Kevin Systrom (born December 30, 1983) is an American
computer programmer
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software.
A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...
and entrepreneur. He co-founded
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
, the world's largest photo sharing website, along with
Mike Krieger
Michel Krieger (born March 4, 1986) is a Brazilian-American entrepreneur and software engineer who co-founded Instagram along with Kevin Systrom, and served as its CTO. Instagram expanded from a few million users to 1 billion monthly active users ...
.
Systrom was included on the list of America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 2016. Under Systrom as CEO, Instagram became a fast growing
app, with 800 million monthly users as of September 2017. He resigned as the CEO of Instagram on September 24, 2018.
Meta Platforms (then Facebook, Inc.) bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, a large sum at that time for a company that had 13 employees. Instagram today has over one billion users and contributes over $20 billion to Meta Platforms's annual revenue.
Early life and education
Systrom was born in 1983 in
Holliston, Massachusetts
Holliston is a New England town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States in the Greater Boston area. The population was 14,996 at the 2020 census. It is located in MetroWest, a Massachusetts region that is west of Boston. Holliston is t ...
. He is the son of Diane, a
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
executive at
Zipcar
Zipcar is an American car-sharing company and a subsidiary of Avis Budget Group. Zipcar provides vehicle reservations to its members, billable by the minute, hour or day; members may have to pay a monthly or annual membership fee in addition to ...
, who also worked at
Monster
A monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion. Monsters are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive with a strange, grotesque appearance that causes terror and fe ...
and Swapit during the first
dotcom bubble
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system ...
,
and Douglas Systrom, Vice President in
Human Resources
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include m ...
at
TJX Companies
The TJX Companies, Inc. (abbreviated TJX) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Discount store, off-price department store corporation, headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was formed as a subsidiary of Zayre, Zayre ...
.
[Holliston native strikes it rich with smartphone app Instagram – Framingham, MA](_blank)
''The MetroWest Daily News
''The MetroWest Daily News'' is an American daily newspaper published in Framingham, Massachusetts, serving the MetroWest region of suburban Boston. The newspaper is owned by Gannett.
The newspaper covers several cities and towns in Norfolk, M ...
'' (April 12, 2012). Retrieved on 2013-08-20.
Systrom attended
Middlesex School
Middlesex School is a coeducational, non-sectarian, day and boarding independent secondary school for grades 9-12 located in Concord, Massachusetts. It was founded as an all-boys school in 1901 by a Roxbury Latin School alumnus, Frederick Winsor, ...
in
Concord, Massachusetts
Concord () is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. At the 2020 census, the town population was 18,491. The United States Census Bureau considers Concord part of Greater Boston. The town center is near where the conflu ...
, where he was introduced to
computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...
. His interest grew from playing ''
Doom 2
''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a first-person shooter game by id Software. It was released for MS-DOS computers in 1994 and Macintosh computers in 1995. Unlike the original ''Doom'', which was initially only available ...
'' and creating his own levels as a child.
He worked at Boston Beat, a
vinyl record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts nea ...
music store in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, while he was in high school.
Systrom attended
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
and graduated in 2006 with a bachelor's degree in
management science
Management science (or managerial science) is a wide and interdisciplinary study of solving complex problems and making strategic decisions as it pertains to institutions, corporations, governments and other types of organizational entities. It is ...
and
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
.
At Stanford, he was a member of the
Sigma Nu
Sigma Nu () is an undergraduate Fraternities and sororities in North America, college fraternity founded at the Virginia Military Institute on January 1, 1869. The fraternity was founded by James Frank Hopkins, Greenfield Quarles and James McIlva ...
fraternity
A fraternity (from Latin language, Latin ''wiktionary:frater, frater'': "brother (Christian), brother"; whence, "wiktionary:brotherhood, brotherhood") or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club (organization), club or fraternal ...
. He turned down a recruitment offer from Mark Zuckerberg and instead spent the winter term of his third year in
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
, where he studied photography.
He got his first taste of the startup world when he was chosen as one of twelve students to participate in the
Mayfield Fellows Program The Mayfield Fellows Program is a university program that offers students in-depth training and experience in high-tech entrepreneurship.
The program, originally called the "Technology Ventures Co-op" was founded in 1996 at Stanford University and ...
at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. The fellowship led to his
internship
An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organization for a limited period of time. Once confined to medical graduates, internship is used practice for a wide range of placements in businesses, non-profit organizations and gover ...
at
Odeo
Odeo was a directory and search destination website for RSS-syndicated audio and video. It employed tools that enabled users to create, record, and share podcasting, podcasts with a simple Adobe Flash-based interface.
Odeo was originally developed ...
, the company that eventually gave rise to
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
.
Career
Google
After graduating Stanford, he joined
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
working on
Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP an ...
,
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is a time-management and scheduling calendar service developed by Google. It became available in beta release April 13, 2006, and in general release in July 2009, on the web and as mobile apps for the Android and iOS platforms.
