Q&A with Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger

Tonight I had the opportunity to attend a Q&A session with the co-founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Held at UC Berkeley’s Dwinelle Hall, the event was hosted by Facebook recruiters and was completely packed with students and post-grads. We all had an awesome time listening to the creators answer funny lightning-round questions and more serious questions submitted and asked by the audience. It was pretty inspiring listening to Kevin and Mike describe the early days at Instagram, and how much they had to hustle and focus on delivering an amazing product.

Instagram Co-Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger

I was able to take notes of some key points during the Q&A session, which I’ve compiled here for everyone to read. They’re definitely random tidbits but contain a lot of useful information for startups and life in general. Enjoy!

How to Scale your Product as a Startup:

  • Don’t be shy! Put yourself out there, the worst people can do is say no.
  • We’re never prepared for the hardest things in life anyway

On Entrepreneurship and Careers:

  • Experience matters a lot, much more than school – it divides people who do really well in life vs. people who do comfortably well
  • The best entrepreneurs know what they don’t know (and they’ll find much more qualified people to do the things they don’t know)

On Vine and the new Video on Instagram:

  • You take ideas and mix them up with new ideas
  • Don’t just change a couple of features – not sustainable in the long run

On Being Acquired by Facebook:

  • A lot hasn’t changed, but more talented people have joined
  • They were barely above the water before the acquisition
  • Joining Facebook helped solve the spam problem that was rampant on Instagram

On Mark Zuckerberg:

  • He’s fascinating, sort of like a board member of Instagram
  • They see him once a week, and it’s apparent he deeply cares about the products
  • He’s an active CEO – he likes to walk around the office and see what people have been working on

On Why Instagram Didn’t Have an App for Android for the Longest Time:

  • They were still a small startup, completely focused on building the product quickly, which meant focusing on iOS

On Introducing Ads Within the Next Year:

  • Instagram was always going to be a business
  • The ads will be very Instagram-y (i.e. very simple and well-integrated)

On Creating a Good Company Culture:

  • Must be open to new ideas from the whole team
  • It’s a meritocracy of ideas – the best ideas win
  • Generally want positive attitudes from workers, try not to hire jerks

Advice for Post-College:

  • Discount the first 3 years, because you will screw up
  • But no mistake will define you for the following 20 years, so take a chance!
  • Almost everything is solvable, so try your best to figure problems out!

Random Fun Fact:

  • The first filter they made was X Pro II

Filters at www.RandomTidbitsofThought.com.