The Jordan Harbinger Show - 335: Kevin Systrom | Life Lessons from an Instagram Founder Part One

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

Kevin Systrom (@kevin) is a computer programmer and entrepreneur who co-founded Instagram in 2010 with Mike Krieger. This is part one of a two-part episode. Look out for part two later this week! What We Discuss with Kevin Systrom: Why founding a startup now is probably easier for the average aspiring entrepreneur than ever before. What famous brands have pivoted radically from their origins to become massively successful (including Instagram). How to get honest feedback (and know when you should listen to it). How to get honest feedback (and know when you shouldn't listen to it). The simple idea that led to the creation of Instagram, and what made it stand out in a seemingly saturated market. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/335 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most brilliant people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We want to help you see the matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave. We want you to become a better thinker. If you're new to the show, we've got episodes with spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for skills like negotiations. body language, persuasion, and more. So if you're smart and you like to learn and improve, you'll be right at home here with us. Today, Kevin Sistram, founder of Instagram. This is an app that nearly everyone uses and was one of the hottest tech unicorns in history, making the founders billionaires and changing the way people share and interact online. This is a two-part episode because

we went so long. Today's conversation is just packed with goodness, including how to get feedback and when not to listen to it, how he got the idea for Instagram and how we can take some of that strategy and implement it in our own lives, why he stopped posting on Instagram even though it was his own app, hiring and problem solving advice, and what do you do with yourself once you leave something you've spent nearly a third of your life creating, and you've got another lifetime to try and raise the stakes? If you want to know how I manage to book all these great people, they all come from my network. I manage my relationships using systems and tiny habits in just a few minutes per day. I'm teaching you how to do this at our six

minute networking course, which is all free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they do subscribe to the course in the newsletter. So come join us. You'll be in great company. All right. Here's Kevin Sistram. How does one start a startup? Do you start from a place of, look, I want to found a company or are you like, I want to solve for a specific issue? I think, okay, first off, I think I did it in a way that most people don't, which is I'm not sure I tried to found a startup. I just wanted to work on my own, on my own stuff. Like not have a boss? Yeah. That's a different way of putting it. But in fact, I think I've said that before. I was like, I just didn't want a boss. I like, I'd been working at some great companies for some great people

for a while. But I wanted the chance to build something from scratch, quote, unquote, my way. And that's the reason why I decided I was going to jump ship from the startup that I was at to go start something. So, you know, I didn't know it was going to be a startup. It was just me. I was fudson around with ideas. But that was my way. In terms of how you start to start, meaning just anyone, I mean, nowadays, probably very different. I mean, you can raise money fairly quickly. You know, there are all sorts of incubators that people are part of. Yeah. That's not the route I went. I just kind of went the, like, I just need space, a table and my old laptop and a few ideas. It took more than a few to get to Instagram. But that was the way I did it back then.

I'll go over some, before we do the show, I'll do like a little, he started this app. Yeah. That was like the 10 billionth check-in app of the decade or of the year or whatever. I think we were before 10 billion. Okay. Yeah, I just like. So top million. I think we were definitely in the first hundred.

Let's give you some credit. Yeah, I'm giving you. It's just funny because when you look at check-in apps now, you're like, wait, do we still do that? And we kind of do. We just don't use a check-in app. It just Instagram or whatever you're using happens to sort of know where you are. It's true. At the same time, like, of all the crazy ideas that I have in my oodles of time now, I think to myself, like, man, like, it just feels like checking apps had so much velocity and then just nothing. And I guess Instagram kind of took that space because you could see what people were up to, et cetera. But sharing a photo is like a lot more heavyweight than just sharing where you are. Yeah. And I still feel like there's room for sharing your location. I feel like, you know, find my friends kind of does it, but not really. and people have hacked it.

Yeah. But my point is, there's something there, and I'm not sure who's going to do it. But if you know anyone, I also invest these days. I was thinking about this the other day because when I was reading about your history, I thought, oh, yeah, now we use, oh, wait. I have no way to know if, like, hey, are you going to this event other than texting everybody who might be going to a specific conference in Vegas. I have to, what, look on some sort of thing. But I also don't want just anybody to be able to see that I'm there. I just want to see if my friends are there.

So there's like a permissions thing that nobody's quite figured out. And then apps like LinkedIn kind of do it. But it's like, oh, but you have to be available all the time. And the app has to be open. I'm like, no one's going to do that. It's got to be built into like the OS almost. Yeah. So my point really is that we started in a crowded space.

Then it's like everyone left the room. And it's not clear to me that's an invaluable room. Is invaluable a word? You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah. My point is I think it might be valuable. and no one's there anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like a, nobody's quite solved the privacy issue and made it useful. They're sort of like. I hope in startups that like, someday there will be this moment

where retro is cool again. We're like, people are like, we don't have an app. We're just on the web. Yeah. There's HTML5. Yeah.

