Posting anon.<p>In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding for a month or two in honorable futility, but after a while, my bank account depleted and I had to go.<p>To make various ends meet and to keep my mental health during the wind down however, I took up some contract work that I found through various friends in the SF startup scene. One company that I really liked and did some small stuff for was Burbn, which was a mobile-only location check-in that was hinged around taking photos of your location.<p>Missing my friends in NYC (I made a lot of friends in SF, but my inner circle were my college buddies from CMU; I went to tech and they went finance, sigh), I decided to leave SF to head to NYC and get a fresh start.<p>As I was leaving, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends, so I emailed my contact at Burbn and said I was likely to be unavailable for any more work, but that I liked the project and hoped for the best for him. He responded and said that he was near funding on a small pivot, and that if I was interested, there might be a full-time role available. I declined - I was mentally done with SF and the startup scene (Larry Chiang, 111 Minna, the rise of FB spam-crap like RockYou, etc.) as it was then.<p>That person was Kevin Systrom; that pivot was Instagram.
First official statement:<p><a href="https://instagram-press.com/blog/2018/09/24/statement-from-kevin-systrom-instagram-co-founder-and-ceo/" rel="nofollow">https://instagram-press.com/blog/2018/09/24/statement-from-k...</a><p>> <i>We’re planning on taking some time off to explore our curiosity and creativity again. Building new things requires that we step back, understand what inspires us and match that with what the world needs; that’s what we plan to do.</i><p>h/t to Bloomberg's @sarahfrier, who also says this:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/sarahfrier/status/1044419256383729664" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/sarahfrier/status/1044419256383729664</a><p>> <i>My sources say the Instagram founders are leaving after increased tension with Mark Zuckerberg over the direction of the product. IG culture/priorities very different from FB. See my April story for background</i>
Well, there's more than a 50% probability that they're leaving because of conflicts with Facebook, the privacy issues and the push to add more and more ads everywhere. If this were the case, I hope they'd speak up sooner than later. We need voices from within FB and its acquisitions to tell everyone how messed up things are behind the scenes.<p>But you have to give credit to how the company started and how it's been running all these years. Instagram is still flourishing (and grew in the face of competition from Snapchat, even by copying its features and making it better) and seems like a nicer group of communities with a lot less of the nastiness that's seen on Facebook (I don't have much first hand experience, but do see some feeds on the web). That's not easy to cultivate, and for reasons I haven't read about or examined, the Instagram users have self-selected such a group to be in.*<p>Here's hoping the founders start something new and fresh, far from privacy invasive platforms.<p>*: I'd be interested in any writings about how these communities developed to be what they are.
Here's an offtopic observation. This article (from the <i>New York Times</i>) denoted the names of the Instagram founders as "Mr. Systrom and Mr. Krieger..."<p>The <i>Wall Street Journal</i> has a corresponding article about this story. In that article, the Instagram founders' names are written, "Messrs. Systrom and Krieger..."<p>Despite frequently reading both papers, I can't recall ever seeing "Messrs" before. I thought it was a typo at first; turns out it's a formal way to refer to two or more men instead of saying Mr. several times. This isn't germane to the story at hand at all, but I found it to be an interesting and educational part of reading both articles about the same story.
I'd venture that they're extremely wealthy, still friends, and decided it's time to go have fun rather than prescribe this to Facebook's ethical challenges like the article would have you believe.
I wonder what's Facebook's move after Instagram becomes stale and no longer "cool". It seems to me that the popularity of social networks are cyclical, and there's very little that a company can do to satiate a user's appetite for something new. That's before we discuss future regulatory troubles Facebook might face.<p>What future revenue streams does Facebook have? Are they even capable of creating something new that users love? As far as I can tell, they haven't created any popular products outside of Facebook version 1.0.<p>Out of all the major tech companies, Facebook's position seems the least stable IMO.
