ETL Speaker Series: Kevin Systrom, Instagram

Key ideas

Revisiting a 2011 talk, Systrom argues founders should solve a broad, painful problem, try many ideas, fold fast, and gain leverage through people as the job changes.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   No right time, except for you

   Systrom says there is no right moment in the world, since companies start in downturns and bubbles, but there is one for an individual. He says he needed skills and a network first, meeting his co-founder at Stanford, his first investors while at Google and learning to build a service at Next Stop. He adds that it will never feel right, because you can always learn more and it may not seem safe.

2. 2

   Score problems by relief and reach

   Systrom says that if he were to write a book on entrepreneurship it would be called solve a problem, and warns against building something neat or serving only a narrow group. He sizes opportunities on two axes: how much relief the product brings and how many people that applies to. He says he isn't sure he has the answer on Instagram's early growth, but believes about 90% came from solving three problems (slow photo sharing, posting to many networks, unflattering photos) and about 10% from growth tactics.

3. 3

   Analyze, then play many hands

   Using poker as an analogy, Systrom says entrepreneurship means being dealt many hands before your chips run out and folding quickly when one doesn't work, since he thinks companies that hold too long crash. He still wants the analysis done, and says that with one session in front of college students he would teach expected value, which he says can mean utility or happiness as well as money.

4. 4

   Replace yourself and get leverage

   Systrom says you start with one hour of your time producing one hour of work, and the job as you scale is raising that ratio by bringing people in, though a poor fit can lower it. He says that by the end he would have worked for any of his executives, and that he feels twice as strongly as in 2011 that people decide success or failure. He describes the job as new every day, and says feeling uncomfortable and unsure is normal.

5. 5

   Selling as rocket boosters

   Asked why he sold to Facebook, Systrom says joining a leading social company looked like a way to speed up the mission for a team of 13, with the trade-off that the larger company may want to go a different direction. He says there is no way of knowing whether independence would have worked as well, and stresses that the reasoning makes more sense in hindsight than it could have at about 27. He says he stayed six years with his co-founder and, after crossing a billion users, felt their passion was to start something new.

In Kevin’s words

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