VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Instagram Founder Kevin Systrom Doesn’t Regret Selling Instagram To Facebook

Kevin Systrom was interviewed by Kara Swisher, where he discussed Instagram and his views about its sale and its effect on people’s mental health. 

The first question posed to Systrom was whether he regrets selling Instagram to Facebook.

“[I don’t look] back on the Instagram experience with anything but awe, it’s amazing, there are over two billion people that use it,” he told Swisher.

Swisher said she thought Systrom didn’t need the help of other companies. 

“Because I felt that you really had something special and that you had the capabilities of doing it without their help,” she said. “Although they don’t think that but that’s whatever, their wrong, and you’re creative and they’re not, for the most part. It’s just their shoplifters. Actually really plagiarists, I could go on, but I won’t.” 

Systrom responded that he thought the sale of Instagram was beneficial for the app and its users. 

“I think there are a lot of benefits to being a part of Facebook, and we attached ourselves to an already very large company, and we’re able to grow and as much as we had conflict, we would probably have had more conflict if we were independent, I don’t know.”

Systrom said he wanted to start something new when he decided to sell Instagram and believes that this was the right choice for him personally. 

“I’ve said this before so I feel like I’m re-answering the same thing, which is so many entrepreneurs get caught up in their public companies and they can’t do something new,” he said. “Like I always felt, even a couple years into being on Facebook, like you wanna build new things you want to and you try to within Instagram and you launch stories and you do video and you do IGTV and you do all these things, and it’s like it’s not the same as pressing reset. New brand, new team, new things so there’s an upside.”

Next, Systrom explained his thoughts on whether he believes Instagram negatively affects people’s mental health.

“And I’m like come on, you know that they’re not living their best lives but of course, they’re putting the best images on Instagram,” he said. “That dynamic is terrifying as an entrepreneur, to who created the thing, because you want people to know that life is really hard and whatever people post on Instagram is not necessarily, it’s the tip of the iceberg.”

The interview ended with Systrom commenting on the apps BeReal and Snapchat. He praised BeReal, calling it “brilliant” for allowing people to post their real lives rather than just the best parts of them. Snapchat also allowed for this, as it “came out of the pressure of everyone feeling like they had to have a perfect grid.”