I just feel like they're going to, there's like this retro movement that might happen. I'm just, I'm kidding. Yeah. I don't know. I mean,

it would be like, I think. Checking apps are the new hot thing. Badges and gamification come back. That's right. Well, I wonder, do you ever wonder, actually, let me phrase it as a question, do you ever wonder, hey, people are going to want to get rid of some of these filters after like 20 years? They're going to want to see what their actual skin color was, not like the sepia. Oh, you mean like on their photos, be able to undo it? Yeah, like delete Instagram, remove Instagram filter.com could be like the hottest website of 2035.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not going to be the one that creates it. If someone, someone enterprising out there wants to figure it out, you know. Why not? Given the formulas, they can back it out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you get a lot of press. if you were the guy who meant that, I think. Your mom said something along the lines of, when you started your startup, your mom said, like, what about health insurance? Yeah.

And it's kind of a joke when you tell that story. But what people don't realize is that, like, half of a business is, wait, but what about health insurance? Wait, is the who paid the electric bill? How come the Internet's not working? How did you manage that in the beginning? Because I know in the beginning you're like, I have my old laptop and I'm just pushing out code.

And it's, yeah, but who's like doing payroll? Well, first off, I think it's important, like, when you start a company, you to find as much leverage as you can so that you don't have to figure a lot of this stuff out. What's crazy is now if you start a startup, it's like a meta startup. There are startups that have been formed to like help you with all this stuff as a startup. So, you know, whether it's credit cards, I remember trying to open an Amex and they wouldn't give us an Amex because we hadn't been in business long enough. Yeah.

We didn't have profit and blah, blah. So we were bankrolling everything on our own credit cards and then paying ourselves back and it was messy and we hired a rent a CFO, which actually exist out there, you know, via all these different firms you can go to. It's a mess. But what I'll say is that stuff is table stakes. And the good news is it's getting easier, right? Like before Instagram, you actually had to have like hardware for your servers. I remember it worked at Odeo that became Twitter. And I remember visiting our data center. And I don't, it's somewhere actually around this recording studio, It was somewhere around here, and we walked in and we had to have, like, headphones on.

It was loud. It was that loud? Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of computers running, and they were old school, right? Running on diesel or something. Yeah, like, how loud is it when you need headphones? But now with AWS, it's like, you don't even think about it. So my point is starting a startup has just become so lightweight.

And I like that because it means the true competitive advantage is basically on two things. One, the value of the idea and two, the execution. And that has meant it's become extremely competitive. Because if there were 100 check-in apps when we started today, if that was still a space that people cared about, there would be that you were joking a million, but there would be a million. It's funny. I started doing some angel investing. I would come across our company and be like, that's an awesome idea. And, you know, my friend whose investor was like, okay, but rule number one is go find the other 10 that are doing the exact same thing and compare them all.

Because as much as you think that's a cool idea, there are a lot and then compare the execution. That's why. My point is it's totally different to start a company today. And on the health insurance stuff, it is so important to make sure you're taking care of. I think we just got really lucky. You know, this could have ended in a bunch of different ways. But, I mean, listen, I was 26, I guess, when I started. I'm 36 now.

It's 10 years later. I didn't have a kid then. I didn't have anything to worry about. My co-founder and I, Mike, like to say, we think there's a reason why startups started by, like, 20-year-olds. Yeah. It's like, you can go hard to 4 a.m. every single day or maybe even longer. Yeah.

You don't get sick. It just works. You don't really have kids. And that's part of the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is that you can make a lot happen with a few people highly leveraged. And if you stay healthy, everything goes well. But probably took some risks we shouldn't have. I agree.

But I totally get it. I mean, it's just I went to law school and it was very similar. Startups are even more hardcore. But there were guys in law school that were married and we were like, hey, you want to go out tonight? He's like, no, I've got to go and spend some time with my family. And we're like, oh my God, you've had a family this whole time? How is that possible?

And we felt bad for them. Not that they had to go spend time with their family, but we're like, does your kid even know who you are? We've been studying for the bar exam. Like, you haven't left the library for four weeks more. Well, now it's interesting because I have a lot more time. I mean, I keep myself busy with a lot of quote unquote work. And when I say quote unquote work, it's not like I go to an office, but I have lots of

things going on. But I get to see my family. And I've got two kids now. And I often think to myself. man, I don't see them enough. And then I think to myself, wait, like, if I was working day to day in office and I was commuting an hour, so I have to remember, like, how grateful I am to have this experience now to be a little bit more flexible. But man, how life changes. Yeah. Having my first kid, I'm like, oh, this is what people mean when they say your priorities

