Kevin Systrom
Kevin Systrom
Kevin Systrom is an American entrepreneur and programmer, best known as the co‑founder and CEO of Instagram, an online mobile photo, video sharing application. This social networking service for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 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. In 2013, Systrom was listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 list under the Social/Mobile category. Together with Mike...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth30 December 1983
CityHolliston, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Above all else, products spread when they're useful and they're usable
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.
I love challenging the notion that, in order to be a tech founder, you have to be holed up in a dark room wearing a T-shirt and baggy jeans.
If you've got an idea, start today. There's no better time than now to get going.
I promise you, a lot of it is luck. But you make your own luck by working really hard and trying lots and lots of things.
Focusing on one thing and doing it really, really well can get you very far.
There's real beauty in pushing yourself to expose the real you in more ways.
I have a pretty random life. 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.
People have presences, both online and in real life. You can choose to show everything, meaning all sides of you, or you can choose to be selective.
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. There's a reason we don't allow you to upload photos on the Web as albums. It's not about taking all these photos off your DSLR putting them into an album and sharing them with your family. It's not about that. It's about what are you up to right now out in the real world, how can you share that with everyone.
In the past, people have looked at photos as a record of memory. The focus has been on the past tense. With Instagram, the focus is on the present tense.
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.