Adam Mosseri: AI is a tailwind for authenticity

**Adam Mosseri** (0:00)
No, I think taste matters a ton. In a world where it's easier to build things, it's more important to make sure that your time is spent figuring out what you should be building in the first place. The people who I think are gonna make the most of it are the ones who are clear-eyed about what AI is good at and what it's not good at, and also have an instinct or a nose for what it will be good at and not good at.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:23)
What's something that the Instagram algorithm knows about human behavior that people may not realize?

**Adam Mosseri** (0:30)
I think people assume that there's a much more detailed semantic understanding of everybody's interests and preferences in the algorithm than there is.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:38)
Is the rise of AI content a headwind or a tailwind for Instagram versus other platforms?

**Adam Mosseri** (0:44)
I think it's gonna be a tailwind, but I think it's gonna be a challenge. In a world where there's an abundance of synthetic content, I actually think people are gonna seek out creativity and authenticity and people. I don't think we should filter out AI content. I think we should let you know if content is AI content or not. That's hard, by the way.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:04)
Where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable as AI continues to eat more and more of that product development life cycle?

**Adam Mosseri** (1:12)
That's a great question.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:13)
So...
Today, my guest is Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram. Over three billion people use Instagram monthly. That's one in every three people alive. It boggles the mind. Prior to Instagram, Adam designed and led the early Facebook newsfeed. He also ran the team that built the Facebook ranking algorithm. And eight years ago, he took over Instagram from its founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. He's a designer turned product manager, turned leader of Instagram. Adam is also famous for being the face of all of the controversy and changes that come with evolving Instagram as a product, which we talk about. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennysproductpass.com for a free year of the most interesting and well-crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Adam Mosseri.
Adam, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Adam Mosseri** (2:13)
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:15)
You've been doing product for a long time. You get to see how a lot of teams operate across Meta within Instagram.
What is the canonical product team look like in 2026? What's most different today in how teams operate slash should operate versus say a couple of years ago?

**Adam Mosseri** (2:33)
It's changed a lot this year.
For the longest time at a big company like ours, the canonical team was something like two or three Android engineers, two or three iOS engineers, two or three server engineers, maybe a generalist, a PM, a designer, a data scientist, a researcher if you're lucky, and maybe that's about it. So on the order of a baker's dozen.
That is a function of, you want to have for anybody who's writing code, someone who can review their code and who's familiar with that code base, and having these different functions that are more specialized. I think it's very different at a startup. But this year, it's changing. We've adopted what we call pods, which are just mini teams, where it's, call it four to six engineers who are a bit more generalists.
One we call product staff, which is sort of a devolution of the PM, so a PM who can do some of what a designer does and some of what a data scientist does and some of what a research does, leveraging the latest tools that we have for them. And then whatever specialist they need. If they're doing something that requires a pricing strategy, you need a senior data scientist. If you're doing something that is really novel from an experience standpoint, you need a very senior product designer. So we try to build a team based on the needs of the work a bit, but then end up with a much smaller core, which is more on the order of six or seven usually. And that is a very big shift that's just happening to us this year. But they, just by virtue of having less people to coordinate, they can often move faster and make better decisions, a little bit less designed by committee. So we talk a lot about, you know, AI adjusting and improving productivity, and that's part of it. But I think another part of it is just the small teams, I think, often are just more effective.