change. Yeah, totally. And I just happen to be lucky that I'm in a good place where my priorities can change. And I'm not like, guess I better go get a job at the post office, not if there's anything wrong with that. But a lot of people have to kind of give up on what they like doing when they have kids and family because it's like reality check. You're not paying your bills with whatever you were doing before. And a lot of people, that kind of sneaks up on them. It's true. Trude off surreal. You are really well known for keeping things simple. And it looks like the original app, Bourbon, was like this checking app and involved photo sharing. And you managed to pair things down like, all right, this is one of the most popular things people

are doing on the app. I assume there was a process to prune away. all this? Or were you just looking at the data and you're like, everyone's sharing photos? Let's just double down on this. No, in fact, I guess a couple ways of telling this story, but the most interesting way is just to say, when we told people that were currently using bourbon, there were maybe 100 of them that we were going to be switching to Instagram. 99 complained, right? And there was only one that was like, ah, like this Instagram thing seems a little bit cooler than bourbon. Everyone loved bourbon. It was great. And in fact, the data didn't show that everyone was just sharing photos. In fact, they were checking in far more than they were sharing photos.

So we actually had data, and this is why business is so hard. We had data that showed that we shouldn't work on Instagram, that we should just keep working on Bourbon. And who knows? I mean, we don't have the counterfactual. Like, maybe we should have kept working on Bourbon. Maybe it would be even bigger today. Like, we don't know. Burba Graham. But we decided that Bourbon didn't have the competitive edge because there were so many checking apps that just having a feature different wasn't going to work. We needed something that people were drawn to because, you know, the real test is when you give bourbon to someone who isn't one of your close friends or one of their close friends, do they retain? And the answer was no time and time again because everyone was like,

ah, I use four square or guala or hot potato or, you know, like, you name it, right? I forget about those. But Instagram, the process was we took a look and we said, okay, what do we think are the most unique features? And I don't remember the third one, but I remember number two was plans. plans were like check-ins, but in the future. So you could say, hey, we're going to go hang out on Thursday. Let's make a plan. And then that broadcast in advance. So instead of checking in on Thursday, by the way, you checked in then as well. But you would broadcast and then people could join. And it created this really interesting snowball effect where people would say, hey, I'm going to do this thing. And people could join in. And before you knew it, on Thursday, you'd show up and like 20 of your friends would be there.

That's cool. It was a really nice organic way. So people love that. And I still think there's an opportunity. there that hasn't been there is we used texting and it's a huge pay hey are you coming oh bro sorry i didn't see these told us now we know you're lying yeah but we had gamification too like just to go deeper on this we had this thing where like if you made plans and you didn't follow through and check in you lost points but if you made a plan and you checked in within an hour of the window you said you were going to you actually got like double points or something i can't remember a little reliability badge something well you just earned points and then there was this leaderboard of like who could make the number of most number of plans and actually follow through.

And it was an incentive system basically to be more social. And people like that. But we didn't feel that that was like a truly big enough market to go after with our startup effort. So the photo part was interesting because it was the part people were most emotional about. They were like, oh, it's so great that you can do this. And the fact that you could do it meant that you could share what you were up to, who you were with, often what you were eating, right? like that kind of stuff. And that made us just double-click on that idea because it was so differentiated from what existed at the time. That's how we paired it down. That's surprisingly

kind of insightful because a lot of people probably think you just stumbled upon this cool photo sharing idea because you love photography. I do. And there's this metaphor of like, maybe it's not quite a metaphor. Maybe it's the real story. But I went to Florence and I went on this photography thing and I had my great camera. And then this professor was like, no, here's this crappy camera. Keep it simple. And you're like, ding, dot, dot, dot, Instagram is simple. I'm like, I'm a huge nerd when it comes to statistics. And I think like with a classic sayings is correlation is not causation, right? It's very easy to look back and overfit the past. And like perhaps I do that in some of my narratives, but I don't know. I think a different

way of looking at this is that maybe better companies would come out of people if they just stuck to what they knew and loved, right? And stopped fudsoning around with things that they thought, would quote unquote make a good startup. And you see it time and time again. The people who found the largest things are often most passionate about those problems and most familiar with them. So I often like to say like in high school, if there was a crystal ball and they said someday, you're going to found computer based company because I loved computers and I love programming. And mobile phones weren't really a thing back then. Like you played Snake on a Nokia. That was a level. But like it's going to be advanced and you're going to be able to take photos with it and

share them with friends and you'll be able to manipulate them with color. Like, that was all the stuff I was into in high school. It just came full circle when I let it because that's what we knew. If we had tried to focus on something that we hadn't done in the past, I think it would have been a lot harder. You're right. A lot of people will try and look at data and be like, the perfect idea is this random thing dot, dot, dot on the blockchain. And some people do, by the way, and they do okay at it. I just, if you're going to spend 24 hours a day on something, I hope you love it because it takes away years off your life to get there, you know? At least it did Micas. I don't know. Maybe other people had an easier time.

