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Systrom: Founders naturally gravitate toward central roles like goalie or DJ

Kevin Systrom · Instagram Co-founder Kevin Systrom: Keep it simple while scaling big | Masters of Scale · Jul 28, 2023 · at 9:11

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom reflects with Reid Hoffman on how his childhood roles in sports and DJing shaped his instinct to lead and build companies.

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“When I did sports as a kid, I was the goalie. When I played baseball, I was the pitcher. Like I always wanted to be in the center of it and not controlling it, but I wanted to be in the center of it. And the DJ is kind of the same thing, right? So the early glimmers of, I think, wanting to start a company and lead people in a specific direction, sure, like, that relates a lot to whether you're the goalie, the pitcher, or the DJ, you're in these types of positions.”

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