YouSaid · the spoken record

Kevin Systrom

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193
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2021-11-23
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2021-11-23
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  1. “Also, you talked about the personality of leaders and who resonates and who doesn't. Rare that I see leaders be vulnerable. Rare. And one thing I tried to do at Instagram, at least internally, was like, say when I screwed up. Like, point out how I was wrong about things and point out where my judgment was off. Everyone thinks they have to bat a thousand, right? Like, that's crazy. The best quant hedge funds in the world bat 50.001%. They just take a lot of bets, right? Renaissance. They might bat 51%, right? But Holy hell, like the question isn't Are you right every single time and you have to seem invincible? The question is how many at bats do you get, and on average, are you better on average? With enough bets and enough at bats that your aggregate can be very high.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “As you ascend, no one wants to tell you you're crazy. No one wants to tell you your idea is bad. You're like, oh, I'm going to be a leader. And the idea is, well, I'm just going to ask people. No one tells you. So you have to look for the markers knowing that literally just people aren't going to tell you along the way and be paranoid. I mean, you asked about selling the company. I think one of the biggest differences between me and a lot of other entrepreneurs is like, I wasn't completely confident we could do it. Like we could be alone and actually be great. And if any entrepreneur is honest with you, they also feel that way. But a lot of people are like, well, I have to be cocky and just say I can do this on my own. We're going to be fine. We're going to crush everyone. Some people do say that. And then it's not right and they fail.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Really hard to give feedback. And one of the other things I learned from him and just people in that world is Man, humans really like to pretend like they've come to some kind of meeting of the minds. Like if there's conflict, if you and I have conflict. Is better to meet face to face, right? We're on the phone. Slack is not great, right? Email's not great, but face to face. What's crazy is you and I get together and we actively try to, even if we're not actually solving the conflict, we actively try to paper over the conflict. Oh, yeah, didn't really bother me that much. Oh, yeah, I'm sure you didn't mean it. Like, no, in our minds, we're still there. So, this is one of the things that, as a leader, you always have to be digging, especially as you ascend.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Unlimited vacation Know Ray at Bridgewater is always fascinating because people, it's been called a cult on the outside or cult-ish. But what's fascinating is they just don't give on their principles. They're like, listen, this is what it's like to work here. We record every meeting. We're like brutally honest. And that's not going to feel right to everyone. And if it doesn't feel right to you, totally cool. Just go work somewhere else. But if you work here, you are signing up for this. That's been fascinating to me because it's honesty up front. It's a system in which you operate. And if it's not for you, like no one's forcing you to work there, right?”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, totally. So, I mean, I use this thing called training peaks, and it's interesting because it actually mathematically shows where you are on the curve and all this stuff. But you have to have that rest, but it's a function of going harder for longer. Again, it's this reinforcement learning, like planning the aggregate and long, but a lot of people will hide behind laziness by saying that they're trying to optimize for the long run and they're not. They're just not working very hard. But again, you don't have to sign up for it. It's totally cool. Like, I don't think less of people for not working super hard. It's just like, don't sign up for things that require working super hard.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Of working smart. And there is balance, though. So I used to be like a pretty big cyclist. I don't do it much anymore just because of kids and like prioritizing other things, right? One of the most important things to learn as a cyclist is to take To me and to cyclists, like resting is a function of optimizing for the long run. It's not like a thing that you do for its own merits. It's actually like if you don't rest, your muscles don't recover and then you're just not as like you're not training as efficiently.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Pick your sports team. Let's go back to the Yankees for a second. You want to join the Yankees, but you don't really want to work that hard. You don't really want to do batting practice or pitching practice or whatever for your position, right? That to me is wacko. And that's actually the world that it feels like we live in in tech sometimes where people both want to work for the Yankees because it pays a lot. But like don't actually want to work that hard, that I don't fully understand because if you sign up for some of these things, just sign up for it, but it's okay if you don't want to sign up for it. There's so many wonderful careers in this world that don't require 80 hours a week. But when I read about companies going to like four-day work weeks and stuff, I just like, I chuckle because I can't get enough done with a seven day week. I don't know how, and people will say, oh, you're just not working smart. And it's like, no, I work pretty smart, I think, in general. I wouldn't have gotten to this point if I hadn't some amount.