You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard from our amazing sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Don't forget, we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all of the latest episodes downloaded automatically to your podcast player so you don't miss a single thing.

And now, back to the show. When I worked in finance a long time ago, I was always jealous of the people that seemed to really enjoy it. They'd be like, and then we securitize these batches of subprime mortgage. And I'm just like, I'm so jealous that you don't want to jump off the window right now. Like, you really enjoy this. But everybody else that was there was like the data shows that I'm going to get rich working at Goldman Sachs, period, the end. And then, I mean, we know the stats on how much people are miserable at those types of banks and law firms and things like that. Well, I, like, every step of the way I just made like non-financial decision after non-financial decision in a highly financial area. So that's not to say that like when I joined Google,

I wasn't paid well or that it wasn't one of the top one percent of company. in terms of payroll, right? Like, but I took a lower paying job than I would have had I join other companies. I had other offers that were far more lucrative. But I joined Google because I was like, this company is the world changing. I mean, it is going to be one of the companies that goes down in history is one of the most important companies on earth ever. Like, to be part of that, even for a moment is super special.

I always made decisions that way. Like, what's my passion or what do I love? And now I think about it. I'm like, man, that was kind of irrational. like it worked out. So my point is to anyone listening, you know, if you decide to go that direction and that's the way you want to make a decision, have the faith that because you're so passionate about the stuff you're working on, good things will come of it. I think it's much harder to get into a situation where there's like high pay and no passion and good things happen. That's where burnout happens. That's all sorts of bad stuff happens. That's true. As long as you can pay your bills, I suppose, then it's all good. Well, you know, we talked about kids. a little bit. I often think about like how I will paint the picture of options for my kids. And I wish someone had told me earlier that you can choose, I mean, my parents let me choose whatever I want. I hope I let my kids choose whatever they want. Not everyone has that freedom

in their family, but let's assume that for a second. It's important to know you could choose whatever you want, but everything comes with consequences. Consequences is like a loaded word. Maybe outcomes is better. But like, you know, if you choose you want to be, you know, a painter, okay, great. Go look at that distribution of outcomes. It's like, if you're okay with that and happy with those outcomes, then that's great. Because maybe you value creativity and maybe you want to work in a big workspace and you realize that only 1% of 1% of 1% of people ever even get to put their stuff in a gallery or, you know? I mean, I'm stretching this a little bit because I'm not super familiar with the art world. Yeah, same. But my point is, it's not. It's not,

unknown when you set off to make a decision what the likely distribution of outcomes are. Right. So it's good to at least ask yourself, hey, let's imagine I can fast forward the tape 10 years from now. Where am I going to be? What are the likely outcomes? What's like the most extreme outcome? I feel like I experienced an extreme outcome, right? Not everyone who starts a startup, right? But I don't know. The way I think about it is if I did that exercise, I'd say, well, I'd learn a lot. I'd have a ton of fun. I'd work with a small group of people. I'd get to build something, and I'd probably learn enough to, like, get a great job somewhere else, and then maybe get back into it later. And that median case doesn't feel so bad to me.

But on the upside, you could potentially start something that changes the world. And don't get me wrong. When we started Instagram, like, there was zero belief we were going to get even close to that. A lot of people like to say, like, oh, I knew it at the beginning. We were going to not even close. That always sounds funny to me. Like, oh, you knew it, huh? That's congratulations.

Yeah. But knowing, my point is knowing the distribution of outcomes before you make a decision and just stopping and saying like, what could possibly happen? What's the range? And am I okay with that? And if you're okay with that, then go for it, you know? I suppose as long as you're not delusional about your chances of rolling the dice properly. Exactly. Right? Like if you think, okay, the chances of me making it big as an artist really, really, really slim, as opposed to, no, but I'm really good. I'm totally going to be the next war haul and I'm going to be hanging out with celebrities all the time.

It's like then you're setting yourself up for a failure. But if you think I might make a modest salary owning this company that turns into an app and maybe we'll sell it later on, which would be great. That's more reasonable. Yeah. And the idea that maybe I'm going to get super nerdy even beyond where we just want. line with this. Okay. So like what I talked about in terms of distribution is called a prior in statistics. It's like what is your prior belief of the outcomes of what you can possibly experience

if you make this decision, right? But you can go ahead and update that prior. Now we're getting into what's called Bayesian statistics. People can Google it, right? All the statisticians are rolling their eyes right now. But Bayesian Statistics is the idea that you can update your prior beliefs with new information. So if you said, well, I happen to be the the son of like a super famous artist. I don't know. Actually, that like increases your outcomes quite a bit. There are lots of examples of that in art and movies and right and music. In startups, I don't know if you worked at Google or Microsoft or Amazon or one of the big ones, if you have a computer science degree, if all your co-founders also worked at one of those

and have a computer science degree from MIT or Stanford or Harvard, like I'd probably invest, right? So my point is you can update your beliefs over time using information. I agree it's important not to be delusional. But I don't know. Listen, anyone who gets into startups is a little bit delusional. I think that's probably, yeah, you're probably right. Because it's like one of the least. It's like one of the least safe sort of pads that you can have for the qualifications

that most people have. Like, I could take this job at McKinsey or Google or wherever. Nah, I kind of want to just eat kind bars for the next like three years and drink Mountain Dew every day until I pass out. And like, then, but you have... Time bars are fancy. They are. You're right.

