Kevin Systrom: What we can learn about coronavirus by looking at the data

If you look at the Spanish Flu of 1918, it wasn't one flu; it was three massive waves over the course of about a year. That's what happens when you let your foot off the brake—when you get excited, and you think you have this thing under control, and then all of a sudden, everyone starts going back to work. It screws the system. You end up seeing these massive waves again.

I think it's both right to check the power of the most powerful companies, and it's probably wrong to assume that their power is complete. Often, what happens is these very large companies are the ones that cause their own downfall—they trip over their own shoelaces, they don't react to something quickly enough, or they over-complicate their products.

Kevin's model showed that the number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. would peak in mid-May.

Often, the best ideas start as super-niche things that only people with money can afford—whether it was the car, telephone, you name it.

How companies grow—usually by word of mouth—mirrors how epidemics grow based on contact between people.