Calling ‘Instagram’ a photo-sharing app is like calling a newspaper a letter-sharing book, or a Mozart grand era symphony a series of notes. ‘Instagram’ is less about the medium and more about the network. – Kevin Systrom
It turns out that no undergrad class prepares you to start a startup – you learn most of it as you do it. – Kevin Systrom
Mike Krieger and I started talking, and he decided he liked the idea of helping start the company. Once he joined, we took a step back and looked at the product as it stood. – Kevin Systrom
I’ve always been into taking my photos, cropping them square, putting them through a filter in Photoshop. – Kevin Systrom
Every startup should address a real and demonstrated need in the world – if you build a solution to a problem lots of people have, it’s so easy to sell your product to the world. – Kevin Systrom
‘Instagram’ Direct is a really interesting feature because it’s grown significantly since we launched it. People continue to use it to communicate more privately. – Kevin Systrom
As a kid, creation was something that I always loved. Creating worlds for video games, creating businesses that didn’t make any money, selling lemonade, etcetera. In my fourth grade classroom, I even instituted a government structure because I was really interested in people having positions and there being law. – Kevin Systrom
When you open up ‘Instagram,’ you need to know that you’re seeing the real Tony Hawk, the real Taylor Swift, the real Burberry. – Kevin Systrom
‘Instagram’ doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We’re not a bunch of siloed individuals. It’s a bunch of people coming together on topics, fashion, you know, youthful teens, creatives, photographers, foodies, everyone coming together and building a community around the things they love, communicating visually. – Kevin Systrom
I run a business and go all over the world doing things for that business, things that are fairly orthogonal. But my job is to run my company, not to be the best Instagrammer. I’ll let other people be awesome at it. – Kevin Systrom
A platform is the base from which something big happens. In our case, we’re an entertainment platform in the sense that there are people signing up like MTV, Burberry, folks like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber. And why? Because it’s their channel to control their entertainment to their fans. – Kevin Systrom
I care deeply about craft: the quality of how something is made and the experience it enables. – Kevin Systrom
Instagram was created because there was no single place dedicated to giving your mobile photos a place to live and to be seen. – Kevin Systrom
‘Instagram’ is an app that only took 8 weeks to build and ship but was a product of over a year of work. – Kevin Systrom
One of the earliest requested features was to do premium filters where a brand could sponsor a filter. It’s just not in our wheelhouse. It doesn’t feel ‘Instagram’-my in the way that the high-quality brand ads do. – Kevin Systrom
Traditional businesses can say, ‘We’re going to sell widgets to people, and it will make X amount of profit.’ But new business models are hard. – Kevin Systrom
Whether it’s an ad or organic content, video provides a new creative dimension for storytelling on ‘Instagram’. Video lets people convey the power and beauty in a moment through sight, sound, and motion. – Kevin Systrom
Most photo apps before asked something of the users. They said, ‘You produce, act, and perform.’ ‘Instagram’ said, ‘Let us take care of the secret sauce.’ – Kevin Systrom
There are a lot of apps that are fun to use – they’re utility apps; they’re fine. But there are a fraction of apps that are in the cream of the crop. You just need to be in the cream of the crop to get noticed. – Kevin Systrom
Really, we’re just taking people and shifting them from taking photos anyway to taking them on ‘Instagram’. – Kevin Systrom
‘Instagram’ is great if you want to share photos, but you’re not that technical. Or, if you’re not interested in sharing publicly, ‘Instagram’ becomes a place where you can not only consume photos and videos from musicians, or whoever, but send them directly to your friends. – Kevin Systrom
‘Instagram’ is a media company. I think we’re about visual media. I explain ourselves as a disruptive entertainment platform that enables communication through visual media. I don’t think it’s just photos. – Kevin Systrom
I think not focusing on money makes you sane because in the long run it can probably drive you crazy. – Kevin Systrom
I grew up as a photo nut. Every Christmas I would get a new camera. It’s a huge part of my life. – Kevin Systrom
I own a Canon 20D, though I don’t remember the last time I used it. Ever since the iPhone 4, I’ve been completely absorbed in taking photos from my mobile phone. – Kevin Systrom
‘Instagram’ is definitely becoming a new entertainment source for people day after day. – Kevin Systrom
Imagine the power of surfacing what’s happening in the world through images, and potentially other types of media in the future, to each and every person who holds a mobile phone. – Kevin Systrom