It's probably not even that fancy. We have those granola we lived off of Nature's... Yeah, the one where there's two flat ones in a pack. And they crumble everywhere. I just had one this morning. What are the names of those? Nature. It's like Nature's choice.

Nature's choice, yeah. And they're green. I swear this isn't an ad. Those are delicious. I lived off of them. We have them in the lobby here. We'll get them for you when you live. I'm going to show up at home and there's going to be a

truck waiting with like Nature's Valley. Nature Valley. That's right. We got to get the sponsor crack. Okay. I'm sorry. NatureValley.org slash Jordan. Hard cut.

Yeah. Most successful things are pivots. I think you said this in another talk that you gave. YouTube was like a dating site. I think what was the other example that Tim Ferriss gave me post-its were like a failed adhesive product and turned into a note. I mean, Facebook was different at the beginning. YouTube was different.

I think PayPal was also different, right? Most great ideas start as something else. And there was a professor at Stanford who wrote a book called like something getting to plan B or something. I can't remember exactly. His name is Randy Comasar, but you can look up the book and you can edit out my voice and put in the real title. We'll put it in the show. Yeah, thank you. We'll find it.

But it's effectively the idea that like, oh, now I'm quoting a book that was many, many years ago. But the idea is that rarely does your plan A work out. so you have to be able to be quick to move to where the fire starts. And often the best business ideas, I believe, are getting yourself into an area, putting down a bunch of kindling and really hoping that lightning strikes somewhere. And when it strikes and it starts a fire, you run over and you pile all the rest of the kindling on that thing. You don't sit over hoping that lightning strikes somewhere else because you want it to.

You can't wheel lightning is what I'm saying. So anyway, most ideas start as separate things. and they morph over time. But yeah, it's pretty interesting to go to the wayback machine. Yelp actually was different, too. It was like you emailed out to a bunch of people asking for recommendations and that that turned into the directory. Oh, wow.

YouTube was a dating site. It's crazy. That's wild to think about now. But you can go back and you can actually see in the way back machine, like, what it looked like way back in the day. And it's striking, actually. The homepage for Amazon is the one that always comes to mind where it was like the crappiest.

had like a little digital picture of a river and it was like over 100,000 books or something like that. It sounds like a lot of books. It's a lot of books. Bezos had a really full garage at that point. But it's like now it's just looking back at that 1998 version. Wow, that was like about 20 plus. I mean, there are kids that like can't rent cars that were born then. Yeah.

And now it's one of the largest businesses around. You've talked about always trying to prove yourself wrong and without truth you cannot improve. how do you get feedback when you're the boss or when maybe you're not even the boss, you're just trying to get honest feedback from people? It's got to be really tough. Well, you asked a question with two layers. One, how do you get honest feedback? And then two, when you're the boss. Right. Let me put aside the when you're the boss thing, because most people aren't the boss. And honestly, it's a special case of how do you get honest feedback anyway? It's just along the dimension of your authority, the higher your authority, the harder it is

to get honest feedback. But I think in general, it's really, really hard to get feedback no matter who you are. Okay, so we're sitting there. We're having dinner. We're at this nice restaurant. And you're like, God, this steak sucks. And I'm like, yeah, mine's not that good either. Waitress walks up or the waiter and says, how's your meal? We're both like, great, thanks. Loving it. Loving it. Awesome. Thanks. Just leave us alone. Every day in my life. And he or she walks away. How many times does that happen to you? Yeah, I mean, I always do that. I would rarely would I complain about the food, unless it's like, this is not cooked. But by the way, like, you just said a really interesting thing here, which is one, it's like, feedback is seen as like complaining about something or someone, you don't want to be that guy or that person doesn't want to be that girl.

Like, you feel like the social pressure not to, but, you know, it's funny, like now that I've invested in a couple restaurants and I see that the lack of feedback leads to bad outcomes. I'm like, if something's wrong, I'll say, hey, like, I just want you to know because, and this is my line. I say, if I were you and if I were working here, I'd really want someone to tell me about this. Yeah. Because I feel like probably no one's going to say anything, but hey, listen, this is just for you. And it's like my thing was totally overcooked. Like, I enjoyed it still, but it was totally overcooked. And maybe I shouldn't say I totally enjoyed it.

