the first principles argument around why is this critical to the business, right? The qualitative version of this might be, can you imagine a Netflix 10 years hence where we are not doing this? And there's a more wonky version of this, which is you think about materiality to the business. Do we have permission to play as our leverage off the core in success at scale? Does it lever back to the core? So there's different ways of thinking about the same question. But ultimately you're saying like, okay, we're going to do a limited number of things. Does this materially drive the business? And if it does, then our orientation is we are going to do it to win. We may start and may not be great, but ultimately we will learn and grow. And that's very much.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first order question would be Is this the decision that I should make or the decision that should be made somewhere in the company? Because part of what we really want to do is enable folks throughout the entire company to make as many decisions as possible. So that might be the first order is like, okay, is this my decision or should it be somebody else's decision? And then if it is my or my int's decision, I would say partly we're trying to figure out like what are the things that are most material to the business companies can do a lot. You're at this certain scale and there's a lot that you can go do. We've always been pretty choosy about the strategic extensions that we've made. In fact, we've been very, very focused as a company. And so our orientation rather than”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are a functionally organized group, and then within that structure, we've got product leaders that are responsible for various different product categories. And then they have respective engineering teams that they go with, with a little bit of a horizontal layer onto it. So we've got a platform team that's really focused on infrastructural components, services that are generally available to multiple different sort of end user facing future teams. That's the core model.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon is different, and the UI should show up in a different way to serve those needs differently.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, there always are. I mean, back to games, for example, the ability to virtualize multiple game instances on a single GPU, if we can do that more efficiently, that yields sort of a better effective use of infrastructures. That's an example I would put on the list. I think another example is just how we think about recommendation systems, right? You know, we're moving and significantly improving how we think about how we dynamically assemble the UI for you, which allows us to then, as you are navigating the UI, actually change what we are presenting in real time based on signals, explicit implicit signals we get from you around what is your need for Netflix today. And I think this is sort of an evolution. We talked about sort of like how we personalize today and where other folks are in that process. You know, the next step for us is to think about what you need from us on a Thursday night versus what you need from us maybe when your family's, you know, assemble.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ultimately, if you step back and look at what we do, we're in the business of working with creators, the most amazing storytellers on the planet, having them build compelling universes that we can then deliver to people around the world in a variety of different ways. So that could be non-interactive modes like film and TV, and it could be interactive modes like games. And then ultimately, I think to give fans the most compelling immersive experiences, it will eventually will get to something that looks like a AAA model. So I would definitely not rule that out. And we sort of walked the same path in other places, you know, in the company. If you think about when we add new genres and things like that, sometimes we start, you know, smaller and then develop more and more capability and more aspiration to do it at the highest level. I think that's a pretty common trajectory for us to follow, and I expect that's where we'll go with games as well.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think we will be able to do it in the way that I described it, you know, and that envelope of what we can deliver will change every year, right? So like we've seen, it'll grow and grow. And, you know, I don't know when it would get to that ultimate level, but it's going to be a ways away, I think. And we've seen that again and again, you know, from the folks that have tried it. But back to your question, phone is way more capable general gaming device than a TV is, right? It has way more compute power in that regard. And so we will deliver downloaded games to your phone in a way that it's totally different than what we would do with the TV.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say we're delivering games in multiple different ways. So cloud is one way to do it, and I'd say cloud is relevant because it unlocks TVs, which haven't really been a source of gameplay, you know, except as they are the screen at which connected devices like consoles manifest themselves.”
2024-06-24 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters on the streamer's shifting culture and where ads, AI, and games fit in · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT