Kevin Systrom
Co-founder, Instagram. On 3 shows, 5 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineerinvestor@kevin ↗LinkedIn ↗systrom.com ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
Kevin Systrom is the co-founder and former CEO of Instagram, which was acquired by Facebook in 2012. He later co-founded the AI-driven news application Artifact, whose technology was acquired by Yahoo in 2024.
3shows
5appearances
66statements
12resolved
8supported
2contradicted
67%fully supported
89said about them ↓ Everything Kevin Systrom said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Systrom: Investing in industry verticals is 'BS' compared to team quality
“This is gonna be heresy to a VC's ears, but like, I think investing in verticals and spaces is BS. Like, yes, in general, generative AI is gonna produce something pretty cool, Like, yes, the stuff, like, these verticalized, like, the sharing economy, it's like…”
Systrom: Every successful social app begins as a utility before scaling
“Every app that is successful in social starts off as a utility, and it becomes a large social behemoth over time.”
Systrom: Believing friends share content interests was social media's biggest mistake
“And the fundamental thesis is that your friends are kind of into the stuff that you're into, and I would argue it is the greatest mistake Of social networks in the last 20 years, is to believe that is true.”
Systrom: Social networks must become less social and rely on behavioral affinity
“So, long time, like, long story short, I think that social networks need to become less social, and I think that something that will make up for it is this idea of learned association or learned affinity through your behavior.”
Systrom: Early Instagram mistakenly prioritized 'mission hipsters' over top talent
“As a small company, one of our mistakes in Instagram is hiring too many, like, mission hipsters that wore plaid and really liked drinking bourbon. Like, that was stupid. Like, we should have just been hiring the greatest people out there.”
Systrom: San Francisco will rebound as top startup center within five years
“But like, mark my words, look back five years from now, and I, you're even seeing the glimmers of it now. Just all these companies getting started. If you look at history, history, what is it? It's like it never repeats perfectly, but it rhymes. And there's no…”
Systrom admits social media is not a force for kindness
“Is social media in general a force for kindness? No.”
Systrom: Product complexity is acceptable only without orthogonal use cases
“So, adding complexity is okay as long as you don't add orthogonal use cases that feel totally unrelated.”
Systrom: Network apps need a 'single-player mode' to solve cold starts
“The problem is that you have this app that's a network, but no one's on the network, and it only becomes useful once people are on the network. So you have to have what we called single player mode feel awesome. And it turns out single player mode as a app whe…”
Systrom would not work 16-hour days if he were in an office
“And if I were working this hard elsewhere, first of all, I wouldn't work this hard in an office. It just wouldn't happen.”
Systrom: Artifact overbuilt social features and could have launched much earlier
“There's parts of this product that exist, you can DM people, you can post socially, like, Facebook or Twitter, like, they're entire, there's entire pieces of this app that people can use, it's just locked away and not launched. We have over, we could have laun…”
Systrom: Artifact is a recommendation engine, not a news service
“I think what people don't understand is we're not building a news service. Like, maybe I shouldn't be saying this as much as I say it, but like, no, I'm interested in core recommendations. I'm interested in the science of utilizing people's tastes and profiles…”
Systrom: Founders must rely on dashboards over gut feelings during volatility
“Just trust the instruments. And like, my god, we have instruments, dashboards, et cetera, just trust the instruments. Forget about what people are saying, forget about what issue you had yesterday with the server, trust the instruments. And it doesn't make it …”
Systrom: Choosing an open network model drove Instagram's sustained growth
“I believe the thing that kept it growing was we created an open network.”
Systrom: Instagram grew because prior photo apps were closed, friends-only networks
“If you look at every photo service before then, it was basically a closed-only, friends-only network, and we were the first ones to really open that up.”
Systrom: We copied our first Terms of Service from another site
“We had these terms of service that we had I think effectively copied from some other site way back in the day and just find and replace their name with Instagram because we were a startup and we didn't know what we were doing.”
Systrom: Instagram never actually intended to use user photos in ads
“One of the sections Reading it again today, if I look at it, can be interpreted that we were going to take user photos and somehow use them in advertising. That was definitely not our intention, and like, no one in the company had even thought of that idea.”
Systrom: The best products are built from personal past experiences
“I think the best products are usually built Based on personal experience from your past, and you never know exactly what parts of your past will come together to, like, form that puzzle and be a product that you want to build for the world, but inevitably some…”
Systrom: The top growth lesson is hiring experts for your current problems
“So lesson number one is like, find great people that know their stuff, because there are a lot of them in the world, and they would be happy to deal with the problems that you are currently facing. That is the lesson number one of growing a company.”
Systrom: Adding complexity works only if new use cases remain related
“So, adding complexity is okay as long as you don't add orthogonal use cases that feel totally unrelated.”
Systrom: Entrepreneurs too often mistake two-way doors for irreversible decisions
“Far too many times entrepreneurs assume that things aren't reversible. Jeff Bezos talks about one-way doors. He likes employees to make decisions quickly when there are, I don't know, two-way doors or revolving doors. But when there are one-way doors, think lo…”
Systrom: Machine learning is fundamentally changing social product consumption
“We think fundamentally machine learning is changing the way people consume social products, and we want to ride that wave and build the best social product using machine learning we can.”
Systrom: Companies never reach stable perfection; founders must choose their suffering
“The myth that things are ever just in the stasis of good is totally BS, and what people need to realize is that, like Ray Dalio likes to say it's, like, not about avoiding suffering, and I'm paraphrasing here, it's about, like, learning to enjoy the suffering,…”
The other half of the tape: Kevin Systrom's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 78 times in 37 episodes across the shows. 11 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 15Harry Stebbings 12Kevin Weil 8Jag Duggal 6Adam Mosseri 6Chris Sacca 4Sam Yam 2Kevin Rose 2
Statements about Kevin Systrom, by other people (11)
Instagram Acquisition Forced Facebook to Switch Metrics From MAU to DAU
“When Instagram came along to Facebook, we still had the MEU as our goal. And so when we had the MEU as a goal, I mean basically Kevin's system was like, what? We are now in the mobile world. People use the phones all the time. We should be doing we do DAUs. We…”
Market Success Drives Team Morale More Than Internal Communication
“Over the long run, the thing that's going to get people the most rallied, the most excited, the most motivated, the most effective is doing good work and being successful.”
Duggal: Google's CS degree rule barred Kevin Systrom from PM roles
“Because of that computer science requirement to be a product manager, people like Kevin Systrom weren't allowed to be product managers at Google, right?”
Kevin Systrom sought only Sacca, Adam D'Angelo, and Jack Dorsey for Instagram
“Instagram came to me. Kevin Systrom literally said, I want three angels, you, Adam D'Angelo, and Jack Dorsey.”
Kevin Systrom and Jack Dorsey paired to build Odeo's desktop podcatcher
“We also had Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram. Was working for us as an intern. So, Kevin and Jack paired to write our, I think our installable podcatcher, as we called them.”
Weil: Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom is the best product editor
“He's the best editor I've ever seen.”
Kevin Systrom specifically targeted Sacca, D'Angelo, and Dorsey for Instagram's angel round
“Instagram came to me, but like Kevin Systrom literally said, I want three angels, you, Adam D'Angelo and Jack Dorsey. And so he pitched me. I literally was not seeking photos. I, it sounds fucking hilarious, but I thought it was spent. I thought it was done. A…”
Lazerow passed on early angel investments in Instagram and Uber in 2011
“So, my biggest misses were really as a personal investor, you know, sitting in a hotel room in 2011 with Kevin Systrom and Travis from Uber and, you know, having the opportunity, but not raising my hand and saying like, hey, I'd love to invest, right?”
