Kevin Systrom — Tactics, Books, and the Path to a Billion Users | The Tim Ferriss Show
Tim Ferriss Tim Ferriss
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 Published On Apr 25, 2019

Kevin Systrom (@kevin) is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Instagram. While at Instagram, Kevin served as the CEO, where he oversaw the company’s vision and strategy and daily operations. Under his leadership, Instagram grew to over one billion users and launched dozens of products including video, live, direct messaging, creative tools, Stories, and IGTV.

The company also grew to over 800 employees with a campus in Menlo Park, new offices in New York City, and a new headquarters in San Francisco.

Prior to founding Instagram, Kevin graduated from Stanford University with a BS in management science and engineering. Kevin currently lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Please enjoy!

Intro [00:00]
The book Kevin gifted most frequently [01:16]
A book that helped Kevin in his early days [03:03]
Doing the simple thing first [04:02]
Instagram’s origin story [08:09]
How Kevin and Mike decided which features to keep or eliminate [09:42]
How filters became part of Instagram’s big picture [13:37]
Important lessons from Stanford’s Mayfield Fellows Program [15:16]
Insights from the Golden Personality Test [19:16]
How Mortimer Adler recommends reading nonfiction books [21:00]
A sampling of the kind of books currently occupying Kevin’s nightstand [23:08]
The precursor to Twitter (Odeo) and what Kevin did there [23:58]
Evan Williams’ superpowers [26:01]
Some of the most successful pivots in recent history [28:51]
Can you train to make the right call to pivot? [33:20]
How to get honest feedback [36:51]
Some honest feedback Kevin was grateful to get [38:44]
What is a 360 interview, and what can it teach us? [41:36]
Disallowing seven on a one-to-10 scale [44:29]
How Kevin has bounced back from tough times [45:46]
Selling Instagram for $1B—not everything you'd think it would be [51:06]
The power of understanding your own motivators [53:06]
How did Kevin learn to manage? [55:12]
On getting through decision-making bottlenecks [58:45]
How does Kevin choose the books he’s going to read? [1:04:17]
What Kevin gets most out of reading history books [1:06:14]
Some of my recommended biographies and histories [1:08:40]
Advice Kevin gives to entrepreneurs that very few actually take [1:10:09]
Other mistakes Kevin sees entrepreneurs and creators making [1:14:29]
What would Kevin’s billboard say? [1:16:58]
Parting thoughts [1:21:32]

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About Tim Ferriss:
Tim Ferriss is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 300 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.

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