Posts Tagged ‘Instagram’

Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed: Kevin Systrom

by Scott Edward Walker on July 22nd, 2011

To Our Clients & Friends: Welcome to our weekly series entitled “Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed.”  Each week, we share a favorite video of a successful entrepreneur, investor or business leader on a variety of topics.  This week, we present Kevin Systrom, the co-founder and CEO of Instagram.

In this interesting, three-minute clip (courtesy of Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner), Kevin provides some outstanding advice with regard to raising capital, including the importance of:

•           seeking out the people you want to work with;

•           optimizing for people, not for valuation; and

•           finding investors as if you’re hiring part of your team.

Kevin also discusses the importance of bringing a prototype to a pitch meeting (as opposed to a deck), which is indeed solid advice.  I hope you enjoy it.  Many thanks, Scott