Kevin York Systrom (born December 30, 1983) is an American entrepreneur and programmer, best known as the co‑founder of Instagram along with Mike Krieger.
People always told me photos have been done. My feeling was, these people are wrong.
We're just taking people and shifting them from taking photos anyway to taking them on Instagram.
In my fourth grade classroom, I even instituted a government structure, because I was really interested in people having positions and there being law.
Working at a startup to make a lot of money was never a thing, and that's why I decided to just finish up school. That was way more important for me.
Above all else, products spread when they're useful and they're usable
Obviously, being the CEO, there are a lot of eyes on what you do and what you post and how you post, and I think one of the challenges of Instagram in general is that, as we get bigger, there are just more voices in the room, more eyes on everyone's accounts.
I don't think you should ever start a business and move in a direction where you can't see it becoming a business.
Everyone gets lucky for some amount in their life. And the question is, are you alert enough to know you're being lucky or you're becoming lucky?
With Instagram, the focus is on the present tense.
If you've got an idea, start today. There's no better time than now to get going.
You can be a couple in London who happen to take pictures of their breakfasts every day - it's called @symmetrybreakfast - and you can gain hundreds of thousands of followers overnight because people are genuinely interested in your unique angle on the world.
What people tell you and how they act is very, very different sometimes.
I always look toward teens on Instagram to really understand what's going on. For some reason, when you're a teen, you just understand the world better than anyone else.
The world runs on luck.
I really value passion for the product above experience.
There's real beauty in pushing yourself to expose the real you in more ways.
Teens just understand the world in ways I don't think any of us adults do.
I was never as focused in math, science, computer science, etcetera, as the people who were best at it. I wanted to create amazing screensavers that did beautiful visualizations of music. It's like, "Oh, I have to learn computer science to do that. "
Instagram is a media company. I think we're about visual media.
Having a company that's successful is a wonderful platform to do new things. You don't have to raise money for it; you can take profits from the company and pump them into new business.