20VC: Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri on Threads: The Journey from 0-100M Users; What Worked, What Didn't and the Plans Ahead | Instagram: Biggest Mistakes, Successes, Misconceptions, TikTok Competition & The Future of Social Media; Interest Graph or Friend G

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2023

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Adam Mosseri is the Head of Instagram, where he is responsible for overseeing the engineering, product, and business teams and leading Meta’s efforts on creators and Reels. Adam has been at Meta for more than fifteen years. He started at Meta as a designer for Facebook's mobile app before moving to product management, where he led the Facebook News Feed product and engineering teams, and served as the Head of Facebook News Feed. Adam began his career founding a design consultancy focused on graphic, interaction, and exhibition design before joining TokBox as the company’s first designer.

In Today's Discussion with Adam Mosseri We Discuss:

1. From Designer to Product Leader to Instagram CEO:

What did Adam learn from his first job bartending? How did it impact his approach to customer support and research?
What are the top 1-2 pieces of advice Adam would give to someone wanting to make the move from individual contributor to leader?
If Adam was "not amazing at anything", what did he do that enabled him to rise above the rest and become CEO of Instagram?
What have been 1-2 of the biggest lessons from working with Mark Zuckerberg for 15 years?

2. A Deep Dive on the Wild Times as Instagram CEO:

What has been Adam's single biggest mistake as CEO of Instagram?
What does Adam believe is the least known feature within Instagram that has made them successful?
What does Adam believe has been the biggest product decision he has made as CEO?
Why does Adam believe that Instagram is too complicated as a product?
Who does Adam believe is the most formidable competitor to Instagram?
Was Instagram Reels a simple copy of TikTok? What have Instagram learned from TikTok?
How does Adam respond to the statement that Instagram is a "copy-cat machine" and lacks innovaton?

3. Threads: The Journey from 0-100M Users in Three Days:

Did Adam and the team expect the response they got to Threads?
Why did they decide to break Threads out into a separate app?
What went into bootstrapping the Threads friendship and interest graph?
What was the Threads influencer activation strategy? What worked? What did not? Did they pay influencers? How did they choose which verticals to focus on?
What is Adam's core focus with Threads today?
How is the team analysing and measuring retention? What are their goals?
What are the 1-2 core reasons why Threads would not work? How do they aim to prevent them?
In 12 months, where will Threads be?

4. The Future of Consumer Social: What Happens Now?

Does Adam believe we have seen the transition from the social graph to the interest graph? Is it that binary?
Is it possible to have both the interest and the friendship graph all in one app?
How does the monetization potential differ when comparing Threads (text) to Instagram (visual)?
How important is it for the next consumer social platforms to have stars that are native to their platform (Mr Beast on Youtube, D'Amelio on TikTok etc.)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	When you see a competitor to do something, I think it's super important to be humble enough to learn from it.
0:05.1	The numbers are staggering, but it's just sign-ups. It's way easier to build something that people are willing to try than build something that people want to continue to use in a month or a year from now.
0:14.8	So this is the best first eight days I could have ever possibly imagined. But what really matters is how well do we iterate so that it is compelling
0:23.4	enough that people will continue to use it over the long run. Welcome back, 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings.
0:28.2	Now, today's show is an immensely special one because in recent weeks we've seen threads smash all
0:33.2	previous records and hit 100 million users in just five days.
0:38.0	Today, I'm so excited to be joining the hot seat by Adam Masseri, leading the charge with
0:42.2	threads.
0:42.9	Adam's also head of Instagram and leading Meta's efforts on creators and reels, and Adam's
0:47.9	been at Meta for more than 15 years.
0:50.0	Having started at Meta as a designer, he then went on to serve as head of Facebook's
0:53.8	news feed, and I do want to say a huge thank you to Anne Schultz and Naomi Gelt at Meta as a designer, he then went on to server's head of Facebook's news feed,
0:54.6	and I do want to say a huge thank you to Anne Aeschel's and Naomi Gelt at Meta and Sam Lesson
0:59.3	for some amazing questions today. It really did make such a difference.
1:03.4	But before we dive into the show today, this episode is brought to you by Teegas,
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	...

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