Kevin Systrom

Systrom grew up in a small town about 25 miles west of Boston, the son of Douglas and Diane, a tech executive; he has a younger sister, Kate.⁠[1]

His mother worked at Monster.com and later Zipcar. In high school he wrote prank programs; his first job was at a Boston record store, and before turning 18 he was opening for DJs at clubs.⁠[2]

Systrom graduated from Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry in 2006 with a major in Management Science and Engineering; he met Mike Krieger through Stanford’s Mayfield Fellows entrepreneurship program.⁠[3]

During his studies he interned at Odeo, which later became Twitter; after graduating he worked on consumer teams at GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry and in quantitative marketing.⁠[4]

He spent about three years at Google, first in marketing for Gmail and Calendar and, after two years, in the M&A division. He then joined the travel-recommendation social site Nextstop, writing code, and quit in early 2010; Facebook bought Nextstop that July.⁠[2]

Burbn, then essentially a one-man shop run by Systrom, closed a $500,000 seed round with participation from Baseline Ventures and Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry; it described itself as “a new way to communicate + share in the real world.”⁠[5]

The idea of photo filters came from his then-girlfriend Nicole; he recalled: “we just need to be able to make people feel like their photos are worthy of sharing.” Instagram launched on a single server, which crashed almost immediately under unexpected demand.⁠[6]

In December 2010, Instagram announced it had passed 1 million registered users, about two months after its release on the iPhone in early October.⁠[7]

Facebook announced an agreement to acquire San Francisco-based Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and Facebook shares. Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was committed to “building and growing Instagram independently,” calling it the first time Facebook had acquired a product and company with so many users.⁠[8]

WalmartWalmartWalmart is an American retailer founded by Sam Walton in 1962, with businesses spanning physical retail, membership warehouse clubs, e-commerce and related services. Its businesses include Walmart and Sam’s Club, and it has expanded into other markets through international investments; its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WMT.Open the full entry’s board appointed Systrom as its 15th director, serving on the Technology and eCommerce Committee and the Compensation, Nominating and Governance Committee; Instagram then had more than 200 million monthly active accounts.⁠[9]

In April 2016, he was among the directors nominated for re-election to Walmart’s board.⁠[10]

After about four years on the board, he stepped down to focus on work and other outside commitments, and Steve Easterbrook was nominated in his place.⁠[11]

Instagram introduced Stories, letting users share all the moments of their day, not just the ones they want to keep on their profile; multiple photos and videos appear together in a slideshow format as a “story.”⁠[12]

His wife, Nicole, a fellow Stanford graduate and a CEO, was then expecting the couple’s first child, a daughter, in January. He rode his road bike each morning on an indoor setup running Zwift and is a trained barista.⁠[1]

The couple’s wedding ceremony was held at Beaulieu Vineyard in Napa, California, with the evening at Clos Pegase Winery, on Halloween.⁠[13]

Instagram launched IGTV, a standalone app for longer videos from creators. Onstage, Systrom said, “It’s time for video to move forward, and evolve,” adding that there were no ads in IGTV at that time.⁠[14]

Systrom announced that he and Mike Krieger would leave Instagram after eight years there and six years with the Facebook team; he wrote that the company had grown from 13 people to over a thousand and that they planned “to explore our curiosity and creativity again.”⁠[15]

Tension with Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg was widely cited as a factor in the departures; Instagram then served a community of over one billion users.⁠[16]

During his time as CEO, Instagram grew to over one billion users and launched video, live, direct messaging and Stories, with more than 800 employees, a campus in Menlo Park, an office in New York City and a new headquarters in San Francisco; he then lived in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.⁠[17]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Systrom and Krieger launched Rt.live, a website tracking the rate of infection in all 50 U.S. states. He explained: “This number is important because if I infect more than one person, that means the epidemic grows exponentially.”⁠[18]

He appeared as Instagram’s co-founder and former CEO on episode #243 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing the origin of Instagram, new social networks, the sale to Facebook, features, the whistleblower, machine learning and advice for startups.⁠[19]

Systrom and Krieger introduced Artifact, a newsreader that uses machine learning to personalize the experience, with social features for discussing articles with friends; it initially used a waitlist limited to U.S. phone numbers.⁠[20]

Less than a year after launch, Systrom announced that Artifact would shut down because “the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way”; commenting and posting were removed immediately, while core news reading remained through the end of February.⁠[21]

YahooYahooYahoo is an internet brand that grew out of a 1994 Stanford web directory project created by Jerry Yang and David Filo; its businesses span email, search, news, sports, finance and advertising technology. After acquiring Viaweb in 1998, it launched Yahoo Store. In 2017 the original public company sold its operating business and was renamed Altaba, and the brand’s business came under funds managed by Apollo in 2021. Yahoo’s current chief executive officer is Jim Lanzone, and its official company page lists its headquarters in New York.Open the full entry announced that it had closed its acquisition of Artifact on March 29; Artifact would no longer operate as a standalone app and its personalization technology would be folded into Yahoo News and other products, with Systrom (CEO) and Krieger (CTO) advising during the transition. Systrom said: “AI has allowed us to give users a better experience discovering great content they care about.”⁠[22]

In the Federal Trade Commission’s case alleging that MetaMetaMeta (Meta Platforms, Inc.) is a publicly listed American technology company, renamed from Facebook in 2021, that operates social communication, digital advertising, virtual reality, smart glasses and artificial intelligence businesses.Open the full entry bought Instagram and WhatsApp to maintain a monopoly, Systrom testified that Zuckerberg came to see Instagram’s growth as a threat to Facebook and that Meta underinvested in Instagram; he acknowledged its growth “could have gone either way” but said “the probability of us failing was low.” Meta argued that Instagram had 13 employees and no revenue when acquired and that its growth depended on Meta’s backing.⁠[23]

Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the FTC had not shown Meta currently holds monopoly power, so Meta would not have to divest Instagram or WhatsApp; the ruling pointed to competition from TikTok and YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry.⁠[24]

X: Public account: https://x.com/kevin (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinsystrom (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

Instagram: Official website: https://about.instagram.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]