Lessons From Co-Founding Facebook, And Now Asana | Dustin Moskovitz

Welcome to The Eric Ries Show. I sat down with Dustin Moskovitz, founder of not one but two iconic companies: Facebook and the collaborative work platform Asana. Needless to say, he’s engaged in the most intense form of entrepreneurship there is. A huge part of what he’s chosen to do with the hard-earned knowledge it gave him is dedicate himself and Asana to investing in employees’ mental health, communication skills, and more. All of this matters to Dustin on a human level, but he also explains why putting people first is the only way to get the kind of results most founders can only dream of. We talked about how to get into that flow state, why preserving culture is crucial, his leadership style and how he decides when to be hands-on versus when to delegate, and how Asana reflects what he’s learned about supporting people at all levels. 

Dustin sums up the work Asana does this way: “Our individual practices are meant to restore coherence for the individual, our team practices are meant to restore coherence for the team, and Asana, the system, is meant to try and do it for the entire organization.” I’m delighted to share our conversation, which also covers:

• How he uses AI and views its future

• Why he founded a collaboration platform

• How he applied the lessons of Facebook to building Asana

• Why taking care of your mental health as a founder is crucial for the company as a whole

• His thoughts on the evolution of Facebook

• The importance of alignment with investors

• His philanthropic work 

• And so much more

—

Brought to you by:

Mercury – The art of simplified finances. Learn more.

DigitalOcean – The cloud loved by developers and founders alike. Sign up.

Neo4j – The graph database and analytics leader. Learn more.

—

Where to find Dustin Moskovitz:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmoskov/

• Threads: ​​https://www.threads.net/@moskov

• Asana: https://asana.com/leadership#moskovitz

Where to find Eric:

• Newsletter: https://ericries.carrd.co/ 

• Podcast: https://ericriesshow.com/ 

• X: https://twitter.com/ericries 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eries/ 

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theericriesshow 

—

In This Episode We Cover:

(00:00) Welcome to the Eric Ries Show

(00:31) Meet our guest Dustin Moskovitz

(04:02) How Dustin is using AI for creative projects

(05:31) Dustin talks about the social media and SaaS era and his Facebook days

(06:52) How Facebook has evolved from its original intention

(10:27) The founding of Asana

(14:35) Building entrepreneurial confidence

(19:22) Making – and fixing – design errors at Asana 

(20:32) The importance of committing to “soft” values.

(25:27) Short-term profit over people and terrible advice from VCs

(28:44) Crypto as a caricature of extractive behavior

(30:47) The positive impacts of doing things with purpose

(34:24) How Asana is ensuring its purpose and mission are permanently enshrined in the company

(41:35) Battling entropy and meeting culture

(44:31) Being employee-centric, the flow state, and Asana’s strategy

(47:51) The organizational equivalent of repressing emotions

(52:57) Dustin as a Cassandra

(56:51) Dustin talks about his philanthropic work and philosophy: Open Philanthropy, Good Ventures

(1:02:05) Dustin’s thoughts on AI and its future

(1:07:20) Ethics, calculated risk, and thinking long-term

—

Referenced: 

• Asana: https://asana.com/

• Conscious Leadership Group: https://conscious.is/

• Ben Horowitz on managing your own psychology: https://a16z.com/whats-the-most-difficult-ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/

• The Infinite Game, by Simon Sinek

• Dr. John Sarno

• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

• Awareness: Conversations with the Masters, by Anthony de Mello

• Brené Brown: Dare to Lead , The Call to Courage (Netflix trailer) 

• Open Philanthropy

• Good Ventures

• GiveWell

—

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected] 

Eric may be an investor in the companies discussed.