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Important that that startup communicate that the expectation is we're all working really, really hard right now. You don't have to join this startup. But like if you do just know it's almost as if you join, I don't know, pick your”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Are plenty of counter examples if people have majored in esoteric things and gone on to be very successful? So I just want to be clear it's not about the major, but every choice you make, whether it's to have kids, like I love my children. It's so awesome to have two kids. And it is so hard to work really hard and also have kids. It's really hard. And there's a reason why certain very successful people are not successful, but people who run very, very large companies or startups have chosen not to have kids for a while or chosen not to like prioritize them. Everything's a choice. And like I choose to prioritize my children because I want to do that, right? So everything's a choice. Now, once you've made that choice, I think it's important that the contract is clear, which is to say, let's imagine you were joining a new startup.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, think about theoretical. Spanish lit from the 14th century, like just make up your esoteric thing. And then the number of people I went to Stanford with who get out in the world and they're like, wait, what? I can't find a job. Like, no one wants a theoretical, like.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So I have a very particular take on this, which is that No one's forcing you to do anything. All choices have consequences. So if you major in, I don't know, theoretical literature, I don't even know if that's a major. I'm just making something up.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Even if Elon accomplishes all the things he wants to accomplish, we will have nudged the world in a slight direction, but it requires enormous amount. There was an interview with him where he was just like, he was interviewed, I think, at the Tesla factory, and he was like, work is really hard. This is actually unhealthy. And I can't recall the exact, but he was like visibly shaken about how hard he had been working. And he was like, this is bad. And unfortunately, I think to have great outcomes, you actually do need to work at like three standard deviations above the mean. But there's nothing saying that people have to go for that.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “But I do think that great things require a lot of hard work. So there's no way you can expect to change the world without working really hard. And by the way, even changing the world, the folks that I respect the most have nudged the world in like a slight direction. Slight. Very, very slight.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “This is like just to be very frank, it drives me nuts. Saw this really funny video on TikTok. Was it on TikTok? It was like I'm taking a break from my mental health to work on my career. That was funny So it's like, oh, it is kind of phrased that way the opposite often, right? Okay, so a couple things. I have worked so hard. Do the things that I did like Mike and I lost years off of our lives staying up late, figuring things out, the stress that comes with the job. I have a lot more gray hair now than I did back then. It requires an enormous amount of work, and most people aren't successful, right? But even the ones that do don't skate by I am okay if people choose not to work hard because I don't actually think there's anything in this world that says you have to work hard.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, yeah. And I think it was one of these self-accountability things. Anyway. Remember Jack just getting the vast majority of votes from everyone. I remember just thinking, I couldn't imagine he would become what he'd become and do what he would do, but I had a profound respect that the new guy who I really liked worked that hard. And you could see his dedication even then and that people respected him. But that's the one story that I remember of him, like working with him specifically from that summer.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “It did to me for sure. I actually got two votes. I was very happy. We were a small company, but as the intern, I got at least two votes.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And in the Satua was a thousand bucks, or I recall there was a thousand bucks. It might have been a hundred bucks, but let's call it a thousand. It's more exciting that way.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I don't know. It's so weird, right? I mean, it's also weird that. Mark showed up in our fraternity, my sophomore year, and we got to know each other then like long before Instagram. It's a small world, but Tell a fun story about Jack. And I don't know. I think Ev was feeling like people weren't working hard enough or something. Can't remember exactly what he created this thing where every Friday, I don't know if it was every Friday. I only remember this happening once, but he had like a statuette like of Mary. And in the bottom, it's hollow, right? And I remember on a Friday decided he was going to let everyone vote for who had worked the hardest that week. We all voted. Closed ballot, right? We all put in a bucket. He tallied the votes. And then whoever got the most votes, as I recall, got the statuette.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Terrible problems. Yeah, I mean, not terrible, just like boring Boring widget problem. I think it was the ODO widget we were working on at the time. Surprised anyone paid me to be in the room as an intern because I didn't really provide any value. I'm very thankful to anyone who included me back in the day. It was very helpful. So thank you if you're listening.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Also, like Jack's shoes attention, he's not out there almost on purpose. He's just working hard, doing square, right? Like, I literally shared a desk like this with him at Odio. I mean, just normal guy who likes painting. I remember he would leave early on like Wednesdays or something to go to like a painting class. And he's creative, he's thoughtful. I mean, Money makes people more creative and more thoughtful, like extreme versions of themselves, right? And this was a long, long time ago.