But my point is, I think you have to go out of your way to see feedback as helping someone, rather than complaining or criticizing. That's not answering your question about how to get feedback. That's answering how to give it, but I guess it starts with giving. It makes sense. I mean, as a business owner, you're a business owner of money businesses now, but as a business owner now, I go in there and if something goes wrong, I'll go, hey, look, I love this place, but this is not a good fit.

This doesn't work. Or this person probably shouldn't be in this position. What's really interesting, though, is sometimes I give the feedback in the way I just described, and the reaction is really negative. Really? I'm like, man, I like. Yikes. Well, I think to myself, I'm like, hmm, that's like a failed opportunity to like, for that

person to learn about something really important. And, you know, like there was this one restaurant and every single Yelp review mentioned the word salty. And like, I thought this thing was too salty too. So I tried my best to be like, hey, like, FYI, I think this. And also, if you look, you'll see it says it over and over again. And, you know, I don't think the reaction was terrible, but it's just like, people sometimes bristle. And I like, I wish I could find a way to be like, man, if I were in your shoes, I would really want to know this. Because then I could make. make it better. So let's now flip this to how do you get feedback? I think you have to actively ask for it. The idea that people are just going to offer it up to you is rare. And then actively

asking for it. Like, I love to cook. We were just talking about food, but let's do another food example. I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner. And I made this, like, really special turkey thing, these amazing potatoes where you, like, slice on a mandolin and you line them all up. It looks really pretty. It was intense. I worked really hard. And everyone knew it. But we sat down and we ate, and I'm thinking in my head, oh, interesting, that thing sucks. That's undercooked, but that's good. And then I asked the table, I said, hey, guys, what do you think about the food? And everyone's like, oh, so good.

It's great. And I was like, I disagree. Like, I think there are some things that need help. Like, what do you guys think? And I asked, like, three or four times, people would not give it to me. They wouldn't. And I knew, like, for instance, the bread hadn't cooked all the way. So it was kind of weird in the middle, right?

But no one said anything. But my point is, like, even in family, even when you're. asking for it. So then I said, okay, this is the fun part. Rate everything from your favorite to your least favorite. So of the four main dishes, you got to give me what's your top, you know, and then rank it down to the bottom. Then they don't have a choice. They have to rank something on the bottom, right? So one of the ways, I guess, of giving feedback is like, hey, like, what are my top three things that you think I'm good at? What are the three things you think I should work on the most? That's like force ranking potentially. But even still,

I think it's really hard. Maybe the last thing I'll say on this is if you say to someone, hey, I'm really trying to improve, like in this case, imagine I said, I'm really trying to improve as a chef. And I know not everything's perfect. So I really want to know from your eyes what stuff I was the best and what stuff wasn't the best. And maybe that disarms it a little bit. And my father-in-law said the best thing. He goes, the butter was insulted. And I said, okay, listen, if that's the worst thing, I can buy different butter next. Right. Good point. But still, even that was like easy feedback to give because it wasn't my thing. People find it really hard. They do because they're not thinking, all right, this is going to be helpful for you. They're thinking, he spent like seven hours cooking all this. I'm not going to sit here and be like showing up with a deck of cards for later and be like, this is too overcooked. Now I imagine a presentation or a product that you slaved away on for a month.

Yeah. So, again, I think the best thing to do is just say, I really want to improve. and the only way I'm going to improve is if you let me know what stinks about this. I think people would be more open to giving you feedback if that were the case. I sometimes pull the old, if you had to pick something, even if that something was still kind of good, but it was the worst thing in your mind, what would that be? And you find like half the table agrees. And then you know that that thing sucks.

Yeah, the other way of doing it at least in food is just look at what's the least eaten. Yeah, you kind of have a real-time or black card. Yeah, that's good. I didn't think about that. Yeah, that totally makes sense. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show. We'll be right back after this. Thank you for listening and supporting the show.

Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, so you can check out those amazing sponsors, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. If you're listening to us on the Overcast Player, please click that little star next to the episode.

We really appreciate it. And now back to the show. How do you know who to listen to, right? Because I would imagine people are like, oh, photo sharing, we don't need any more of that. But then on the other hand, so you can't listen to them, but then you also do have to listen to some people because they have good ideas. So how are you parsing, okay, this is good feedback that makes sense versus that's just a person who doesn't understand what we're doing? Yeah, I think often people lump people into overall believability buckets, meaning, wow, this person started a lot of, a startup. They're so smart. Like, I got to listen to everything they say. Right. I think that's a mistake.

