Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instagram’s CEO

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 130 posts

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#101

Post by beenBoutIT »

JacobDotVI wrote: post #55
kbenson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered about this. How much inventive is that? When the person thinks "if I work really hard and this, I'll increase my huge pool of money from an amount I can't easily spend given the rest of my life to an amount almost six times as much!", does that really resonate? It's not like it's the same as $700 to $4,000, or even from $7,000,000 to $40,000,000. There are things you can buy to spend most of thos…

I'm not sure about the psychology of incentives angle, but this old post from reddit shows the monumental difference in wealth between $700M and $4B: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_i...

Reddit's unfriendly block-everything popup reminder for National Voter Registration Day got me wondering, does anyone know how effective these types of popups are? The less-obtrusive popups that allow you to still see whatever you came to the site for seem better IMO, but I'm curious if they're less effective.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#102

Post by beenBoutIT »

kevincrane wrote: post #91
dionidium wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but those are things it's not really worth buying multiple of (e.g. houses, super yachts) Don't think consumer goods. Think: * own and run a professional sports team * spearhead a transit project in your hometown * build 100 libraries with your name on them * influence politics for a generation * fund the cure for the rare disease that killed your mother If all you can think to do with a few billion extra dollars i…

> spearhead a transit project in your hometown > build 100 libraries with your name on them > fund the cure for the rare disease that killed your mother Tax them at 90% and the government can and should do that all for them.

I like Jimmy Kimmel's proposal to tax the richest person in America at 90%(something along those lines). This way everyone at the uppermost top gives away more money in the process of avoiding the number 1 spot.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#103

Post by lacker »

kbenson wrote: post #43
billmalarky wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've always wondered about this. How much inventive is that? When the person thinks "if I work really hard and this, I'll increase my huge pool of money from an amount I can't easily spend given the rest of my life to an amount almost six times as much!", does that really resonate? It's not like it's the same as $700 to $4,000, or even from $7,000,000 to $40,000,000. There are things you can buy to spend most of thos…

Much more of the incentive is the desire to make Instagram a cool, popular, successful thing. Even though they sold the company to Facebook, it still felt like their creation the vast majority of the time. They were proud of what they had built and they wanted to make it a really popular thing that people liked to use.

There are plenty of billion-dollar acquisitions that don't work out at all. Instagram grew far bigger than it had been when they were acquired, in both financial impact and impact on the world.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#104

Post by gm-conspiracy »

vezycash wrote: post #64

Seeing as established giants can just kill a start up by copying them, I'm left to wonder. Could Snapchat have patented/trademarked Stories?

...and then litigate against Facebook for 8 years?

Or, license the patent, but why wouldn't Friendster have done the same?

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#106

Post by obmelvin »

cpeterso wrote: post #87
subdane wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a daily subscriber to Stratechery. Ben (Zuck?) under-indexes on the feeling of good will associated with a good product experience. But I agree that we over-index on it here on HN. IG won on speed, usability and UX over early competitors like Hipstamiatic and Flickr. But for sure the network was the addictive glue that brought users back, new users in and made the entire product grow. FB feels like the opposite…

An example of how little UX can matter: Facebook ran an experiment where they intentionally crashed their Android app to discover the threshold at which users would give up and go away. But someone familiar with the experiment said: “The company wasn’t able to reach the threshold. People never stopped coming back”. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/05/facebook-...

Isn't that sort of contradictory? The rest of the UX is so great that people want to use it despite the crashing.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#107

Post by krschultz »

vmarsy wrote: post #94
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…

Is there any good book/resources covering some of or all the 'business-y stuff' that people recommend?

The Innovator's Dilemma would be my first choice. There's 30 more that would be worth reading after that, but that will change your view of the industry.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#108

Post by rokhayakebe »

overcast wrote: post #88
enitihas wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Zuckerberg refused a 1B $ offer from yahoo.

Zuckerberg wanted power, not money, that's the difference. Only a fool turns down a billion dollars. That's live the rest of your life doing whatever the hell you want money. Holding out for more billions won't change that.

What if what you want to do for the rest of your life is run the company the way you see it fit for as long as you want?

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#109

Post by TAForObvReasons »

1290cc wrote: post #95

They traded their company for hundreds of millions of dollars. Good on them for turning a product into something that was so lucrative for FB and a real enjoyment for so many people the world over. I think it can't be understated how Instagram has become a pillar of so many brands and online businesses today. But in reality their departure is really part of the business of software, the founders sell out, become exce…

At the end of the day, as the article correctly points out:

> Letting Facebook build the business may have made Systrom and Krieger rich and freed them to focus on product, but it made Zuckerberg the true CEO

Instagram's decision to include advertisements is best understood from Zuckerberg/Facebook's view. Even if the local view is that IG adverts are negative, they are likely accretive from the perspective of the entire Facebook enterprise.

Re: Instagram’s CEO

#110

Post by LolWolf »

eitally wrote: post #92
storgendibal wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ben also said in today's update that the "relative importance decreases over time as things like network effects and business models come to bear". This is another way of putting Marc Andreesen and Steven Sinofski's point that if you have product / market fit, then you can do almost everything wrong and it won't matter. I think Ben gets that the tech and product are the only thing that matters pre-PMF, but post-PMF,…

I think I'd simplify even further, and say this this way: If you assume a startup has the technology, as it's nothing without it, then by definition the differentiated recognition of business potential will be achieved through business performance, not technology. IOW, you've got nothing without the tech, but you don't have a successful business if all you have is the tech.

"Necessary but not sufficient."
Post reply on HN