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So, my point is Humans don't forget, and if there are times in the past where they feel like they don't trust the company or the company hasn't had their back. That has really hard to earn back, especially if you don't have that bedside manner. And again, I'm not attributing this specifically to Mark because I think a lot of the companies have this issue where You have to be trustworthy as a company and live by it and live by those actions. And then two, I think you need to be able to be really relatable in a way that's very difficult if you're worth what these people are. It's really hard.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And you sit there and you're just like, What? Like, And there's that bedside manor. If you lack that, or if that's just not intuitive to you, I think that it can be a lot harder to gain the trust of people. And then add on top of that missteps of companies, right? I don't know if you have any friends from the past where maybe they crossed you once or maybe you get back together and you're friends again, but you just never really forget that thing. It's human nature not to forget.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, I will say the one element that you haven't named that I think you're getting at is just bedside manner, which Steve Jobs. I never worked for him. I never met him in person. Had an uncanny ability in public to have bedside manner. I mean, some of the best clips of Steve Jobs are from like, I want to say maybe the 80s when he's on the stage and getting questions from the audience about life. And he'll take this question. How are you going to compete with blah? And it's super boring. And I don't even know the name of the And his answer is if you just asked your grandfather the meaning of life.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “My experience when talking to people is they gave me the benefit of the doubt because of that. But if your experience of the product is kind of makes you angry, it's where you argue. I mean, a big part of Jack might be that he wasn't actually the CEO for a very long time and only became recently. So I'm not sure how much of the connection got made. But in general, I mean, if you hate, Just thinking about other companies that are in tech companies. If you hate what a company is doing or it makes you not feel happy I don't know, like, people are really angry about Comcast or whatever. Are they even called Comcast anymore? It's like Xfinity or something, right? They had to rebrand. They became meta, right? It's like”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “People get behind that because it's a sense of hope and excitement and innovation. And you can say whatever you want, but we ascribe that emotion to that person. Now, let's say you're on a social network and people make you kind of angry because they disagree with you or they say something ridiculous or they're living a FOMO type life where you're like, wow, I wish I was doing that thing. Think Instagram, if I were to think back, by and large when I was there, was not about FOMO, was not about this influencer economy, although it certainly became that way closer to the end. It was about the sense of wonder and happiness and beautiful things in the world. I don't know. I mean, I don't want to have a blind spot, but I don't think anyone had a strong opinion about one way or the other.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Amazon's pretty utilitarian, right? It delivers brown boxes to your front door. Sure, you can have Alexa and you can have all these things, right? But in general, it delivers stuff quickly to you at a reasonable price, right? Think Jeff Bezos is wonderfully wealthy, thoughtful, smart guy, right? But like people kind of feel that way about him. They're like, wow, this is really big. We're impressed that this is really big. But he's doing the same space stuff Elon's doing, but they don't necessarily ascribe the same sense of wonder, right? Now let's take Elon. And again, this is pet theory. I don't have much proof other than my own intuition. He is literally about living the future. Mars, it's about wonder. It's about going back to that feeling as a kid when you looked up to the stars and asked, is there life out there?”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Again, can I just come back to this point, which seems oversimplistic, but I really do think how a product makes someone feel. They ascribe that feeling to the founder.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Like basically, you know, gives the middle finger to the SEC, like on Twitter, and like, I don't know. I'm like, well, there's a founder and like people kind of like him.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “That's one example or one reason why I think a lot of people express anger. With Mark, at the same time, I don't know, I pointed out to that person, I was like, well, I don't know. I think a lot of people really like Elon. Elon arguably he kept his, you know, factory open here throughout COVID protocols, which arguably a lot of people would be against.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Yeah. So someone once just recently said there's a strong case that founder-led companies have this problem and that a lot of Marx issues today come from the fact that he is a visible founder with this story that people have watched in both a movie and they followed along and he's this boy wonder kid who became one of the world's richest people and he's no longer marked the person he's marked this this image of a person with enormous wealth and power and in today's world we we have issues with enormous wealth and power for a variety of reasons one of which is we've been stuck inside you know for a year and a half two years one of which is a lot of people were really unhappy about not the last election but the last last election and where do you take out that anger who do you blame but the people in charge”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I mean TikTok isn't just literally an algorithm. Some ways, TikTok's content, and algorithm have more sway now over the American psyche than Facebook's algorithm, right? It's visual, it's video. By the way, it's not defined by who you follow, it's defined by some magical thing. But by the way, if someone wanted to tweak to show you a certain type of content for some reason, they could, right? People love it.