If for some remarkable reason you haven’t heard of Instagram, it’s a small photo and video sharing social network with more than 1 billion active users. Despite Instagram’s massive success, to my surprise, not many people are familiar with the two young men that revolutionized the way we take and share photos online. These two young men are of course Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the founders of Instagram. It is only appropriate to take a brief look into their story and see how they managed to create one of the most successful and influential social networks of all time.
Before we get into the details of how Instagram came to be, let us talk a little bit about Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and how they got to meet each other.
Kevin Systrom
Kevin Systrom was born on December 30 1983 in Boston. His father worked as a human resources executive, while his mother worked in tech. Kevin was always keen to photography. During his highschool years he even participated in some photography classes but he wasn’t that good, as he puts it:
“..Yeah, I’m not sure I was a good photographer. I’m not sure I’m a good photographer now either, by the way. My employees are always like, “Your photos are okay.” But listen, running a company and being a good photographer are two different skill sets. I’m not saying I’m good at either but listen, one of them’s working. “
Systrom was planning to study computer science but as soon as he arrived to Stanford University, he decided to switch majors to management science and engineering. Right before his senior year at Stanford, Systrom took an internship at a company called Odeo. Odeo was founded by Evan Williams, who went on to create Twitter. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was also working at Odeo at the time, and he and Systrom became good friends. After graduating, Systrom worked at Google for a few years before leaving to work at another startup called Nextop. Nextstop was acquired by Facebook in July 2010. By that time Systrom was already working on his own app and was in search of a co-founder. That’s where Mike Krieger comes in. Kevin and Mike knew each other from Stanford. Kevin thought that Mike was a perfect fit for what he was planning to launch. It wasn’t long since he decided to ask Krieger to become a co-founder at Burbn, Systrom’s first app which later became Instagram.
Mike Krieger
Mike Krieger was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil and came to the US in 2004 to study symbolic systems at Stanford. During his Stanford years, he interned at Microsoft. Krieger specialized in Human Computer Interaction and wrote his Master’s thesis on how user interfaces can better support collaboration on a large scale. After graduating, he worked at instant messaging firm Meebo for a year and a half as a user experience designer and as a front-end engineer.
How did they meet
In 2010 Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger begun working together. Little did they know,they were about to go on a journey that would change their lives forever.
Before Instagram was even a concept, Systrom was already working on his own app, which he initially named Burbn after his favorite spirit. Like many other apps at the time, Burbn was a check-in app. More precisely, through Burbn users could check in at particular locations, make plans, earn points for hanging out with friends and post pictures of the meet-ups. At the time, there was an overwhelming hype for apps of that kind. That’s why venture capitalist Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures decided to invest $250,000 in Burbn, even though it was still in its early stages. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz contributed another $250,000 in the same round.
It was at this point that Systrom decided that he was in desperate need of a co-founder. Soon after convincing Krieger to come onboard, the young founders realized that something wasn’t quite right. Burbn wasn’t able to get the traction they were initially hoping for. It soon became clear that in order for their app to succeed, change was necessary. Having this in mind, Kevin and Mike decided to scrap the original idea and focus on one that simply displayed pictures, and thus Instagram was born.
A true inspiration moment took place while Systrom was on vacation with his wife, Nicole. Here’s how Systrom explained it to the Telegraph:
We were walking along the beach and I said that we needed something to help us [the company] stand out. Nicole then said, “Well, I don’t want to take photos, because my photos don’t look good. They’re not as good as your other friend Greg’s.”
Source: Telegraph
He was also using the early product [Burbn]. I told her that was because Greg used filter apps. So she just said, “Well, you should probably have filters then.”
Then it hit him. Why did they not think of this sooner? It was a brilliant idea. First chance he got, Systrom sat down to make a filter and add it to their app. The first one, called X-Pro II, is still used in the app today.
Instagram launched in Apple’s App Store in October 2010. When the app went live, more than 25,000 people downloaded it in the first 24 hours, crashing Instagram’s servers. What followed was a massive acceleration rate, never seen before at the time. The app was gaining thousands of new users every day. Just a month after its’ launch, Instagram had grown to 1 million users. The massive success of Instagram caught the attention of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook. In April 2012,Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion. Kevin Systrom continued to operate as the CEO whereas Mike Krieger became the CTO.
Instagram under Facebook’s umbrella
Despite being owned by Facebook, Instagram was promised autonomy and for a long time this was the case. Taking advantage of Facebook’s resources while at the same time remaining faithful to their original character and identity, Instagram continued growing year after year. In 2018, Instagram announced that it had finally hit a billion users worldwide, making it one of the most popular social networks.
As the popularity of Instagram continued growing, so did Facebook’s efforts in taking control over the app. Mark Zuckerberg began disregarding the initial promises of complete autonomy and constantly tried to force Facebook into Instagram one way or the other. This has reportedly lead into clashes between the the founders of Instagram and Mark.
In September 24, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger published a statement on Instagram announcing their departure from the company.
Today Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have a combined net worth of 1.7 billion dollars. What’s next for this creative duo of entrepreneurs? I’m sure it won’t be long since we find out.