The Twenty Minute VC

Adam Mosseri: Why Video Is Bad For Business; Does Feed Matter Anymore? | E1039

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. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:44) Who is Adam Mosseri? (4:04) How Adam Became Head of Instagram (17:23) Biggest Mistakes at Instagram (30:38) Deep Dive on IG Reels (35:38) Is Facebook a copycat? (39:06) Threads: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know (1:03:57) Lessons from Working with Mark Zuckerberg (1:08:59) Work-Life Balance (1:17:49) Quick-Fire Round -------------------------------------------- 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 innovation? 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.) ------------------------------------------------ Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Adam Mosseri on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mosseri Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact

Adam MosseriguestHarry Stebbingshost

Jul 23, 20231h 27mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Adam Mosseri on Instagram’s Evolution, Messaging Surge, and Threads Gamble

Adam Mosseri traces his path from middle‑of‑the‑pack designer to Instagram’s head, emphasizing breadth of skills, clear problem framing, and relentless execution over raw talent. He explains Instagram’s strategic pivots: the shift of sharing from feed to Stories to DMs, the controversial push into recommendations and video, and how Reels and messaging now power the app’s growth. Mosseri details the thinking behind launching Threads, from bootstrapping its graph off Instagram to creator‑led seeding and the focus on long‑term retention over headline signups. Interwoven are lessons on leadership, taking over a founder‑led company, managing backlash, supporting creators, and balancing an intense job with family and personal priorities.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Breadth of capability can be a superpower for leadership roles.

Mosseri frames himself as “middle of the pack” in design but strong across disciplines; that breadth, coupled with reliability and solving problems end‑to‑end without hand‑holding, made him an obvious choice for leadership over narrow specialists.

Clarify the problem, explore multiple solutions, and ruthlessly sift feedback.

He describes good design and product work as first defining the problem crisply, generating alternatives, and then systematically evaluating them while separating noise from signal in feedback—an approach he now applies to all leadership decisions.

Over‑communication is essential; saying something once is never enough.

To move a large organization, he repeats key messages until he’s sick of hearing himself say them, recognizing that internal alignment requires both clear content and high frequency, much like external marketing.

Big product shifts must balance clear long‑term logic with short‑term pain.

The controversial introduction of recommendations in feed and heavier emphasis on video were, in his view, obviously correct to prevent feed decay—but they triggered strong backlash because they collided with users’ mental model of Instagram as a photo‑feed of friends.

Messaging is now the core engagement surface, but Instagram isn’t a pure messenger.

Data showed more rich media shared in DMs than Stories or feed, leading Mosseri to reallocate entire teams to messaging; yet he positions Instagram DMs as “conversation starters” tied to shared media, not a utility messaging app like WhatsApp.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

My strength is my breadth. I’m not great at anything really; I just have a wide range of things I can do reasonably well.

— Adam Mosseri

If you really want to move the team on something, you need to say it until you literally want to throw up in your mouth—and then you need to say it again.

— Adam Mosseri

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying big enough things.

— Adam Mosseri

People think of Instagram as a feed, and it’s the third most important surface at best. Teens spend more time in DMs than Stories, and more time in Stories than feed.

— Adam Mosseri

I want to be proud of how I spent my time when I look back.

— Adam Mosseri

Career journey from designer to product and organizational leaderInstagram’s product evolution: feed, Stories, DMs, Reels, and recommendationsMajor product missteps, backlash (e.g., “Panavision”) and course correctionThreads strategy: graph bootstrapping, creator activation, retention focusCreators, monetization models, and the interest graph vs. social graphLeadership, culture, and managing through founder departures and team rebuildsPersonal life: parenting, marriage, time allocation, and definitions of success

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