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “It is way better to be in a world where you are producing hits and consumers love what you're doing because then they're on your side. And I think that's the past 10 years for Facebook has been fairly hard on this dimension.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Both of these companies, by the way, Amazon, Apple, have issues, right? There are labor issues, whether it's here in the US or in China, there are environmental issues, there are but like when's the last time you heard like a large chorus being like these companies better pay for what they're doing on these things, right? I think Facebook's main issue today is like you need to produce a hit. If you don't produce hits, it's really hard to keep consumers on your side. Then people just start picking on you for a variety of reasons, whether it's right or wrong. I'm not even going to place a judgment right here and right now. I'm just going to say that”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Think they'd be in a totally different world. So just like imagine for a moment, and by the way, Apple's entering this, but like Apple for so long, just like product after product, you couldn't wait for it. You stood in line for it. You talked about it. You got excited. Amazon makes your life so easy. It's like, wow, I needed this thing and it showed up at my door two days later.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Way too many things, but I don't know. Entrepreneurs get bored. They want to add things. They want to, right? Have a good answer for it except for that, I think, being true to your original use case and not even original use case, but sorry, actually not use case, original job. There are many use cases under that job. Being true to that and like being really good at it over time and morephing as needs change. I think that's how to make a company last forever. And I mean, honestly, my main thesis about why Facebook is in the position it is today is If they have had a series of product launches that delighted people over time,”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “I mean, look at Reddit. Like, Reddit is basically groups of public and open and a little bit crazy, right? In a good way. But there's clear product market fit for that specific use case. And it doesn't have to be a college. It can be anything. It can be a small group, a big group, it can be group messaging. Facebook shines, I think, when it leans into that. I think when there are other companies that just seem exciting and now all of a sudden the product shifts in some fundamental way to go try to compete with that other thing, that's when I think consumers get confused. Even if you can be successful, like even if you can compete with that other company, even if you can figure out how to bolt it on, eventually you come back and you look at the app and you're like, I just don't know why I opened this app. Like why, like too many things going on. And that was always a worry. I mean, you listed all the things that Instagram and I almost gave me a heart attack.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “And groups is effectively like everyone can found their own little Stanford or Dartmouth or MIT, right? And find each other and share and communicate about something that matters deeply to them. That is the core of what Facebook was built around. And I think today is where it stands most strongly.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Well, let's go back to the founding of Facebook and why it worked really well initially at Harvard. And then Dartmouth and Stanford. And I can't remember, probably MIT. There were like a handful of schools in that first tranche, right? It worked because there are communities that exist in the world that want to transact. And when I say transact, I don't mean commercially. I just mean they want to share. They want to coordinate. They want to communicate. They want a space for themselves. And Facebook at its best, I think, is that. And if actually you look at the most popular products that Facebook has built over time, if you look at things like groups Marketplace groups is enormous.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “It's when you leave that system and you start doing something weird that people start scratching their head. And I think you are less successful. So I think one of the challenges Facebook has had throughout its life is that it has never fully, I think, appreciated the job to be done of the main product. And what it's done is said, ooh, there's a shiny object over there. That starts getting some traction. Let's go copy that thing. And then they're confused why it doesn't work. Like, why doesn't it work? It's because the people who show up for this don't want that. different.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Products that succeed are products that all share this parent node of this job to be done that is in common. And then they're just different ways of doing it, right? Apple, I think, does a great job with this, right? It's like managing your digital life and all the products just work together. They sync. It's beautiful, right? Even if they require like silly, specific chords to work. But they're all part of a system”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “You're worried about people seeing your stuff, or you're worried about being permanent so that a college admissions person is going to see your photo of you doing something. And so it turns out that that is a more efficient way of performing that job than the original product was. The original product still has its value, but at scale, these two things together work really, really well. Now, I will claim that other parts of the product over time didn't perform that job as well. I think IGTV probably didn't, right? Shopping is like completely unrelated to what I just described. But it might work. I don't know, right? Products, I think.