Systrom's Quotes

#1. Way back in 2008, when the iPhone was new and Instagram was a gleam in Kevin Systrom's eye, I was involved in creating a service called CrowdFire. It was a way for fans at a festival (the first was Outside Lands) to share photos, tweets, and texts in a location and event specific way.

John Battelle

#2. There are a lot more companies with a lot younger people. It is just like 23-year-olds are starting companies, and they are scaling really quickly.

Kevin Systrom

#3. The best products in the world have a point of view. The worst products have none.

Kevin Systrom

#4. I think Instagram at its best is where you feel like you're getting the most authentic version of the person on the other side of the camera. Someone who does this wonderfully well is Lena Dunham.

Kevin Systrom

#5. I do believe that Instagram has put a stake in the ground and we're growing more quickly than anyone. Is there something in there we could do to make it a multi-billion dollar business? I think we can figure out something along the way.

Kevin Systrom

#6. It's funny: I was a photographer before I was a programmer.

Kevin Systrom

#7. Back in the day, I actually studied photography in Florence for a few months, and my photography teacher took away my digital camera and said, 'No, use this - it's analog and it's square.' It was a Holga camera, a very cheap $3 or $4 plastic camera. And that's what inspired 'Instagram'.

Kevin Systrom

#8. Really, we're just taking people and shifting them from taking photos anyway to taking them on 'Instagram'.

Kevin Systrom

#9. I like to say that the one thing that all people who succeed in changing the world have in common is that they at least tried.

Kevin Systrom

#10. People don't work in a dotcom because they have to. There are many professions that don't require that sort of time. But people sign up because they want to make world-changing differences, to build something that affects millions of people.

Kevin Systrom

#11. Do what you love, and do it well - that's much more meaningful than any metric.

Kevin Systrom

#12. 'Instagram' can engage generations of people that may not be on Facebook yet. I think that's true with 'WhatsApp,' and I think that will be true with things like Oculus.

Kevin Systrom

#13. I can't imagine that companies are uninteresting if they don't have a billion users. But I do believe, to have mass scale, you have to be in the many-hundreds-of-millions-of-users range, and there are not that many companies that get there.

Kevin Systrom

#14. 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

#15. '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

#16. If you're a journalist, and you want to see live photos happening at any location in our system, you can simply type in the location, and up comes the page.

Kevin Systrom

#17. There's a natural set of constraints with mobile phones that force you to be a better photographer by acknowledging and observing the world around you.

Kevin Systrom

#18. I'm always in awe of people who are artists in their fields - people who understand that simply by taking ideas and translating them into reality, they've created value in the world.

Kevin Systrom

#19. Instagram is a media company. I think we're about visual media.

Kevin Systrom

#20. I've always had a passion for technology, photography, startups, and connecting people. Bringing those aspects together made me successful.

Kevin Systrom

#21. Mobile has created a totally different dynamic for discovering apps. You're sitting in a bar, and your friend is taking some pictures, and then you ask what app they're using.

Kevin Systrom

#22. I believe photos is one of the underlying things in every social network that becomes successful.

Kevin Systrom

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. Focusing on one thing and doing it really, really well can get you very far.

Kevin Systrom

#26. I really love connecting people, creating communities. As a kid, creation was something that I always loved.

Kevin Systrom

#27. 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

#28. Products can introduce more complexity over time, but as far as launching and introducing a new product into the market, it's a marketing problem. You have to explain everything you do, and people have to understand it, within seconds.

Kevin Systrom

#29. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#30. There's real beauty in pushing yourself to expose the real you in more ways.

Kevin Systrom

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. You need to fail in order to find the right solution.

Kevin Systrom

#34. It's wonderful when you pair entrepreneurs together because they can share experiences and in some ways push each other to build better products going forward.

Kevin Systrom

#35. 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

#36. Just so everyone knows, we're not a photo-sharing company. I don't see photos on 'Instagram' as art. They're much more about communication.

Kevin Systrom

#37. I really appreciate crafts. I like cooking. I love food and drink. I love owning that through Instagram. Although that can be challenging at times because it doesn't fit people's stereotypes of a technical founder.

Kevin Systrom

#38. When people say that college isn't worthwhile and paying all this money isn't worthwhile, I really disagree. I think those experiences and those classes that may not necessarily seem applicable in the moment end up coming back to you time and time again.

Kevin Systrom

#39. The best companies in the world have all had predecessors. 'YouTube' was a dating site. You always have to evolve into something else.

Kevin Systrom

#40. A photo app is a utility. It's like comparing 'Twitter' to Microsoft Word. If you want to be an author, you're not always going to constrain yourself to 140 characters.

Kevin Systrom

#41. Chobani did a really wonderful yogurt campaign on 'Instagram' to shift perceptions away from the fact that they were just yogurt. And they had a 7-point incremental lift on shifting that perception through a brand advertisement on Instagram.

Kevin Systrom

#42. I like to compare 'Instagram' to the Library of Congress.

Kevin Systrom

#43. All of us in social media and regular media, we're all competing for the same thing, which is this gap between something happening in the world and you knowing about it.

Kevin Systrom

#44. 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

#45. The best feature is less features.

Kevin Systrom

#46. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#47. When you're introducing a mobile app, you look around and say, 'We could be doing 15 different things, but how do we communicate to someone why they would want to download and even sign up for this thing?'