Instead, I think people have different dimensions. So listen, if you're really, really good at producing podcasts and you've done one after another and like just all of them have been hits, of course I'm going to believe you about podcasting or frankly, like audio equipment or studio equipment. Like, I'm going to, of course, you're going to be my first call, right? But I don't know. let's say I have a headache. Yeah. You know, and I'm trying to diagnose, why do I get those? I'm not going to call you because, frankly, just because you're good at this thing doesn't mean.

I would make your headache a lot worse. Right. But my point is, I think people have dimensions of expertise. And I think the idea is you have to seek out people who aren't just impressive, but rather are impressive on that specific thing. So when we were designing the new logo for Instagram, we had very specific people we talked to about branding and iconography, and we researched the masters of this world who have created logos before for all the major companies that had lived on forever. We did that research on those,

but we didn't go to the company, hey, vote, right? Like, we didn't just say, hey, everybody, vote for you, right? Because that's a free-for-all. That's not going to give you, I wish someone would write the opposite of the wisdom of the crowd's book, because it's so clear to me that you need to find people who are good at that thing and just go deep with them and don't overgeneralize. But the number of people that told me photo sharing was a terrible business to get into, it's like not a million, but it's several. There are many. But maybe the last thing, definitely last thing on this is in order to be great, I think you

have to be contrarian, meaning you have to bet against what most people think, and you have to be right. Making a photo sharing startup at the time we did was very contrarian. because there had been a ton there had been Flickr, Smog, Mug, you know, Shutterfly, you name it, like, list all of them. Hipsomatic. Hipsomatic. But Hipsomatic was popular at the time.

I was on Hipsomatic. Still is. But at the time, it wasn't like, it wasn't a nobody app. It was a big thing. People cared deeply about it. And the idea was like, well, how are you guys going to compete? Like, this is silly. When I just share it on Twitter?

So it was very contrarian to go that direction. And we happened to be right. We happen to be right that some fundamental. things changed. Like, the phone changed everything. I was going to ask if you were going to ride that wave, right? Because cameras now are so awesome that you have to try to take a bad photo. And then you can throw a filter on there if you still want to. Yeah. And it looks great. By the way, back up for a second. Like, if imagine Instagram hadn't started and photo sharing, that vein of value hadn't been tapped, right? And someone said, hey, I'm going to start Instagram today. I don't

think it would work. It would be, uh, filters, like, I don't know, my photos are pretty good. Like, I don't know, like it's Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. Like, it's very easy to share photos online now. I think at the time, it was just the right moment of like, you couldn't quite share photos on a mobile phone. And when you could, they didn't look quite right. So we kind of jumped ahead by making them look good. And we just like jumped ahead in the future a little bit, right? And good is relative. I don't know that they looked good, but I read this. We had this one filter called Little Green Men, by the way. I think we cut it eventually, but it made photos look terrible. It was like green, sewagey, and yeah. Little Green Men. Here's how you make a great photo look like it has snot all over.

Yeah, it was bad. I read the story about how you were in Mexico with your now wife, and she was saying, oh, I don't want to post photos because they don't look good like so-and-so. And you said, well, he uses a ton of filters, and she told you, well, then you should have filters. And the app, that was the exact reason that it took me so long to get on Instagram. And my wife was like, why aren't you using it? And I go, my photos suck. You tell me yourself. They're not framed right.

She's like, you know you can like pinch, twist, props, and then swipe and then it changes everything. And like, it makes you lose 10 pounds because you're in black and white. And I was like, she showed me. I went, oh, my God. And I've been on that thing every day ever since. You kind of have to hold it in your hand and see that you can actually be proud of your work.

If she told me, hey, this makes your photos look good. I wouldn't have cared at all. Right. But when you do it and you feel that sense of like, I actually made something work well. So it's almost, I'm looking for this lesson in here somewhere. Like, if your app can make people feel like they're accomplishing something or doing something or creating something that they couldn't have done before, you have like one ingredient for a hit potentially. Yeah, we talked a lot about having like one tap magic, which is I'm going to zoom all the way back to my days at Google.

I would play around in Photoshop with my photos at a nice digital camera. and it took photos and everything, but I'd bring it into Photoshop and I would mess with the curves, and I'd mess with hue and saturation. I'd overlay textures and blah, blah, right? It's not like I was the only one in the world doing it, but I was like, wow, this is cool. I like this. God, this is a lot of work. All Instagram was was like that hour and a half in Photoshop in 0.5 seconds at the beginning,

going down to what, five milliseconds towards the end, like being able to take magic and making it super easy, that was the key to Instagram. And think about it with, I don't know, things like Uber or Lyft, right? Like the idea that you don't have to call a busy, you know, cab call center where the person puts you on hold and then says, wait, where are you? And there's confusion. And then you hope that the car is on the way, but you don't really know. And then it comes.