...
, Docs, Spreadsheets and other products.
He spent two years at
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
as a product marketer; Systrom left Google out of frustration of not being moved into the Associate Product Manager program.
Burbn
He made the prototype of what later became Burbn and pitched it to
Baseline Ventures
Baseline Ventures is a venture capital investment firm that focuses on seed and growth-stage investments in technology companies. The company was the first seed investor in Instagram, an early investor of Twitter and has been called "one of Silic ...
and
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Andreessen ...
at a party. He came up with the idea while on a vacation in Mexico when his girlfriend was unwilling to post her photos because they did not look good enough when taken by the
iPhone 4
The iPhone 4 is a smartphone that was designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the fourth generation of the iPhone lineup, succeeding the iPhone 3GS and preceding the 4S. Following a number of notable leaks, the iPhone 4 was first unvei ...
camera.
The solution to the problem was to use filters, effectively hiding the qualitative inferiority of the photographs.
Subsequently, Systrom developed the X-Pro II filter that is still in use on Instagram today.
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 US$500,000
seed funding
Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...
round from both
Baseline Ventures
Baseline Ventures is a venture capital investment firm that focuses on seed and growth-stage investments in technology companies. The company was the first seed investor in Instagram, an early investor of Twitter and has been called "one of Silic ...
and
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Andreessen ...
. While in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, Systrom and Mike Krieger built Burbn, an
HTML 5
HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML L ...
check-in service, into a product that allowed users to do many things: check into 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.
Instagram
In 2010, Systrom co‑founded the photo-sharing and, later, video-sharing social networking service
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
with
Mike Krieger
Michel Krieger (born March 4, 1986) is a Brazilian-American entrepreneur and software engineer who co-founded Instagram along with Kevin Systrom, and served as its CTO. Instagram expanded from a few million users to 1 billion monthly active users ...
in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
In April 2012, Instagram, along with 13 employees, was
sold to
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
for US$1
billion
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions:
*1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English.
* 1,000,000,000,000, i.e ...
in cash and stock.
According to multiple reports, the deal netted Systrom US$400 million based on his ownership stake in the business.
One of the key contributions to the acquisition was that
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...
stated
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
was "committed to building and growing Instagram independently", allowing Systrom to continue to lead Instagram.
Systrom stated in an interview with ''
Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to:
People
* Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer
* Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian
* Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and ma ...
'' that the pros of becoming a part of Facebook were that "we got to pair up with a juggernaut of a company that understands how to grow, understands how to build a business, has one of the best, if not the best, management team in tech and we got to use them as our resource".
In an interview with ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'', 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."
Systrom identified
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...
as a media company, which explains the roll-out of video advertisement by big companies such as
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
,
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...
,
Lancôme
Lancôme () is a French luxury perfumes and cosmetics house that distributes products internationally. Lancôme is part of the L'Oréal Luxury Products division, which is its parent company and offers luxury skin care, fragrances, and makeup at ...
,
Banana Republic
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighboring ...
and
CW in late 2014.
On September 24, 2018, it was announced that Systrom resigned from Instagram and would be leaving in few weeks.
Views on copying ideas in the industry
Instagram has been accused on multiple occasions for copying various new functions from its closest competitor Snapchat. Regarding the issue, Systrom argued that all new services launched by tech companies nowadays are "remixes" of existing products, and that "all of these ideas are original when you remix them and bring your own flavour".
Systrom also argued that 'you can trace the roots of every feature anyone has in their app, somewhere in the history of technology' and that this was simply 'just the way Silicon Valley works.'
Forbes list
In 2014, Systrom was listed in the
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
30 "Under 30" list under the "Social/Mobile category."
In 2016, the magazine ranked Systrom as a billionaire with an estimated net worth of US$1.1 billion.
The fortune came about as a result of Facebook stocks rising more than 500%.
Personal life
In February 2016, Systrom met with
Pope Francis
Pope Francis ( la, Franciscus; it, Francesco; es, link=, Francisco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church. He has been the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 13 March 2013. ...
at the
Vatican
Vatican may refer to:
Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum
The Holy See
* The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...
, where they discussed the power of images in uniting people "across borders, cultures and generations".
On October 31, 2016, Systrom married Nicole Systrom (née Schuetz), founder and CEO of clean-energy investment firm Sutro Energy Group, in
Napa, California
Napa is the largest city and county seat of Napa County and a principal city of Wine Country in Northern California. Located in the North Bay region of the Bay Area, the city had a population of 77,480 as of the end of 2021. Napa is a major t ...
. The two met at Stanford and were engaged in 2014.
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Systrom, Kevin
1983 births
Living people
Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area
American technology chief executives
American technology company founders
American computer programmers
Facebook employees
Google employees
American billionaires
Stanford University alumni
21st-century American engineers