I recently listened to Lex Fridman’s podcast episode with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, it was great and had a few interesting ideas that I tried to interpret.
1. Pain is inevitable so find fun in what you are doing
If you want to achieve anything great, you will have to go through a lot of suffering regardless of your background (talent, knowledge, money, etc.). The key is to find what makes the pain a fun experience to go through, or simply put find what you love. This is pretty cliche, but when delivered in the context of enjoying the suffering and pain it highlights that passion really triumphs over a lot. This again connects back to the idea that being in love with the process instead of the outcome (bottom-up instead of top-down in some ways) is generally going to be more sustainable. Kevin even said that even if Instagram had failed, he would have been satisfied because the journey was really a fun experience (which I generally find really hard to grasp when people who make it say things like that).
I guess going back to the analogy of the fallen entrepreneurs, you could probably fill a graveyard full of companies that had all the passion in the world and yet still could not pull through. I don’t see many failed entrepreneurs (that don’t succeed even in the future) claiming that the failure was really good for them and that it was a fun journey that, but you do hear Jeff Bezos talk a whole lot about the regret minimization framework after he has become successful and how he would not have regretted anything even if amazon had failed.
There are different kinds of delusions, some good some bad but the key thing is to not delude yourself by thinking that you are really working hard, and show other people how hard you are working when in reality the output of your work is not existent.
2. The problem with social networks is the people
This idea was one that I found hard to wrap my head around. When asked about the issues with social media networks, Kevin responded with something along the lines that it is the people that are the problem, not the algorithm itself. (I might be completely butchering what he meant or said). The following analogy hopefully makes things clearer: we have been catching tons of fish in an ocean for years now, but when we go fishing this year there is barely any fish remaining. Why? Because once a critical mass is exceeded a system is no longer self-sustainable, and equilibrium is destroyed. Because we have overfished, there aren’t enough fish to repopulate the ocean by themselves. When networks reach a certain mass, it becomes difficult to create a product whereby a person genuinely feels better after using it, and because it is very easy to make money from maximizing user engagement companies stick to the ads business model and measure success based on metrics such as click-through rates or time spent. Another interpretation was that the way current algorithms rank content is based on engagement and it is very filtered. What Tik Tok excelled at was the fact that literally, anyone could go viral as long as they made something interesting.
“Look for the cracks” was Kevin’s response when asked if a new social network could replace existing giants. It is going to be impossible to beat such big players at their own game so try and fix the gaps that each network has. You have to play in a space where your competitor cannot pivot because of the way they are structured. Every 5 years or so there has been some displacement, whether it be Instagram to Facebook, Snapchat to Instagram, and now tik Tok.
When talking about the side effects of social media, Kevin gave a smart response by alluding to the fact that any technology can have undesirable consequences especially when the scale is so large.
3. Life Advice
Another interesting thing he mentioned centered around the well-known notion of being fully present at the moment, you have to try and “opt-in every single day”, where you are actively thinking about and considering what you are doing instead of mindlessly going through each task. This is yet another one of those cliches that everyone knows they should do but is so hard to implement.
The ultimate concept that was reinforced from listening to his is to create something that is valuable for people to use and solves their problems. If I can enjoy this painful yet fun process of solving problems then life is good.
Akshat Jain 