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Instagram was about sharing your life with others visually, period. Right? Why? Because you feel connected with them. You get to show off. You get to feel good and cared about with likes. And it turns out that that will, I think forever define Instagram. And any product that serves that job is going to do very well. Stories, let's take it as an example, is very much serving that job. In fact, it serves it better than the original product because when you're large and have an enormous audience”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “There's this great book by Clay Christensen called Competing Against Luck. It's like a terrible title. But within it is effectively an expression of this thing called jobs to be done theory. And it's unclear if he came up with it or some of his colleagues, but everyone, there are a bunch of places you can find with people claiming to have come up with his jobs to be done theory. But the idea is if you zoom out and you look at your product, you ask yourself, why are people hiring your product? Imagine every product in your life is effectively an employee Your CEO of your life, and you hire products to be employees effectively, they all have roles and jobs, right? Why are you hiring a product? Why do you want that product to perform something in your life? And what are the hidden reasons why you're in love with this product?”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “I will say, I still don't know if it was the right decision because I don't have that counterfactual. I don't know that other world. I'm just thankful that, by and large, most people love Instagram, still do. By and large, people are very happy with the time we had there. And I'm proud of what we built. So I'm cool. Like we're, you know, now it's next shot, right?”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Are plenty of examples where people have turned down big offers and then you've just never heard from them again, but we never focus on the companies because you just forget that those were big. But inside your psyche, Think it's easy for someone with enough money to say money doesn't matter, which I think is like, it's bullshit. Of course, money matters to people But at the moment, you just can't even grasp the number of zeros that you're talking about. It just doesn't make sense, right? So to think rationally in that moment is not something many people are equipped to do, especially not people where I think we had founded the company a year earlier, maybe, two years earlier, like a year and a half. We were 13 people.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “So, a couple things. One is I would not assume Clubhouse is down for the count at all. They're young. They have plenty of money. They're run by really smart people. I'd give them a very fighting chance to figure it out. There are a lot of times when people call Twitter down for the count and they figure it out and they seem to be doing well, right? So just backing up and not knowing anything about their internals, like. There's a strong chance they will figure it out and that people are just down because they like being down about companies. They like assuming that they're going to fail. So who knows, right? But let's take the ones in the past where like we know how it played out.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “I'm ready for the next scheme. I mean, think about an athlete. Where, I don't know, maybe they do something wrong in the World Series or whatever. And like, if you let it haunt you for the rest of your career, why not just be like, I don't know, it was a game, next game, next shot, right? If you just move to that world, at least I have a next shot, right?”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Like, there are plenty of moments where people say no and we just forget that those things happen. We only focus on the ones where they said yes and like, wow, like what if they had stayed independent? So I don't know. I used to think a lot about this and now I just don't because I'm like, whatever. Know like things have gone pretty well. Yeah.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Got it. Yeah. There are also companies that don't sell, right? And take the path and say, we're going to be independent. And then you've never heard of it. Like, I remember Path, right? It was one of our competitors early on. There's a big moment when they had, I can't remember what it was, like $110 million offer from Google or something. It might have been larger. I don't know. I remember there was like this big Tech Ranch article that was like they turned it down after talking deeply about their values and everything and I don't know the inner workings of Foursquare, but I'm certain there were many conversations over time where there were companies that wanted Foursquare as well. Recently, like, I mean, what other companies? There's Clubhouse, right? Like, I don't know. Maybe people were really interested in them too.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Can I tell you why Are not a lot of companies that you can be part of where the popes like, I would like to sign up for your product. Like, I'm not a religious person at all. I'm really not But when you go to the Vatican and you're like walking among giant columns and you're hearing the music and everything and like the Pope walks in and he wants to press the sign up button on your product, like it's a moment in life, okay, no matter what your persuasion, okay. The number of doors and experiences that that opened up was, it was incredible. I mean, the people I got to meet, the places I got to go, I assume maybe like a payments company is slightly different, right? But that's why it was so fun. And plus, I truly believed we were building such a great product. And I loved the game. It wasn't about money. It was about the game.”

    2021-11-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #243 – Kevin Systrom: Instagram · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source