Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Three different companies
Groupon was run one way. Instagram was very focused on design and creativity, and Kevin Systrom, an incredible designer, worked that way with the team. Sam Altman operates in a completely different way, and OpenAI is a research lab.
Simple thing first
Instagram moved slower and changed the product less, and that worked well for most of its stages. It would not work at the stage OpenAI is in now. The Instagram motto, do the simple thing first, still shapes how product gets built at OpenAI, though it is not the only way of working there. Sometimes things still being experimented on get thrown out.
Working with culture
A company's culture is very hard to change, especially a founder-oriented one. The approach that works is staying flexible and helping to round the culture out.
How does founder culture persist at companies?
Organizational psychologist Edgar Schein argued in his 1985 book Organizational Culture and Leadership that founders shape culture through their assumptions. Those assumptions become embedded in whom the company hires, what leaders pay attention to, and how they react to crises. Over time, new hires absorb the patterns without anyone writing them down. Schein described culture as the shared assumptions a group learns while solving its problems.
How small was Instagram when Facebook bought it?
Instagram had about thirteen employees when Facebook announced the purchase in April 2012. The company was founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Its small team kept the product narrow, built around photos, filters, and a simple feed. Facebook paid about one billion dollars in cash and stock.
More from Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
