Snapchat is strategically positioning itself to become a platform by introducing “Minis,” which are small, built-in applications that allow users to perform tasks like paying bills or buying movie tickets without leaving the app. By emulating the successful ecosystem of WeChat, Snapchat aims to compete with Facebook and Instagram, which have aggressively copied their features. The hosts also discuss the concept of “asymmetric bets” and “inflections,” highlighting how these strategic moves are essential for Snapchat’s survival and growth in a competitive market.
Topics: Snapchat, WeChat, Minis, Platform Strategy, Facebook, Instagram, Asymmetric Bets, Inflections, Business Strategy
Snapchat’s Strategic Pivot [00:00]
Shaan Puri: Snapchat is sort of in a position where they have to become a platform to compete because Facebook and Instagram have sort of just declared like…
Sam Parr: Um, did you see today Snapchat did a like, they did their like developer conference thing?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, tell me about that thing that they introduced.
Sam Parr: So they introduced a few things and they were like, “Hey, you know, last time we introduced games and games are doing great,” and they were talking, they were just kind of hyping up games to get more people to build mini games on Snapchat. Um, but they introduced other things called Minis. And Minis is actually, I think, a bigger move by them. So Minis are basically mini applications, um, built into Snapchat. What they’re doing is they’re copying WeChat, which is the big messaging app in China. Uh, WeChat has like a million little apps built in. Like, “Oh, you need to pay your bills? You just do it through WeChat.” And how do you do that? Well, there’s this little mini website that the the, you know, the utility company makes that’ll just pop up in your WeChat and you hit pay and it’s paid. Or you want to do this, you want to buy movie tickets together, you do it within WeChat. Like we don’t do that in iMessage, we don’t do that in Facebook Messenger, but that’s what all these companies would love to, they’d love to be WeChat here in the States.
Snapchat’s Competitive Strategy [01:19]
Sam Parr: Um, so Snapchat’s taking a big stab at doing that. And they announced like, so for example, one of the Minis is, um, Headspace. So you can do uh like sort of a quick meditation with anybody else on uh like one of your friends from Snapchat. They did a movie ticket buying thing. They did, you know, so they did several of these.
Shaan Puri: What’s the stock at?
Sam Parr: Uh, I don’t know how the stock’s doing. But what what’s interesting here is that, um, Snapchat’s sort of in a position where they have to become a platform to compete because Facebook and Instagram have sort of just declared like, “We will steal your, we took your Mojo already, and if you come up with some new great Mojo, like guess what, you know, Evan Spiegel, you’re the head of product at Facebook actually. Whatever you come up with, we’re going to put in our apps as soon as humanly possible.” So their only strategy, they have basically two core strategies. One is maybe they can create Snap glasses, these like AR glasses, and they can just sort of get off the cell phone game and get into the glasses game before anybody else. So that would be like a What’s it called? What’s it called? A a Snap Mini website? What do you call that?
Shaan Puri: Um, they call them uh Snap Minis. And what they are are little mini websites that that can pop up and be little like utility things to do inside Snapchat besides message each other. Now, the second thing is becoming a platform because Facebook and Instagram, um, don’t do a great job of letting other companies build shit on top of them. People distrust those companies. Um, they’ve built apps on top of Facebook and Messenger before and gotten screwed, and so they don’t have great ecosystems. So Snapchat’s kind of pushing their chips into the middle of the table and saying, “Come build shit on us, um, we’ll treat you better than those guys will.” And you kind of believe it. You kind of believe it because it’s really their only way to compete with Facebook and Instagram. So they kind of have to actually honor this.
Understanding Inflections [03:42]
Shaan Puri: I’m doing this course with Gagan, and a lot of the a lot of the things we talk about are inflections. So what are what are inflections? And and there’s a a variety of styles of inflections. There’s um technology inflections, which is like basically like, “Oh my god, uh the internet is now in everyone’s house.” That is an inflection. There’s an opportunity there. Or a uh a belief inflection is like, “Wow, people really don’t trust the media. What can we build to help?” Um, or people are afraid to be in groups of thousands of people. How can we fix that? Um, what we are seeing right now is a uh technology inflection or a platform inflection. It’s really Platform inflection, yes. And this is it. This is like when so Pandora, the music company, Tim told me that the company was around for three years and it was doing horrible. And he said, um, they heard about the Apple Store, and for some reason Steve Jobs reached out to them and said, “You guys might be a good like place to put your shit here.” And once that happened, he goes, “Whoa!” And and this I don’t know if it will be, but this is potentially one of those.
Sam Parr: Yeah, these are asymmetric bets.