Kevin Systrom left Google in frustration.
Kevin has been a product manager at Google for nearly three years. He is eager to take on more responsibilities and be able to focus his core motivation on tangible things, but his boss wants him to play golf.
His next stop is NextStop, a start-up company that develops location-recommended apps. In the late 2000s, under the guidance of FourSquare, sign-in apps were all the rage, and a small team meant that Kevin could take on more responsibilities and have a lot of say.
He did it. After a year of entrepreneurial training, Kevin decided to develop his own sign-in App.
"My idea is nothing special... I mean to develop a sign-in app... At that time, who had never thought about developing such an app... This was probably the worst idea we could think of at the time."
For Kevin, to realize his idea, it seemed that he had to find a hotel in Mexico, so Kevin packed up the flip-flops and bought two tickets to leave California, one for himself and one for his girlfriend. The second ticket will be Kevin Systrom's best investment.
1 "You should add a filter function"
Burbn is Kevin's first App, and it looks good on the surface. Unlike other sign-in apps, Burbn allows users to post photos and videos together when they sign-in. Investors liked the idea very much, so Kevin received two checks, one from Baseline Ventures and the other from Andreessen Horowitz, totaling $500,000.
"We spent $60,000 to start Burbn. We raised $500,000 and started it the next day... We were like keeping all the money... It turns out that using Amazon Web Services is fine. At that time, only 2 engineers were needed to get things done."
Burbn is easy to develop, but also easy to be forgotten by users. There are only 80 users in 9 months. Kevin recalled that his friends contacted their parents through this app and re-established contact with long-lost acquaintances. However, as long as he shows the app to "outsiders" (that is, potential users like you and me), they will nod enthusiastically, then turn it off in a few minutes and forget it completely.
This is a community of enthusiastic location sharers, but it hasn’t grown much, something has to be done.
"We listed the functions of Burbn, and then asked ourselves: What are the functions already on the market? What are the terrible functions?... Now there are many sign-in apps, many planning tools and group chat tools... but none of them can Publish beautiful photos to many friends at once".
During a trip in Mexico, Kevin asked his girlfriend why she didn't post photos on Burbn. She said that her iPhone 4 photos did not look as good as those of Kevin's friends. He explained that his friend used a photo filter.
"She said, well, you should add a filter function. We walked back home, I went directly into the room, turned on the laptop, and made the first filter, which is X-Pro II."
Within a few weeks, Burbn removed all functions except photo sharing. The reduced version was downloaded 25,000 times on the first day.
What should be the name of an app that sends instant camera snapshots at the speed of a telegram? Yes, it is Instagram.
2Kevin's Wisdom Clip
Kevin is an erudite, so it is not surprising that he is notable. Here are some interesting thoughts from Kevin.
" Learning must be enough to apply ."-Kevin is a self-taught programmer, but he admits that he could not develop Instagram without the help of his friends. He advocates learning enough knowledge to build an MVP, and then hiring real talents after determining the needs.
" You are never ready, but this is also the most interesting place ."-You can't wait for enlightenment at the age of 26, and then build a billion-dollar company. You have to do it with your hands, and then see if there are any gems in the mud.
“It’s very easy to find a solution. The most difficult thing is to find what problem to solve .”-It confirms Einstein’s wisdom that “understand the problem, the solution will emerge”, this is extremely important today, because we live in An era when the problem is not so obvious and the solution is not so complicated.
" Bad ideas are the mother of good ideas ."-just as happened with Burbn.
" A day of practice is better than a year of war on paper ."-People who always keep a pile of books by the bed but don't read it are usually so boastful. If I were you, I would not take it seriously.
3 "If I can only read two books, I will read these two books"
Kevin said that he mainly learns by reading, and he provided valuable advice for reading non-fiction books (Kevin does not read fiction.)
First of all, he recommends always have a clear goal (such as "I want to learn body language"), and then take a suitable book to read, so that you will find that reading is meaningful and you will enjoy reading.
The way he reads non-fiction books is also very interesting: he analyzes the table of contents first, and then reads the last paragraph of each chapter. He said that the authors will point out their views in these places. Only after knowing the content of a book can Kevin read it from beginning to end.
Below are his two favorite books.
4Ray Dalio's "Principles"
"Principles" is a classic. Before it became a bestseller, it was a PDF file containing Dalio's "commandments." The PDF didn't impress Kevin too much, but he admitted that the book surprised him.
In "Principles", Dalio reviewed his life story-from poor school grades, the death of his mother to leaving Bridgewater Fund (a $160 billion hedge fund he founded). Then, he continued to sum up important and valuable experiences from life.
These principles themselves may be dogmatic and vague, but if you want to refresh the core logic of life, then the following may resonate with you:
- Don't confuse the truth of your expectations with the truth of reality.
- Don't worry about how well you are acting-what you should worry about is how to achieve your goals.
- Don't overemphasize the first-level consequences just because of the second- and third-level consequences.
- Don't let pain hinder progress.
- Don't blame others for bad results, but you should bear it yourself.
No matter which principle it is, they all come from a real person, backed by real thinking. Therefore, if you think Dalio is authoritative or even dogmatic, it may be worthy of your in-depth study. In any case, these stories are worth reading.