Greylock recruited three key engineers for Instagram within four days
“And to give you an example, when we were talking to Kevin Systrom about investing in Instagram, and they were 13 employees, and they said, well, what's their major pain point in terms of how they operated? We said, okay, great. Because we have this network of …”
Hoffman: Systrom would not have raised funding if Burbn kept gaming
“If Kevin had persisted in trying to build gaming features for Bourbon, he probably wouldn't have found a backer, but he had kept it simple, and he got some attention.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 57
How I Built This 21
2025 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2024 5 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
- Graduate Hotels: Ben Weprin
- Tom Blomfield: Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | E 1152 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Chandra Narayanan: Top 5 Lessons from Leading Analytics at Facebook | E1126 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 17 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- Adam Mosseri: Why Video Is Bad For Business; Does Feed Matter Anymore? | E1039 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jag Duggal: How We Scaled Nubank to 80M Users; Google's Brutal Hiring Practices | E995 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Gina Gotthilf: Lessons Scaling Duolingo from 3-200M Users; How to Master PR and Comms | E1028 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- reCAPTCHA and Duolingo: Luis von Ahn (2020)
- Everlane: Michael Preysman
- David Tisch: The 3 Most Important Variables When Raising Your Seed Round | 20VC #983 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 16 mentions in 4 episodes 4 per episode
- Kevin Weil: Lessons from Leading Product at Instagram & Twitter | 20VC #934 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Chris Sacca's True Unfiltered Opinion on Facebook and Softbank | Full Interview · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Michael Mignano: How I Founded Anchor; Why TikTok could be a $2 TRILLION Company | 20VC #923 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 16 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
- 20Growth: The Biggest Growth Lessons from Leading Teams at Instagram & Instacart, How To Structure The Hiring Process for Growth Teams, How To Onboard Growth Reps Efficiently and The Relationship Between Growth and The Rest of the Org with Bangaly Kaba, H
- 20VC: The Opendoor Memo: Keith Rabois on The Origins of Opendoor from a Conversation with Peter Thiel, Why Cash is Not a Competitive Moat for Startups Today and What People Misunderstand About Black Swan Events in Real Estate and How it Impacts Opendoor
- Patreon: Jack Conte and Sam Yam
- 20VC: Chris Sacca on Coming Out of Retirement To Unf**k The Planet with Lowercarbon, How Chris Evaluates His Relationship To Money Today, Why We Have Bred a Generation of Ass**** Kids, Do VCs Provide Any Real Value and The True Unfiltered Opinion on Faceb
- 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them
- 20VC: Wunderlist & Pitch Founder, Christian Reber on His Personal Relationship with Risk, Money, Whether the Sale to Microsoft was a Mistake, What Great Product Designs Means Today & Why Founders Investing External Capital is a Distraction
- 20VC: Evernote & mmhmm Founder Phil Libin on Why We are Beginning a Multi-Trillion Dollar Restructuring of the World, Why Shortcuts are the Biggest Mistakes Startups Make & The Future of Video and The Unbundling of Zoom
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- reCAPTCHA and Duolingo: Luis von Ahn
- 20VC: Reid Hoffman on Investing in Airbnb and Passing on Stripe, The Different Styles of Truly Great Leaders, How To Think Through Ownership and Price in Venture & How To Ensure Venture Partnerships Always Have Trust and a Learning Mindset
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 5 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
2018 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Slack & Flickr: Stewart Butterfield
- 20VC: The Mindset The Best Investors Assume When Assessing Opportunities, Why So Many Hardware Startups Fail Today & The Right Way To Think About Employee Retention with Andrew Farah, Founder & CEO @ Density
- 20VC: Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook on The Commonalities of The Truly Great CEOs, How To Hire The Very Best Execs, Why Cash is A Defensible Moat Today & The Pros and Cons of M&A and IPOs
- 20VC: How To Strategically Build The Right Investor Base, Why Startup Timing is Like Surfing & How To Determine Whether Someone is Scaling with the Organisation or Not with Daniel Lewis, Founder & CEO @ Convoy
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Kevin Rose on Putting The Entire Fund Into Uber, The Future For Mobile & Whether Angels Should Have Super Pro-Rata Rights?
- 20VC: Jason Calacanis on The 4 Questions Investors Must Ask Founders, Whether YC Have Scaled Their Process Successfully & Why Early Founder Liquidity Is Good Not Bad
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Kevin's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-founder, Instagram | 3 | 32 | 70% 7/10 | full record on How I Built This → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-founder, Instagram | 1 | 24 | 0% 0/1 | full record on 20VC → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-founder, Instagram | 1 +1 | 10 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Masters of Scale → |