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Instagram’s CEO

stratechery.com

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Re: Instagram’s CEO

#31

Post by krn1p4n1c »

tyingq wrote: post #29
krn1p4n1c wrote: post #24

Seems like they didn't know when to leave. Once they sold it was no longer their baby and should have started working on an exit strategy. It becomes a contest of egos. On the technical side, FB's methodology with acquisitions seemed the most rational. Rather than sucking the new company in they embedded PE's in there for the purpose of giving the tech teams a fast track to using FB resources.

It's a little over 6 years elapsed. Maybe they had to wait out some vesting?

I'm sure. Everyone has to do the 4yr slog, but founders usually write in a parachute clause.

I hope they stuck around to make sure their original team was taken care of, but it's naive to think they'd have C-level control at the parent company after acquisition.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#33

Post by billmalarky »

krn1p4n1c wrote: post #24

Seems like they didn't know when to leave. Once they sold it was no longer their baby and should have started working on an exit strategy. It becomes a contest of egos. On the technical side, FB's methodology with acquisitions seemed the most rational. Rather than sucking the new company in they embedded PE's in there for the purpose of giving the tech teams a fast track to using FB resources.

To be fair, they also had $700 MM in FB stock (now worth $4b according to the article), so there was incentive to help instagram succeed at FB.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#34

Post by tootie »

raheemm wrote: post #22

In the short-term, Zuckerberg maybe the CEO, but if he keeps prioritizing ads over product (which he has done with FB prod/privacy), then the long-term maybe dicey. Just as content is king, so product will always be king. The ads will follow whoever has the best product, and hence user attention.

Ad money is what lets him crush or acquire competitors. The thing that isn't discussed is how commodotized social media software is. Sharing photos and comments and likes is the core of these businesses and it's extremely easy to replicate over and over from a tech perspective. The hard part is acquiring users, scaling and monetizing and FB has won that game. That's how they can take anyone else's product or idea and best them at it so quickly.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#35

Post by joejerryronnie »

jhabdas wrote: post #9

For those who covet money titles are more important than to those who covet building great products for users. As a product leader offloading your money challenges into the hands of VC funding is a surefire way to turn vision into greed and slowly destroy one's creative product vision.

Or, it could be the only way to get a great product out of your basement and into the hands of millions of users. It's a tough balancing act but TANSTAAFL.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#36

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

mooreds wrote: post #17

This is a sobering look at what it takes to build a business vs a product (vs, even smaller scale, a feature). You have to be willing to put in the long hours (err, years) and the schlepping to do all the business-y stuff: * distribution * monetization * back end systems for admin users * sales channels etc, etc Or, you can cash out and assimilate, err integrate, with a larger company that has done that hard work and…

Instagram was huge even before Facebook took over. It has gone from strength to strength in the 6 years since but I'm pretty sure that would've been the case without Facebook's involvement (see also: Twitter and Snapchat).

You seem to be doing the founders and the team behind Instagram a huge disservice here by accusing them of not being willing to put in the work and riding on Facebook's coattails.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#37

Post by BeetleB »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #36
mooreds wrote: post #17

This is a sobering look at what it takes to build a business vs a product (vs, even smaller scale, a feature). You have to be willing to put in the long hours (err, years) and the schlepping to do all the business-y stuff: * distribution * monetization * back end systems for admin users * sales channels etc, etc Or, you can cash out and assimilate, err integrate, with a larger company that has done that hard work and…

Instagram was huge even before Facebook took over. It has gone from strength to strength in the 6 years since but I'm pretty sure that would've been the case without Facebook's involvement (see also: Twitter and Snapchat). You seem to be doing the founders and the team behind Instagram a huge disservice here by accusing them of not being willing to put in the work and riding on Facebook's coattails.

His comment is merely a summary of the article.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#38

Post by eldavido »

mooreds wrote: post #17

This is a sobering look at what it takes to build a business vs a product (vs, even smaller scale, a feature). You have to be willing to put in the long hours (err, years) and the schlepping to do all the business-y stuff: * distribution * monetization * back end systems for admin users * sales channels etc, etc Or, you can cash out and assimilate, err integrate, with a larger company that has done that hard work and…

I am a daily reader of Stratechery. It's a very "MBA" publication: the emphasis is always on strategy, distribution channels, markets, sales and marketing, etc.

It's a soberingly different worldview than product-obsessed, hacker/maker/developer-centric worldview you get on HN a lot of the time. HN definitely skews toward the entrepreneurial/business end of software, but there's still a real emphasis on building great products, talking to users, and faith in the idea that in the long term, the best product will win. Whereas the Stratechery worldview is more like, "figure out sales and do enough of that engineering mumbo-jumbo, and everything will fall into place". I think there's more truth to this than is commonly acknowledged on HN. Eng/product isn't always the center of the damned universe.

I find both views important. I think the best products do tend to win. But reading stratechery has also given me an appreciation for the difficulties inherent in fighting an entrenched competitor, and bootstrapping distribution (how customers discover/use/buy something) from scratch.

On the other hand, Ben (stratechery author) says almost daily, "It's not the technology that matters, it's the strategy". I don't think that's right. A big talking point that comes up over and over with Instagram was how well-built the app was. There was genuine craftsmanship in terms of usability, performance, and a lot of other things that made it a joy to use. That matters.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#39

Post by briandear »

mooreds wrote: post #21
everdev wrote: post #8

Not a positive trend for FB considering the What'sApp founder quit in April: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/30/jan-koum-quits-facebook/ Giving a single person full control of a company is great when they're on the right track. These have to be warning shots to employees and investors though.

It depends. Do you still need product geniuses when you have distribution and monetization nailed?

Salesforce proves that you don’t.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#40

Post by briandear »

orliesaurus wrote: post #11

Great article, this is how I feel about Instagram personally: - Great app who turned a camera phone into a powerful camera for those who couldn't afford one of those expensive Canon/other brands of good cameras. - Democratizing photography made phone vendors spend more time build better camera, we're at a point where cameras on certain phones are as a good as stand-alone cameras for photography. - Filters have been a…

Hipstamatic was far better but since it wasn’t too “social” it never caught on.
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