Nov 13, 2017 · 31m · how-i-built-this
Instagram: Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger (2017)
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this archival episode of NPR's How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger about turning a simple photo-filtering prototype into a global social phenomenon acquired by Facebook for one billion dollars.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 28.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.0 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 1.0 Guy pushing back 1.6
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 25:38 Systrom reframes the role of luck
Rather than accepting a simplistic view of luck, Systrom counters with his thesis that everyone gets lucky and success is determined by alertness, grit, and execution.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 15:41 Raz challenges the linear success narrativeRaz refuses to let the story look effortless from the outside, pushing the founders to reveal the acute fears of failure they felt after launch.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 18:50 Systrom explains the open network vs closed network innovationSystrom educates Raz on the fundamental architectural choice that separated Instagram from earlier photo-sharing platforms like Facebook and Flickr.
Guy holds their own ▶ 20:36 Raz contextualizes tech naming conventionsRaz validates Krieger's cultural milestone observation by citing his own journalistic experience from when media outlets routinely said Google the search engine.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Origins of Burbn and Finding a Co-Founder | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Guy Raz sets up the origin story of Burbn and guides the narrative with simple prompts. Kevin Systrom explains the initial thesis on location sharing and how he pitched Steve Anderson in a bar. | |
| Partnering with Mike Krieger and Securing Seed Capital | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Guy Raz clarifies specific numbers and asks how they differentiated in a crowded photo app market. Systrom details the lean startup methodology of focusing on the 100 core users and inventing the X-Pro II filter in Mexico. | |
| Launching Instagram and Surviving Server Overloads | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz expresses surprise at the single-server infrastructure. Mike Krieger and Systrom recount running on zero sleep while the app crashed repeatedly on day one. | |
| Strategic Beta Outreach to Designers and Journalists | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Krieger outlines the pre-launch strategy of seeding top Dribbble designers. Raz narrates the growth trajectory to ten million users and asks about venture funding rounds. | |
| Managing Growth Anxiety and Overcoming Well-Funded Rivals | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Raz challenges the idea that Instagram had an easy linear trajectory and asks why it survived when other apps died. Systrom breaks down the product design decision to make Instagram an open network rather than a closed friends-only feed. | |
| Cultural Breakthroughs: Celebrities, Politicians, and Mainstream Fame | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz shares an anecdote from his radio career to ask about cultural validation moments. Krieger and Systrom share stories about President Obama, Snoop Dogg, and their operational dynamic under Facebook. | |
| The Terms of Service Backlash and Rebuilding User Trust | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz prompts the founders about their major terms-of-service public relations crisis. Systrom openly admits copying early legal copy and explains how issuing an immediate apology halted account deletions. | |
| The Role of Luck, Resilience, and Post-Acquisition Growth | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz asks what percentage of their outcome was luck. Systrom reframes luck as an everyday occurrence that requires alertness, talent, and resilience to convert into success, followed by the Priority Bicycles segment. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Systrom: Smartphone cameras would spark a visual communication revolution
“The fact that like these devices had a camera that would lead to a visual communication revolution where like all of a sudden people weren't just communicating with text and voice, but they had the chance to communicate with an image.”
Systrom: Investor interest in Silicon Valley instantly attracts other investors
“The second someone shows any interest in you in Silicon Valley, all of a sudden you have a bunch of other people that really want to invest.”
Systrom: Andreessen Horowitz invested $250,000 in Instagram's seed round
“And that initial check went from 50,000 to 250,000 dollars. And then there was another investor, Andreessen Horwitz, who came in and put 250,000 dollars in.”
Systrom: Instagram's first filter and photo were created in Mexico
“I literally just, like, researched how to make the first filter, which ended up being called X-Pro II, and if you scroll all the way back on my account to the very first photo, there's Nicole's foot and a little stray dog in Mexico, and that's because that day…”
Systrom: Instagram took eight weeks from initial sketch to App Store launch
“It was only eight weeks from the time we had basically sketched it out to when we put it into the Apple store.”
Systrom: Instagram gained 25,000 users within its first 24 hours
“The first 24 hours we had 20 5000 people sign up around the world, which sounded big to us at the time.”
Systrom: Instagram launched hosted on a single computer in Los Angeles
“It was a single computer in a co-location space somewhere in LA.”
Krieger: Early users at an app launch set the community culture
“So we had this intuition that if you're going to throw a party, which is kind of what an app launch really is as people are streaming to the door, you want them to sort of know how they should act and who else is there.”
Krieger: Instagram seeded pre-launch beta invites to Dribbble designers and journalists
“So one of the things we did was we have you have a hundred sort of Invites that you can have before you launch your app to the Apple store where you can invite people to try it out. And we're like, how are we going to use these hundred people? And we use them …”
Systrom: Instagram raised $8M Series A at roughly $30M valuation
“It was, I think our first round was like, I don't remember. It was like, we took eight million dollars of financing on like a 20 pre, so like roughly a thirty million dollar valuation or something.”
Systrom: Choosing an open network model drove Instagram's sustained growth
“I believe the thing that kept it growing was we created an open network.”
Krieger: Dropping app descriptive tags in press signals mainstream cultural arrival
“I noticed that the New York Times, when they would cover us, had stopped saying Instagram, comma, The photo sharing app, and then it was just Instagram. I'm like, oh, we are, we have now reached the point where they can assume that most of their readers know w…”
Systrom: Snoop Dogg was Instagram's first major celebrity user
“For me, it was like our first celebrity of Snoop Dogg. Do you remember Snoop Dogg signing up? And we were like, Is this actually Snoop Dogg? And then I got an email that was like, Snoop Dogg's people want to meet you guys”
Systrom: Justin Bieber signing up drove viral adoption among teens
“And I remember Justin Bieber signing up, and the world going kind of bonkers for that as well, and by world, I mean teenage girls, and they basically started using the app incessantly, and it kind of took off with, like, a bunch of really young people as well.”
Krieger: Instagram was the first company Facebook acquired and kept running
“We were the first company that Facebook acquired and sort of kept running, and then since then you've seen Oculus and WhatsApp”
Systrom: Instagram's original Terms of Service were copied from another site
“We had these terms of service that we had I think effectively copied from some other site way back in the day and just find and replace their name with Instagram because we were a startup and we didn't know what we were doing.”
Systrom: Instagram account deletions dropped to zero after apology blog post
“And Mike and I sat down and we were like, what do we do? And we felt helpless. I mean, it was like all over, it was that first day all over again. It's like, we've screwed this up. How do we make sure people know? And I went back in my head. I was like, why do…”