According to WSJ's report:<p>Facebook’s Chris Cox has been put in charge of all the company’s apps now.<p>When Ms. Sandberg went unmentioned in a major reshuffling of Mr. Zuckerberg’s top product executives in May, the moves caused former employees and executives to speculate that she had been displaced as the second-most-powerful figure by Chris Cox, a close friend of Mr. Zuckerberg, who had been elevated to a new role in charge of all the company’s apps, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.<p>link: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/sheryl-sandberg-leans-into-a-gale-of-bad-news-at-facebook-1536085230" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/sheryl-sandberg-leans-into-a-ga...</a>
As a non VC, non founder, the only surprise to me is that anyone stays beyond contracted minima. The first, assuming you had taken a role as a VC, you'd want out to go do the VC thing somewhere else. The second, you would be watching your baby pimped out and sold for drugs on the streets, as things you had no desire to see were done, in the name of profit.
Instagram often seemed to have its own way of doing things and its own aesthetic within Facebook, one that the founders championed. Recently, however, the winning strategy for Instagram seems to be copying features from Snapchat, and abandoning the style that got it to its first 100 million users. I can imagine that being frustrating.
Without being too careless[1] I think it is plausible to assume they and their children will not "have" to work again. The "have" is in scare quotes because, in my experience with tech people I know who have 'banked out' of the workforce, working on something is often more rewarding, over a longer term, than sitting around consuming entertainment while eating and drinking. So nearly everyone I know who became multi-millionaires or beyond have ended up still doing something interesting with their lives.<p>So stepping down from FB is kind of a no brainer, especially if it becomes less "fun" due to issues raised by other people. Building stuff is fun, cleaning up a mess, is not fun. Trying to do stuff while the mess is getting worse and worse around you, that is pure torture in my opinion.<p>[1] There is a sad track of people who have made millions and then lost it all due to poor choices.<p>[2] Billionaires actually -- <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/kevin-systrom/#3b19b6447396" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/profile/kevin-systrom/#3b19b6447396</a>
-- or not -- <a href="https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/tech-millionaire/mike-krieger-net-worth/" rel="nofollow">https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/...</a>
My first reaction was the parallel to Jan Koum's unexpected exit over Facebook's ethics; good to see the article ends with that story.<p>After Google's recent Dragonfly resignations, this might be the new standard for tech companies.
I know i'm wrong, and doing a misjudgement here but the fact is "Companies like facebook don't need founders, they will eventually make the product that people might use in everyday life, they will do it anyhow; by either copying that product or to buy it. Remember that the 'poke your friend' feature is only unique from facebook everything else is someone else's things"<p>this evil face of facebook will hurt more and more companies day after day and in a result a chain reaction that will affect the life of general people.
It’s time to relisten ALL past podcast interviews of kevin systrom <a href="https://lnns.co/Ut_qSy6-TwP" rel="nofollow">https://lnns.co/Ut_qSy6-TwP</a> and mike krieger <a href="https://lnns.co/YrbpXP9aTMv" rel="nofollow">https://lnns.co/YrbpXP9aTMv</a> :)
I find Instagram fascinating, because on the one hand it's one of my favourite social network apps, but on the other hand I kind of feel like they don't know what people like about it and are trying to kill it... Perhaps I'm just weird though and other people like the direction they're going in?.<p>A good example of what I'm talking about is the whole recent <i>you've seen all the posts you care about, keep scrolling for things you're not interested in from people you don't care about</i> "feature" that popped up a few weeks ago. They just seem to be incredibly determined to push the content of users I don't care about on me, when what I think made Instagram so great was that I could carefully curate what I follow to only see stuff by profiles I'm interested in... And what's the deal with not having a native iPad app? That's just insane!<p>I wonder how much of this is pushed on them by Facebook, and whether that had something to do with them leaving?
This is interesting, considering Snapchat teams up with Amazon to Offer Image-Based-Shopping today. <a href="https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/" rel="nofollow">https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/</a>
Kevin and Mike have my utmost respect for everything they have done for the world. Thank you so much for truly believing in something and giving it all up for that.