5 "Lean Startup" by Eric Ries
This is another classic work that I can personally prove. This book contains more than 300 pages and contains many interesting business stories. The core of this book is a simple truth: no one knows what is feasible, so the best way is to develop a minimum viable product (MVP, I think the actual Ries coined the term above), and then verified it step by step.
Kevin said that "Lean Startup" is one of the books that has the greatest impact on him:
"I still follow the principles of "Lean Startup" today... One of the principles is to do simple things first. This is also the first value of Instagram... Until today, I still think of this often".
6Four reasons why Instagram has reached a market value of $1 billion in two years
Kevin's story has become a classic legend in Silicon Valley, and for good reason, it embodies the truth of developing a product that can change the world.
Instagram is super simple
Most apps try to attract users through complicated function menus, and constantly add new functions, but they are getting farther away. And Instagram is obtained by removing most of the functions of an existing App.
"Indeed, you shouldn’t be afraid to provide simple solutions to simple problems. Most people think you have to use complex ways to solve problems. After all, if you can satisfy people with simple solutions, then you will Go further".
Kevin emphasized that when resources are limited, simplicity will make you go a long way. For most startups, this is a very realistic thing. However, most founders put the elegance and complexity of the product first, not effectiveness.
"When the company is very small, there are only two people, and you often have to write code late at night, you don't have time to think about complicated things, your time can only be used to ensure that everything is working properly. Otherwise, you will over-optimize."
Not only to keep the product simple, simplicity has been deeply rooted in Instagram's DNA. When the company's development momentum was strong, Kevin introduced a "decision meeting"-no one can leave the meeting room until all the decisions that need to be made have not been completed. Moreover, if you have heard his speech, you will find that his childlike curiosity and sense of humility have remained the same for many years.
"I woke up every day to worry about a lot of things, just like before Instagram became a climate. Is what I am doing right? What am I doing today? Is this idea right?"
Indeed, keeping it simple is not the only thing that makes a billion-dollar company. You must also solve a billion-dollar problem.
The birth of Instagram has been tested by practice, not just by imagination
Many successful ideas initially want to do other completely different things, so you don’t have to think hard at first. Kevin told us that Youtube was originally designed as a dating site based on videos, and Samsung was originally an exporter of dried fish.
"Timing, perseverance, and ten years of experimentation will eventually make you look like you have succeeded overnight."-Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder
Kevin accidentally discovered that Burbn’s problem is that people do want to share their lives through photos, but they are not satisfied with the quality of the photos. When the iPhone 4 became the hottest smartphone, photo quality was a serious issue.
Instagram has gained fame because it solves two problems: users can take beautiful photos at the click of a button, and it provides users with a platform for sharing photos.
But if no one wants to see it, who would want to share the photo?
Integration of Instagram with the existing ecosystem
Before Instagram became a social app, it was a photography app, almost a platform for amateur photographers. Its integration with Facebook makes it a multi-billion dollar giant.
Nowadays, as the social structure of the Internet becomes clearer and clearer, integration has become the default choice. You want to connect your App to Facebook, Google, or other online platforms that are meaningful to users.
In 2010, you might not have thought of "connecting" users to a larger platform, but instead tried to build an ecosystem yourself. Kevin, who has a tendency towards realism, encourages users to share their filter-enhanced photos on Facebook, thus effectively catching the free ride of the social network's bulldozer-like growth. Instagram did not add social media features until later: the chat feature was launched at the end of 2013, and the hashtag feature was added a year after the launch of Instagram.
All these decisions seem to be natural, but the reality is much more complicated.
Kevin listens to suggestions but makes independent decisions
Someone gave Kevin suggestions, some told him not to leave Google, others told him not to cooperate with Facebook, and others told him to add photo filters.
Based on years of experience, Kevin came to the conclusion that sometimes people just say something because they like or dislike you, not because they are rational.
"Entrepreneurship is like this. At the beginning, no one believed you. Until they became your fans, you had no fans... For an entrepreneur, these two sides will always exist. Sometimes it will be biased towards disgust, sometimes Will be biased towards love".
Today, Kevin, who has a net worth of US$400 million, has difficulty getting negative feedback. He has found a solution, such as asking people to rate his public speech on a scale of 1 to 10, and deleting 7. He said that in this way, people cannot remain neutral.
7 keep it simple and stupid
My cell phone is humming, it's my mother calling. This is the sixth time she asked me what her online store should be called. It's been about two weeks, and she hasn't made a decision yet.
If it was Kevin, what advice would he give her? He might tell her to pick a name at random and try it out, because no one knows whether her online store will work.
But I am not Kevin, so I can only tell her that I prefer the previous name.
At last
But I don’t ask myself to be able to make an app worth 1 billion US dollars like Kevin. What we can do is to improve our technology , so here I will also share with you the Android learning PDF+ architecture that I have compiled in the boss. Video + Interview Document + Source Notes, Advanced Architecture Technology Advanced Mind Map, Android Development Interview Special Information, Advanced Advanced Architecture Information
These are all fine materials that I will read again and again in my spare time. There are detailed explanations on the high-frequency knowledge points of interviews with major factories in recent years. I believe it can effectively help everyone master knowledge and understand principles.
You can also use it to check for omissions and improve your competitiveness.
If you need it, you can also privately message me [Advanced] to get