Kevin Systrom

Kevin Systrom
Systrom at the 7th Annual Crunchies Awards
Born	(1983-12-30) December 30, 1983 Holliston, Massachusetts
Residence	San Francisco
Alma mater	Stanford University
Occupation	Entrepreneur
Known for	CEO and Co-Founder of Instagram
Net worth	US$400 million (2013)[1]
Website
http://www.systrom.com/

Kevin Systrom (born December 30, 1983)^[2] is an American entrepreneur and computer programmer, best known as the co‑founder and CEO of Instagram, an online mobile photo, video sharing application and social networking service for iPhone and Android that allow users to apply a filter to a photo and share it on the service or on other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr.^[3] In 2013, Systrom was listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 list under the Social/Mobile category.^[4] Together with Mike Krieger, Systrom launched Instagram in San Francisco on October 6, 2010. Instagram is one of the fastest growing services of all time, hitting 80M users by July 26, 2012 and it was acquired by Facebook for $1B less than 2 years after its launch.^[5] "Our goal is to not just be a photo-sharing app, but to be the way you share your life when you're on the go," Systrom says.^[4] As of December 2014, Instagram has over 300 million active users.^[6]

Early life

Systrom was born in 1983 in Holliston, Massachusetts. He is the son of Diane (Pels), a marketing executive at Zipcar, and Douglas Systrom, Vice President in Human Resources at TJX Companies.^[2][7][8] Systrom attended Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts where he was introduced to computer programming. His interest grew from playing Doom 2 and creating his own levels as a child.

College years

Systrom graduated in 2006 from Stanford University with a B.S. in management science and engineering.^[9] At Stanford, he was a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity. He got his first taste of the startup world when was chosen as one of twelve students to participate in the highly prestigious Mayfield Fellows Program at Stanford University. The fellowship led to his internship at Odeo, the company that eventually gave rise to Twitter.

Career

Google

After graduating Stanford, he joined Google as an associate product marketing manager, working on Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, Spreadsheets and other products. He spent two years at Google; during the first, he worked on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products, and during the second he worked on the Corporate Development team.

Burbn

After leaving Google to join Nextstop, a location recommendation startup founded by ex-Googlers that was acquired by Facebook in 2010, Systrom thought of combining location check-ins and popular social games.^[10] He made the prototype of what later became Burbn and pitched it to Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz at a party. After the first meeting, he decided to quit his job in order to explore whether or not Burbn could become a company. Within 2 weeks of quitting his job, he received $500,000 seed funding round from both Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. While in San Francisco, Systrom and Mike Krieger built Burbn, a HTML 5 check-in service, into a product that allowed users to do many things: check in to locations, make plans (future check-ins), earn points for hanging out with friends, post pictures, and much more. However, recalling their studies in Mayfield Fellows Program, Krieger and Systrom identified that Burbn contained too many features and the users did not want a complicated product. They decided to focus on one specific feature, photo-sharing. The development of Burbn led to creation of Instagram. A month after launching, Instagram had grown to 1 million users. A year later, Instagram hit more than 10 million users.^[5]

Instagram

After pivoting from Burbn, Systrom co‑founded the photo-sharing in San Francisco, United States (U.S) and then later, video-sharing social networking service, Instagram with Mike Krieger.^[11] The name "Instagram" comes from the words "instant" and "telegram".

In April 2012, Instagram was sold to Facebook for $1 billion in cash and stock, along with 13 employees.^[12] According to multiple reports, the deal netted Systrom $400 million based on his ownership stake in the business.^[13] One of the key contributions to the acquisition is that Mark Zuckerberg stated Facebook is "committed to building and growing Instagram independently," allowing Systrom to continue to lead Instagram.^[14]

In an interview with Forbes, he stated that "Instagram is a new form of communication that’s an ideal fit with the always-with-you iPhone in today’s social media world. Instagram’s a social network built around photos, where people can quickly comment on or ‘like’ photos and share them on Twitter or Facebook." ^[4] Systrom identifies Instagram as a media company, which explains the roll-out of video advertisement by big companies such as Disney, Activision, Lancome, Banana Republic and CW in late 2014.^[15]

Under Systrom's leadership, Instagram developed key features are the Explore tab, filters, and video. Over time, Instagram has rolled out features allowing users to upload and filter photographs and short videos, follow other users' feeds, geotag images, name location, and comment on other users' photographs and short videos. Instagram allowed the development of web profiles in 2012, connecting accounts to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr in 2013, an Explore tab in mid-2012, and Video in June 2013.^[3] Instagram offers 19 photographic filters; Normal, 1977, Amaro, Branna, Earlybird, Hefe, Hudson, Inkwell, Kelvin, Lo-fi, Mayfair, Nashville, Rise, Sierra, Sutro, Toaster, Valencia, Willow, X-Pro II.

As a Mayfield Fellows Program with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program where he met Co-Founder, Mike Krieger, Systrom believed in building "simple solutions and minimum viable products" which attributes to the minimalistic nature of Instagram's core features and iteration cycles.^[3] In addition, both co-founders attribute their success to building a collaborative work culture, developing work-life balance, and constantly maintaining and growing their co-founder relationship.

References