And then, like, is this good cab driver or is a bad guy driver? And if it's bad, you have no recourse. And if you, by the way, if you lose something on the cab, like, there's no way to get it back. Yeah. All of that got solved because. of things like Uber and Lyft. Not to say that they're all great, but like the system got so much better. And like that's one type magic, right?

That's what I look for in companies that get started today. It's the hardest part is just, you know, man, it's, in terms of mobile, it's been picked over in terms of like experiences. That's not to say that things won't continue to get created, but we're kind of waiting for there to be this next platform or next big shift where all of a sudden, There are a bunch of new use cases. Yeah, it's like we went from cars to scooters to bikes to, like, we're now getting down towards the marginal, like the incremental idea on some of these things. Right. Yeah. I would imagine as an investor you see pictures that are like, it's Uber but for dog grooming, which exists already. But I can't think of a really dumb example off the top of my head, but you must see this all the time. And you're thinking, wow, this is, we don't need Uber for like colored pencils. Well, I don't know.

Now that I have a kid, I'm like, man, we need color. Well, actually, Amazon Prime is kind of that, to be fair. It is. That's true. Prime now, I should say. Same day delivery, yeah. Yeah. You know, I often spend a month or two each year outside of California, like in, you know, nature.

Not that California doesn't have nature, but I go elsewhere, right? Right. And the one thing that, like, really blows my mind when I come back is how spoiled we are with all these services, whether it's postmates or DoorDash or, you know, prime now, it's like, if our baby's sick, you can just order the things. you can just order the thing and it shows up at your, it's all there. And when you live, like, you know, we go out to the middle of the country and it's just nothing. And you realize how far we've come in terms of building these services, it's really special. And then when you realize your little microcosm in San Francisco is small, that you actually have all of these other like places you can expand to in the U.S. but also in the world, you realize that tech has hit, but like not even close to the type of penetration

that we're going to see over the next 20 years. I read an article that said something about how in the early days you had so much trouble getting Instagram to work overseas because the phones couldn't process the posts, couldn't take good photos, couldn't run, I don't know, maybe they couldn't run the app as it was like the latest version of the app and there were different versions of the app for like Southeast Asia where people are using really old phones that were 10 years ago here five years ago. It was complicated. Yeah.

And you've got different servers that are faster. It just seems like people don't really think about that. They think, oh, well, we've got five. Everyone's got fiber in their house now. Everyone's got broadband. So we'll just make this huge high-res file. We spent a lot of time early on making sure that Instagram would work on the worst phones that were out there. And that was because I owned the worst phone. Mike and I would argue about how fast it needed to be on my clunker phone. And Mike was just like, will you please just buy the new iPhone 4? Like, will you please just get it? And of course I did eventually. But I think something got lost there when I upgraded because, man, we really paid attention to speed and performance on the lower. and stuff. And interestingly, like, you know, now you can basically instrument your app or your site to the point where you have tracking on just about everything. Sure. You can understand how fast is for different people. That just didn't exist in the same way when we started. So we had to live it with terrible devices. So you got like your razor or whatever, your like little flip. No, I just, I had the, it was the iPhone 3G. It wasn't even like the 3GS.

Wow. Like the smooth, curved middle back. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. That's like some OG. Yeah, yeah. And that was in the day when the iPhone 4 was available. You had the 3G. Totally. Yuck. Yep.

Man, that's a, I hope you frame it. I'm developed for it. Yeah. I don't know where it is, actually. I should, I don't know where it is. Yeah. I might have gotten rid of it a long time. It's like, it belongs in the computer history museum at this point.

That would be cool. Thanks to Kevin for doing this. Stay tuned in a few days for Part 2. We have a lot more where that came from. Links to everything Kevin's system will be in the show notes. and please do use our website if you buy any books or products from the show because that does help support the show. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel, also at Jordan Harbinger.com slash YouTube. And also in the show notes, there are worksheets for each episode so you can review what you've learned here from Kevin Sistram.

We also now have transcripts for each episode, and those can be found in the show notes as well. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits. That's over at our six-minute networking course, which is free over at Jordanharbinger.com slash course. Don't do it later, do it now. Dig the well before you get thirsty. You got to build your network before you need it, even if it means starting from scratch. The drills take just a few minutes a day.

I wish I knew this stuff 20 years ago. You can find it all for free at Jordanharbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show do subscribe to the course in the newsletter. So come join us. You'll be in smart company. Speaking of building relationships, you can always reach out and or follow me on social. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. This show is created an association with podcast one.

This episode was produced by Jen Harbinger and Jason DePhilippo, engineered by Jace Sanderson, show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own. And yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or

interesting. If you know a startup founder, if you know someone who runs a business, if you just know someone who's interested in tech, share this episode with him. Hopefully you find something great in every single episode of the show. Please do share the show with those you love. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast.

Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas.

is you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.