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Kevin Systrom

Co-founder of Instagram, Instagram

Search every verified Kevin Systrom interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Kevin Systrom, co-founder and former CEO of Instagram, appeared in two recent podcast interviews. In a conversation with Lex Fridman, he discussed his time leading Instagram, including the period after Facebook acquired the company. He reflected on the experience of building the product, describing it as a "game" driven by passion rather than money, and emphasized the importance of "opting in" to work one loves. He also offered perspectives on competition in social media, stating that Instagram succeeded by identifying gaps left by other platforms, such as focusing on mobile and visual content when rivals were desktop-oriented. He further suggested that the future of social networks may involve making them "less social," pointing to recommender systems as a potential area of change. In a separate interview with NPR's "How I Built This," Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger discussed the early days of Instagram, noting that their initial server crashed frequently. They highlighted how the app demonstrated the capabilities of smartphone cameras in 2010, showing users what could be done with a phone in their pocket. The episode also covered the app's growth to hundreds of millions of users and its acquisition by Facebook for one billion dollars.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“I think the most interesting part are the future of social networks is going to be making them less social because I think people are part of the root cause of the problem. So for instance, often in recommender systems we talk about two stages. There's a candidate generation step, which is just like of our vast trove of stuff that you might want to see, what small subset should we pick for you, okay? Typically that i”

Other executives at Instagram

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