Kevin Systrom Quotes

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

If you've got an idea, start today. There's no better time than now to get going.

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.

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

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.

Great products sell themselves.

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.

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.

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

Instagram was created because there was no single place dedicated to giving your mobile photos a place to live and to be seen.

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.

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

I've always been into taking my photos, cropping them square, putting them through a filter in Photoshop.

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

You need to find people that are drawn to the idea that you build, and they end up taking it and making it even better.

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

With Instagram, the focus is on the present tense.

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

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

I grew up as a photo nut. Every Christmas I would get a new camera. It's a huge part of my life.

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

Teens just understand the world in ways I don't think any of us adults do.

I love challenging the notion that, in order to be a tech founder, you have to be holed up in a dark room wearing a T-shirt and baggy jeans.

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.

The best feature is less features.

Everyone gets lucky for some amount in their life. And the question is, are you alert enough to know you're being lucky or you're becoming lucky?

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.

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

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

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

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.

I really value passion for the product above experience.

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.

We're just taking people and shifting them from taking photos anyway to taking them on Instagram.

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.

In my fourth grade classroom, I even instituted a government structure, because I was really interested in people having positions and there being law.

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.

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.

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

The world runs on luck.

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

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.

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

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.