Kevin Systrom

#48. Photos were seen as the most private type of content, and 'Instagram' really flipped that on its head and said photos can be really public.

Kevin Systrom

#49. I try to list the top three things to get done every day, and I'll be lucky if I hit all three, but it's amazing what that does to keep you on track.

Kevin Systrom

#50. '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

#51. I don't think you should ever start a business and move in a direction where you can't see it becoming a business.

Kevin Systrom

#52. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#53. People are hungry for what's happening right now in the world.

Kevin Systrom

#54. Our goal is really to make sure that 'Instagram', whether you're a celebrity or not, is a safe place and that the content that gets posted is something that's appropriate for teens and also for adults.

Kevin Systrom

#55. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#56. We just want to build a company that focuses on the love of Instagram.

Kevin Systrom

#57. 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

#58. A lot of the earliest 'Instagram' celebrities took really beautiful photos. But you're starting to see a change where it's not about beauty; it's about the story that you tell.

Kevin Systrom

#59. The number of people who have either gotten married or had kids or started dating or just made great friends over Instagram is countless. I think we're the only platform that continues to be successful in bringing people together in real life for these real relationships.

Kevin Systrom

#60. Videos are a very difficult medium to be good at and also a difficult medium to consume quickly.

Kevin Systrom

#61. I think not focusing on money makes you sane because in the long run it can probably drive you crazy.

Kevin Systrom

#62. What people tell you and how they act is very, very different sometimes.

Kevin Systrom

#63. Brands, musicians, and public figures were among the first to embrace video on 'Instagram', and we've been impressed with how brands have extended their reach with video ads.

Kevin Systrom

#64. Above all else, products spread when they're useful and they're usable

Kevin Systrom

#65. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#66. 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

#67. Every photo you take communicates something about a moment in time - a brief slice of time of where you were, who you were with, and what you were doing.

Kevin Systrom

#68. Facebook's campus has a lot of creative spaces: an analogue print shop, a candy store. It's a dynamic place and one of the best environments I've been in, period.

Kevin Systrom

#69. On the intimate relationships, I'd say you can be someone who wouldn't normally get attention in traditional media and come onto Instagram and build this massive following.

Kevin Systrom

#70. The printing press did something really big for the world when everyone could get books in their hands and read.

Kevin Systrom

#71. The major reason why Instagram works is that you can follow anyone out there and start following their photos immediately.

Kevin Systrom

#72. It turns out that no undergrad class prepares you to start a startup - you learn most of it as you do it.

Kevin Systrom

#73. I really value passion for the product above experience.

Kevin Systrom

#74. I'm a huge fan of what 'Hipstamatic' is doing and all they've accomplished.

Kevin Systrom

#75. On average, people miss about 70 percent of the posts in their 'Instagram' feed. What this is about is making sure that the 30 percent you see is the best 30 percent possible.

Kevin Systrom

#76. 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."

Kevin Systrom

#77. 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

#78. If you've got an idea, start today. There's no better time than now to get going. That doesn't mean quit your job and jump into your idea 100% from day one, but there's always small progress that can be made to start the movement.

Kevin Systrom

#79. I think it's hard to compare 'Twitter' and 'Instagram'. Twitter has a more mature business.

Kevin Systrom

#80. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#81. '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

#82. Someone once described entrepreneurship to me as a series of happy accidents.

Kevin Systrom

#83. 'Instagram' reached 13 million users in just 13 months.

Kevin Systrom

#84. If it's one thing we do really well as a company, it's that we take big change slowly and deliberately and bring the community along with us.

Kevin Systrom

#85. If you focus on producing a great experience for anyone, that's how you get big.

Kevin Systrom

#86. It is cool to see that the fashion world has really taken to 'Instagram,' but, again, it is one of the many examples of many communities, whether you are a chef, a skateboarder, a surfer, a skier.

Kevin Systrom

#87. I care deeply about craft: the quality of how something is made and the experience it enables.

Kevin Systrom

#88. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#89. You can build a filter app get people really excited, but the way to keep them is to provide long-term value. Long-term value is, in fact, being its own network.

Kevin Systrom

#90. I actually think some of my best moments in life have been while I was with people from Instagram - whether it's super late nights getting a release out or being able to travel to places I'd never visited and meeting some of the most interesting people I've ever met.

Kevin Systrom

#91. 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

#92. Good companies are always fundraising. Whether you're meeting people or considering firms, you're always fundraising.

Kevin Systrom

#93. 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

#94. Our goal is to allow people to use whatever app they want to get photos into 'Instagram'.

Kevin Systrom

#95. People always told me photos have been done. My feeling was, these people are wrong.

Kevin Systrom

#96. 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.

Kevin Systrom

#97. Kevin Systrom of Instagram used to work for us as a consultant in the early days of Mint. I knew him a long time ago. Maybe I could have gotten in there. But with photo sharing, I don't know if there's an obvious business model. I don't think there's a competitive, sustainable advantage.

Aaron Patzer

#98. In May of 2010, I joined Kevin Systrom, my co-founder, and we created 'Instagram', a mobile social network that today has over 15 million users.

Mike Krieger

#99. It helps to see the world through a different lens, and that's what we wanted to do with Instagram. We wanted to give everyone the same feeling of discovering the world around you through a different lens.

Kevin Systrom

#100. 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