Adam Mosseri: AI is a tailwind for authenticity
Adam Mosseri is the Head of Instagram, where he oversees an app used by over 3 billion people. He also leads the team building Threads. Adam has run Instagram for longer than its founders did, after taking over from Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2018. A designer by training, he spent over 15 years at Meta, starting as a designer on Facebook’s mobile app, rising to lead Facebook’s News Feed, and eventually chosen to lead Instagram. During his tenure, Instagram’s user base has more than tripled.
In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:
- How the canonical product team structure is changing in 2026, from baker’s-dozen specialist teams to lean pods of four to six generalists
- The rise of the “product staff” role—a blending of PM, design, data science, and research into one generalist operator
- Why Adam is bullish on designers even as functional boundaries dissolve, and which roles are most at risk
- What the Instagram algorithm knows about you, and why it’s only now catching up to what people assumed it knew years ago
- Why the rise of AI-generated content is a tailwind for Instagram, and how the company is thinking about creator identity in a synthetic-content world
- The two biggest product failures of Adam’s career—Facebook Home and the first version of Reels
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Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/adam-mosseri-ai-is-a-tailwind-for
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Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
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Where to find Adam Mosseri:
- X: https://x.com/mosseri
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mosseri
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mosseri
- Threads: https://www.threads.com/@mosseri
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Where to find Lenny:
- Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
- X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Adam Mosseri
(02:09) How product teams are changing inside Meta
(05:48) Blurring roles and career anxiety
(14:01) Hiring traits that matter now
(16:48) How AI is resetting who succeeds at work
(19:38) How Meta thinks about token spend and AI costs
(23:23) Where human judgment still matters
(25:56) Why AI is not automatically great at strategy
(30:36) Why great product leaders are curators
(34:23) What Instagram’s algorithm actually knows about you
(38:08) Why chronological feeds often disappoint users
(40:56) Why AI content may be a tailwind for Instagram
(43:42) The future of AI and human content in the feed
(48:00) What Adam admires about other social platforms
(52:05) How he handles public criticism
(56:31) Lessons from the Instagram feed redesign backlash
(01:00:21) Adam’s biggest failure: Instagram on iPad
(01:03:03) His approach to kids, screens, and social media
(01:06:56) What Adam wants listeners to remember
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Referenced:
- What happens after coding is solved? | Fiona Fung (Manager of the Claude Code and Cowork Teams): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-the-most-ai-pilled-engineering
- Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-code
- Claude Cowork: https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-cowork
- Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny: https://www.lennysnewslet
