Tim Sweeney

`3:56:25`

no board would've signed off on this lawsuit to a professional CEO, no freaking way. So the fact that they've been able to beat Apple in also the most hilarious way possible, I think it's just incredible. 'Cause remember their first victory in the case was actually not much of a victory. There were about 11 counts in the trial. Apple basically won 10 of them and the judge awarded Epic this one little win that Apple couldn't tell 'em not to link out to the internet to be able to do the payment processing. So they won this one little thing. And Apple, instead of just taking the 10 out of 11 wins and going fine, you can have your little links but all these other rules stay in place decided to essentially commit criminal contempt of court as they've now been referred to for prosecution and angered the judge to such a degree

`3:57:26`

that the rule of law in the US now is that you can launch an app in the app store. And you don't have to use in-app payment, but you can have a direct billing relationship with a customer if you just link out to the open internet when you take the credit card and then hop back into the app. And we owe all of that to Tim and Mark. We owe all of that to Epic. We're gonna launch new apps any minute now, I hope actually next week to take advantage of this that revamp the hey apps so that people who download the Hey app off the Apple app store can sign up in the app and can then use the web to put in their credit card so we don't have to pay 30%. Instead we have a direct billing relationship and such that they can take that subscription to Android, to PCs, whatever without any hassle. And we have Tim and Mark to thank for it. — Yeah, Tim, I mean, like you said founders but also specific kind of founders. 'Cause I think maybe you can educate me on this, but Tim is somebody who maintains.

`3:58:27`

to this day sort of the unreasonableness of principles. Yes, that's what I love. I think sometimes maybe even with founders you can get worn down. It's a large company. There's a lot of smart, quote, unquote, people around you lawyers and just whispering your ear over time and you're like, well just be reasonable being a, you know, this is a different thing. And to be the sort of maintain, I mean Steve Jobs did this. Still are the asshole. Who' says, "No, I'll sink this whole fucking company over this." — That's the exact language basically I used in our original campaign. I will burn this business down before I hand over 30% of it to Apple. And that sort of indignation, that actual rage is something I try to be a little careful about tapping into because it is a little bit of a volatile compound. Because I mean I have a bunch of employees, we have a bunch of customers. It would be pretty sad if the journey of 37 signals

`3:59:29`

after 25 years would come to an end because Apple would burn us down or I would burn the business down over this fight with Apple. But I think you also need that level of conviction to be able to even drive the day-to-day decisions. One of the other Apple examples, and I know we're racking on Apple a little bit here, and I don't actually hate them. I really don't. I am tremendously disappointed at the squandered relationship that did not need to be sold away for so little. Now I understand that the app store toll booth is actually a pretty big business. It's multiple billions, but Apple is a trillion dollar company. And I think in the lens of history, this is gonna come off as a tremendous mistake and I think it's already coming off as a tremendous mistake. The flop that was the Vision Pro was partly because Apple had pissed off every other developer. No one was eager to come build the kind of experiences for their new hardware that would perhaps have made it a success. So when you're on top and you have all the cards,

`4:00:31`

you can dilute yourself into thinking that you can dictate all terms at all times and there are no long term consequences. Apple is learning finally, the fact that there are long-term consequences and that developers actually are important to Apple's business. And the relationship is not entirely one sided. We don't owe our existence to Apple and Apple alone. We've built our own customer bases. Apple has been beneficial to the industry. I'm glad the iPhone exists, da da da da. It's not that it doesn't go both ways, but Apple wants it only one way. And I think that is a mistake, and it's a mistake that was avoidable. And A, that's disappointing. Certainly disappointing for me. I've literally spent 20 years evangelizing this shit, right? I've spent so much money buying Apple hardware, excusing a bunch of things they've done over the years. And then for what? For the fact that you wanted 30% of something